あなたは、目が疲れる、目が乾くといった感じがしたことはありませんか？ それは、ドライアイになっている可能性があります。目の乾き程度ではあまり気にしない方も多いですが、涙…

Myself and Josh were one step ahead then

i greatly appreciate your analysis of the fledgling American empire or as i like to ccall us “the credit debt nation.”

Check this report at Bear Stearns. Good stuff on the Long Tail and relates to our pointless banter.

http://www.bear...12706/index.htm

Great discussion today. Cheers.

The Jug

But internet solutions requires open standards. Are there open standards bodies which set-top box manufactures are turning to for internet connectivity, or is it Gold Rush 2.0?

As for reconciling the ad model with DVRs, I envision standards that allow for a tiered model of delivery: fee-based without ads, and free with ads and with markers disallowing fast-forwarding through commercials.

In the end, I don’t see IPTV VOD and DVRs in competition, because the DVR can always assimiliate what is thrown at it while integrating true internet video.

Take a trip to places like Dubai, Moscow or Hong Kong and you’ll see that while they’re increasingly swimming in seas of hard wealth, we’re increasingly swimming in a sea of debt and vapor wealth. Unfortunately by the time we realize that our consumer and greed-driven culture has cannibalized our own economy and created a house of cards, all our wealth will have been effectively transferred to the global chess players who found themselves playing a high-stakes game with a culture only capable of playing checkers.

Macroeconomic doom and gloom aside, you state:

“What’s to stop a group of creatives from doing the same thing and putting it online? Nothing because it’s dirt cheap. That’s why so many shows like those are on TV and spoonfed to the masses. The’re inexpensively produced product.”

I disagree that it’s “dirt” cheap. Try getting a bunch of people together to produce a show with high-quality content when they have no way to monetize it in such a way that everybody gets rewarded. You need somebody writing the script, you need a host, you need a producer/director and you need equipment if you are to produce something of professional quality. I have yet to see any vlog that I could watch side-by-side with something produced in Hollywood and not be able to tell that it was put together by “amateurs.” This doesn’t mean that the cost of production isn’t going down, but it means that mainstream America is still very much in love with mainstream content and most Americans aren’t interested in Rocketboom and Zefrank.

Somebody will eventually create an online video show that is very appealing to the mainstream, or will come close. And guess what: when they do, a television/cable company will likely come along and offer them a deal. They have the cash and most people who are offered a TV show will jump at the opportunity. Guaranteed cash and the ego boost of being on TV go a long way. If the producers don’t “sell out”, they are stuck with the same challenge as the television/cable companies: finding advertisers and ways to make money in a highly-competitive and fragmented market, especially when a single online show probably doesn’t have a big enough audience to make it interesting for a blue-chip advertiser.

So my final point is that user-generated video in and of itself isn’t going to hurt the television/cable companies. YouTube usage shows that the demand for user-generated content is minimal compared to the demand for Hollywood content. Television/cable will face challenges and will have to adopt new distribution channels to enable consumers to consume their content in new ways, but they produce the content people want and that puts them in a fairly safe position. Let’s touch base in a year and see if any vlogger has a show as popular as Jon Stewart. Let’s see if some enterprising video producers have created something as entrenched in pop culture as American Idol. Let’s see if somebody has created a drama like Lost. Let’s see if an independent filmmaker pulls in even $20 million without a distribution deal with a major studio. What’s changing here is how content is distributed and consumed, not who’s producing the content people want and who is going to make the most money from it.

Well thought and well put. particularly this point:

“We apparently lack the ability to recognize that if the producers of goods and services are not compensated appropriately for the production of those goods and services, its becomes unlikely that they will continue to produce them. While I’m oversimplifying it a bit, this same type of attitude has already played a crucial role in the destruction of the American manufacturing industry. We want goods as cheaply as possible and will cannibalize our own nation’s industries to get those goods cheaper. Obviously there are a lot of contributing factors that could be blamed (pensions, insurance costs, medical costs, labor unions, etc.), but the point I’m trying to make is that very few people here seem to be asking the question “What makes sense for us economically?” If you love The Daily Show, for instance, it’s in your best interest to find some way to make sure that you’re not cutting out the economic incentive Comedy Central/Viacom has to produce it.”

While the analogy of the media business to the manufacturing sector is extreme it makes sense. Consider: American manufacturing fell apart because of reduced costs to produce similar products from global competition. Sound familiar?

This is capitalism at work. Consumers don’t give a rat’s about supporting anybody. It’s self/capital preservation. People don’t care about the little guy or the American manufacturer. They shop at Target and WalMart. People won’t pay for software. They pirate it. People don’t care about the artists who create music or the legal owners (labels). They pirate it. people want want to pay lees, period. Video and film production has gone digital and it will be pirated, Tivo’d and splintered and fragmented to a point by new competiton to where it will be completely unrecognizable in five years.

Let’s look at history.

First their were three networks and PBS. (think of the hours wasted watching Merv Griffith!)

Cable came along and siphoned off huge portions of their audience.

More shows were added to cable, movie channels and then the rise of HBO as a content developer (they ripped the networks a new one with shows like the Sopranos and Sex and the City) and basically forced the networks to seriously revisit their core offerings.

DVD’s and boxed sets of old TV shows hit Blockbuster.

netflix

Satelite hits the mainstream in the form of Direct TV, etc.

Tivo.

Advertisers begin to question viewership and pricing.

Internet video hits in 2006.

IPTV in 2007

prediction: Massive fragmentation of audience due to tsunami of content choices by 2008.

UGC (YouTube, YouTube clones, video podcasters)
Archived film and video – long tail
Foreign films and video – new markets
New media webTV producers – piranhas
Virtual Worlds – second life, cyworld, etc
massive online Gameplay – halo, Gears, Warcraft, etc

The networks will fight tooth and nail and do their best to adapt but I believe (and could be dead wrong) that small video start ups will come together to create unique programming, the likes of which we haven’t seen before. We’re just starting. Granted, the production values will be lacking but think about how inexpensive it is to use a green screen and then modify the digital video using Adobe software. It’s shocking how professionally done the final product looks for very little cost.

Alot of people watch these “Trading Spaces” and “This Old House” type of shows on cable like Food Network and Style Channel. They capture a particular audience for an advertiser for minimal cost and provide sufficient ROI to make the ad buy justifiable for the advertiser. What’s to stop a group of creatives from doing the same thing and putting it online? Nothing because it’s dirt cheap. That’s why so many shows like those are on TV and spoonfed to the masses. The’re inexpensively produced product.

Again, nobody cares if it’s NBC, Style Channel or two guys in a garage. If it works people will watch.

I like your idea about checking back in a year from now. The networks will still be here, but there will also be a ton of new video content.