Robert Paterson's Weblog

Google - You Tube - Why 2?

What more value can Google get form YouTube? What about Distribution?

Chris Anderson is starting to explore the Long tail in Movie distribution.

Fewer than 150 films get distribution on 1,000 screens or more (the definition of mainstream release) each year . Meanwhile, more than 13,000 films are now submitted each year to just one independent film fest--the Tribeca Film Festival--alone. Lucas is right that box-office domination of the movie business seems a throwback to an earlier day of scarcity. Today it's getting cheaper and easier to make a movie. Why shouldn't it be cheaper and easier to distribute it, too?

Is there not a case for using YouTube as a legitimate way of breaking the grip of the current tiny shelf that keeps most movies out of the viewing possibilities?

So if now the floodgates are to be opened in distribution - how will we find the good stuff? Is there not a huge potential here not simply for distribution but to have comment and community attached to films? Here is Jeff Jarvis on this aspect -

And where do we find everything else in life these days? Google, of course. So Google’s acquisition of YouTube makes perfect sense. It can be the world’s biggest TV Guide.

But that will not work if all Google brings to this is search. For video is not about information. It is about entertainment, about taste. And though some algorithms have tried, none can yet program the perfect network for me. Neither, for that matter, can television executives. But my friends can.

And that is what YouTube brings to its deal with Google: people. Though Google depends on the wisdom of the crowd, it still respects us only in aggregate as a mass.

YouTube made the new TV social. It enabled people to recommend the good - or at least amusing — stuff not just by their clicks and ratings but also by their actions: YouTube allowed us to put good videos up on our blogs. YouTube enabled us to become network programmers.

I believe that the serving of 100 million videos is the least valuable service that YouTube provides. Serving all those videos was an important and insightful step in the process of exploding television as we knew it and handing its power to the people. But I believe the end of that process will have us serving videos from wherever — from Google or our own blogs and servers or via peer-to-peer technology that vastly reduces the cost of distribution.

So then how does Google make money on those videos? How does it serve advertising? The same way it does now: Google does not make us come to it and its ads; Google takes its ads to where we already are. It serves ads on my own blog.

If the Google purchase of YouTube is successful, it will learn how to listen to people as individuals with taste and timely opinions and use that to enable us to find the video we each want to see wherever it is. It will make YouTube a key channel of distribution even for old, big networks (witness this deal, announced yesterday, between CBS TV and YouTube). And then Google will sell advertising on that new TV screen, powering the explosion of the new television.

So what does this mean the for those of us in Public TV? Why not go here?

Education and the Long Tail

From David Warlick - On Fire

You know that there is more information available today than at any other time. You know that your children need to be come well informed to cope in an ever changing world.  You know that they need to pick up the skills of how to not only find information but also to separate the wheat from the chaff.

You know that much of the really interesting material is not found in the mass market or in conventional wisdom but along the Long Tail.

But at school they can get none of these things. Worse - school discourages it all. Worse they support the Text Book Industry a scam that not only costs a lot but stays focused on converntional or even outdated and often wrong thinking.

So tell me again why you think that school is so important to your child's future?

The Long Tail and Why there is so much crap on TV

I don't think I am imagining a rosy past - but there was a time when there was a lot on TV that I wanted to watch and that was a time when the choices were few. In England there were only 2 channels. There was also a time when the network news was excellent. So why is there almost nothing worth watching now with hundreds of channels and why is network news today so pathetic and sensational? (Great moments of the state of Network News displayed by Jeff Jarvis)

I think that the Long Tail can help us.

In the Murrow/Cronkite era, CBS News still saw itself as serving America as a source of Trusted News. But once ABC moved Roone Arlidge from Sports to News - the race for ratings and hence to the bottom began. My sense is that CBS News was happy to be in the middle of the Long Tail. But when ratings and ad revenue became the mantra - programming had to move to the left up the power curve to crap. News had to compete with all the rest of the schedule.

It's the same today for the CBC. If the CBC feels that only ratings matter, then they too move left to Crap - this is why they pre-empted the news for a Idol show. This is why now they are worried sick about a bid for Hockey Night in Canada. Why should a public broadcaster be there? Does Public mean Pander to Crap? I fear that CBC has no idea what it should be and drifts to the left.

When Public broadcasting began, it did not see itself as Mass Media. This is why when in England there was only the BBC and ITV - there was tons of interesting shows - because the BBC saw its mandate as to both entertain and to uplift. As a Public Broadcaster they did not Pander. They do a lot now but not then.

That is why when the History Channel, the Learning Channel and Discovery launched - they beat the pants off PBS. They started by taking on Public TV but now they mainly show crap. They rushed to the left. Discovery has become the Biker Channel, LC the home reno channel and History the War Channel. All have major contracts with P & G. Watch closely nearly every ad in prime time is for P & G.

So if you go to the left, where all the numbers are who is in your camp? Are these the people that you really want to reach. Who are these people? What is it about their profile that may be useful? I will let you answer that question.

Now who is the Public Radio audience now? Are they the kind of audience that is worth having?

A word of warning to Public Radio - if your model is all about "Underwriting" be very very careful.

Today you are like the BBC of the 1970's or CBS News of the late 1960's. If you let the underwriters pull you to the left - you risk losing it all. It's not just the move to crap but also the loss of independence. The other night on PBS there was a half hearted piece on Ethanol. There is a strong case to be made that ethanol is a wheeze. It costs more energy to make energy with corn. The piece was half hearted because surprise ADM is a major sponsor. ADM is THE promoter of Ethanol.

PBS gets major funding from Mobil, ADM and GM. If PBS was to explore the issues of the environment and energy could it?

So the risk is you lose both ways by moving blindly to the left. You offer crap to people who live for crap and you find yourselves helpless in the embrace of people who have an agenda that cannot be questioned. So you lose your innate quality and the trust that you had. You lose it all.

There is surely a very good living to be had both economically and ethically in the middle or to the right of the Long Tail.

Now the opportunity for all public broadcasters - this includes my beloved but sick CBC - Think of who lives in the middle of the Long Tail. Who are they? What is their profile. What may be the value of having this group as your primary audience and body of support?

Future of Public Radio - The End of Status Quo

Here is a summary of the state of things by Chris Anderson. Again, I know that great programming becomes essential in this challenging environment, but faced with these kinds of trends - something more is surely required?

A successful strategy cannot be based on being the best radio station in North America. You can select this for yourself but you  cannot make this the requirement for 300 stations. It has to be based on something that is achievable by good, hardworking people.

Here is Chris -

Mainstream Media Meltdown III

A couple times a year, I take a statistical look at mainstream entertainment and media in decline. All figures are year-on-year comparisons unless otherwise noted. (The last version of this, from November, is here).

Down:

• TV: network TV had its lowest ratings week ever in July.
• Music: weekly album sales set a 10-year low in July. For the year, CD album sales are down 4.2%; although digital single downloads (still less than 10% of the business) are up 77% and are nearly making up the difference in revenue terms. 
• Radio: the music radio listening audience is down 8.5% this year alone, continuing a multi-decade decline.
• DVDs: shipments are down 4% so far this year, more than 30 million units behind the same period last year.
• Newspapers: circulation, which peaked in 1987, is declining faster than ever and is down another 2.6% so far this year.

Mixed:

• Magazines: ad revenues are up 3.7% although the total number of ad pages is flat (they're charging more per page). Newsstand sales are at an all-time low, while total circulation was down 0.3% last year. 
• Books: up slightly so far this year (but still lagging behind overall retail growth).

Up:

• Box Office: is up by 5.8% so far this year (but still down 4.2% from 2004).
• Videogames: The long slump caused by the next-gen hardware transition (Xbox-to-Xbox 360 and PS2-to-forthcoming-PS3) seems to have finally ended. June sales were up 25%.
• Internet advertising: is on pace to grow by 21% this year. Google's revenues grew by 77% in the most recent quarter.

A couple times a year, I take a statistical look at mainstream entertainment and media in decline. All figures are year-on-year comparisons unless otherwise noted. (The last version of this, from November, is here).

Down:

• TV: network TV had its lowest ratings week ever in July.
• Music: weekly album sales set a 10-year low in July. For the year, CD album sales are down 4.2%; although digital single downloads (still less than 10% of the business) are up 77% and are nearly making up the difference in revenue terms. 
• Radio: the music radio listening audience is down 8.5% this year alone, continuing a multi-decade decline.
• DVDs: shipments are down 4% so far this year, more than 30 million units behind the same period last year.
• Newspapers: circulation, which peaked in 1987, is declining faster than ever and is down another 2.6% so far this year.

Mixed:

• Magazines: ad revenues are up 3.7% although the total number of ad pages is flat (they're charging more per page). Newsstand sales are at an all-time low, while total circulation was down 0.3% last year. 
• Books: up slightly so far this year (but still lagging behind overall retail growth).

Up:

• Box Office: is up by 5.8% so far this year (but still down 4.2% from 2004).
• Videogames: The long slump caused by the next-gen hardware transition (Xbox-to-Xbox 360 and PS2-to-forthcoming-PS3) seems to have finally ended. June sales were up 25%.
• Internet advertising: is on pace to grow by 21% this year. Google's revenues grew by 77% in the most recent quarter.

A couple times a year, I take a statistical look at mainstream entertainment and media in decline. All figures are year-on-year comparisons unless otherwise noted. (The last version of this, from November, is here).

Down:

• TV: network TV had its lowest ratings week ever in July.
• Music: weekly album sales set a 10-year low in July. For the year, CD album sales are down 4.2%; although digital single downloads (still less than 10% of the business) are up 77% and are nearly making up the difference in revenue terms. 
• Radio: the music radio listening audience is down 8.5% this year alone, continuing a multi-decade decline.
• DVDs: shipments are down 4% so far this year, more than 30 million units behind the same period last year.
• Newspapers: circulation, which peaked in 1987, is declining faster than ever and is down another 2.6% so far this year.

Mixed:

• Magazines: ad revenues are up 3.7% although the total number of ad pages is flat (they're charging more per page). Newsstand sales are at an all-time low, while total circulation was down 0.3% last year. 
• Books: up slightly so far this year (but still lagging behind overall retail growth).

Up:

• Box Office: is up by 5.8% so far this year (but still down 4.2% from 2004).
• Videogames: The long slump caused by the next-gen hardware transition (Xbox-to-Xbox 360 and PS2-to-forthcoming-PS3) seems to have finally ended. June sales were up 25%.
• Internet advertising: is on pace to grow by 21% this year. Google's revenues grew by 77% in the most recent quarter.