Robert Paterson's Weblog

PBS on iTunes - What might this mean in Dollars?

So the iTunes Store just sold its three billionth song. Wow. That’s a lot of anything, regardless of what you’re counting. (OK, if you're counting grains of sand on the coastline of the United states, perhaps it's not a lot.) But more interesting to me is the pace at which Apple reached its latest billion-song threshold. It took the company a little less than three years to sell the first billion iTunes downloads. Then it took less than a year to sell the second billion. Now, just over six months later, the store has passed the three-billion song mark. (Playlist)

What if Public TV did a deal with Apple? Moving more and more inventory into the iTunes Store? What if there was a billion downloads in 5 years time? What if Public TV's share was 50 cents a show? What would half a billion dollars mean to the system? Is this a conservative or low ball estimate?

Online Video is already mainstream. (Pew)

The widespread deployment of broadband combined with a dramatic promotion push by content providers has helped pave the way for mainstream audiences to adopt online video viewing. The majority of adult internet users in the U.S. (57%) report watching or downloading some type of online video content and 19% do so on a typical day.

• Three-quarters of broadband users (74%) who enjoy high-speed connections at both home and work watch or download video online.
• Looking separately at those who have access to a high-speed connection at home, 66% report online video consumption, compared with 39% of home dial-up users.
• Yet, some online video viewers who have dial-up at home are able to supplement their access with broadband connections at work. Among those who are truly relegated to slow connections at home and work, just 31% say they have watched or downloaded video online.

Who Watches

Young adults (those ages 18-29) are among the most voracious video viewers. Three-in-four young adult internet users (76%) report online consumption of video, compared with 57% of online adults ages 30-49. Less than half (46%) of internet users ages 50-64 watch or download video and just 39% of those age 65 and older do so. On a typical day, young adults' video consumption also outpaces that of older users:

• Roughly one in three (31%) internet users ages 18-29 said they watched or downloaded some type of video on a typical day during the period of this survey.
• By comparison, 18% of internet users ages 30-49, 12% of those 50-64 and 10% of those 65 and older watch or download any type of video on the average day.

Many would like an easier way of getting higher quality video than YouTube (Can't get the Quality). Many don't want to use Bit Torrent - Many, as in music, are happy to pay. A deal with Apple could enable this.

What about the loss that stations might suffer to their pledge week fund raising if their content was available online? A lot of it is there now and soon all of it will be there.  Very soon, the model of asking people to pay for a commodity that is scarce when it is in truth plentiful will fail. So the issue is to work out a revenue sharing deal for national content. There will be more than enough money around.

Some stations such as Oregon with great material in inventory, open up a new store of value if they shift from their current method of selling DVD's to selling material directly on the web. Stations such as KETC with a large and excellent inventory of 6 minute epics in Living St Louis can now get value from a format that is ideal for the web.

PBS have a large collection of Tasting the Content on their channel on YouTube now. Frontline has all of its material available here. Nature streams tasters here. Nature sells videos here. Materpiece Theatre has its shop here. The News Hour streams here.

Aren't we just a step away?  What would it take?

'Stress, Neurodegeneration and Individual Differences' by Robert Sapolsky

10/10/2001 The Grass Traveling Sceintist Program presents Dr. Robert M. Sapolsky of Stanford University's Dept. of Biological Sciences in a seminar sponsored by the Dept. of VCAPP and the Northern Rocky Mtn. Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience. This is an outstanding talk on what I think will become the core ideas as we look at human health for our time. No longer is the issue germs but our immune system itself. Disease today is mainly about long term debilitation of our immune system. The cause? Social Isolation and lack of control. The onset - the early years when patterns are set. The cure? Improving the social networks of parents and how well they respond to stress. Until minute 52 - the talk is about how stress and the immune system work - for the scientists this is a tour de force but may drag on for the casual viewer. After minute 53, Sapolsky goes into his material on Baboons and it all becomes very real for us primates. You will see our life in a baboon context. He is funny and brilliant - find a moment when you might be reading and watch this instead/

Blogging and Crisis - The Fire in the Canary Islands

Sadly, my post the other day about the value of using blogging in a crisis is being supported by bloggers on Grand Canary where a huge fire is underway.

MADRID, Spain(IHT): A forest ranger has confessed to setting a huge and fast-growing fire in the Canary Islands, saying his job contract was about to run out and he wanted to keep working, the Civil Guard said Sunday.

The blaze that began Friday in a mountainous area on the island of Gran Canary has now charred 3,500 hectares (8,750 acres) of ecologically rich land, most of it top-quality pine trees.

About 100 firefighters are battling the blaze in difficult conditions of extremely hot weather and low humidity. Many areas on fire are in rough terrain that is hard to reach.

Police arrested the ranger, identified as 37-year-old Juan Antonio Navarro Armas, on Saturday and he later confessed to setting the fire with matches, the Civil Guard said in a statement.

Navarro Armas's three-month job contract was to expire Sept. 30, and he said he set the fire hoping the work would lead authorities to extend his contract, the police statement said.

The link is to a composite site, called Planeta Canaris, where a group are keeping up the news. Luis Suarez (elusa) Twitters here.

Again a service that probably will emerge naturally now in any community, but what if a Local TV or Radio station had the template and Twittered at the same time? Would this not be public information at its best?

When is an iPhone not a phone........?

I don't have one yet - I live in Canada. But I was having coffee with a friend today and we were talking about how mobile computing was becoming and I had another aha - 2 today!

I had been thinking about the idea of a public TV or radio station being not a broadcaster with a web site or even with a good social network BUT as primarily being a web based organization that also broad casted.

A huge shift in mind set.

So is an iPhone and expensive phone or is it a cheap personal computer?

In a world where media will be truly portable and where I will want my TV or radio shows when I want them, is an iPhone an expensive phone or a cheap TV or HD radio set?

Is there a marriage here between Public Radio and TV and the iPhone guys?

What if iTunes became a formal distribution system? I don't want to use Bit Torrent. I don't mind paying a bit for episodes of Nature or Materspiece Theatre. I can get Frontline now. I can get Bill Moyers now.

So how then will the stations get their money? It is only a matter of time before the content is taken for free anyway. Work out a deal.

So what does a public radio/TV station have to do to go to the new place?

Knowing that a destination is good for you is not enough. I know that I am getting fatter by the week and that I have to lose and keep off at least 40 pounds. It's not just aesthetics but my health. My Dad died at my age of apnea and being overweight is a key factor and I have it. But knowing that I have a high chance of an early death if I don't change my life, is not helping me.

So it is with many thoughtful stations in Public Radio and TV. They also know that if they don't become more engaging with their community, that it is likely that they will follow the newspaper industry and the music industry into a slow death spiral.

My problem and the stations that I work with problem is I think the same. What do we have to do - do today - do tomorrow - do more of so that it becomes our new way of life - that will enable us to break the habits of a lifetime - and be different?

I had a bit of an aha as I dozed this morning and here it is.

This is Jim Collins' classic picture of breakout as applied to Wal-Mart. This is how I interpret it.

Reaching the inflection, or Tipping Point, in 1970 was not just a matter of having 38 stores but of finally finding out how to fill an entire state - he had to not only solve any issues with the stores but also the supporting logistics and people. Once he had discovered how to design and run a viable "System" he could expand. Had he expanded fast before this, he would  have driven the business into the ground.

Here is the same trajectory for Starbucks which now has many more thousands of stores. At first all the few stores were in Seattle. The first break came when they opened the first out of town store in Chicago.   They had to discover how to set up and manage remotely. As they built the system, they had to find what they called the "Perfect Store". Schultz set up a program to again define the best system. Once they had found this, they could expand exponentially.

So what might this mean to a Public TV or Radio station? What are the key inflection points along this curve? (What does it mean for my weight loss as well?)

With my clients we are using Ken Burns' new documentary, the War, to learn some things at the first inflection point - which may be akin to running a new store well. The next inflection point will have to be knowing how to run a full system but on a small scale.

In the next few weeks we have to work out what doing Inflection point 1 well is. At the moment we are learning how to use a number of social media tools and meetings to see how best to support the growth of a community and of a web audience.

I suspect that one of the measures will be our web audience - who is in it, how many are there etc. For surely isn't the web where most of the action will be? We are certainly seeing that for video and we know that few young listen to radio any more.

I am getting a simple feeling - that our destination will be to become a web based business that has an on air component.

Just as Starbucks left Seattle and Wal-Mart left Bentonville, we have to leave broadcast and live on the web as our primary place. Not as a support but as the centre of all that we do and are.

That we have an "audience" that gives as much as it gets - it is highly participative - it is both intensely local and global - that it is much much younger than it is now - that it sees itself as part of the station.

What do you think? What do you also think that we should put as the interim targets and as the end goal?

Local News - The Power of Social Media

This is Cheltenham Council keeping the residents informed.

Every community is exposed to crisis. We on PEI had "White Juan".

A province-wide State of Emergency was declared in Nova Scotia and the Halifax Regional Municipality imposed traffic curfews as the massive snowfall paralyzed the region. Businesses and schools were forced to close as many roads would not be cleared for days. Some flooding was also reported in parts of Prince Edward Island and southeast New Brunswick as very strong northerly winds produced a significant storm surge. By February 20th, the storm had left behind a large swath of snowfall accumulations in the range of 50 to 70 cm, with a few pockets of 80 cm or more.

We will likely have our own floods, power failures etc in the future. Every city is exposed. Last summer St Louis lost power for about a week downtown.

CBS News correspondent Kelly Cobiella reports it is the worst power failure in this city's history. Last week's one-two weather punch - storms Wednesday and Friday - knocked out power to half a million customers during a heat wave.

For the hundreds of thousands of people waiting on repairs, food has gone bad and frustration is rising.

Social Software is ideal for helping people get through this type of event.

Surely for Public radio and TV stations that are struggling to understand how they should use Social Software - Crisis management is a great place to start? (Thanks Robin Hammam for the link)

 

"By their works shall ye know them" - Social Software's power to "Out" the bureaucrats

At the beginning of the Civil War, all the money was on General McClellan, to win the war for the Union. He was the public's idea of what a soldier should be - good looking, smooth talking, a great recruiter and trainer, an excellent politician who was very convincing in his briefings.

But he and those like him could not get the job done. The crucible of war exposed him for what he and many that held high rank in the Union Army at the time were actually skilled at.

They were not warriors who could get the job of the army done - winning battles - but bureaucrats who were skilled at the main job of a bureaucracy - looking after themselves.

In desperation, Lincoln turned to a man who had failed in the peacetime army and who had failed in civilian life. He turned to a man who had none of the smoothness and polish of a courtier.

He turned to a real warrior Grant.

It seems that only exceptional circumstances allow someone who can really do the job to have organizational power.

In the day to day world, the Churchills write books in the country, the Mandelas serve their prison sentence and the Grants get drunk. The bureaucrats run countries, banks, schools, armies, drug companies, government agencies and our lives.

My hope though is that the bureaucratic power is revealed for what it is by organizations that adopt the use of social software. My hope is that as millions of young enter the workforce expecting to use social software that they will open up the internal workings and "out" those that have little to say about the real work of delivering the result to the customer, or the voter, or the patient,  or the student.

You can find my case on the Fast Forward Blog here.

I feel so old - Bill and Ben the Flower Pot Men

YouTube is becoming more interesting every day. So much to see. What will it be like in 2 or 3 years? Here is a TV show that I loved as a small boy - called Bill and Ben - it has a stunning innocence. What child would sit through this today? What a different world I grew up in?

Using a Youth Virus to help with Adoption of Social Software

In a post today on Fast Forward I offer my thoughts on how the ideas embedded in the New York Times story today about how obesity spreads like a virus might be used to overcome the barriers raised highlighted in Jake Shapiro's report on the adoption of social media by public radio.

Hint - moving faster might need us to look more like we used to - Deja Vu all over again!

Online Video has Tipped - Pew

There is a wealth of new information today on important aspects of social media. I will be writing more on the trials of social media adoption in Public Radio on Fast Forward. Here we will look at the latest report by Pew on the use of online video.

All of us involved in public television need to think about what this report tells us - that Tipping Point has occurred and we are behind. But then so is everyone else and we have a great chance to get ahead.

Here is the executive summary:

Online video now reaches a mainstream audience; 57% of online adults
have used the internet to watch or download video, and 19% do so on a
typical day. 

The growing adoption of broadband combined with a dramatic push by content providers
to promote online video has helped to pave the way for mainstream audiences to embrace
online video viewing. The majority of adult internet users in the U.S. (57%) report
watching or downloading some type of online video content and 19% do so on a typical
day. 

Three-quarters of broadband users (74%) who enjoy high-speed connections at both
home and work watch or download video online. 

Looking separately at those who have access to a high-speed connection at home,
66% report online video consumption, compared with 39% of home dial-up users. 
Yet, some online video viewers who have dial-up at home are able to supplement
their access with broadband connections at work. Among those who are truly
relegated to slow connections at home and work, just 31% say they have watched or
downloaded video online.   

Young adults (those ages 18-29) are among the most voracious video viewers. Three in
four young adult internet users (76%) report online consumption of video, compared with
57% of online adults ages 30-49. Less than half (46%) of internet users ages 50-64 watch
or download video and just 39% of those age 65 and older do so. On a typical day, young
adults’ video consumption also outpaces that of older users:

Roughly one in three (31%) internet users ages 18-29 said they watched or
downloaded some type of video on a typical day during the period of this survey.   
By comparison, 18% of internet users ages 30-49, 12% of those 50-64 and 10% of
those 65 and older watch or download any type of video on the average day.
Three in four young adult internet users watch or download video online. 

So what to do?

Learning how to get your material online is surely the first step and that is itself hard when all this is new.

But surely the value is once you know how to do this - Making sense of it all. Here is Seth Godin's warning:

The longest tail

                                                        

I stopped by a garage sale today. The guy had thousands of CDs, most of them in their wrappers. $3 each. I was excited.

Two boxes in, I felt like I was in a different universe. Every single artist was someone I had never heard of. After 25 years of buying CDs (a lot of CDs) I had come face to face with a huge Dip. It's almost impossible to buy music with no frame of reference. There were no hits, no recommendations, no "if you like x, you'll like y". I realized that the time it would take to decide if I liked an album was probably worth more than the $3 it would cost to buy one--in other words, not even worth it for 'free.'

Musicians, bloggers, writers--if you're toiling in the long tail, getting stuck at zero is now a real possibility. Being just like the other guys but trying harder is less of an effective strategy than ever before.

So the lessons are even harder than we thought - the easy one is the technical challenge. The hard one is to learn how to be a taste maker. Even harder is after perhaps being the taste maker yourself as a station - how do we give the job like Digg or Slashdot to the audience?