Broadband Developments

This is a completely voluntary post by me to promote NewTeeVee’s event. I’ve put the logo on the site because they are doing great work in covering a new emerging sector. Blogging and professional coverage set by the standard Om built at GigaOm. Liz and team have very focused and relevant content when it comes to new TV models.

Want to know why Hulu is successful? Want to know why P2P might be a reality sooner than you think? What are the programming formulas online? What’s the big ‘real’ trends. How do you invest in this market online? What moves should you make? How do you make money?

All the holy grail questions will be raised. Answers maybe? It is definitely worth going. Here are some discount specials for late sign ups.

NewTeeVee Live is a must-attend event for anyone who develops, distributes, invests in or sells online media products and services. Last year’s conference sold out early and garnered rave reviews for it’s mix of influencers, tastemakers and media industry thought leaders who made the deals.

Come meet the senior executives from ABC, FOX, Netflix, Hulu, Disney, Lucasfilm, Comcast, YouTube, Sling Media, Level 3, Microsoft, and more who are driving the decisions that effect the future of online video. Hear from the producers of hit shows CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and HEROES as they discuss how online video is changing the art of storytelling.

Also, we can’t leave out the biggest breakout video stars from online shows Fred, The Guild, What the Buck, Boing Boing TV, Alive in Baghdad and Ill Doctrine.

Be there this year as we ask the tough questions. Hear from the best business brains in online television as they answer your questions on what has worked for their business and what have been lessons learned.

NewTeeVee Live: Television Reinvented

November 13, 2008
Mission Bay Conference Center, San Francisco, CA

Sponsorship Opportunities

Don’t just attend NewTeeVee Live this year. Get in front of this highly influential audience of digital media executives and be seen as a market leader. We can create a customized sponsorship package that fits your goals. Get in touch with Mike Sly at sly@gigaom.com or call at 415-235-0358.

Here’s a selection of the speakers with whom you’ll want to meet up and swap ideas

• Anthony Zuiker - Executive Producer, TV Show CSI
• Reed Hastings - CEO, Netflix
• Jason Kilar - CEO, Hulu
• Jesse Alexander - Writer, Producer, TV Show HEROES
• Alexis Rapo - VP, Digital Media, Disney-ABC Television Group
• Hardie Tankersley - VP Online Content & Strategy, FOX Broadcasting
• Blake Krikorian - CEO, Sling Media
• Dan Beldy - Managing Partner, Steamboat Ventures
• Miles Beckett - CEO, EQAL
• Ben Ling - Director of Platforms and Syndication, YouTube
• John Edwards - CEO, Move Networks
• Mark Taylor - SVP, Emerging Opportunities, Content Markets, Level 3
• David Verklin - CEO, Canoe Ventures
• Eric Schmidt - Director of Media Delivery and Monetization Evangelism, Microsoft
• Tania Yuki - Senior Product Manager, comScore
• James Slavet - Partner, Greylock
• Greg Douglass - Managing Director, Media & Entertainment, Accenture

We’ll be exploring the following topics

• The truth about online video advertising
• Bridging the gap between television and online
• Online video investment trends
• Managed versus unmanaged content
• Live webcasts of major events: the inside story

Register Now

Take advantage of our Late Bird Special to celebrate the finalized speaker lineup. You’ll receive the Early Bird ticket price again (that’s $100 off). Get it until midnight October 31. Register now with code LATEBIRD.

Here is a blog post in Portfolio that talks about online video being recession proof. To me anything online is recession proof if it adds value.

Two funding deals were announced today: $6 million went to Brightstorm, an online educational video content company, from Korean venture firm KTB Ventures; BlipTV, in a second round of funding, got an undisclosed amount from Bain Capital, financial backers of LinkedIn and LaLa Media.

Yesterday, the Chinese online video site PPS.tv announced getting $20 million in third round funding in a deal finalized prior to the Beijing Olympics.  Also PPLive is closing in on a round of financing for their third round.

While the deals are small, they nevertheless signal a continued flow of cash into the sector.

Playboy is among those increasing online video already. Last Thursday the company announced it will close its DVD division, cutting 80 jobs and spending $2 million in restructuring costs to instead make its video offerings available only online.

Funding for online video sites has been on the rise. It nearly doubled between 2006 and 2007, from $266.9 million to $460.5 million. In just the first quarter of 2008 alone, over $217.3 million was raised.

Also rising has been the amount of ad dollars going toward online video: eMarketer reports a 55.9 percent increase this year over 2007.

By a 14 to 4 vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee has approved a bill backed by the RIAA - the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act - that would give federal prosecutors the power to file civil lawsuits against file-sharers who violate copyright laws. The bill will create stricter IP laws and toughen civil and criminal laws against counterfeiting and piracy. The act also expands the power of the White House by creating an IP Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) position within the executive branch, and the IPEC will direct other agencies in a coordinated strategy to fight counterfeiting and piracy.

“We all know that intellectual property makes up some of the most valuable, and most vulnerable, property we have,” said Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), according to CNet News. “We need to do more to protect it from theft and abuse if we hope to continue being a world leader in innovation.”

Leahy added an amendment to the bill that expanded mandatory, court-issued protective orders to cover any records seized by law enforcement, in order to protect potentially confidential or private information. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) also added two successful amendments to the bill. One adds the Department of Agriculture as a member of the interagency intellectual property enforcement advisory committee, and the other ensures a transition of power from the government’s current IP efforts to a new IP coordinator, once he or she is confirmed by Congress.

Mitch Bainwol, Chairman/CEO of the RIAA, commented, “Intellectual property is widely recognized as an important economic engine for this country. Real, bipartisan efforts to protect this national resource with new, meaningful tools are necessary to energize the economy and maintain our global competitiveness. This legislation is a welcome verse in a great song.”

I ran into this blog called Hmmconvenient. The unknown blogger is direct and very accurate in his analysis.  This blog is worth reading if you’re into online video and media.  I just added it to my list of reads.  Whoever you are keep blogging.  Good stuff

Here is the post on Barries to Video consumption.

The root of a successful digital video platform play is embracing an event where there is a known, well visible, barrier to consumption. With MLB, it is time of games and the frequency with which games occur. Olympics, while not a large success, many of the live feeds that were available were not being broadcast on television (however, it is worth noting that online got the “less desirable” events). Contrast this to the NBC/NFL Sunday Night Football player, where there is relatively no barrier to viewing the game as it is available via. the local NBC Affiliate. Based on these examples a barrier to consumption can include:

- Time of day that an event occurs
- Lack of availability within the traditional channel
- Notion of “premium” value
- Concurrency (e.g, multiple events within a genre taking place at or near the same time)
- Exclusivity

Each of these is an area where a well defined business can solve a problem for the consumer. Another way to look at this dilemma is Joost. Joost ultimately failed in their “1.0″ download based model not because of a bad user experience, but due to lack of content and an understanding by consumers of what total value the product offered them. As Joost recasts itself on the web, they are still ignoring the fundamentals that lead to failure on their first try… instead they felt it was a “platform” or “download” issue (which other success stories would negate). P2P as a buzzword for delivery does not solve a single problem for the consumer, in other words, Joost fails to address or overcome any barriers to consumption. Hulu on the other hand, continues to push to overcome exclusivity, quality, and other barriers that directly impact the consumer.

Fox Interactive also seems to understand their consumer; NewTeeVee reports that their SVP of Mobile says Live has been a success on mobile. Not really a surprising result; based on our definitions above Live content allows a user to have access to the content, in real time, when they want it. This is a quantifiable value add to a viewer and therefore has a high propensity to be succesful. Fox Interactive gets additional credit for realizing it is not enough just to put a live stream online, it must be in the channel where it solves a problem for the consumer (especially since, much like NBC, Fox Broadcast content has low barriers to consumption).

Intel and Yahoo announced a partnership (also with Comcast) that they will be providing the embedded technology for set top boxes to provide widget for a TV environment. I’m here at IDF and had a chance to talk to a few Intel super geeks and basically it’s all vapor at the moment. It’s mainly a developer oriented showcase so it’s not meant to be a shipping product. The demo they are showing is very sexy but it’s vapor - at least for now.

The demo really shows the benefit of the user experience. The notion of having prefabricated widgets coming from Yahoo will make for a compelling experience. What’s more interesting is the idea that users or families will be able to create their own widgets. I can see this really working well for parents putting together microcontent widgets for their kids - a kinda set top box playlist concept.

So as of today it’s concept and this offering should attract developers with the open architecture. The Intel guy said that developers can integrate any clients side innovation directly into the stack. This makes sense for emerging areas that need innovation - like video acceleration and other problem areas like managing the storage issues. Today big video content providers have to to store multiple file formats like Flash, Windows, and Silverlight. This is a big problem and generates a ton of costs. At least the CDNs can make more money.

I love this concept with the Intel set top box and think that this is where Yahoo needs to be successful. By pushing out content from their system to the edge the users are happy. Yahoo goes to where the users are instead of today where Yahoo makes the users come to them.

The question in my mind is what is the video user experience like when there are so many problems in delivering video over the Internet (speed, cost, concurrency).