Tag: Internet video

Reevaluating Video

Is the Internet ready for video? Maybe it’s a little late to ask this with YouTube so huge. Still, I’m starting to come to the conclusion that no one does video as well as TV does!

With TV, you turn it on – boom – the video is there. No fuss. Nothing more to do. And, most importantly, no waiting.

Schedules aren’t as hard and fast as they were a decade or two ago, but it’s reasonably easy to find your faves on TV.

Commercial TV stations have been broadcasting for around 60 years. They lucked into the right formula.

Even when cable tries to do video in different ways on my TV, they can’t do it effectively. My Comcast DVR, hooked to digital cable, connects me to hundreds of shows on demand. I hardly ever look!

The problem is, finding the shows and then getting them running is a hassle. Of course, that’s the Internet’s problem too. And now, on the Internet, add ‘roadblock’ ads as another viewer disincentive.

For years I’ve been telling anyone who’d listen that the future of newscasts, what I do for a living, is on the small computer screen, not some big TV. I now have second thoughts.

Until someone figures out how to index all the shows… until someone figures out how to make video appear instantly… until someone figures out how to make Internet video as profitable as over-the-air broadcasts, it’s just not going to happen.

Youtube might end up being the exception, not the rule.

Power Of Internet Video

I just watched a clip of Jeff Jarvis at the Syndicate media conference in New York. He was talking about Jon Stewart’s famous appearance on CNN’s Crossfire.

When the show aired, about 150,000 watched it. The video clip, as posted to the Internet, has been seen 10,000,000 times. I’m not sure CNN made anything from the Internet plays, even though their reach dwarfed the ‘main’ channel.

For broadcasters and cable channels, this is a significant disconnect. It’s not that programs aren’t being watched, as much as they aren’t being watched in a way that produces revenue necessary to make them.

Looking At Video On The Web

I will sit online and watch twenty minutes of a Photoshop tutorial or other narrowcast that interests me. I won’t sit for twenty minutes of a compilation of stories – some of which, by definition, appeal to me less than others.

As I wrote yesterday, with a house full of Helaine’s friends visiting, I spent a lot of looking at online video. It quickly became obvious there’s a lot right and a lot wrong as far as video goes.

I’m not talking about content. There will always be good and bad content. This is about structure, access and indexing.

While mulling over what I would write in this entry, I had breakfast and browsed the Sunday Times.

THE NEWS Yahoo said it was backing off from a plan to bring television-style programming like situation comedies and talk shows to the Internet.

BEHIND THE NEWS As advertising grows on the Internet, there is a market for content as well. But the content that seems to be working best is created by individual users and takes the form of short videos, shared photos, blogs and other small-scale efforts. The Hollywood approach, epitomized by Yahoo’s hiring of Lloyd Braun, the former chairman of ABC Entertainment, in 2004, is no longer in favor. There had been speculation that the shift in strategy would result in Mr. Braun’s leaving the company, but he vowed last week that he would stay.

Yahoo!’s&#185 corporate wisdom seems to be right on. Internet video is not watched the same way as mainstream over-the-air video.

As far as I can tell, that point is lost on the news divisions of the major broadcast networks. NBC and ABC both present ‘conventional’ newscasts online. I’m glad they do, as opposed to posting nothing, but they have extremely limited utility.

Internet video done right is sharply focused – one subject. For news, that means offering stories one-by-one.

I will sit online and watch twenty minutes of a Photoshop tutorial or other narrowcast that interests me. I won’t sit for twenty minutes of a compilation of stories – some of which, by definition, appeal to me less than others.

Technology does exist to make a newscast random access, so I can pick and choose what I want to see. I don’t see that technology widely used.

In the pre-remote era there were ‘specials’ and ‘variety shows’ on TV. They’re gone, victims of cost and easy viewer choice. I think the same fate awaits conventional TV newcasts re-purposed for the Internet (or web only newscasts presented in virtually the same format as their on-the-air siblibgs) .

It’s a new age, and content must adapt.

What seems to be in its infancy is a way to find what you’re looking for and a standardization of format. Why must we fight between Windows Media, Real, Quicktime and Flash. Isn’t there already one or two that are actually superior to the others?

That was painfully obvious when I followed a link for a Simpsons video that went to youtube.com. After I watched, and was on the youtube.com site, I couldn’t do much but randomly traipse around.

Yes, there were categories to click, but it was non-intuitive and a hodge podge. I ended up going to pages that I hadn’t intended to visit.

The same goes for Itunes. It looks organized (and Itunes, after all, is an adjunct to the Ipod, with the world’s best designed user interface), but I had trouble finding what I wanted, or even knowing whether what I was clicking was audio or video! And why is it necessary for Itunes to run in its own application and not my browser?

There is not yet a ‘Google’ for video – and that includes Google’s video search though this ad implies they understand there’s a problem). We desperately need one. We’re early in the game. Someone will figure it out before long.

Addendum – As I finished writing this, I came across a link for the Natalie Portman video from last night’s Saturday Night Live. Though NBC will surely end up objecting to and stopping this improper use of their content by youtube.com, isn’t this the way SNL should be presented on the Internet – a piece at a time?

&#185 – Am I writing that correctly? The corporate name ends with an exclamation point. It just doesn’t look right set in type.

The Future of TV

In today’s ShopTalk, a daily newletter for broadcast journalists (and those who sit in the same room with them), Alan Mendelson of KCAL wrote an interesting letter:

From: Alan Mendelson

MoneyLA@aol.com

We are only a few years away to find the reach and penetration of high-speed Internet access to be on par with Cable TV. And when that happens, perhaps in only five years, broadcast and Cable TV news will also be on par with Internet-TV News.

In that time, families will have a “video wall” with a handheld remote with which to choose TV, Cable, Satellite TV or Internet video.

And when that happens, companies will not pay hundreds of millions of dollars to buy a TV broadcast station (and along with it the limitations of government regulation) but they will be able to start up an Internet-TV station for the cost of a server — about $2,000. And unlike broadcast TV and Cable TV, Internet TV will have no geographical boundaries.

Alan Mendelson

KCAL-TV Money Reporter and www.moredeals.com

This is a subject I’ve thought about a lot. So, I responded:

I read, with great interest, Alan Mendelson’s letter concerning the future of Internet video. If it were only that simple.

Alan mentions the startup cost of $2,000 for a server. That’s a server without bandwidth. Unlike broadcasting, where one single transmission reaches out to anyone, current Internet technology requires a discreet, individual signal to each user.

That’s also a server without any viewers. Broadcast stations provide something an Internet start-up can’t (and here’s their real value) – a well known address. Don’t underestimate the value of prime real estate. It’s no surprise that when the same program is seen on both broadcast and cable channels, broadcast gets the higher audience share.

Even when Internet television finds an audience, it takes a lot of bandwidth to serve an audience. As far as I can tell, it’s a lot more expensive to transmit that many bits than with our current system of broadcasting.

I’m not saying that what Alan predicts won’t happen. It just won’t happen in the way he anticipates.

Internet television will be watched as the Internet is watched – very close to the screen. It will be watched as we browse and check email and do all those other things we do with computers… and will do with computers.

For the most part, Internet video programming will not be watched full screen. Certainly not for news and information programming. There is no need for it. Watching news, or even sports, in a small window on a computer desktop is perfectly satisfying and reduces the bandwidth cost greatly.

Already, here in Connecticut, University of Connecticut women’s basketball is streamed on a subscription basis by our local Public Television station. Major League Baseball does it too. In neither case is the service designed to be full screen viewing. In neither case would this be economically possible without a significant subscription fee, for what is a small amount of programming.

The good news for most of us is, Internet or broadcast, our skills will still be needed. The bad news is, increased dilution of the audience will lower margins and probably lower salaries.

My small town, a suburb in a medium sized market, might be served by a one man TV station, where a single person does every function from reporting to shooting to editing to anchoring to sales.

Will the cable companies, who provide a huge chunk of the broadband Internet access now available, try to control this use of bandwidth? They have a vested interest in seeing that they are the source of subscription programming, not a flat rate pipeline by which others profit… at their peril.

Whether change will be good or bad remains to be seen. What is unavoidable is, there will be change.