Online Media Cultist

Mark Cuban wrote a piece last night about “the failings of Internet video and the expectation of free content,” which references a Bernstein Research report called And Now for the News…The Emperor Has No Clothes.” Cuban’s premise is that “the a la carting of video on the net” will force video production budgets to be slashed and video content quality dumbed down, which will only benefit “Google and Youtube and black and white hat SEOs.”

This is an interesting and complex topic, and no one really has all (or even many) of the answers right now, but I find some flaws in Cuban’s thinking.

Let’s walk through this. Cuban’s initial premise is:

* Consumers won’t pay for content on the web, so it will have to be ad supported. - Is this true though? Over the last month, I’ve paid for music and video on the Internet, purchasing both through the iTunes store. The content was high quality (a great 2007 album by The Hives, and episodes of Lost that I had missed) and the price was right.

Consumers will of course be savvy in setting the barometer on what they will and won’t pay for. Most people though will be willing to be subjected to some form of video advertising.

Then we have:

* [Video content] will have to be ad supported, and it won’t be ad supported - Cuban is arguing that video content producers won’t be able to make money back on video advertising that it will take to create video content. This is a tough one, but it makes a number of assumptions. It assumes that video is being produced for web distribution (only?), and that the revenue model is based on some form of video advertising.

There are a number of ways, however, that things may work differently, in whole or in part. Video could be a branding vehicle to drive eyeballs back to television or elsewhere, or it could be a “loss leader” in an effort to get people to purchase video.

Cuban is right in stating that “a la carte” consumption on the Internet is exploding traditional methods of media consumption. In other words, people would only pay for the cable television channels that they wanted if they could, but they’re forced into paying for expensive packages at present. The print newspaper and music industries are flailing because people can purchase “a la carte” or get the content for free online.

So Cuban is looking ahead to see how the television and movie industries are going to deal with these same issues when it comes to video.

The short answer that anyone can say for sure is that it’s both an exciting and chaotic time for media creation, distribution, and consumption. I would argue though that in the end it’s a great thing because people are able to get more of what they want and how they want it than ever before.

Here are a number of other factors that I see playing out in the years ahead:

* Television will compete with the Internet for a long time - The opposite is of course true. However, if seven or eight million people watch a show on broadcast TV or one or two million watch on basic cable, no one blinks an eye. These numbers are astronomical when compared to numbers of people watching any one show online. That means that television – and that includes premium channels like HBO and Showtime – will be producing high quality content for the foreseeable future.

And really: the last decade has perhaps been the best in the history of television. The Sopranos. The Wire. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Dexter. Lost. The Shield. Great shows are managing to be produced. One could argue that the proliferation of cable TV helped to drive this “golden age.” So as a devotee of great TV, I’m confident that that won’t change anytime soon.

* Producing and distributing “high quality” video content on the Internet is still very new - New web enterprises like Funny or Die and web-only shows such as Prom Queen are voyagers on a brand new ocean. Television has been around for decades, so of course many of these newer efforts are going to look and feel awkward, as production budgets and episode lengths are tinkered with to meet brand new economics.

This will get figured out though. Here’s the thing to remember:

* People love to watch video on the Internet - So people will figure out a way to make money on it. Sure, there will be some of the “dumbing down” and SEO plays that Cuban fears, but there can and will be a way for high quality shows to find an audience, and for that audience to help drive revenue for the content producers.

* The video advertising industry is still brand new - Pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll, sponsorship, banner ads, companion ads, takeover ads, ad overlays, hypersyndication. These are all brand new tools for video publishers to play around with to find the model that will be acceptable to viewers and will make the most money. If it sounds confusing, it is. But there are hordes of hyper smart folk working on the equation even now. There’s gold in them thar hills, if you follow.

Production budgets, content type, and content length will all be experimented with wildly for many years to come. And over time, expectations and norms for advertising and monetizing online video content will evolve and mature. Let’s remember that a decade ago, online advertising wasn’t respected as a way to make money!

* Creative destruction - If nothing else, the Internet is a powerful force that is still only beginning to shape our daily lives. We’re only a few short years into widespread broadband cable distribution, which is driving the mad wild rush of video consumption.

So, finally, Mark Cuban asks: will it lead to destruction?

Yes. And that destruction will clear the way for what’s next.

For anyone that will give me the smidge of a chance, I’ll be happy to talk your ear off about Mad Men, a glorious and cutting and masterful drama centered around a fictional advertising agency in New York City circa 1960. It’s easy to miss as it’s on AMC, but I highly recommend this show. It matches the incredibly fleshed out characters and deft humor of The Sopranos (and indeed Mad Men’s creator Matthew Weiner exec produced and wrote for that show, perhaps the best to ever hit the small screen) with precise details that pull you into another world and time and place.

Thankfully, I finally have the chance to spread the gospel of Mad Men a little bit here at OMC, as I found a Mad Men Guide to New York (via TV Squad). Locations from the show – both real and fictional (such as ad agency Sterling Cooper) – are guesstimated on an interactive map of New York, replete with anecdotes and show notes. Very fun to check out the locale of the Gaslight Café on MacDougal Street (also the street where you can find some of the cheapest and very best falafel on the planet these days), where protagonist Don Draper slums it during one episode, dragged along by his mistress and her beatnik friend. The scene also featured an absolutely haunting version of a song I believe is called “Babylon.”

In what may be coincidental but is nonetheless interesting timing, stories involving both ABC and NBC making broadcast shows available online (at least for an increment of time after the show premieres on television) have caught the buzz over the last 24 hours.

ABC’s deal with AOL locks in distribution via AOL and features advertising embedded during shows, with no cost to viewers. The NBC deal allows people to stream shows for free for one week after shows premiere on the broadcast network. Advertising runs on shows and can’t be fast-forwarded through.

So, what have we learned here?

* Television isn’t just rushing to get online. It’s scrambling.
The days of massive traditional audiences watching TV distributed by networks on a television set are in their last throes. The networks now get this and are hell bent on finding new ways to get eyeballs in front of their shows.

* The future of television is online, free, and ad-supported.
Some people might pay $1.99 to download shows on iTunes (guilty here, when I went away for several weeks and my DVR forgot to record Lost!) but for most, they’ll sit through short, sweet, and relevant advertising.

* People are online and want entertaining content.
This is the most powerful force of all. The audience is there, and there’s a marketplace for quality entertainment content. That race is on at warp speed to fill it.

* Return of the TV?
Just for kicks, think about this: wouldn’t it be wild if the traditional TV, powered by the DVRs (digital video recorders) that networks despise, actually made a bid for people to return to their sets because it allowed people to fast-forward through commercials?

* Check the trends.
Here’s what we’re looking at: traditional TV will figure out more ways to advertise in-show (thanks, TiVo!), online TV will figure out the revenue model (think short pre-rolls, mid-roll, post-roll that allow interactivity if the user desires), and much much more content available online than ever, including original offerings such as Quarterlife.

TV is heading online, even if most people aren’t fully aware of it.

Let’s do the math while dispensing with the numbers (it’s Friday, you know?): People, and especially young people, are online. Broadband penetration is high. People watch video online. Many people spend more time online than they do in front of a television screen.

The marketplace is wide open for high quality video series to originate online. All that’s needed is for a few early experimenters to figure out the model in terms of structure and distribution and deals and advertising revenue, and the floodgates, they shall be opening quick-like.

Quarterlife, a new Internet series by My So-Called Life and Thirtysomething creative team Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick that premieres in November (full disclosure here: I’m involved on the webby end of this project), has as good a chance as any to lock down the model and signal a bevy of well funded and produced online video shows to follow in its wake.

In the end, it’s not about how much money goes into making shows, it’s about story and characters and developing a following. Herskovitz and Zwick are experts at doing just this, so if they can produce a high quality show that is easily accessible and viewable on a computer monitor (and it helps that Quarterlife will roll out its first season in 36 eight-minute episodes), it makes sense that people will tune in.

YouTube helped to ring in an era of highly popular user generated online video. If you think about it, millions of people liked watching cats fall off a table or men of all ages getting their nethers slammed by some blunt object on television via America’s Funniest Home Videos, and YouTube was a conduit to fulfilling that need, so to speak, online.

Lonelygirl15 and Prom Queen are more recent examples of online video series to earn a following, the significant difference being that these are examples of fictional episodic video content that just happen to be broadcast over the Internet.

Quarterlife, the story of a young woman who videoblogs about her friends and her life, represents the natural next step in this evolution. And if it does gain a large scale following, the way that the public thinks about and watches “television” will significantly change. Quarterlife also will offer a social networking community and invite its audience to participate and become fully immersed in the show.

Check out the trailer:

Quarterlife Trailer

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Earlier this week, I wrote about highly produced reality television hitting the web in the form of The Next Internet Millionaire. It seems that the web is set for a full on wave of reality shows, two of which are “adventure” shows in the tradition of The Amazing Race and Survivor.

Some kids at Ithaca College in New York are so crazy about The Amazing Race, in fact, that they produced their own version of sorts called simply The Race (found via Reality Blurred. Over 200 hours of footage were culled down to nine hour-long episodes that comprise two seasons of the web-based show.

Even though The Race doesn’t traipse across the globe like its Amazing predecessor (it’s a more modest race across New York) the ability for college students to produce quality shows that mimic (in a flattering way) some of the most popular programs on broadcast television tells you that the future of reality programming is online. Now the real race is to find audiences and figure out the best advertising model. Once a standard is established – and I predict this will happen in the next six to nine months – I think we’re set for a paradigm shift in how “television” is thought of, funded, covered, and viewed.

All that’s needed are one or two breakout shows, and we’re off to the races.

Meanwhile, Around the World for Free hails itself as “the first interactive reality series where the audience is in control and an integral part of the journey. Amazing Race alum Alex Boylan is taking on the challenge of depriving himself of money and resources (save a backpack) while attempting to make it around the globe. Of course, he’ll be filmed the whole way, and the idea is that viewers will be able to write in to offer advice, offer him a place to crash, and so on, with prizes involved. Sounds sort of like a kinder, gentler version of The Running Man! Around The World is also trying to build upon the show in creating a social networking community where people can share their travel experiences.

The line between “television” and “TV-quality shows distributed online” continues to blur. A perfect case in point is The Next Internet Millionaire, a reality show that has Internet marketers compete against each other with the goal of winning $25,000 and getting in on “the next big thing” with creator and host Joel Comm.

The show looks and feels for the most part like the sort of highly produced, slick reality television show that you might see on Bravo, VH1, or even a broadcast network. In addition, it makes sense to produce a reality show that’s broadcast online about the Internet itself. The show in essence is about making money online, which would naturally appeal to webby folk and those who work in the web business. In fact, I picked up on this site/show from Mr. Make Money Online himself, John Chow.

I’ve wondered about the possibility of having a reality show about Internet entrepreneurs for a long time, kind of an Apprentice for the online set. The Next Internet Millionaire seems to be roughly following this model, but whether or not it hits the mark has yet to be determined.

The premiere episode is somewhat uneven in communicating the challenges that the contestants are being asked to perform, which made it a little bit difficult for me to become involved with the drama of who wins immunity, who might get cut, and so on. There’s also some over-the-top in-show marketing of products, though this is not all that different from what you see on television each day!

Just before the contestants are asked to meet in the ominous-sounding Judgment Room, an awkwardly placed mid-roll ad plays, but luckily it’s pretty short. There’s also a short pre-roll ad. I’m guessing there’s a post-roll ad as well, but I didn’t make it quite that far!

I wouldn’t be surprised if The Next Internet Millionaire is angling to get picked up by a basic cable network. The premiere episode is 51 minutes in length – quite long for watching a program in front of a monitor but ideal for splicing up and allowing for the insertion of commercials on TV.

In any event, the modest success of Prom Queen is laying the groundwork for a new generation of online-based shows. Video podcasts are the grassroots part of this movement, but the era of the well funded and produced shows is coming.

And sooner or later (and likely on the sooner side) online-based shows will gather large audiences and make significant money. And that will really change everything. Television as we know it is radically shifting, even though most people are not yet aware of it.

Episode Two of The Next Internet Millionaire will be available tomorrow, August 27.

My obsession with television is something that peeks through every now and again (okay, maybe every again!). Which is a good thing for me in writing an obsessed-with-the-web blog (that being the OMC) because increasingly “TV shows” are video programs that you can watch on a standard television, the Internet, or both.

Over the last few years, TV-related blogs have been getting better and better. Two of the best that cover the convergence of “traditional” television and the online world are Lost Remote and NewTeeVee. With original content offerings popping up online more and more often (such as Prom Queen) it has become a fascinating time for looking at and thinking about how content is produced, distributed, and consumed. And of course technology innovations are shifting the tides unceasingly.

And then you can’t forget about the good stuff, the manna, the shows themselves. In my view, TV Squad does a rock solid fantastic and comprehensive job of covering the doings of the TV world, including news, features, and reviews. That said, they don’t review everything every week. I’m obsessive enough, I’m afraid, that I would love to see a great writer cover Making the Band and Flight of the Conchords every single week – if a blog can deliver on that, I’m there.

Reality Blurred does a great job in covering the ever bourgeoning world of reality television, and Ain’t It Cool News is Johnny-on-the-spot for short snippets, breaking news, and DVD sales info for both movies and TV.

In terms of individual bloggers, I latched ever so obsessively onto Tim Goodman’s The Bastard Machine during the final season of The Sopranos. And as always I have to give some love to my peoples at Blogcritics: Diane Kristine, Chris Beaumont, Josh Lasser, Matt Paprocki, Heloise, Sterfish, Connie Phillips, and a host of others always do a bang up job. And last but not least there’s my man Eric at Backward Five.

Finally, I’m always on the lookout for more (I guess I just can’t help myself!). TVNewser, a Media Bistro blog that covers TV News, is an intriguing new entry. Found it via Lost Remote, thanks guys!

What are your favorite TV blogs?

If you’re a fan of HBO’s Entourage, you know how important Medellin – a Scarface-like biopic about Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar – has been to the storyline for star-within-the-show Vincent Chase, his manager and best friend E, and the rest of his LA crew.

After the conclusion of last night’s episode, HBO presented the full trailer as though it were a real film starring real person Vincent Chase (as opposed to actor Adrian Grenier) and real film director Billy Walsh.

This isn’t the first time that HBO has blurred the line between fiction and reality for entertainment value. During the final season of The Sopranos, a short “making of” featurette for Cleaver, a film-within-the-show financed and coerced by character Christopher Moltisanti, aired with amusing results.

The blurred line has also been extended over into the online world. The Medellin trailer advertises MedellinTheFilm.com, which is a pretty sweet looking if barebones site that also advertises the film as though it were real.

Lost is another television show that has made extensive use of the Internet to extend the fictional realm of its storytelling, including a website for Oceanic Airlines (the airline that helpfully and forcefully strands the Lost kids on a mysterious island) that hilariously and creepily declares that all flights have been cancelled.

The truth is that the online world has just begun to be tapped in terms of extending film and television and literary storylines, providing original content, and exhibiting marketing and advertising power for entertainment companies. In fact, we’re at the dawn of an age where storylines will be driven by the online world, with extensions into the “real” one.

And who knows, it’s entirely possible that the “fake” world can spin around and become real based upon popular demand. For example, there was some chatter a year or so ago that Aquaman, a big-budget vehicle for Entourage’s Vincent Chase and directed by James Cameron within the show, could become a real movie directed by James Cameron. A full-page ad for the as yet fake film taken out in Variety no doubt fueled the speculation! Perhaps a sign that in Hollywood the line between fake and real can at times be tenuous.

A tectonic shift is taking place, and we’re just beginning to see the visible results. Television is slowly but surely bowing to ascendant power of the Internet as the place where people gather to discuss, interact, and increasingly watch episode video content (translation to human = television programs).

Very interesting news came yesterday in that CBS program Jericho is being brought back from the dead based upon a massive up swell of support from the online community.

Advertisers are starting to get that eyeballs are online in ever increasing numbers, for more time each day – particularly in the crucial 18 to 49 demographic – than on television. Broadband penetration is on the rise, which further blurs the line on which place – the television set versus the computer monitor – is the best place to watch video content.

I watched most of the first season of Jericho, by the way, and enjoyed it, though I felt it tailed off in quality near the end. I’m curious to see if it can make good on its second chance later this year. I hope we get to learn more about who set off the nukes!

“Television programs” more than ever before are coming to mean “episodic video content” rather than “entertainment and informational programming that comes out of a blue glow-emitting box.”

Consider that almost half of European broadband users now watch television programs on a computer, according to BBC News. And when you consider the massive popularity of YouTube – which has “trained” people to enjoy online video content programming that is often low budget and low quality in nature – it only stands to reason that traditional television products will be increasingly integrated into the online experience.

But what I find really fascinating is the prospect of shows premiering online, with the potential to then be broadcast on traditional TV. That’s what Comedy Central is doing with Web Shows, where “webisodes” that originated online will then make their small screen debut in July. Another example of an online-traditional TV experiment is Jack Black’s Acceptable.tv, which ties to a show on VH1.

Meanwhile, many are keeping their eyes on Prom Queen, original 90-second soap opera-style stories that are available on places such as MySpace, Veoh, YouTube, and PromQueen.tv. The early and as yet modest success of this venture may open up the floodgates for a new generation of online-first episodic video programming.

As an episodic story cultist of all kinds, I’m liking it.