Message From Michael -- July 14, 2008

THE 600-POUND MEDIA GORILLA

VIDEO, VIDEO EVERYWHERE

THE TECHNOLOGICAL SHOTGUN WEDDING

DANGER, WILL ROBINSON

FACTOID OF THE WEEK – VIDEO SHELF LIFE

COCKTAIL CHATTER


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THE 600-POUND MEDIA GORILLA: Even without me saying it, you can probably guess what I’m talking about, and if you guessed the Internet, you’re wrong. Half a dozen recent reports that I’ve reviewed came out with the same conclusion – television is and will continue to be for some time the dominant media. First comes the PriceWaterhouseCoopers Global Entertainment and Media Outlook report which says that revenue from traditional media such as television will still dominate the global market. Then there’s the media services firm Magna Global whose director of industry analysis argues that TV’s “convenience, relatively low cost and quality of content” will sustain the traditional viewing and support from big brand advertisers for the foreseeable future. Interestingly The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising based in London (who else but the British would have such a weird name), used the same language as the Magna Global people, referring to television as “the dominant medium.” The Solutions Research Group predicts that TV viewing will stay pretty constant for some time, accounting for nearly half (47%) of the daily “video pie.” Add to that the report by The Media Audit which says adults spend an average 222 minutes a day (that’s 3 hours and 42 minutes) watching television, compared to 122 minutes a day using the Internet. Finally research conducted by The Nielsen Company for the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing which shows the vast majority of adults (94%) who subscribe to cable or satellite prefer to watch on the traditional TV sets.

Of course it’s never that simple. The Media Audit study notes that online usage has jumped 62% in the past year from an average of 2 hours and 2 minutes a day to 3 hours and 17 minutes a day. Television, which while still the larger amount, has actually dropped as a percent of the total media day from 36.5% in 2006 to 32.7% in 2007. The CTAM commissioned study by Nielsen noted similar numbers and percentages, while also noting that a third of broadband users surveyed (35%) said they had turned to the Internet to watch a television show originally shown on TV. The Solutions Research Group makes a similar point, noting that TV’s share has dropped while PC-based, web video and mobile video consumption has continued to rise; but the group says on-demand video and digital video recorders will mean TV will still retain a place in the market. The PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) report says the ballooning over-50 crowd in developed countries (aka America and Europe) is the main support for traditional media even while adopting some of the new media; but that in the developing countries it’s the ballooning under-35 crowd who are setting the stage for change in media consumption. Putting that into PWC-speak, media companies should continue to “extract revenue” from the traditional segments while the emerging technologies “solidify their consumer position.” Brian Weiser with Magna Global says part of the problem with ad spending on new media is that it is labor intensive, but that as ad buying becomes more standardized for these segments along with data crunching (aka measurement), spending will increase. The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising warns that increased advertising is driving some people away while the advent of the personal video recorders is helping keep them away.

Side Note #1: A study commissioned by Yahoo titled Engage and Entertain: The Impact of the Internet on your TV Show Brand” found that a third of TV viewers go on-line for details about a TV show BEFORE watching it while two-thirds (68%) of TV viewers say they go online to find about more information about a TV show AFTER watching it.

Side Note #2: The PriceWaterhouseCoopers report says the fastest growth in media will come in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) nations with the group forecasting the media business in those four countries at $250 Billion by 2012 compared to $165 Billion for Japan, $633 Billion for Western Europe and $760 Billion for the U-S which remains the largest but slowest growing market.

VIDEO, VIDEO EVERYWHERE: Several reports say we should get away from thinking about things like TV, DVD’s, DVR’s, Mobile, Film, Movies, Internet video and video games as separate issues but rather as part of a total video universe. The Solutions Research Group, cited above, predicts that by the year 2013, people will spend as much time consuming video as they do sleeping – roughly eight hours a day, up from six hours a day right now and 4.6 hours a day in 1996. The report says the “appetite for video is remarkable” and talks about “ambient video everywhere.” In a similar vein, the Forrester Research group issued a report titled somewhat hyperbolically How Video Will Take Over the World in which it talks about a concept it calls “omnivideo.” It predicts a video explosion with individuals able to watch – and produce – video nearly everywhere on a variety of different devices because, says principal analyst James McQuivey, “video satisfies the brain in a way that other media just cannot.”

THE TECHNOLOGICAL SHOTGUN WEDDING: It’s between TV and the PC, and several major groups are working to make sure it happens. Sony has created an Internet video link that plugs into the back of Bravia LCD TV’s and allows you to access sites as diverse as YouTube, AOL, CBS.com and Yahoo! Panasonic’s version is Vieracast on its Viera model TV sets and which accesses YouTube and the Weather Channel. Sharp has a configurable widget on its Aquos Net TV’s to update people on weather, NASDAQ, traffic and comic strips. Comcast is seeking patents, as reported by Cynopsis, for two devices – one that acts as a portable TV and video player and one that ports TV content to PC’s. Of course, Google is in the fray, with its announcement of a Google Media Server which conveys content from the PC to the TV AND even a move to distribute ORIGINAL TV content via AdSense. Finally, there is a device called the ZvBox which lets you watch high definition Internet video on any digital TV in your housing, simply by plugging one end into your Windows PC and the other into an ordinary cable TV wall socket.

DANGER, WILL ROBINSON: That catch phrase from the 1960’s TV series Lost In Space was the first thing that came to mind as I read the Technology Review’s special report on the future of the Web, quoting thirteen of the leading minds in the Internet world. Many of them warned that privacy will be lost in the interconnected world that is the Internet. Richard Stallman who developed the GNU/ Linux system and founded The Free Software Movement warns of the dangers of Big Brother while Mena Trott who cofounded Six Apart sees it as letting people put most of their day online. Jonathan Abrams who founded Socializr and Friendster offers the tongue-in-cheek (or at least I think it’s tongue-in-cheek) prediction that in ten years we will all have chips in our brain which will immediately process all information from others we meet as well as sharing it with others, overloading our brain and “causing frequent nosebleeds and occasional cerebral hemorrhage.” An interestingly different perspective comes from the three futurists who, not coincidentally, all come from the developing regions of India, Africa and the Middle East, with all three seeing the Web as empowering the people of their areas either financially, socially or politically. A good number of the predictors talked about the Internet becoming more mobile so people are not ‘tied’ to a computer at a desk. And, of course, no prediction about the Web would be complete without a statement from Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing the Web, who speaks about Linked Open Data. And in a line that only Sir Tim and a few others probably full understands, says, “a mashup sphere will feast on a wealth of Semantic Web data and herald the next wave of progress and creativity on the Web.”

FACTOID OF THE WEEK: According to website, TubeMogul, whose motto is “empowering online video,” the ‘shelf life’ of most video is about two weeks. The website which helps people upload video to multiple websites reports that a quarter (25%) of all views of a video take place in the first four days; half of the views (50%) take place in the first two weeks; three quarters in the first 44 days; and by day 81, nearly all of the viewing (95%) that will take place has taken place.

COCKTAIL CHATTER: Just one, but it’s a beauty. You’ve heard about clothes and fashion outlets opening businesses in the virtual worlds. Now, trend website Springwise reports that the flip side of that is people are taking the clothes worn by their avatars and having them made for real world use. Two websites, Stardoll and Spreadshirt, are already capitalizing on the trend, according to industry website, Virtual Worlds News. Yes, I know, I had the same reaction. There is actually an association or newsletter specifically for virtual worlds. In fact there is going to be a virtual worlds expo in Los Angeles in September. And I would note a previous MfM in which people were getting married in these virtual worlds, or at least their avatars were, even though some of them were married in real life.

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