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Web TV: Will This Time Be Different? Feb 22, 2012

In This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, economists diagnose an incurable syndrome in finance history: the tendency to believe each crisis is “different” than previous economic collapses. They show how, in fact, most debt crises have a small set of core similarities. This time is not so different.

The same could be said for the shorter history of web programming. We now have a largely unrecognized genre of reporting—often good reporting—about the “new television” lineup. The articles, mostly written in the trade press but occasionally in mainstream newspapers like the New York Times and most recently Los Angeles Times, start with a declaration that the television landscape is changing online, and then proceed to offered extensive evidence of new forms of TV. A list of programs is typically included.

I realized this when doing research on a broad history of web programming. The first of these could be a 1996 article in my hometown paper, The Record, which posited “cybersoaps” as the potential next form of television. Then it was webtoons in the early 2000s, with Variety‘s Marc Graser declaring that “the Netcasting game”—the pre-Netflix’s—”starts to look a little more like Hollywood every day…[W]annabe Webheads are jumping into the Internet content creation game, trying to feed Netcasters desperate for entertainment programming.”

Each new trend came and went, often within a year or two. By the time YouTube rose to prominence, widespread corporate interest in web originals faded. But now it’s back in a big way. History has taught us to be skeptical of the “next big thing,” but web originals really are different today. Will this time be different?

There’s a lot of evidence it will be.

Format: Web series today look more like television than previous periods of programming, which have typically been shorter in length or completely different in style (cybersoaps were mostly text-based).

Bandwidth: Nearly 70% of Americans have access to high-speed Internet, absolutely necessary for viewing long-form video.

Revenue: There’s real money flowing into web programming, based on solid business models. Hulu’s investing a robust but responsible amount of money acquiring and producing original series, given the company $500 million revenue; Netflix’s budget for originals is 5% of its overall content budget, the rest of it going to competing (successfully at times) with the likes of HBO and Amazon for syndication. Other networks like Aol, Yahoo, Crackle and YouTube are investing smartly, as a proportion of expected revenue. All are either owned by wealthy publicly traded companies, or, in the case of Netflix, is one. They’re relatively self-sustaining, not overly reliant on parent companies or wealthy producers.

Competition: Not only is there real demand for web originals from the audience—average viewing time continues to rise—but there’s a number of options, forcing the distributors above and content companies like CBS, Warner Bros. and Fox to step up their game.

Organization: While a “web TV guide” is still something of an illusion, notwithstanding the laudable efforts of Clicker and Sidereel, web companies are starting to streamline the market, through award shows and the much-hyped digital upfronts.

Not to mention: the programming’s pretty good. Not everyone agrees, of course. Variety‘s critic Brian Lowry is still not buying web originals: ”The bar ought to be pretty high for original online fare,” referring, not complimentarily, to Hulu’s Battleground. I agree. But Netflix’s Lilyhammer is quite decent—it’s other Euro-import, Tom Fontana’s Borgia, was not—and I have a hard time imagining the network’s Fincher/Spacey project House of Cards or its Arrested Development reboot will disappoint. On the short-form side, leading YouTube channels like Machinima and BlackBoxTV are churning out great genre series and finding consistent, dedicated audiences.  You’ll find plenty of great niche programs among the winners of this week’s Indie Soap Awards.

What’s wrong? There is the perennial “measurement crisis,” the inability of these web networks to come up with a consistent ratings system that will satisfy advertisers (Nielsen has an idea or two). I suspect this won’t be a problem for long.

The larger problem is one I’ve already started: a lot of the most recent “web TV” grabbing headlines looks an awful lot like traditional TV. Netflix’s Lilyhammer could easily be on TV, if not HBO then definitely Showtime. A lot of the creatives getting high profile development deals were already successful in film or television (David Fincher, Mitch Hurwitz, many of the YouTube channels). Last year’s announcement by Crackle of their long-form line-up had producers with credits in broadcast TV. In 10 years, it seems unlikely many of us will care Netflix and Hulu originally broadcast over-the-top. They’ll all be apps on our Google TVs (or whatever).

What difference does a difference make? That’s the question we need to be asking in 2012.

Photo credits:
-Screenshot, The Sync (via, Archive.org)
-Screenshot, Netflix.com

-Contributed by Aymar Jean Christian, Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania-

Posted in Alternative Distribution, Essay, Television Industry | Tagged amazon, aol, crackle, history, hulu, netflix, web series, yahoo, YouTube | Leave a comment

Inventing the Digital Medium: An Interview with Janet Murray Feb 21, 2012

I first met Janet Murray when I arrived at MIT almost 25 years ago. At the time, she was working on her book, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, while I was working on Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. Murray, along with the members of the Narrative Intelligence Reading Group, was an early guide for me to the emerging realm of digital culture and helped to shape my thinking in ways that I will never be able to fully acknowledge.

A few years later, Murray and I worked together, along with Ben Singer and Ellen Draper, to create The Virtual Screening Room, the prototype for a fully interactive digital textbook for studying film analysis. In many ways, what we constructed together using Hypercard was more advanced than anything we’ve seen so far coming out of the realm of e-books, with hundreds of clips on command from almost as many movies to illustrate core concepts in film editing.

Shortly afterwords, she left MIT for Georgia Tech, while with William Uricchio, I took over the leadership of our newly created Comparative Media Studies Program. We’ve remained in touch through the years, with Murray always proving to be a wonderful thinking partner, sometimes affirming, sometimes challenging my own thinking, and always overseeing cutting edge projects which stretched the affordances of digital media in the service of expanding human expression or more fully realizing its pedagogical potential. We’ve both found ourselves under attack for being “narratologists” in the famous “Ludologist” debates, and sharpened our own thinking about games as a medium in the process. I was delighted (well, for many reasons) when the British magazine, Prospect, identified both of us as among the top thinkers for the digital future.

Murray recently released her long-awaited new book, Inventing the Medium: Principals of Interaction Design as a Cultural Practice. On one level, the book is a textbook designed to help designers in training develop a fuller, more robust understanding of digital media, one which builds productively on principles she first outlined inHamlet on the Holodeck, but which also reflects on the past decade plus of developments as many once cutting edge practices have now become normalized and routinized within digital media. This book captures some of the thinking she did as the chair of her program at Georgia Tech, which remains one of the most forward thinking about new media platforms and practices.

On another level, the book is a theory of media — especially of media change — with a strong emphasis on the intersections between technology and culture. I was delightful to see how much more deeply Murray had read and thought about media theory since the first book, and in the process, she is pushing all of us to think more deeply about what it might mean to consider the digital as its own medium rather than as a delivery system for multiple media or what it might mean to think about the local choices made in digital design as contributing to a larger evolution of that medium. Murray’s writing has shifted in a more technical direction than her first book, which was very much an argument for why humanists should engage with new media production and critique, but she remains very much a humanist at heart, who sees digital media as making vital contributions to our contemporary culture. Inventing the Medium is an epic accomplishment, one which we will all be mining for years to come.

In this interview, Murray reflects about the larger conceptual framing of the book, what it has to say about the nature of media change and the role of design in constructing contemporary culture. Her thoughtful and engaging responses to my questions should provoke further reflections about the state of the art in digital design.

Henry Jenkins: You rather quickly dismiss the concept of “transmedia” or “crossplatform” storytelling from your focus here. Yet, I know you have been working with the American Film Institute on various projects to think about the computer as a “second screen” in relation to film or television. What insights might you be able to share from this work with my readers who are interested in transmedia issues?

Janet Murray: My etv group has been an important focus of my own research since I came to Georgia Tech. It assumes a convergence platform that combines everything we love about TV with all the affordances of the digital medium. This is what I predicted in HoH in 1997, and described in chapter 9. The home TV is converging with the computer, the game platform, and the telephone which is now a video telephone. The tablet has become a useful second screen and is very well positioned to replace the remote control. Our prototypes address these possibilities. For example, we assume that TV series are stored in an archive that is navigable across episodes and across series. Then we ask, what kinds of connections will viewers want to make? So we do prototypes that connect two American history documentaries that explore the Cuban Missile Crisis from Castro’s perspective and from Kennedy’s. Or we show how a long-form story arc, like Graham Yost’s masterfully controlled Justified season, can be made clearer to viewers by scene-specific synchronized visualizations that do not distract them from the unfolding story.

I like your categories of transmedia very much and I know the term has been very energizing within the entertainment industry. I particularly like your calling attention to the need for a consistent storyworld across media instantiations. I have picked a friendly quarrel with the term “transmedia” on my blog and I am taking up the same issue in a keynote at Euro iTV next August, calling for a process of “transcending transmedia. ” Instead of interactive environments as separate media from television, I want to encourage people to think about more complex storyworlds that integrate the affordances of the digital medium, such as documentaries that are indexed for multiple paths, or dramatic series that come with the ability to follow a single thread across multiple episodes or seasons, or fantasy dramas that support investigation and sharing of clues to mysterious forces without a sense of leaving one medium and entering another one. I’m more interested in the integration because I think that more complex storytelling is a human resource. It holds the power to make us smarter and more empathetic.

The post above is an excerpt. For the original post, visit Confessions of an Aca-Fan.

-Contributed by Henry Jenkins, Communications, Journalism, Cinematic Arts, Education, University of Southern California-

Posted in Connected Television, Essay, Technological Innovations | Tagged transmedia | Leave a comment

“You can’t use data from Nielsen. All Nielsen data should come with a Surgeon General’s warning.” Feb 17, 2012

—Jon Mandel, former Grey and Nielsen executive and current CEO of PrecisionDemand, on using set-top box data instead of ratings from Nielsen.

While there’s always been some distrust of Nielsen data, the proliferation of tools for accessing television has arguably accelerated dissatisfaction with the ratings system, particularly its sampling method. Mandel argues that Nielsen fails to capture audiences precisely, particularly on cable or daytime. “Now that we have all this set-top box data, we realize how dangerous to your business using just Nielsen data alone was,” he told Broadcasting & Cable. As advertisers seek even more targeting, will TV’s metrics fragment as well?

-Contributed by Aymar Jean Christian, Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania-

Posted in Connected Television, Technological Innovations | Tagged analytics, nielsen, ratings | Leave a comment

Pushing Mobile Feb 14, 2012

 

This is a slight update of a recent post from my personal blog, The Chutry Experiment, where I explored the ways in which mobile spectatorship is being promoted. I’m currently in the process of developing some research around the concept of platform mobility, the idea that texts now circulate easily between multiple platforms and devices. Although this is often hyped as allowing us unprecedented forms of access, actual experience suggests a more complicated picture, and often depictions of a mobile generation are greatly exaggerated.

To address these questions about platform mobility, I’d like to mention a report on a study that I received via email the other day from Greystripe, which bills itself as the “largest brand-focused mobile advertising network.” The sample size for the survey seems rather small to me, especially compared to the much richer studies conducted by Pew and Nielsen, but I think that part of what attracted my attention was their specific focus on emphasizing the ways in which mobile devices, whether smartphones or iPads, contribute to the practices of movie consumption.

To some extent, I agree with their arguments, although the basis for my agreement is probably at least partially anecdotal. One of the arguments they are trying to push is that mobile users are likely to seek out information—trailers, cast, showtimes—about movies using mobile devices, and there is probably some validity to this argument. Three of the first apps I downloaded to my iPhone were Flixster, IMDB, and The Oscars. The first two of these directly offer reviews and showtimes that I could use to find out when and where movies are playing, while The Oscars offers at least some information about nominated films. Their findings seem to confirm that one of the most common “entertainment activities” uses of smartphones is to check movie times or to find a nearby movie theater. They also place emphasis on the fact that mobile apps still function primarily to point us to other screens through advertising and promotion, encouraging users to watch trailers or other video advertising.

But there are places where their framing of mobile seems disingenuous. First, they use data that shows that 44% of respondents saw 1-3 movies per year in theaters and another 25% saw 4-6 per year to conclude that “almost 70%” of respondents watch as many as 6 movies per year, when a more honest way of reading these numbers would have to acknowledge that nearly 85% watched six movies or less in theaters per year (given that only about 16% said they watched more than six). These numbers don’t seem completely consistent with other numbers that I’ve seen, but they hardly paint a rosy picture of mobile users being frequent moviegoers.

They also seek to point out that half of all mobile users claim to decide what to see based on movie ads, but what’s left unstated here is whether these mobile users saw these ads exclusively on mobile devices, and I’m guessing the answer is no. More than half stated that peers were a major influence, and it seems notable that the survey pays little attention to social media as a factor. Movie reviewers may be relieved to know that, especially for iPad owners, they continue to hold at least some influence, if these survey results are to be believed.

I’m addressing this survey for a couple of reasons: First, I’m becoming a little more attentive to the methodology behind surveys and survey questions, especially as I plan to immerse myself in more of that kind of research. These kinds of surveys—even at the small scale conducted by Greystripe—can provide keen insights, but their questions are too transparently focused on pushing mobile advertising to be believable, especially given the proliferation of screens and sites where we might encounter movie advertising. The Nielsen study cited above shows, in fact, that most people still spend significantly more of their time watching “traditional TV” than staring at tiny, mobile screens. But the survey—and others like it—seem dependent on pushing the idea of an emerging model of mobile spectatorship that seems greatly exaggerated, especially given that many people have a great deal of dissatisfaction with their mobile phones and are often leery of exceeding costly data caps on their phone service. In essence, we need much more rigorous conversations about what it really means to be mobile.

Originally published at The Chutry Experiment.

-Contributed by Chuck Tryon, Fayetteville State University Department of English-

Posted in Essay, Television Industry | Tagged mobile, research | Leave a comment

Whitney Houston, the Nation and the TV Archive Feb 12, 2012

Some of us are too young to remember watching Whitney Houston’s iconic rendition of
“The Star-Spangled Banner” live. But now we can see it! Thanks to YouTube, the privately owned public archive.

It’s been lamented that television’s function as a vessel for national consciousness has died in the wake of digital convergence, that, aside from a few media events like the Super Bowl, we no longer come together as a country through the screen. But the presence of an easily accesible archive of television programming, available not through the Library of Congress but Google, allows for other forms of collective witnessing.

In the wake of Houston’s death thousands are reposting the clip above, a spectacular document of post-Cold War America that reminds us not only of Houston — I heard this rendition every Friday in elementary school — but also of our bombastic sense of supremacy at the end of the 20th century. A YouTube commenter had a compelling take:

Only Whitney Houston could do justice to a war-worshiping anthem on a war-worshiping ‘grid-iron’ as fighter jets fly overheard, in celebration of the most boring, tactically convoluted, vulgar game ever invented. Her pipes were the biggest! the best! the most overblown pieces of vocal equipment around – a classic American icon.

I happen to find football a fine sport, if only once a year, but yes: through YouTube, I can witness Houston and America in their supposed primes, while mourning and remembering along with everyone else.

-Contributed by Aymar Jean Christian, Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania-

Posted in Alternative Distribution, Visual | Tagged archive, history, YouTube | 1 Comment

Comments as Writing Feb 8, 2012

My course, Learning from YouTube, advertises that all class assignments take the shape of YouTube videos or comments, hence pushing and challenging both the constraints of web 2.0′s platforms for higher learning, while at the same time, asking higher learning to take better account of the ways, places, and forms where learning occurs in 2012. I have spent some time and energy codifying the ways my students and I began to “write” academically on YouTube. And perhaps it comes as no surprise that I evaded similar thinking in relation to our work at commenting, given how paltry is this function and its related culture.

Of course, my steadfast collaborators have been thinking about commenting all along:

In class yesterday, we began to build on this part of the project, asking ourselves to codify our commenting practices as academic writing. These terms serve as our beginning:

Meta: writing that evidences in its form its analysis of YouTube. These self-reflexive forms include:

Rant: writing that rages
Spam: writing that sells
ADD: writing that jumps, moves, distracts, disconnects
Reiterative: writing that re-cuts

Social: writing that takes into account its public, interactive position

Personal: writing that takes into account the experiences, position and opinions of its isolated author

Convergence: writing that attempts to translate academic style, lingo, or analysis to the Internet

Efficient: writing that attempts to relay information with ease

Tweet: writing that must be short

Live: writing that strives to be current

-Contributed by Alexandra Juhasz, Pitzer College Media Studies-

Posted in Pro-Am and User Generated Content, Social Media | Tagged YouTube | Leave a comment

“TV is no longer a device…It is a concept, and people go where the best screen is.” Feb 8, 2012

—Jon Miller, News Corp. chief digital officer, on the company’s video strategy.

Miller added: “I actually think we’re entering the age of video now…some people think we’re already there but I think we’re just getting started.”

The transition from “television” to “video” has been around for years, as documented by Amanda Lotz, though it seems less ideological now—the “death of television”—and more procedural—how to monetize it. Is the “concept” of video for a company like News Corp. substantially dissimilar from that of TV today?

-Contributed by Aymar Jean Christian, Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania-

Posted in Mobile Video, Quote, Television Industry | Tagged fox, newscorp | Leave a comment

WSJ and pushing convergence. Will legacies follow? Feb 6, 2012

For the better part of a decade, legacy print outlets debated the benefits of online video and the production toll the medium allegedly takes on their resources. The issue, from strictly a cost perspective, focuses more on metrics than laying a foundation for future convergence.

Spend some time watching WSJ.com on Apple TV or Google TV and ask if this argument will hold up in 2012 and beyond.

As one of the few legacy print outlets with content strong enough to demand a paywall, the people at the Wall Street Journal (and perhaps more so the Murdoch family and their properties) should no longer have this conversation within the ranks. WSJ.com’s aggressive video and television strategy — and early adopter status with Apple and Google — means the next few years will redefine competition in the news and information broadcast space. After a decade of trepidation and the proliferation of 24-hour news cable channels, a production point has been met.

The technological barriers of entry are low. The quality of legacy broadcast content in the 24-hour cycle has also dropped. Now those resources (people) are emerging as the WSJ’s biggest assets to improve quality on a new platform. With more than 2,000 journalists, their expertise is the outlet’s most significant resource and a simple Skype conversation will satisfy the masses in terms of production value. The technology will always improve. The means of reporting remain the same and the outlet’s branding remains strong.

Just ask Kelly Evans, who last week was hired away from the WSJ by television network CNBC. She hosted one of the WSJ’s original web shows. Or ask Raju Narisetti, the former head of the Washington Post’s online operation who moved to the WSJ a few weeks ago. This move was just weeks after the WaPo’s ombudsman claimed there is too much experimentation at the Post. Narisetti’s response? Not enough.

This will be the year when legacy print companies aggressively pursue the possibilities on traditional broadcast platforms (throw HuffPost in this mix but its classification is debatable). The seamless integration of Wi-Fi connections and screens in your living room and pockets has ushered in more competition with content that on first glance does not differ much from what you see on CNN, CNBC or Fox.

Most of the WSJ’s original programming is your standard Q&A segments (with less antagonizing) in 28-minute blocks with a mix of journalists and special guests. Kara Swisher of AllThingsD (Skype) and serial entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk (in-house) have been guests on the program “Digits” – a niche technology segment from the WSJ’s cross-platform presence. Most of the eight original shows are filmed inside the WSJ newsroom with a minimalist set and standard digital graphics in the backdrop. Even the give-and-take between journalists/hosts and their guests seems authentic with the sharing of quality information. We have seen this before on legacy broadcast channels. With this duplicated format, there really is no difference.

Growth will continue and Reuters (which shares content with the WSJ) has made it clear its video/broadcast push is also here to stay. The financial discussions will persist but content and proven metrics are needed before selling space to advertisers. As of now, the only ads on the WSJ channel on Apple TV are for the WSJ. The 15- and 30-second spots run across platforms and are merely repurposed content, much like the heavily produced 9-minute documentary on a veteran suffering from PTSD that flowed well in the construct of the WSJ original programming in an on-demand format on Apple TV. With gripping photos from 2004, coupled with interviews and fresh video six years later, a compelling narrative is constructed. Every legacy company in America has the same potential. Mixable multimedia journalists with new engaging platforms, and the field is leveled once again. (This does not take into consideration global news convergence.)

The knee-jerk reaction is alive and well about the effectiveness of this “new” medium. After all, with YouTube channels for Reuters and the WSJ, stream metrics are thin – 200 here for one video, 350 there. Multiply this over 365 days, add some cross-platform promotion and allow “traditional” journalists to become comfortable in front of a camera and there will be progress.

People are reactionary by nature. Legacy newsrooms are quicker to pass judgment especially when dollars are involved. Give these experiments two years to become mainstream.

Or give it less.

-Contributed by Brett Orzechowski, Quinnipiac University Dept. of Journalism-

Posted in Alternative Distribution, Broadcast Networks, Cable Channels, Essay, Television Industry, Video Journalism | Tagged AllThingD, Gary Vaynerchuk, HuffPost, Kara Swisher, Kelly Evans, newscorp, Raju Narisetti, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, WaPo | Leave a comment

Social media, “Being Human,” and the importance of conversations Feb 1, 2012

For GigaOM this weekend, I wrote a story about how the network formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel approached their social media campaign for the second season of Being Human:

The concept they played with, according to Dana Ortiz, the VP of brand marketing for Syfy, was to focus the conversation online not around the show but around an idea. Thematically, the show’s second season was exploring the concept of “temptation,” the tagline from the ubiquitous billboards and bus ads being “Temptation is a beast.” So for the first 12 hours of the campaign, Twitter promoted the hashtag “#AlreadyTempted” (which also tied into post–New Year’s conversations about failing to follow through on resolutions); then, for the second 12 hours Twitter pushed the topic “#BeingHuman.”

What they discovered was that, according to Ortiz in a phone interview, “To sponsor a conversation around a theme or topic is much more meaningful.”

[snip]

Of course, Syfy’s advantage here was that the phrase “being human” also serves as a strong conversation starter; Ortiz said they would likely promote the show Warehouse 13 just with a thematic topic, not the show title.

Basically, it turns out that social media works best when it’s approached as a place for conversations. Which is something a lot of marketers seem to forget.

-Contributed by Liz Shannon Miller, GigaOM Video contributor-

Posted in Link, Social Media, Television Industry | Tagged cable, sci-fi, twitter | Leave a comment

On Streaming the Superbowl Jan 31, 2012

Peter Kafka of AllThingsD has a nice post up on Comcast/NBCU’s decision to stream the Superbowl online:

NBC Puts the Super Bowl on the Web Because It Thinks You’ll Watch It on TV // AllThingsD

-Contributed by Josh Braun, Quinnipiac University Dept. of Film, Video, and Interactive Media-

Posted in Link, Television Industry | Tagged comcast, nbcu, superbowl | Leave a comment