Broadband Jungle Blog

Internet Metering - Back to the good old bad days?

During peak times, 5% of Internet users are hogging 50% of the bandwidth?

How to reply if you're a service provider? Metering? Open access? Tiered plans?

Mark Cuban already cast his vote and kicked of a thunderstorm: Why Tiered Broadband is a Wonderful Thing and ASIVS.

'Leave and take your bit torrent client with you.'

While cable giants like Comcats and Time Warner and telecoms like AT&T are figuring out how to add valves to their pipelines to reign in some of their hard-core users, industry mags like Mediapost's Blogs have long been engaging in the debate.

Now the New York Times is weighing in with a clarifying survey from Brian Stelter.
His article from June 15 compares the potential of 'Internet metering' to the industry's clumsy business models from the early days:

'The Time Warner plan has the potential to bring Internet use full circle, back to the days when pay-as-you-go pricing held back the Web’s popularity. In the early days of dial-up access, America Online and other providers offered tiered pricing, in part because audio and video were barely viable online. Consumers feared going over their allotted time and bristled at the idea that access to cyberspace was billed by the hour.'

Stelter compares some of the plans in discussion and the perspective is grim: Bandwidth allotments appear to favor the very casual Internet user simply sending e-mail and reading the news.

Streaming an hour of video on Hulu, which shows programs like “Saturday Night Live,” “Family Guy” and “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” consumes about 200 megabytes, or one-fifth of a gigabyte. A higher-quality hour of the same content bought through Apple’s iTunes store can use about 500 megabytes, or half a gigabyte.

A high-definition episode of “Survivor” on CBS.com can use up to a gigabyte, and a DVD-quality movie through Netflix’s new online service can eat up about five gigabytes. One Netflix download alone, in fact, could bring a user to the limit on the cheapest plan in Time Warner’s trial in Beaumont.   

What this could mean to our fledgling rich media loving industry is pretty obvious:

“We hate it,” said a senior executive at a major media company, who requested anonymity because his company, like all broadcasters, must play nice with the same cable operators that are imposing the limits. Now that some television shows are viewed millions of times online, the executive said, any impediment would hurt the advertising model for online video streaming.

Welcome to GoGooroo Blog

It took us 2 months into our public beta to finally launch the BIG blog. Go figure.
Anyhow--we've been more than pleased by the warm embrace we've received from the blogging community and trade journalists around the globe. Take a look.

A big shoutout goes to Kristen Nicole at Mashable to get the ball rolling. Looks like there really was something missing in the marketplace and a lot of video fiends out there were suffocating under the weight of all their bookmarks. I know we did.

So here's the goal: We're determined to create the most useful and user-friendly platform for all these great and inspiring broadband video channels out there. In spite of our efforts, a lot of them still get lost in the shuffle. We believe in niche programming, and we believe in monster blockbusters to keep the industry's momentum going.

Not so sure how we feel about television, though--it might be the golden age of TV writing, but the platform itself seems tired and stale. We'll just have to see how far the broadband revolution goes. Creatively we certainly are experiencing an eruption of visual content not seen since the advent of cable, maybe even television.

Don't get me started about the movies -- broadband video might be what independent producers have been waiting for since the creatively insane ran the asylum in the 1970s. I do believe that. It could also mean the end of distribution and exhibition as we've known it for the past century. If you're pumping HD on demand broadband into your home theater, who's going to drag their butt into a poorly run theater anymore?

GoGOOROO is clearly a company with a global mindset. It's no coincidence that we launched parallel in  the US and Europe, and we have big plans to add more localized portals as we build this community. We also have aspirations to take a leadership role when it comes to syndicating and hosting video content for our viewers.

While we're currently indexing every channel known to man, we're also determined to create and curate some of these great new channels nobody had thought of. We're big on collaborating with other video portals and aggregators, because we're all Davids in the same boat struggling with Goliath.

And that does include Michael Eisner, a recovering Goliath. He's new to it just like we all are and that's probably what he likes about creating Prom Queen with the skills he learned in the good old TV days.

Anybody who claims they have it all licked, whether it's production, advertising, distribution, finance or storytelling is simply telling a lie. Nobody has a clue and we're all learning and making it up as we go along, just like it should be.

Gary Carter, CCO of the company who brought us American Idol, expressed it extremely well at January's NATPE conference:

“Technological development is a story which runs through human history and which shapes and is shaped by it. And part of that story is the rise (…) of what we call ‘media.’ This is about us, in a very deep and a very profound way, and it’s about the way in which we as a species are driven by creativity.”

That said--follow the Gooroo and have a great time!

MediaPost goes SciFi and looks back

Here's a very clever analysis of things to come in a TV Board post dropped by Joe Mandese, editor in chief at the reliable MediaPost. Camouflaged as a report filed in 2009, Looking Back predicts successful TV and Internet video convergence for 6 months from now in all our living rooms.

"Who would have thought when we launched this discussion board of industry thought leaders back in 2006 that television would go the way of the telegraph and become one of the few mass media to actually become extinct?"

Speaking my mind exactly. Here's how Mandese envisions the shift finally taking place:

"The turning point came 18 months ago when Google acquired Gemstar TV Guide and merged the universal remote control with its Universal Search service, once and for all ending the need for channel surfing or dial flipping."

Couldn't agree more. Until these or similarly equipped forces finally merge, all that's left to help us connect video from several portals is GoGooroo, which is why we started the whole thing. Couldn't find anything!

"My right thumb still twitches with phantom muscle memory every time I pick up my Apple iRemote to change the channel — er, video screen platform — even though the nifty new device relies solely on a retinal interface. And I’ll never get used to those Eyebuds. I don’t care how freakin’ cool they look, they keep falling out."

Sounds like a Philip K.Dick novel?  He's not quite done yet:

"Google’s server farms simply spider the content directly from the master control systems of local stations, and the satellite uplinks of networks reroute video programming to the screen of a user’s choice."

A brilliant book waiting to be written. Enjoy!

The Burg

Here’s an example of what can happen when a group of talented artists take matters into their own hands: Instead of waiting for auditions and productions to materialize, a bunch of people from NYC’s off-off theater scene got together last summer to create a clever and funny series exclusively for the web.

The result is The Burg—Too Hip to be Spared, a dry and very even-handed observation of the bohemian condition, elevated by strong writing, inspired cinematography and very solid performances.

The creative team around directors Kathleen Grace and Thom Woodley essentially assembled a theater troupe for the web: A devoted team of veteran performers, some of whom also write on the show, and music from local bands in each episode.

The Burg is perfect content for a successful web-series: Fun and edgy everyday life with very relatable characters, usually 1 to 15 minutes in length and all geared to a tech-savvy niche audience of metro hipsters who tired of watching TV long ago but still crave their regular sitcom-shots. The Burg scratches that itch just fine and deserves a large audience.

"It’s filmed in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—The Burg: the hipster world capital where trust-fund kids pretend to be starving artists, starving artists pretend to be able to live completely off of credit cards, and everybody pretends not to notice."

VBS—keeping it real.

To the rescue ‘from television’s deathlike grip’ comes VBS, hatched from the wicked mind of ‘creative’ director Spike Jonze: At the same time fearlessly investigative and unabashedly entertaining, VBS explores topics as unrelated as coal mining in West Virginia and Baghdad’s burgeoning heavy metal scene.

With a clear flair for subculture and traveling to various conflict zones, VBS doesn’t quite deliver the 6 o'clock news but inspires with guerilla reporting and a good dose of Jackass thrown in.

VBS' motley crew comes across as fellow broadband rookie BudTV’s ill-behaved brothers, and everyone seems to delight in completely defying categorization, unless you count running on adrenalin and a passion for whatever their topics are.

Interesting also the blog and vlog postings from offbeat comedians like Judah Friedlander and David Cross who both contribute to the quirky ‘Do’s and Don’ts and Friends’ section.

For a better understanding and frequently asked questions, check out the VBS mission statement shot while visiting the the streets of Jamaica. My favorite feature: The very practical channel guide / interactive remote.

Reel Pop

Online media and technology reporter Steve Bryant just launched Reel Pop, a terrific (and long overdue) new media blog for the Hollywood Reporter. He’s equally specific and all over the place, which is exactly how this unruly field evolves while everybody involved is sweating to figure things out (read: monetization).

Covering the breakneck speed at which convergence is talking place, his first post is a most comprehensive rundown of milestones in our young industry, the brilliant A Brief History of Online Video (in Pictures).

Here’s Reel Pop’s chart, read the article!