Broadband Jungle Blog

Yahoo's Steve Mitgang new Veoh CEO

Has Dmitry Shapiro's pioneering VeohTV broadband network finally found who it needs to  turn into a portal that really matters? Niche talk is on.

Abbey Klaassen writes in AdAge: Yahoo Veteran Looks for Veoh's 'Great Business'

Steve Mitgang arrived at Yahoo via its Overture acquisition in July 2003. aBut now as Veoh CEO, he believes there's a big business in online video advertising. That is, if marketers can figure out how to target the intentions of viewers.

Ad Age: Why has it been so hard to create a viable business around online video? It seems to be wildly popular among consumers.

Mr. Mitgang: According to the reports, YouTube only sold $30 million in ads last year because they didn't build a system to support ... that healthy tension between editorial and advertising. They just didn't build it.

The flip side of understanding those user behaviors and recommendations is for targeting purchases. We can say, look at the car enthusiasts ... [these ones] are primarily interested in German cars or muscle cars. Being able to tell that to the brand manager of Mustang or Mini, we'll be able to help them better than anyone else. Whether watching user-generated or premium content we'll help target against the right users.

DISTRIBUTION 2.1 Panel at Cine Gear Expo

I'm a panelist at Cine Gear Expo Master Class Seminars this weekend on a panel moderated by Mark Vega from Omelet:

DISTRIBUTION 2.1
Delivery Channel Fragmentation Leads to Niche Audience Infiltration

Don't miss this amazing master class seminar!
Sunday June 24, 2007, 1:00 pm to 4:30 pm
Location:
Kodak Screening Room (click for map)
Eastman Kodak Company
6700 Santa Monica Blvd.
Hollywood, CA 90038

(class fee $85.00)

Moderated by Mark Vega, Principal OMELET, a new marketing studio that is ½ work-for-hire ad agency and ½ intellectual property incubator

Entertainment content today is being delivered for a profit across distribution platforms believed technically and economically untenable only a few years ago: DVD creation on demand, user-generated content on social networking websites, camera phone film festivals, mobisodic comedies.

This doesn’t mean that feature film or other long-form content is dead. It does highlight, however, the need to pay even closer attention to the audience you’re trying to reach as a storyteller. Where do they reside and where do they consume their entertainment? Only 15% of the United States uses Tivo and digital devices so we’ve got a long way to go before the user-generated content, on-demand content universe becomes the norm. This Master Class Seminar will introduce key voices to a conversation around understanding how to make delivery channel fragmentation lead you to the audience you’re trying to capture.

Panelists:
David Tenzer, Entertainment Project consultant, 23 year packaging agent veteran CAA
Eric Spiegelman, VP Biz Dev, This Just In, an original content comedy venture between HBO and AOL and VP Biz Dev HBO Labs
Thomas Rigler, New Media content strategist, co-founder of Internet TV guide community GoGooroo.com, and host of the Broadband Jungle Blog
Mike Sarner, Filmmaker of In The Crease and former film acquisitions executive at MGM
Mark Netter, VP Biz Dev, zannel.com (mobile content on zillions of channels)
Graham Streeter, Filmmaker of Cages and former news reporter/producer

To purchase a seat to this event please click this link.

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!

Brightcove, broadband factory

Some of the viral sites like YouTube and now Grouper may have been getting all the attention, but in my book another company is leaving the real imprint: Almost every time a commercial player launches, one company seems to be pulling the strings behind the scenes: Brightcove, brainchild of former Macromedia CTO and Flash pioneer Jeremy Allaire.

With a fierce determination to break down the barriers between television and the Internet, Allaire founded Brightcove in 2004. When last fall’s broadband revolution hit, the start-up had the applications package in place to professionally run and manage multi-channel broadband players. The Cambridge, MA company has since launched probably more broadband players than anyone else in the business.

In spite of being limited to uploads from PC’s only (a Mac version is in the works), close to 5000 users have signed up with Brightcove’s free (!) commercial preview that enables almost anyone to program and run a professional Internet TV platform with surprisingly little headache.

The informative BC Guide boasts of players for high rollers like the Discovery Channel Beyond, Bravo’s Outzone, Sony Musicbox, The New York Times and Sky Sports.

What’s even more interesting, though, is the eclectic list of the remaining 4900 niche channel providers who discovered Brightcove’s services: The Horse TV Channel, Deval Patrick TV—gubernatorial candidate for Massachusetts, travel service Kayak’s edgy comedy spots, and MomMe TV, a community site for moms to name just a few.

Brightcove seems to be determined to rule the broadband world one day, their services already include hosting your media on their servers, selling and running ads for a revenue share, syndicating channels through aggregators like AOL (a strategic investor in the company) and selling videos through custom digital video stores for all mobile devices.

Couldn’t be easier. So, to all non-profits, manufacturers, retail chains, web businesses, networks and anyone with a property that bears any resemblance to a brand: Now is the time to follow Brightcove’s motto and ‘liberate your video.’ Launch that spankin’ new channel while it’s still for free – according to the Brightcove sales team, the free preview will be available at least until the end of the year and will afterwards definitely remain affordable for niche programmers.

Niche is the whole idea behind ‘long tail economy’ conversion scenarios, and the people at Brightcove totally get that and how profitable it will be one fine day. It’s all about giving power to the content owners (and maybe a little bit of choice to the viewers).

welcome to the niche

Last fall, everything began to make sense in my little TV world, when MTV’s former Internet guru Jason Hirschhorn announced the advent of ‘The World of the Super-Niche’ in an interview with Business Week. Like an evangelist waiting for a cause I had spent the fall trying to spread the word about the non-linear future with broadband, mobile and VOD while helping launch a cable network broadband player.

With Super-Niche, my cause had arrived.

We’re giving access to an audience that hasn’t had that kind of global access to programming and broadcasting before, and while we’re at it we’re changing everything about how this industry works: Programming, production, distribution, eventually probably killing off Television, DVD’s and movie exhibition as we know them.

This month’s edition of Wired features stimulating excerpts to this very topic from an upcoming book by the magazine’s editor in chief, Chris Anderson. The article ‘The Rise and Fall of the Hit’ goes straight for the jugular:

The era of the blockbuster is so over. The niche is now king, and the entertainment industry – from music to movies to TV – will never be the same.

After elaborating on the breakdown of the music industry and drawing a beautiful line between various unifying forces in our history like the printing press, the phonograph, newspapers and TV, Anderson reaches the Internet:

The Internet’s peer-to-peer architecture is optimized for a symmetrical traffic load, with as many senders as receivers and data transmissions spread out over geography and time. In other words, it’s the opposite of broadcast.
Exactly! How incredibly validating.

The book is called: ‘The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, copyright © 2006 Chris Anderson, to be published by Hyperion in July.

broadband activism

Creating space for niche programming is THE big opportunity for the broadband revolution – here are some activists who’ve caught on early and are already using the technology to reach a global audience.

Witness
Founded in 1992 by musician and activist Peter Gabriel and the Reebock Human Rights Foundation after Gabriel saw the impact home video cameras had on the Rodney King trial in Los Angeles.

The partnership has since grown into an international human rights organization that provides video training and support to local groups in their human rights advocacy campaigns. Beyond providing video cameras and editing equipment, Witness facilitates exposure for the films and videos produced on a global scale.

The results are equally moving and terrifying. Videos enhanced with detailed summaries of the case can be seen on their website. A video hub that will make accessing and posting these documents easier is in the works.

TreeHugger
Started by Canadian-born ‘Designpreneur’ Graham Hill in 2004, the web magazine has quickly established itself as the main destination for environmentally sensitive yet chic products and concepts. With the declared mission to help push the issue into the mainstream, TreeHugger successfully bridges the gap between sustainability and modern aesthetics.

Visitors also tend to rely on TreeHugger’s buying guide which obviously helps with advertisers. TreeHuggerTV is a fairly new addition, consisting of a weekly green news update and short features on subjects as varied as sustainable skateboards and green trends at the Brooklyn Design Show.

dh love life
Actress Daryl Hannah is behind this site and she’s been posting very entertaining AND clever weekly video blogs to green and vegetarian issues, shot and produced by – Daryl Hannah. Apparently she’s the real deal, after all she stopped driving petroleum-fueled vehicles years ago and instead switched to a bio-diesel-powered 1983 El Camino she found on the Internet.

Taking full advantage of her celebrity status, here she is campaigning for change and showing us how yummy bio-diesel really tastes. Her site is also being revamped for bigger things to come later this summer.