What I learned from Michael Eisner about the online video industry

Michael Eisner, former CEO of Disney, formed Vuguru in 2007, a studio designed to develop video exclusively for online and mobile applications.  On October 7th, he spoke at the VEOH Insights: Watching The Web presentation about the future of the online video industry.  He came off as funny and insightful, and he's betting big on the future of online video, so it's worth paying attention:

On Hulu and video portals: 

Hulu is a "middle game" - it's not content produced for the web, leveraging the web, though what it does it's done very well.

MySpace has the audience and the streams to dominate in online video, but they don't have a clue how to make it all work.

On online video advertising:

The industry needs to lead the advertisers - it can't let them define their own ad executions that don't fit into the content.  Show them why it will work your way, everybody has to be convinced.

Audiences are conditioned for commercial pods.  They will accept a :15 sec interruption.  Interruptions need to scale to the show length.

Post-roll is dead, it's like watching the credits.  A targeted contextual offer at the end that ties well to the content could be a fruitful alternative.

Behavioral targeting is like when a guy marries the same woman over and over.  It's the Amazon model of assuming a person wants the same thing he just purchased.  But most people aren't that predictably consistent.

On quality of content:

South Park and other low resolution shows are essentially radio, they leverage the elements of good radio to be successful.

On the web video industry:

Video right now is lead by the distributors - the people looking for eyeballs, worrying about screens.  Cable came into it's own when it started producing it's own content.

Online video needs professionals, not automation, to really take off.

TV may be the big guy at the party for the next few decades, but the idea of 'on demand' is the future.

Shows that are cultural phenomenons (Seinfeld for example) took commitments by the networks.  They failed early, but the networks believed and gave them time to win the audience over.  An online property needs to have that presence of mind - it's got the capability, it has the audience and the ability to syndicate instantly.

In any business, you can be too early or too late - we're not sure yet for the online video landscape where we stand.

On Back On Topps and Vuguru:

Back on Topps is a new show by Vuguru.  It's exclusive for a 12-hour window on Fox Sports.  Windows are a TV model that defines length of exclusivity before pushing into syndication.

Back on Topps has in-show ads for Skype that have been made funny; Reeses Pieces was made by Speilberg doing the same thing (inclusion in E.T.).

Back on Topps will ultimately be a half-hour show rather than just 5 minute episodes.  Vuguru is committed to testing the limits and longevity of the show.

Prom Queen was translated and pushed out to international audiences, and saw success.

For an example of his recent work, check out Back On Topps

Cross posted on my Advertising Blog

Original Batman Trailer vs The Dark Knight Trailer

CollegeHumor and YouTube have copies of of the new Batman: Dark Knight Trailer going around placed against the original Tim Burton's Batman trailor from years ago. Comments on YouTube say this is not actually the Tim Burton cut, but it's still a coo comparison between the two films none-the-less. College Humor link here: http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1813453

Watch Every South Park Episode Streaming Online for Free

You can now legitimately watch all of the South Park episodes online for free - from the official South Park Studies website. All of the episodes are available on demand, and all of the partial-clips are available for sharing. For South Park fans, people who want to get into the show, or if you missed an episode that everyone is talking about, this is a great deal. This type of back-log archiving is what all studios should be doing - it's the easiest way to help prevent people turning to Bittorrent, and it won't stop the people who want DVDs from purchasing them. It all comes down to what's easiest for consumers, and creating an easier option that you can monetize is just smart business.

Hulu opens to public, get free TV and movies online now

Hulu, the joint venture between Fox and NBC, leaves private beta today after over 5 months of being closed to the public.  Now at the time of launch, video content has been ramped up to include current and old TV shows, as well as movies, from a myriad of partners including Sony, WB, MGM, Universal, the NBA, and many online TV shows.  The quality of the episodes and clips (see above) is great, and the interface is pretty strong as well - much easier than dealing with the regular TV station websites. 

Still, it's not a fully polished product.  Unless I'm missing something, there's no way to save just the list of shows you want to look at - since most people will likely return for the same shows week after week, this seems like a necessary feature (you can add shows to a playlist, but if you add "family guy", for example, every episode and clip that is on Hulu will be added to your playlist).  Also I don't see an easy way to jump directly to the list of full movies - with now over 100 to choose from, again this seems like an important instant option.

Also - episodes come and go as individual shows see fit, so this isn't a dependable archived content site.  It really should be housing most back episodes of shows, as giving users the opportunity to catch up to current on a show they had never watched is a primary function and growth point for networks.

Still, you should definitely give Hulu a try - it could significantly change your opinion of online video for the better.

Yesterday's post reviewed: Web, Tech, Music, and Entertainment Analysis

Yesterday's post ended up being much longer than expected, so I wanted to sum up the major points made in the numerous sections:

1. We should be able to make purchases, initiate downloads, and more via text messaging.  Pizza Hut and Papa John's are doing it now.
2. Facebook continues to work on the news feed to improve it's value but it needs to open up to more sources of information.
3. Google Reader has a ways to go to become an information hub, and the first place it should look for features is gMail, and then ReadBurner.
4. Musicians need to stop fixating on the album and start embracing the single; the target audience has.
5. Video games are going the way of television and music in the modern era  - free, ad-supported.
6. HBO needs to speed up its embracing of streaming online to keep up with competition and cut off illegal downloading.

Love to hear your comments and thoughts on all of these points.  Read the whole thing here.

Technorati Tags: text messaging,sms,pizza hut,papa johns,facebook,news feed,google reader,gmail,readburner,music,musicians,albums,video games,ad-supported,hbo

Gym Class Heroes Cover Arctic Monkeys at MSG

Last week I went to see Gym Class Heroes and Fall Out Boy at Madison Square Gardens.  Whatever you think of Gym Class Heroes, they are phenomenal performers - it may have  helped that they are from New York, but they were charged up for every song, engaged the crowd, and generally went turned up every song in some way or another.  At one point they covered the Arctic Monkeys song "Leave Before the Lights Come On", which was the highlight of the night for me.  Fall Out Boy was also great, and covered "Mr. Brightside" by the Killers, but our recording didn't come out very well.

Technorati Tags: Gym Class Heroes , Arctic Monkeys , Fall Out Boy , The Killers , Leave before the lights come on , Madison Square Gardens , concert , cover , live video

Recap of Free Broadcast TV on the Web

NewTeeVee has an updated summary of where the broadcast television networks are airing their new tv shows for free. If you miss the show on TV, and don't have a DVR, you can now catch most episodes streaming for free on the web. NBC is even offering free downloads, eventually to be available for transfer onto portable video players, for one week after each episode airs.
You can also watch most of these shows via the desktop browser VeohTV, which I am a big fan of.

Tags: veohtv, abc, cbs, cw, fox, nbc, vod, streaming+video, video+on+demand, itunes, amazon+unbox, xbox+live, newteevee

Viewdle is Facial Recognition in Videos

New video application Viewdle is actually able to pull off significant facial recognition within video.  It takes one detailed image of a person's face and then picks out when the person appears in video.  This leads to deep tagging and rich video search.  I'm not sure whether this will be available for personal use (could they offer a browser extension where this is utilized in video we've already uploaded on YouTube, Google Video, and Facebook), but it's alive and impressive on the Reuters, allowing you to search through their video archives.

Other recent articles about facial recognition in images: Riya 1,2 (my favorite), Google, AOL

Technorati Tags: facial recognition , viewdle , riya , reuters , deep tagging , video , video search

DirectTV is Crashing on the day they launch SuperCast NFL ipTV

This year DirectTV released a new feature called SuperCast, which, if you pay the $350 dollars for the full NFL season package, allows you to watch games on Sunday live on your computer.  The package overall is expensive, but the allure of having our own sports bar with an HD TV airing one game and a wide-screen PC airing another was too too great.  Unfortunately DirectTV is folding under pressure on the first big game day of the season, as the above screenshot shows - very dissapointing, a big let down by DirectTV.  I also feel like it sheds poor light on Slingbox, which is sponsoring the SuperCast.  The synergy would be perfect, since Slingbox is all about giving you the TV you want where you want it, but unfortunately the fact that it doesn't work is an embarrassment

Technorati Tags: football , nfl , vod , iptv , slingbox , directtv

to both parties, even if Slingbox technology has nothing to do with it.

Watch the Daily Show Online for Free

Viacom will be launching TheDailyShow.com with the entire back catalog of John Stewart online.  After fighting with YouTube, MTV is finally bringing a worth only video strategy and offering all of the content of their popular downloaded shows on their websites free with pre-roll.

Last year I watched nearly the entire Heroes season on the NBC website, until last week when I went back to watch the final 5 episodes before the second season starts.  Unfortunately the episodes are no longer offered for free online because they released the DVD's for sale.  What they need to realize is that the people who watch on NBC.com are not watching in place of buying the DVD.  The DVD's catch is extended premium content, and people who want to have full HD quality, extras, deleted scenes, etc, will buy the content regardless of the availability on the website.  For me watching the old episodes isn't important enough to purchase, but I want to catch up and I'd happily watch commercials on the website if I could see the content online for free.  Otherwise I have to turn to other options.

Viacom's offering of The Daily Show online for free is a natural, necessary, and lucrative step in the future of television video content.  The next step is for them to allow VeohTV to pull in the content and represent it as a full video on demand channel, as long as they leave the advertising pre-roll in tact.

Technorati Tags: vod , heroes , thedailyshow , john stewart , viacom , video on demand , dvd

Playing With the Joost Video Player

I grabbed an invite to the Joost beta test last night, and gave it a shot (Joost, if you remember, is the peer to peer -P2P - streaming video application from the billionaire makers of Skype and Kazaa).  First impressions are pretty good - the interface is smooth, changing content happens quickly, and video loads almost immediately.  The way navigation overlays above the video content playing at all times is pretty cool.  Also, the widget overlay was a surprise to me, and very cool - you can add RSS feeds, Google Chat, group chat rooms about the video you're watching, and more.  When you IM with someone via the Google Chat widget, you can see right through every window and continue to watch content.







The value of this is of course going to be the content - what's available to watch.  To be big, Joost needs to offer some A-list content, not shows that are less popular, or discontinued, or niche channels that won't appeal across the board.  There are some major advertisers on board, so hopefully we'll start seeing sponsored content soon.  The advertising spots are expected to be a mix of pre-mid-post roll, ticker ads on the bottom, and branded call outs in the corners, similar to broadcast TV.  Say what you want about everything moving online - a desktop video application that offers internet features is easy to use, and could easily take off if the content's right.



If you want an invite to Joost, e-mail me - I owe Mashable for giving me my invite, and I'll do my best to send some out myself.

Technorati Tags: joost, p2p, video, desktop, skype, kazaa, google chat, gchat, mashable

TV networks offer a lot of free content online

Here's a quick list of the online episode hubs for the four major networks - all at this point offer at least a handful of full episodes from their hit television shows online. In some cases you can watch the entire season, in others you can only catch the most recent episode. I have a list of links to these and other free video content hubs via my del.icio.us documents:



http://del.icio.us/kskobac/broadbandtv

Technorati Tags: broadbandtv, vod, cbs, fox, nbc, abc, free, tv, streaming, television

Watch The Office for free online

Some friends pointed me to free episodes of the first 3 seasons of The Office (the American version):

Season 1: http://blog.coolz0r.com/2006/12/24/the-office-us-season-1/
Season 2: http://blog.coolz0r.com/2006/12/26/the-office-us-season-2/
Season 3: http://blog.coolz0r.com/2006/12/23/the-office-us-version/

Technorati Tags: theoffice, vod, video, tv, free

UPDATE: If these links don't work anymore, you can check out tvparadise or openhulu (or better, Hulu, when it launches publicly).

A Google Video Wired NextFest Infrared X-ray story

So almost 3 months ago I posted a few videos I took from the Wired NextFest in New York City. In that time, it received somewhere around 75 views, over the entire duration.

Randomly I looked at my Google Video stats and noticed that in the last few days, almost 73,000 people have watched the Infrared X-ray video I posted from Wired! I didn't really believe it, but then checking on the page shows that there's not only views, but over 50 ratings and 10 comments, discussing the legitimacy of the video, potential harms of the machine, etc.

I took a look over at Technorati to see how was linking to the video, and 18 sites now have links to it. It looks like first someone at Spoozer Magazine picked it up, and then someone at Ubergizmo posted on it, which has over 1,100 blogs repeatedly linking to it and therefore suggests strong readership.

All in all, I'm surprised and impressed at how quickly a viral video can spread in two days, from 75 to 73,000 people.

Technorati Tags: googlevideo, sharing, technorati, wired, nextfest, viral