Archive for February 18th, 2007
One of the biggest growth businesses in tech right now is creating technology to identify copyrighted video and audio clips. Last week, MySpace signed a deal with Audible Magic to begin to filter out copyrighted clips uploaded by its users. YouTube, which has promised its own technology, is weeks behind its promised launch date. In the meantime, over a dozen companies are racing to create tools that not only can identify audio files, but video as well. “This is capable of helping the film and TV studios comprehensively protect their works,” said Vance Ikezoye, CEO of Audible Magic. “This could put the genie back in the bottle.”
February 18th, 2007
Remember the early days of TV when local stations were the innovators in video? The first color TV, the first live shot, the first live chopper… the list goes on and on. How are local TV stations doing now as we face the biggest and most important revolution in the history of video? Terribly. YouTube, MSN Video, Revver, Veoh are just a few of the online video sites leading the way in technology, advertiser experience, community functionality and new business models. Promising startups are combining video with classifieds. Newspapers are pulling in more revenue in online video than local TV sites. Videobloggers are beginning to build audiences in valuable local niches. And only a small handful of local stations are producing original video for the web that’s not reworked from TV. Or allow viewers to upload and share video. Or allow their video to be embedded elsewhere. What happened, local TV? Where’s your innovative spirit? Do you not see this as a threat, especially when you consider how the networks are increasingly offering their video direct to the user? Remember the newspapers…
Adds Eric in comments: “The local TV market has a working business model that they’ve used for a long time. Getting any organization to fundamentally change their business model, unless they’re in a state of crisis, which I don’t think they are (yet), is a very difficult thing to do.”
Adds BigTimeTeevee in comments: “I’m at a local station in a big network group, and many of these issues are exactly the kinds of things that frustrate those of us here at ground level. There are so many great things we could be doing to advance our video abilities… but we can’t because our corporate masters won’t get in gear, and they control the functionality of the site. Ultimately, any reasons for not doing it are just excuses, and they’re excuses that are going to drive us out of business.”
February 18th, 2007
Many of YouTube’s top videographers gathered in San Francisco on Saturday. Called “As One,” just about every conversation involved one or more cameras videotaping it. “We thought it’d be good to remove some of the barriers of the internet,” said Damien Estreich, 21, whose handle on YouTube is YourTubeNews. “That was the goal, to come here and share ideas and maybe learn each other’s real names.”
Yes, they’re young. And yes, they’d rather create and share their own video than watch TV. Welcome to the future. (Photo from CNET’s News.com. See more photos here.)
February 18th, 2007
By the end of this year, 55 percent of U.S. homes (more than 60 million) will be connected to broadband. The country with the highest broadband adoption? South Korea, with 88 percent of homes already wired with a high-speed connection.
February 18th, 2007
Robert Alder, who co-created the remote control at Zenith in 1956 — and by extension, helped name this website — has died at the age of 93. You could argue the remote (history) brought the biggest technological change in television’s history until DVRs and the internet came along. Much like today’s new technology, it empowered viewers to control their own experience — they flipped channels at will instead of watching the same channel for an extended period of time, which had a profound impact on programming and promotion. In fact, the remote has influenced the industry more than the change from black and white to color or film to video — just like DVRs and the internet today are having a much bigger impact than the switch from standard def to high definition.
Adds Safran in comments: “Alas, our website’s spiritual Godfather…. Adler was the first disruptor. He allowed us to say ’screw you’ when the TV people said ‘don’t touch that dial’ during intrusive commercial breaks. Thank you, sir. We have lost our remote ancestor.”
February 18th, 2007
A story in the NY Times explains how NBCU’s Jeff Zucker and News Corp’s Peter Chernin met with Viacom’s Philippe Dauman a couple weeks ago to try to convince him to rejoin their efforts to start their own user video site to compete with YouTube. But is all this just postering in negotiations with YouTube, or a real effort to create a viable alternative?
February 18th, 2007
