Nexpo: Using video in changing publishing models

David Johnson April 24th, 2007

The panel at this morning’s video session at Nexpo covered a lot of ground for newspapers who are exploring the space. Presenters (and their presentations) included:

• Joel Rochon, Newsroom Systems Manager, Tucson Citizen (Moderator)
• Keven Roach, AP (AP online video plans and future)
• Anne Saul, News Systems Editor, Gannett (Training newsrooms for video production)
• John Yemma, Deputy ME for Multimedia, Boston Globe (Building an integrated video operation)
• Fred Reitberger, Apple Senior Systems Engineer, Apple (Nuts and bolts presentation on hardware and technology specs)

It was a valuable panel with a lot of good takeaway information (as well as a great resource list handout that mentioned ours truly, good ole lostremote.com, gotta love that). Anne’s and John’s presentations contrasted nicely, with the major enterprise view at Gannett and the single paper level from the Boston Globe. Kevin’s roadmap of the AP’s plans showed just how serious they are about serving newspaper sites with video, the commitment is evident and the schedule is ambitious. Finally, Fred really painted a clear, easy to understand picture of how to use Apple’s hardware to build out a production shop. Everyone is trying to figure out just what share of the projected $1.8 trillion online video pie is theirs if that target is reached by 2010.

Gannett’s training program is excellent. They’re leveraging their considerable broadcast footprint and resources to train 600 print reporters and photographers and IT people by year’s end, and they are more than half way there already. They’ve sunk $1.7 million into camera gear alone, putting roughly 300 Sony A1-U HD cameras out there in the field. A big issue for them is getting shooters to love their tripods and stop being shaky. They’re using Avid Pro for newspaper generated video editing because it is the platform they’re using already in broadcast and they want to leverage facilities across divisions. The results are good so far: from March 2006 to March 2007, streams have jumped from 3,700 to 1.1 million. They’re now focused on monetizing the inventory and audience they’ve gathered.

At the Globe, we got a good look a pretty established operation and how they’re moving. They’ve been partners with video providers like NECN (now, who do we know from there?) for years, so they’re working on how to balance small and big partners with their own video content. They’re doing 4.2 million plays of partner content monthly, but their own stuff is working now too, with Boston Marathon coverage generating 20,000 plays. John had a lot great pull quotes in his talk, such as “everything was fishwrap in a day” as he talked about how newspaper folk are trying to get their heads around not treating content as disposable in the daily grind but focus video production efforts on long-life, evergreen, and features to leverage the work as much as possible. Perhaps most comforting to our TV land readers was his noting that he is not trying to replicate standard television-style newscast content or local shows online, but is trying to figure out where they can fit in and add something to mix.

AP online video is moving hard and fast, having just launched local content on the free player only a week or so ago and has goals for local ads and better syndication tools by summer’s end. The online video network seemed to resemble brightcove-like options and strategies, so it will be interesting to see where the inventory goes and as he was speaking I started wondering if their will be any impact or possible opportunity in the AP/Yahoo relationship now that the newspaper consortium is in play. There is going to be a lot people scrambling to build advertiser inventory on those channels. (Note to self: Might John Battelle have an opinion here?). Another quick mention that caught my ear was when Kevin said they had some shooters in the field who were experimenting with some type of Cannon camera to try and capture magazine quality stills with only carrying a single camera - not sure if he meant from the video source or if they were dual function camcorders and stills, though.

Finally, you can do it all on an Apple. I remember seeing Final Cut for the first time and running out to buy stock in Apple that afternoon. Even though Wall Street loved iTunes and the iPod more, I’m still impressed with how cheaply a serious video editing machine can be put together compared to only ten years ago when Avid editing stations for many tens of thousands of dollars were the only option. A G5 with a 250 MB harddrive is enough horse to crank out an hour of SD/HD video a day. Fred also talked about when you would need to jump from ethernet/fileshare-copying to fiber/edit-on-the -server, which he thumbnailed at 4 editors producing more than an hour of finished video a day. We talked a bit after session about Apple’s view of “leanforward video” (watching on a computer, cell or ipod) and “leanback video” (where appletv is positioned).

This is the last day of the show, so the attendees have been dwindling in number steadily since the weekend. But, I have to note, this session was surprisingly well attended for an early morning, last day deal. I peeked across the hall at the only other session that was running simultaneously, which was about reducing printing costs and finding new revenue streams (very dear and critical topics to newspaper folks right now), and there were less than half the people in there than were in the video session. That kind of speaks for itself in my mind. I would not be surprised if next year, next to the big industrial printing machines, Cannon and Panasonic and other video vendors had taken up space here.