Martin Nisenholtz: Times must distribute its video

Steve Safran May 16th, 2007

The keynote speaker at Streaming Media East 2007 on Tuesday was the NY Times Sr. Vice President of Digital Operations, Martin Nisenholtz. Of special interest to the LR Faithful were a couple of his points: the Times intends to grow its video audience by four to five times by allowing blogs to embed its video. “To reach a broader audience, the Times must distribute its video outside of NYTimes.com, ” said Nisenholtz. “We believe we need to go outside the walls to make this work.” My notes below:

Admits “that a company historically known for text and photography historically known for text and photography talking about video isn’t an obvious choice to talk about video,” but times have changed at the Times. Outlines points of talk:

- What need are we satisfying when we push out into video?

- How do we scale this business?

- How do we make money from this? Despite decline of production costs.

“We have a long way to go, but as far as we’re concerned now is the time to make the investment and experiment to see where we can go.”

“All of our video is original because we’re not in the television business.”

The Started dipping its toe in video in 1999. It went into cable television business with DiscoveryTimes. “We thought we could do it faster with a traditional cable channel than with the web.”

“We started to create original video for the web – and grew a desk from a handful to 25 people completely integrated into the newsroom.”

“Once reluctant print reporters are now carrying cameras into the field.”

“Are reporters interested in this? It’s the opposite. We don’t have the production resources to meet the demand.”

Our teams abroad have video cameras. We’re starting to build the full infrastructure.

Times journalists all create more than 100 pieces a month. We stream five million a month.

“We decided that our mission was to extend the Times journalism, and that mission would depend on Times video. We decided to extend that mission into video.”

Recent user survey: Some see it as a companion to print journalism. Others compared it to traditional TV. Some saw higher quality than what you find on TV. One said that the on-camera delivery – weaker than “professional” delivery – adds to the sincerity of the delivery where polish is more important than substance.

“Not a single person questioned the decision to offer video… and nobody told us to stay in print where we belong.”

“Video costs have dropped dramatically. The video we now produce – the majority requires a specialist in the field. This notion that the print reporters would be able to produce videos still hasn’t taken shape yet, but the trend is taking shape.”

“What does it take to get a print reporter to do this? After about a half a day of training, the print reporters do get the basic skills they need.”

“With more reporters shooting, our expertise improves at a faster pace. We’re obviously not going against CNN or MSNBC. They own breaking news.” The Times goes for probing pieces and analysis.

Shows some videos from the site. Among the demos – a piece from a firefight between Taliban and U.S. soldiers. A humorous tech piece. One on homelessness.

“The approach we take is eclectic. It ranges from criticism to reporting from the field.”

“We need to find a big audience for this stuff. As it turns out, it’s not easy to find that audience… the current behaviors don’t play particularly well to watching even short form video.”

“To reach a broader audience, the Times must distribute its video outside of NYTimes.com. We believe we need to go outside the walls to make this work.”

“With video we intend to distribute the whole piece. We intend to work with blogs. Blogs and newspapers are highly complementary. According to Technorati, last year the Times was the most-blogged source in the world.”

(He gives shoutouts to LR pals Romanesko and Staci Kramer at Paid Content.)

“By this strategy we get to put our video in front of a much bigger audience than we would by (keeping it at) the NYTimes.com.”

The NYTimes is even going to develop personalities.

“We’re going beyond the web. We were a launch partner for the TiVoCast service. Times video has become the second-most watched video on the TiVoCast service.”

“It’s possible that something like AppleTV is going to be the living room’s iPod. That’s going to fundamentally change the way programming takes place and, we’re very early in this, but we’re determined to take a role in this.”

Goal in the next 18 months: “We want to have four to five times more streams generated outside NYTimes.com than inside it.”

Nisenholtz then spoke about sales, and here he goes into the Big Numbers: talks about how the site would need to generate 45 million video views a month, sell them at a $60 CPM and sell 80% of video inventory to grab $30 million a year (1% of estimated video ad marketplace in 2010.) Recognizes the difficulty of that.

Which ad formats are going to hold? “So far we only know what hasn’t worked. Pre-rolls are fast becoming a universally accepted bad behavior-response.”

Suggests that overlays, longform ads and “entertaining experiences” from advertisers are better experiences, but it’s still “not quite clear how we’re going to monetize the business.”

“We do believe that in video, brands matter. Content choices are expanding at a dizzying rate. Brands serve as a beacon out there. We think that is one of our differentiators out there. And we think quality matters, too. Good is still good and bad is still bad. I still put my money on the guys in the Times newsroom than on the amateurs. That’s not to say there won’t be good amateur content.”

“Why did it take the broadcast networks so long to propose their answer to YouTube? Existing relationships and proven business models keep companies from changing their business models and moving into something new.”

“The advantages that the new folks on the block have is that they have nothing to protect. Even though the New York Times is 156 years old, we’re still new in video. Failure (in video) is not a step backward for us.”

“Avoid square pegs. Web video is not TV… The whole format is radically changing.”

“The blogosphere is very important for moving video around. These are the new rules of the medium. We’re starting to think of ourselves not only as creators but as programmers as well.”

“Think ahead: just when we were starting to think about the “sit forward” experience of web video, along comes Apple TV.”

“We haven’t innovated very much in this area, we’re looking at mobility. If you haven’t already, go watch the pilot of ‘Lost’ on an iPod. It’s amazing how effective it is.”

As reporters are beginning to shoot, audience member asks if photogs will be asked to write. Answer: not at this time.

I ask if he shares the sentiment that Arthur Sulzberger stated about “not caring if the Times is printed on paper within five years.” Nisenholtz says the statement was taken wildly out of context. “Of course we care if the Times is printed on paper. That’s one of the many formats we’ll continue to publish in.”

Audience member asks if new media will change how the Times will make editorial decisions. “We’re in the journalism business. All of the formats have to work together in order to be viable in the long term.”