Category: content

That didn’t take long…

emerge JPEG logo - from Sulmonetti

As I mentioned in my most recent post, the merging of entertainment with devices really signaled the arrival of the digital era, epitomized by the iPod and iPhone. Now, this article just landed, detailing how Sony and the Playstation have been working on getting back into the streaming media mix.

As Variety reports, HBO Now will now be available on the Playstation. I’d be very interested to hear more about the financial arrangement behind this, but if you’re going to be in the console game, you’re going to need content.

This is what e-merge is all about!

When I first devised the concept of e-merge Media (back in 2003!), my thought was that the landscape of entertainment would be forever changed by the adoption of digital media. We see it on our mobile devices everyday, and now there is increasing convergence of media devices with entertainment. Apple was the first with its wildly popular merging of iTunes with the iPod and, eventually, iPhone.

Today, we are seeing Amazon, initially a online retailer, using music again to promote a tech device. In this case, its Echo. It already has experience with the Kindle and ebooks, but this now puts it squarely in competition with Apple, Spotify and Pandora. But this poses a larger question…

Will it become necessary for device makers to create (or own) the content it provides? Microsoft tried it with the Xbox, and Sony tried it with the Playstation, but each has had varying degrees of success, and the outlook is still hazy.

I will be watching very carefully to see what happens with Verizon and Yahoo! I will also see what develops with AT&T and DirecTV. Now that Netflix is enjoying success with its original programming, and previous suppliers becoming reluctant to sell to a direct competitor, will the it become a takeover target for a television manufacturer or wireless provider?

I am very excited about the prospects of this merging of entertainment with technology… and I humbly (or not) say that i saw it coming way back in 2003.

All hail e-merge Media!

An authentic tale of success in Hollywood

 

emerge JPEG logo - from Sulmonetti

“Don’t Breathe” from director Fede Alvarez scored big at the box office this past weekend, surpassing all others to debut at #1. And while I haven’t see the film (yet), I thought the trailer was pretty compelling, and its success came as no real surprise.

What I didn’t realize was the lineage of its director and co-writer, Fede Alvarez. I had actually seen his early work years before when this YouTube video was garnering a lot of buzz, for what amounted to five minutes of cool special effects and terrific directing. I’ve seen some promising artists create interesting work online before (most notably, “405 The Movie,”) but Fede actually had a lot of luck to match his talent, leading him to Sam Raimi and his first Hollywood film, the remake of “Evil Dead.”

The story is told best in this interview with John Horn from public radio’s KPCC, and it is fairly detailed in how it all happened. The reason why this stood out for me was it seems that, too often, we hear success stories that omit huge steps in how a project came to prominence. In particular, I reference this article from The Los Angeles Times a few years back about how “Grand Torino” got made. It was this passage that frustrated the hell out of me:

“Schenk managed to get the script to two younger producers, Jenette Kahn and Adam Richman, who optioned the story with their own money. Schenk says everyone they took the script to passed. They finally got the script to Gerber, a veteran producer and one-time Warner Bros. production chief who had worked on a number of Eastwood films. Gerber gave the script to Eastwood, who read it and simply said, “I’m doing it.”

Having been an agent for years, I know that this really gives short shrift to the process, and I felt that this particular series of events warranted much greater attention, for the sake of aspiring screenwriters everywhere, if nothing else.

Anyway, I had to write about Fede’s path to critical and financial success in Hollywood because I still harbor frustration over that LA Times article from 2008. I guess I’m still learning to just let things go. And in the end, as difficult as it is to make it in this business, you can’t succeed if you don’t try, and it helps to have a lot of luck – perhaps more so than talent…

Enjoy!

 

Is this the beginning of the end of programming middleman?

It seems that, with every passing day, the importance of traditional content distributors is on the wane. Nowhere is this more stark than the plight of sports programming. As the stock price of Disney continues to fight the inexorable gravity of ESPN’s fate, these kind of comments are exhibit A for the future of not just sports, but all content on the internet:

“The NFL is constantly looking to serve our fans premium NFL content where and how they want to see it,” said Hans Schroeder, senior VP, media strategy, business development, & sales for the NFL.

With the emphasis  now on OTT distribution and mobile devices, the status of ESPN and DirecTV’s NFL package are being seen as bloat. In the past, broadcast networks and cable stations were essential links to the public, today’s growing number of alternatives make these programming middlemen unnecessary. As stated in this article, the leagues can now turn to multiple distributors, such as PlayStation Vue:

“PlayStation Vue offers more than 100 live TV channels. It has deals with programmers including AMC, CBS, Discovery, Disney, Fox, NBCUniversal, Scripps Networks, Turner Broadcasting and Viacom.”

So, instead of set-top boxes turning to ESPN for sports, they can turn to the leagues themselves and eliminate the middlemen (and its accompanying fees) to provide the same experience with added savings. And I would think that it won’t be long before Warner Brothers Television, Alcon Entertainment, and the other myriad scripted content providers completely bypass the networks and just license their wares directly to OTT services, or other online streaming companies.

The shake-and-bake state of the media landscape…

Increasingly, the means of digital content distribution are being revised, altered and shuffled. As this article reports, cable providers are facing reductions in subscribers, and the outlook is not good. So what does this indicate?

It seems that, with every passing day, there is another video platform, phone app, or HDMI plug-in device that promise to wean you off of the exorbitant cable fees that you pay every month. First, it was telecoms, then it was Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, then it was the Roku stick and Chromecast. We are seeing a rapid fragmentation of how we receive video content, and that bodes ill for the traditional distributors.

A few things have transpired recently that hammer this point home. AT&T acquiring DirecTV, ESPN being a drag on Disney stock, Netflix and others producing more original content, and Twitter getting into a content deal with the NBA. This doesn’t even take into consideration the growing popularity of live-streaming, altered-reality gaming, and real virtual reality. As old-timers like myself become less important to the subscriber bases of legacy providers, and advertisers scramble to reach the youth demographic, money and eyeballs will migrate to new means of content delivery.

This is just the end of the beginning, if that. Things are moving very fast in this segment of the media, and a new, transformational technology is likely just around the corner. For now, I’ll go back to my DirecTV and watch some reruns…

The trouble with advertising in the digital age

I was reading this article in the LA Times about how Hulu is integrating product placement into their programming, and then noticed an ad in the sidebar that was most certainly a function of a condition I have. I don’t talk about it, but have spent some time researching it on the web.

This got me thinking about something I’m sure we have all encountered. If you search for anything, you can bet that ads corresponding to your search will pepper every page that you see henceforth. Have toe fungus? You will see dozens of ads for Jublia and the like. Need a bathroom remodel? Every home improvement store and website will inhabit your web life for days to come.

Granted, there is a desperate effort to find ways to make money on the internet. Music succeeded (if you want to call it that) by licensing to legitimate sites like iTunes and Spotify. But ad blocking software is wrecking havoc on the publishing industry, and the DVR is proving problematic for networks (hence, the article mentioned above). It is also lifting the value of live, must-see programs, especially in sports. Just witness the deals that the NFL and NBA have signed recently.

Advertising is a necessary aspect of free programming, but we are very much in a transitional period where the blunt instrument of banner ads will continue to haunt us in our travels from webpage to webpage, until someone can figure out a way to do it better.

Any takers?

AMC’s chief has it right

I’ve been posting about the relative value of content and its place in the financial landscape of streaming media. One revealing interview was on Charlie Rose a few weeks ago with the president of AMC Networks, Josh Sapan. It is well worth a listen, but it also leads into this particular post.

In a recent interview with MultiChannel News, Sapan expounds on the pricing strategy for the likes of AMC, IFC, WeTV, Sundance and BBC America. It is the age-old adage about supply and demand, and said demand it a function of its importance to the other programs out in the programming universe. He puts it simply:

“We take some comfort in that we have shows that are very important to some people,” he added. “If I was a video retailer I would pay a lot of attention to that.”

Pricing to what the market will bear is standard operating procedure for entertainment, and the article also has some interesting numbers that reveal the perceived value of some channels:

“…affiliate fees range from 13 cents per subscriber per month for WeTV to 40 cents per subscriber per month for AMC. That stacks up against monthly charges of more than $6 per month per subscriber for ESPN and $1.60 for TNT.”

As a dedicated “The Walking Dead” fan – and based on the fan chatter in cyberspace – I suspect AMC may be underselling its channel, but I grant that I am biased. Still, it is an important peek into how cable suppliers look at the popularity of a given channel and decide what the market will bear. It also points to the promise and peril of sports programming. As ESPN can really only license a sports program, they will never have the leverage needed to avoid a bidding war over and given league.

And that’s why owning  content is so crucial in the evolving media landscape.

Why original content is so crucial

As reported in Tech Times, the cost of content, original and licensed, at Netflix will exceed $12 billion dollars this year, which is more than 50% of its annual revenue, but a fraction of its $44 billion valuation. It is also the reason why their efforts to build a robust library of original content is so important. The article states:

“Netflix original content production is one of the main reasons viewers subscribe to the service, according to a recent survey, in which the VOD streamer overtook HBO for the first time when consumers were asked which pay TV service produces the best original content.”

 

This demonstrates the stakes in an environment where a streaming service must establish its own bona fides in the original content competition. Like HBO in its early days, or more recently, MTV or TV Land, reruns, music videos and old features can only do so much beyond launching a channel. At some point, the reason for a viewer returning to a channel or service must be something that cannot be found elsewhere.

HBO did that with Oz, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Sopranos,  and now, Game Of Thrones. Netflix is succeeding with House Of Cards, and the pressure to deliver more hits will only accelerate. And I expect that, as content suppliers leverage their libraries to keep competitors – like Netflix – at bay, the price of even reruns will become out of reach for streaming services.

The latest on VR (Virtual Reality) – is it the next media platform?

Depending on how you define a media platform, some experts are calling the impending arrival of mass-scale virtual reality technology as its next incarnation. Having only cursory first-hand experience with it, I can only speculate how it will play out, but the chatter among the technophiles would certainly indicate that it will be very important and a potential game-changer.

With this in mind, I just saw a fantastic discussion about its promise and future on the Charlie Rose PBS show, which you can watch here.

What do you all think?

 

What is your content tolerance?

There was a time when I would subscribe to HBO solely for seeing “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Deadwood,” but today’s crowded field of content providers means that you’ll likely be forking over cash for access to beloved content. You can access HBO through HBO Now, as well as offerings from Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and now, Fullscreen.

Assuming you’re an aficionado of Bret Easton Ellis or “Electra Woman & Dyna Girl,” and you can afford the $4.99-a-month subscription fee, you may be a Fullscreen customer. But this begs the question: With limited resources, how will you prioritize both your time and money to see certain programs? This will be the question many of us will face as the days of broadcast networks fade away in lieu of subscription fees become the norm. Already, the advent of cord-cutters have viewers getting the bulk of their content from the likes of the aforementioned content distributors.

There is a lot to be learned about how viewing habits are acclimating to this brave new world of media, and the days of channel surfing have given way to ordering from a menu, knowing that even the menu is limited by who owns what. Or will advertising-based content take over subscriptions because of the cost and time limitations?