Keen on Media - Andrew Keen interviews Richard Bennett on Net Neutrality

Who isn't confused by the byzantine complexities of the network neutrality debate? Richard Bennett (bennett.com/), long time network maven and fellow of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), is one of the few experts able to cut through confusion and present the net neutrality debate both accurately and simply. So we caught up with Bennett in Washington DC this week to get his take on where we are and where we are going with net neutrality.

 

Richard Bennett from andrewkeen on Vimeo.

In an effort to make online media more accessible to students, UCLA will be adding a custom Clicker program guide to its MyUCLA portal website.  The program guide will help students find programming made available by movie studios and television networks, as well as videos produced on campus.  The site will let them know if content is not available legitimately.

While UCLA does not yet have a system in place for students to submit their own video content, Jonathan Curtiss, manager of technology development for UCLA student and campus life, said the My UCLA portal is "likely to be one of the most visited campus sites", and that it will "provide them with a kind of in-your-face opportunity" legal online video.

This effort may prove to be a more effective way than installing blocking software to combat piracy, because it provides a much simpler way for students to access the content they want.  It stands to reason to think that many students would rather find what they are looking for in minutes, rather than spending hours scouring torrent sites and waiting for downloads of questionable quality, all the while worrying about running afoul of the law.  Also, when one takes into account the staggering growth of sites like Hulu.com, it's easy to see why something like what UCLA is attempting just might work.

Additional sources here and here

Arts+Labs advisor Andrew Keen comments on the opponents of "TV Everywhere", and explains that they are just writing another chapter in an ever-expanding book of conspiracy theories:

"Some people don't like TV Everywhere, Comcast's and Time Warner's plan to bring cable TV to the Web.  They are just paranoid.

Allow me to explain. In his 1964 Harper's Magazine essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics", Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter argued that American politics has often been a stage for excessively conspiratorial and suspicious minds from both the left and the right. What disturbed Hofstadter most of all was the sanity of the paranoid. "It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that make the phenomenon significant," he explained. By infecting normal people, Hoftstadter worried, the paranoid style had made conspiratorial fantasy a troublingly recurrent feature of American political culture."

Read the entire article at TechCrunch

Everybody demands new business models for the internet until somebody actually tries them....at which point, some groups can't take yes for an answer.  Yes, Free Press and Public Knowledge are back to attacking attempts to find new business models for the internet.

TV Everywhere is a new approach that gives subscribers more access to the content they pay for in more places at no additional charge...and yet still protects and fairly compensates content creators.  So, of course, Free Press and Public Knowledge take a break from talking up "innovation without permission" to let everybody know they don't approve of this innovation and think the government should put a stop to it.

So, they want to replace the alleged "corporate gatekeepers" with "non-profit gatekeepers" who know exactly what content owners should be required to do with their video.

And I do mean "non-profit". Free Press' report, "TV Nowhere" (PDF), recommends an amusingly bad model for the cable industry.

Newspapers have been forced to compete and to give consumers what they want -- access to content, widely available, sometimes under subscription, sometimes free. If a newspaper refuses to make its content available online, or does so only at high rates, another newspaper can gain revenue by making its content available at more reasonable rates or giving it away for free and relying on ad revenue. Most newspapers haven't charged or required subscriptions to their content because they fear being undercut by their competitors.

NewTeeVee has a great write up of a new comScore report about online video streaming in April.The post gets a little bit technical about how the measurement are taken, but the takeaway is this: Americans streamed a jaw-dropping 16.8 billion videos in April, which NewTeeVee thinks is a new record.  16,800,000,000 streams. That's a lot of zeros. (Any word on American productivity in April by any chance?)

In all seriousness though, that amount of online video consumption confirms what a lot of us already know: that Americans are increasingly comfortable turning to the Internet for entertainment, whether it's for user generated video (this is my personal favorite), traditional television programming, or web-only shows and exclusives.

As more and more Americans get online--sixty-two percent of U.S. households are already connected at home according USA Today--those streaming numbers are only going to get higher, which is why content creators are working harder than ever to bring even more content online.  But with 16.8 billion streams, it looks like we've already come a long way.

In 2007, the FCC issued an order prohibiting exclusive contracts between multichannel video service providers and the owners of buildings with multiple dwelling units, like apartments or condos.  Such contacts, the FCC reasoned, prevented effective competition in video service from new competitors, such as satellite and telecom video offerings.  The contracts also gave cable companies a leg up in high-speed Internet service, with the opportunity to offer bundled packages of high-speed Internet and video service.

Fortunately for consumers, last week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the FCC's order prohibiting the agreements, meaning that apartment and condo dwellers may soon see the benefits of competition in video and high-speed Internet service.  As MediaPost reported:

The ruling could go a long way towards creating more options for some apartment building tenants. Of course, apartment buildings are only one small component of the bigger broadband picture, but at least it's a start. 

In particular, this will help companies offering fiber-to-the-home services bring new options to consumers.  Since effective competition is critical to the "bigger broadband picture," this is a good start indeed.

Forbes.com had a fascinating interview last week with ZillionTV CEO Mitch Berman about the future of television. In a nutshell, Berman explains, there are a myriad of technologies and models out there--cable, satellite, fiber; streams, P2P, downloads; subscription, ad-supported, pay per use--the winning combination will focus on the consumer experience.

One obstacle will be separating the Internet-TV experience from a PC. Netflix is already trying to do this, and I often stream my Netflix Instant Queue over my Xbox to my television instead of watching POTV. (That's plain old TV.) As Forbes notes, however, to get my Netflix queue in order and add movies to it, I still need the web interface. This results in a "fragmented user experience." This actually doesn't much bother me, since I usually have my laptop in lap when I watch TV. But I can see how it isn't optimal for someone with a desktop in an upstairs home office and an Xbox in the downstairs family room.

The second obstacle, as Berman sees it, is personalization:

Berman's description of an ideal world of TV would be unlimited video-on-demand, perfectly personalized to the consumer taste, and with advertisers able to push ads precisely to align with that taste. Also, the delivery infrastructure will take into account the ISP's interests, and the box will not be charged to the consumer.

As the article notes, that's a vision of the future that may still be a ways off; and it may not ultimately be the exact experience that evolves from consumer demand.  But the evolution of television is certainly well underway, as the universe of options for consuming television programming continues expanding.

Our transition to the digital age has brought consumers and content creators immeasurable benefits--that certainly isn't a question.  But as the way we consume media changes, some of the old business models for how content is distributed and paid for are running up against some problems.

Take traditional television, for example, which relies in large part on ad revenue.  As television has shifted to digital format, there's been an explosion of channels and content, which is good for consumers.  But even though there are more viewers than ever, there are fewer eyes on any one program at any given time.  That's a difficult spot for an ad-supported industry to be in.

Over at Media Post's Online Spin blog, Dave Morgan hits this problem squarely on the head:

Thus, the television industry has shifted from a world of scarce distribution to scarce attention, and most expect much of the economic value to follow. Value in the future will be less about securing distribution of programming and more about attracting and retaining audiences for programming, probably on a case-by-case basis.

Why are audiences fragmenting so much? Certainly, part of the problem is that with many more choices--actually, an explosion of programming choices--it is quite natural for viewers to spread themselves out among the many different types of channels and programs now available. Folks are no longer tied to only three broadcast networks for their television programming.

But that's not the only problem. I believe that viewer confusion and ignorance may be a very big driver of fragmentation as well. With so many choices on so many channels at so many different days and times of the day, it is practically impossible for viewers to know what's available to them at any one time.

But the problem is actually a bit bigger than just fragmentation of the audience--not just a problem of what people are watching. It's also a fragmentation of where people are watching their programming, with more and more people growing comfortable with seeking out traditional television programming online, whether it's on a PC or through a third-party device like AppleTV or Xbox Live.

And now cable providers are feeling the pinch from that online competition.  It's little wonder that we're seeing more and more traditional video providers--cable companies, satellite providers, and telecom companies--offering streaming online access to content from subscription channels for no additional charge to the regular subscription fee: "TV Everywhere," as Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said earlier this week.

Will it work?

It could certainly create new potential ad revenue streams for networks and distributors, as the new wide world of digital content is available to a wider world of locations and devices than regular TV can reach.

But as with any new business model, it may be too soon to tell.  But we're certainly very excited to see the industry looking at these challenges and addressing them.  We're always happy when consumers are able to find the safe, legal content they want, when and where they want it.  It's heartening to see that the entertainment industry is trying new things in order to provide it.

comScore has released new numbers showing online video is booming in the US, with a record 13% growth between November and December of 2008.  That's double-digit growth in a single month.  Specifically, "U.S. Internet users viewed a record 14.3 billion online videos during the month..."

More notable findings from comScore's December 2008 data:

•     78.5 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
•     The average online video viewer watched 309 minutes of video, or more than 5 hours.
•     98.9 million viewers watched 5.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (59.2 videos per viewer).
•     48.7 million viewers watched 367 million videos on MySpace.com (7.6 videos per viewer).
•     The duration of the average online video was 3.2 minutes.
•     The duration of the average online video viewed at Hulu was 10.1 minutes, higher than any other video property in the top ten.