There has been an explosion of interest in using the web as a broadcasting medium, although there is still no agreement as to how to do it, or even what “it” is. Arcada is currently exploring ways in which future media might be produced and distributed. This essay is a preliminary attempt to survey the current situation. At this stage in the discussion I am more concerned to point out the multitude of projects underway than to attempt any kind of conclusion.
Four starting points
At one end YouTube has defined a new genre of short, usually homegrown clips for people who want to watch “television” in five minute bursts. This has naturally encouraged a mass of competitors, all offering libraries of tagged clips that can be searched, commented on and embedded elsewhere.
At the other end the BBC has introduced its iPlayer which allows anyone in Britain to view any BBC television programme on the web for one week after it is broadcast. They are currently negotiating rights issues, and BBC Worldwide intend to make the iPlayer available internationally in 2008. A similar model has also been developed by Swedish television, to allow viewers access to programmes online for a limited period after their broadcast date.
Services like Joost lie somewhere in the middle. Their intention is to package professionally produced programmes into channels for broadcasting exclusively over the web. So far none of these have made any real impact, and it is not yet clear whether the model that they are pursuing will prove viable in the longer term.
In the middle ground, there are also some services such as the nascent Floobs and ChannelME, both of which intend to enable people other than traditional professional broadcasters to package their own (and other people’s) offerings as distinct channels. Despite being user-generated these projects raise different issues to YouTube and its followers. YouTube has created a market where none exsted before. People log on to watch a few bursts of home-made or stolen footage, while surfing. Floobs (like Joost) supposes that people will log on in order to watch television. This may or may not be true.
Joost, Floobs and similar sites are, effectively, in opposition to Apple who are aggressively pursuing a strategy founded on the belief that people will prefer to download material for watching at a time of their own choosing and that, implicitly, the viability of television channels is therefore dying. Apple’s strategy, both in terms of movie and television programming available from the iTunes Store, and the Apple TV device, assumes that people will want personal control over the timing of their viewing. In this vision channels become commodified. Brand loyalty disappears as search engines hunt indifferently across channels and online stores to locate the particular episode of Cheers that I want to watch.
Watching TV on the web
The potential profit in creating or discovering a whole new broadcasting medium has meant that the area has become very crowded - too crowded and dynamic to be followed successfully on an occasional basis. I am therefore relying on Mashable for much of the information that follows.
Mashable.com is an invaluable source of information and analysis about online social media. TV on the web is one of the areas that the team there has followed in detail. I am therefore taking much of the background information, and some of the analysis, from their postings over the last eighteen months.
On July 7, 2007, they published a list of 33 ways to watch free tv on the web. This covered most of the current leading players from Google Video and YouTube to Joost. A few days later they ran a more detailed feature comparing four major TV applications: Joost, Veohtv, Babelgum and Democracy.
The same month they published a top ten list of competitive video sites. These avoided the sites in the first list and instead looked at new or quirky sites that might have an effect on the development of video and television on the web.
Some recent events, according to Mashable
On November 7, 2006, “Comcast’s YouTube-style video site Ziddio.com went live. The launch came after news that Comcast’s rival Verizon was working on a partnership with YouTube (see YouTube-Verizon). At its launch Mashable described Ziddio as “like a cross between YouTube and Bix.com, allowing users to enter competitions and win prizes - these include an appearance on TV”.
On January 5th 2007, the site “vMix, which launched way back in October 2005, has received a second round of funding, according to reports today. They get 1.3 million unique visitors per month, they say, and have partnerships with the likes of Fox Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros and Bravo TV.
It’s fairly standard attempt, with profile pages, messaging, networks of friends, a Flash player, commenting, tags, ratings and the ability to post videos to Facebook, del.icio.us and Digg. They do, however, have a few unique ideas: the Talking Heads feature lets you put your own mouth behind a celebrity image, while there’s also a slideshow tool called VMix Slide and a number of contests (for more video contests, see Bix.com, DareJunkies and Jumpcut). Another unique feature: a “guide” button that overlays related videos in the Flash window, along with descriptions”.
On January 15, 2007: “Music Nation, an artist development agency that launched in March 2006, has raised $5.5 million in first round funding led by Greylock Partners, it’s being reported today. Point Judith Capital also contributed to the round. The founding team includes media veterans like Daniel Klaus, Lucas Mann, Peter Read and ShopWiki co-founder Kevin Ryan.
Music Nation exists to promote unsigned rock, pop and urban artists - it’s essentially a niche YouTube for emerging artists, allowing visitors to explore the newest and most viewed clips, track down artists in their local area, join regional and artist-based groups and add clips to a list of favorites. There are profile pages, too, although these don’t offer any real customization (ala MySpace layouts, skins or codes). Users can also upload videos and post embeddable players to Piczo, hi5, MySpace et al.”
On May 30 2007: “YouTube content will now be available in your living room through the AppleTV set-top. See Apple’s latest iTunes release coverage here. Additionally, Apple also announced today its new offering of a built-to-order Apple TV with a 160GB hard drive. Scheduled to be released in mid-June, AppleTV will wirelessly stream videos directly from YouTube to be played on your television screen. You can browse and view videos using your remote control.”
On June 14, 2007: “Gene Simmons of Kiss has decided to go evil on the online video space by investing in NGTV - No Good TV. The service is web-based like YouTube, but the content is more Joost-like, which means no user-submitted videos of cats dancing - it’s mostly professionally produced content.”
On June 29, 2007: “Everyone is attacking Joost these days. The latest Internet TV contender to throw its hat into the ring is video search engine Blinkx, which says it will launch a similar service called BBTV in the fall.
Obviously Blinkx’s strength is search, and that will be a major part of BBTV (Broadband TV), a downloadable client that uses P2P technology. You can search the audio of TV shows and movies, and there’s a kind of “adsense for video” that displays relevant ads next to the clip you’re viewing.”
Other developments
Hulu is currently in private beta. It sees itself as a global rebroadcaster whose “ambitious and never-ending mission is to help you find and enjoy the world’s premium content when, where and how you want it. We hope to provide you with the web’s most comprehensive selection of premium programming across all genres and formats – television shows, feature films, clips, and more. Additionally, we want to give you more choices of when and where you can enjoy your favorite programming, while creating innovative experiences that let you watch and participate in online video in new and exciting ways. ”
Meanwhile 60Frames is trying to attract striking writers in the USA. This start-up is pitching itself as an online content creator; and according to CNet, “the company, founded with $3.5 million from investors United Talent Agency (UTA) and Spot Runner, is geared toward providing a wide variety of content creators with the financing and resources they need to produce and distribute original programming across the sites of Internet partners like YouTube, MySpace.com, Bebo, and soon, Joost.”
Some conclusions
A complete ecology is growing which will, in principle, allow professionals to create and distribute new content online, using a variety of sites, each pursuing similar but not identical goals.
This ecology will also allow those outside the traditional broadcasting professions to produce programmes. This need not mean teenagers filming themselves drunkenly falling off skateboards. iFoods provides one example of a niche video online site. It is a cookery site started by two professional chefs and intended to mix videos of them at work with user-generated content. Whether or not it is successful, it shows how such a site might work.
Broadly speaking, distribution in this new ecology takes two forms. It is either modelled on a standard television channel, or it is modelled on YouTube, in which individual clips are found by searching tags and keywords, and marketing is viral.
There is no consensus yet about whether channels are still viable or necessary. Nor is it yet possible to say which (if any) of these models will actually work.