Internet / TV convergence is here, and it's not what we expected
Fri, Oct 20 2006
By Jonathan Oxer
I remember way back in the early days of the public Internet there was a lot of discussion about predicted media convergence: we all thought that as bandwidth increased we would see television distribution move from "through the air" to "down the wire", coming in via our Internet connection to a special TV that could download shows on demand and allow us to interact with live shows. Basically it would be like normal TV but it could come from anywhere in the world rather than just your local TV transmission towers.
Of course predicting the future is very hard: we all tend to look ahead in terms of incrementally improved versions of things we already have. Imagining totally new ways of living is remarkably difficult, so I doubt that many people sitting around in 1996 and talking about video distribution via the Internet would have accurately predicted how things have turned out. Sure, Internet / TV convergence has now arrived, but it's not what we expected.
For one thing, the prediction of televisions becoming smarter and Internet-enabled hasn't really come about. For all the bells and whistles and huge screen options a modern TV is still (mostly) the same as the unimaginative devices available in 1996.
As it turns out the focus has changed to use of computers as the preferred way to access on-demand video, and I personally know quite a few people who have got rid of their TVs entirely - not because they don't like watching movies or TV programs, but because current televisions are just too stupid. Instead of a regular TV they have a huge LCD screen in the loungeroom connected to a computer with a TV tuner in it so they can watch live or recorded TV shows, DVDs, streamed video, downloaded movies, and slideshows from their digital camera all on the same system.
TVs haven't got nearly smart enough to keep up with changing expectations so people have had to find a way to use other technology to bridge the gap. Software such as MythTV is becoming incredibly popular and can turn your PC into a very smart TV indeed. A couple of friends of mine are just finishing writing a book about how to do exactly that: http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=10245
Another thing most of us got wrong was predictions about who would provide all the content. Rather than online video being provided by large incumbent content publishers such as television stations and movie studios it seems those are the very groups that are slowest to see new opportunities. Instead of embracing the new technology as a way to expand their audience they seem stuck in business models based on a strongly centralised distribution chain where a very few content producers spend large amounts of money to create well polished content for distribution to the mass market on a large scale. If there's anything we should have learned in recent years it is that the Internet breaks down the usual hierarchy of relationships between suppliers and consumers: instead of a pyramid-like structure with each consumer relating vertically to each supplier in isolation, the new world order looks more like a bowl of sphagetti with everyone empowered to be both a consumer and a content producer simultaneously and relationships going in every direction possible.
Nothing illustrates that phenomenon quite as well as the blogging explosion, with every man and his dog (http://blog.lib.umn.edu/joanh/dogblog/) setting up their own little shingle and sharing their thoughts for the world to see. With blogging anyone can become a "publisher" and build their own audience of like-minded people. Text-based blogging has of course lead to podcasting, which is really just blogging with audio. And now we've seen the natural progression to vlogging (video blogging), and the rise of sites such as YouTube (www.youtube.com) and Google Video (video.google.com) that provide one-stop access to a staggering variety of video snippets produced by everyone from professional studios to random amateurs.
But we don't really want to spend our lives watching a smorgasboard of two minute clips of dubious quality on our computer screen. If we did then TV stations would show nothing but reruns of Funniest Home Videos. That might be funny for a little while and it's a great start but we also want to see full-length, well-produced features.
That sort of thing is still coming, it's just taking a while - not least because the studios are still trying to figure out how to monetize online distribution of high-production-cost content. It's very much a carbon-copy of the growing pains the music industry is going through right now, where the world has changed and they're still stuck on a distribution model based on selling complete albums on physical CDs through bricks-and-mortar stores, while the world wants cheap and instant access to individual tracks to be played back on portable MP3 players.
Such change is inevitable because it's being demanded by consumers and enabled by new technologies. It will just take a while for dinosaur companies to realise they are being made irrelevant because they're not providing what people want.
The interesting thing though is that online video is now rapidly moving up the food chain from quick snippets to serious productions. My business has had three separate inquiries in the last week from companies wanting to distribute regularly updated and professionally created video content via their websites. Typical applications could include expert reports on stock trends: if you imagine the finance section of the TV news but produced privately by an investment management company and made available on their website every week then you're pretty close to the mark. In the same way that podcasting allows anyone to take on a role somewhat like a radio broadcaster, online video allows anyone to take on the role of a private TV station.
That level of video production quality takes money and skill of course, so I fully expect that over the next year or two we'll see an explosion in small-scale video production businesses that cater to SMEs, helping them create high-quality video content on a rapid turnaround cycle without the expense of engaging a traditional film production company. It'll be a cottage industry of home-based contractors just like in the early days of the desktop publishing revolution.
There will also have to be major upheavals in the regulatory environment. Our legal system is currently set up to regulate media ownership on the basis that only a few organisations can exist in a local market due to the high barrer to entry, but with blogging anyone can become a publisher. Podcasting lets anyone become a radio station, and vlogging effectively allows you to run your own TV station.
Some people see this is the democratisation of mass market communication: giving anyone the ability to reach audiences previously only accessible to large media organisations. Personally I think that's missing the point. It's not about putting every individual at the top of the information distribution pyramid. It's about destroying the pyramid and enabling a far greater variety of direct personal communication channels on all levels. It's not about creating a single global market. It's about creating a multitude of tightly focused sub-markets and communities.
For many years the Internet has been almost entirely about text: email and websites. At long last it's starting to deliver the decade-old promise of becoming a universal delivery mechanism for all forms of content, not just text. And in the process it's redefining the ways we interact.
Ain't progress cool?