Editor’s Note: Below is the first of many upcoming “Insider Opinion” op-ed contributions by industry insiders. Today’s contributor, Alina Syunkova, is a PR specialist assigned to client VUDU for SutherlandGold Group (which, in honor of full disclosure, will also handle the official press release and launch of DVDisDEAD.) Insider Opinion contributors may discuss whatever they like - with one exception: They can’t promote their own products and/or services (or in this first piece, products and/or services of companies they contract with or represent). Comments - and queries from potential contributors - welcome. -JH
Insider Opinion: The Movie and TV Download Revolution: Hurry up and wait
By Alina Syunkova, SutherlandGold Group
Content owners like NBC Universal are putting pressure on providers and developers of digital media technologies like Apple to maintain high prices on media content. At the very least, the latest Apple-NBC deal suggests that content owners may be clinging to the option of price manipulation based on what specific content is being viewed. Technology makers, by contrast, aim for simplicity to achieve mass technology adoption.
This points to at least one rift between media content owners and media consumer technology developers/providers. The former live in a content-centric world. Among programs and films, there are the good, the bad, the ugly, and prices must reflect this tedious hierarchy, because revenues – and ultimately, profits – derive from content. By contrast, for Apple and other technology developers, all content – from HD to UGC – is equal. What matters is which – or whose – new gadget delivers the content. Because revenues – and again, those pesky profits – are derived from gadget sales.
It’s important to note that the “techies” are the relative new kids on the block in this tug-of-war. For nearly a century now, media has been defined by content, and the “gadgets” delivering it – television sets, radios, cable, satellite – were a much more unified market, with few real options for consumers to worry about. The advent of iPods and YouTube, online video streaming and TiVo, dozens of VOD box set options and mobile entertainment, all of this is changing. Besides what to watch or listen to, consumers now have myriad choices for how to do it.
The result has been a tug-of-war between the media content owners and media consumer tech providers, impacting the economics of the media industry and the rate of new technology adoption. Specifically, it has created uncertainty as to where the industry is headed. Among die-hard fans of TiVo, the greatest caveat often rumored remains: “I just don’t know whether it’s here to stay.”
The battlefield between technology providers and content owners is chock-full of casualties. One example is Redlasso, the video and audio content search engine that received a cease-and-desist order from CBS, NBC, and Fox, forcing it to shut down. Content owners have seemingly been relentless in making life difficult for technology developers who threaten to make access to content a bit too easy for consumers without making them pay up. Perhaps, the effect is intentional. It seems logical that content owners have an interest in holding back new tech: they want to juice what is left out of the media industry’s decades-old infrastructure. They seem to know that once the free access to content door is opened, it can never be shut again. And they are preparing themselves for the storm, resisting it for as long as they can.
That preparation and resistance only confirms that the new media revolution is well underway. NBC and Fox’s joint operation “reinvent myself,” code-name “Hulu,” is a perfect example of the low profile content owners are maintaining as they scramble to keep up with the industry. Most will go down with the ship as a tsunami of new media technologies hits the media industry. Some, as titans do, will survive and rise to the top. The ones to re-emerge from the debris have been the quickest to form their own spin-offs equipped for navigating the vast expanse of new media technologies. NBC’s Hulu is one such lifeboat in the making.
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