This panel at the Future of Television featured:

Brett Bouttier, SVP, Digital, Warner Bros. Television Group
Marc DeBevoise, SVP, Business Development & Strategy, Starz Media LLC
Matthew Glotzer, SVP, Digital Media, Fox Entertainment Group
Joe Patrick, EVP, North American Television Distribution, MGM
Moderator: Andrew Wallenstein, Deputy Editor, The Hollywood Reporter

Anything surprising about adoption of content on these new digital channels?

Response to ad supported streaming of premium content has been wildly successful. However, the ad supported model cannot keep up economically with sell through or even rental. So the challenge becomes how to do both and not cannibalize the sell through business where someone will pay you $1.99 for a download.

Long tail content has proven to be surprisingly successful. For example, Airwolf has turned out to be one of the most downloaded programs on Hulu.

How can film play a role on Hulu?

Joe Patrick said “I can’t get someone to pay the long tail content, but they might watch it on Hulu when its ad supported.” They might not pay $2.99 for this kind of content, but they might watch it for free. They are working on how to get sampling increased to help drive consumption.

What about Vongo?

Vongo licensed content from Starz. It just goes to show that consumers will use subscription models for premium content. Perhaps the key is to make it feel like free, or close to it. Subscription starts to approach this as demonstrated by cable subscriptions and Vongo.

What about iTunes – how important is it?

Starz will be releasing on iTunes tonight according to Marc DeBevoise, SVP, Business Development & Strategy, Starz Media. NewTeeVee did a video interview with him.

iTunes is clearly the leader in sell through. In this segment, they are the 850 pound gorilla in this segment. In other segments, there is still more competition and variety of players.

itunes has been very successful. All of us are in the business of trying to get distribution. iTunes will be one of these key channels, but there are lots of other channels like the Xbox that will be important. We want the content to be available everywhere at the right times.

Is digital content seen as a threat to mainstream broadcasting?
So far, the evidence has been the opposite. By streaming content shortly after on air play, it can actually help increase audience.

What about FCC regulations – do you see them applying to the internet?
We need to be responsible and self-regulate to some degree. More importantly, the sponsors will require certain levels of content standards so that will likely drive content strategies to a large degree.

Are these alternative channels a threat to contracts with talent?

The sense was that it is potential threat, but the ability for talent to move from one studio to another has always been there when contracts expire. The key will be to leverage core capabilities of distribution, marketing etc and let the creative do what they do best.

[tags]Future of Television[/tags]

Digital Media Wire is holding its Future of Television conference on March 25-26 in Los Angeles. It looks to be a great show with lots of interesting speakers and topics. Digital Podcast will be at the event and interviewing as many people as we can to get a pulse on how organizations are responding to the changes in the television industry.

We will be asking precisely two questions:

• What are your organization’s top three priorities over the next year?
• What trends will have the most impact on the industry over the next three years?

We plan on turning the entire interview series in an interesting podcast collection. If you’re going to attend let us know and we will set up time to get your perspective on the industries priorities and most important trends.

Panel topics at this years event include

• The Top Five Digital Media Trends to Watch
• The Outlook for the Television Industry & Digital Media
• Reality Television 2.0: What’s Next?
• Global TV & the Emergence of Worldwide Content Distribution Networks
• Direct to Internet: Producing Content Specifically for Web and Mobile
• New Television Technologies You Need to Know
• The Future of Television Advertising
• User-Generated Content: Show Me the Money!
• Mobile TV: Hit or Miss?
• Who’Â’s Watching (and are they buying anything)?
• The Evolution of Metrics and Analytics for Television 2.0
• Digital Television (DTV) is Coming!

[tags]Future of Television[/tags]

I noticed tonight a quiet had come over my Twitter feed as the SXSW conference came to an end. Scared to look at the 1000s of posts in my Google Reader, I turned to that old favorite – TV. And I must admit to being an American Idol fan as it works so well to get my family talking about the show. It is a perfect example of a live, in person social object at work. The content is there, we are there and we talk.

Even though I didn’t attend SXSW, I noticed the same thing happened there. Twitter made every session a social object. The event was the content, the crowd was there and they were talking to each other on Twitter. The same thing happened at the academy awards as fans logged into to Twitter to chat about the show as it went along.

Now social broadcasting is not new, as we found out in our interview of Nowlive’s CEO Kevin Bromber , but doing it at television scale is. Twitter has been there before, and either Twitter or something like it could do it again.

As I watched Idol, cheering at the TV when Chakizee did his song and dissing Ramiele for being boring, I wondered where was my Twitter. I paused the DVR and went to check. Nothing, I could not find anything on Twitter. A quick search showed me there had only been 3,330 tweets that contain “American Idol” and 4,650 that contain “Idol”. This compares to 52,600 that contain a mention of SXSW. American Idol has 33 million viewers, but virtually no discussion on Twitter. SXSW has a few thousand and its everywhere on Twitter.

Why so many Twitters at SXSW and virtually none for Idol. Clearly, there’s something demographically skewed on Twitter, but the question is what’s the possibility. If we married TV with something like Twitter, what would be different?

It seems to me that if we combine great TV with Twitter like functionality, we can turn television shows back into live social objects that keep us engaged and make us want to watch in real time. Maybe Twitter, or something like it, can save TV from the death spiral of the DVR. By giving the audience a way to participate in real time, it would change the dynamic of the show and completely change the viewing pattern. Everyone could join in on the social event and that is the kind of TV we watch live.

If I produced a TV show, or ran a TV network, I’d be thinking how to I get Twitter working for me.

Click here follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/alexnesbitt

[tags]Twitter, Television[/tags]

At midnight on February 17, 2009, all full-power television stations in the United States will stop broadcasting in analog and switch to 100% digital broadcasting. Digital broadcasting promises to provide a clearer picture and more programming options and will free up airwaves for use by emergency responders.

What is the TV Converter Box Coupon Program?

Congress created the TV Converter Box Coupon Program for households wishing to keep using their analog TV sets after February 17, 2009. The Program allows U.S. households to obtain up to two coupons, each worth $40, that can be applied toward the cost of eligible converter boxes.

THE NTIA announced that over 1 million converter box coupons were requested in the first 40 hours of availability. If this rapid pace continues coupons will run out by February.

You can get your coupons at DTV2009.gov.

[tags]DTV, DTV coupons, DTV converter, NTIA[/tags]

Craig’s NewYorkBusiness.com is reporting that old media hits the skids as new models roil market. The report describes how TV viewership is down at NBC by 11%, at CBS by 10%, and ABC is down 5%.

From broadcast to print to music, New York’s old media companies stumbled in the face of the chaos brought about by new media in 2007. The future of some of the city’s most venerable companies and brands looks suddenly shaky.

We have entered into a new era for television and the industry just does not seem to understand the shift. Like the print and music industries before them they are struggling with a business model that is not prepared to do battle in these new times.

These networks have enjoyed 50 years of consumer attention surpluses and now must face the consumer attention shortage. It is a market share battle for attention that requires the industry to reconfigure itself, lower costs and expand production across medias all at the same time.

The current writers strike and other upcoming labor issues is like the auto industry’s struggle with lower cost competitors and the UAW’s attempt to protect high paying jobs in the face of non-union based lower cost competitors. Both sides had lots of economic rational to protect their entrenched positions, but it came at the expense of their long term health.

Lower cost competitors are swamping the media market with content and taking share from traditional players. The Guild and management are locked in a battle over how they will share what may be very diminished returns if they don’t get back to work soon. They need to get focused on growing the pie or there won’t be much left to fight over.

[tags]network tv, tv viewership, writers’ strike, attention[/tags]