TV and Movies On YouTube? 101
CNet is running a story speculating on the potential for full-length television shows and movies on YouTube. Google has been looking for ways to improve the popular but unprofitable video-sharing site, including some experiments with movies that exceed the typical 10-minute limit. Incorporating a system similar to Hulu could draw the interest of more advertisers.
"[Mark Cuban] wrote that Hulu is crushing YouTube in revenue per video and revenue per user primarily because 'Hulu has the right to sell advertising in and around every single video on its site,' Cuban wrote. 'It can package and sell any way that might make its customers happy.' YouTube doesn't have the same luxury because it can advertise only 'on the small percentage of videos on its site that it has a licensing deal with.'"
one suggestion (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:OH MY GOD! (Score:1, Interesting)
YouTube Has Already Tried This (Score:2, Interesting)
Back when YouTube first came about, they had original regular running series. Some of them were actually decent too. Then things started to change and now we have a different YouTube.
Besides, it's not as if people don't already do this on YouTube themselves. I'm more surprised that at some point they haven't aggressively tried making money from this in some fashion.
Re:This could work (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, if done in not in an overkill manner, it wouldn't be that bad; for example stuff you download that was ripped from the SciFi channel, has a SciFi logo in the corner.
As a result (being someone who doesn't have cable) I now know that Battlestar is broadcasted on the SciFi channel.
As a personal example, for me that was relatively unobtrusive advertising at work.
Re:YouTube Has Already Tried This (Score:3, Interesting)
Host pilots for shows for free and offer a Google-checkout-integrated escrow service. If you like the pilot, give put some money towards the production of the series. If a target amount is reached before a set date, Google takes a fixed percentage and gives the rest to the producers. They then make a series, send DVDs to the people who paid in advance, and put it on YouTube. Google show advertising around the online version and start collecting money towards the next season.
Re:one suggestion (Score:3, Interesting)
I think this is unlikely to happen. Viacom already has a video sharing site where you can watch ANY episode of The Daily Show. The question Viacom will ask is, "What value does YouTube add that we don't already have, or could easily develop?" Frankly I don't see that youtube does add any value, but maybe I'm wrong.
No, I think Viacom is NOT the company to try to pursue negotiation rights with, at least for now. That doesn't mean there aren't other media companies they couldn't do the same thing with, that haven't developed the video sharing technology.
Re:OH MY GOD! (Score:5, Interesting)
Cuban trolling again? (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember, Mark Cuban also claims to have made his saving throw to disbelieve the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA. If I were Google, I'd rely on my own attorneys for legal advice, and not some self-important blowhard who pretends that important legal concepts don't exist when they don't protect his own financial interests.
There are three barriers to remaking television (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Cost of Production
2. Cost of Distribution
3. Customer Price Sensitivity and General Interest
1. Cost of Production is still high and will remain high, though the bang for the buck is certainly increasing. While I don't enjoy police procedurals, you'll note that the production values are easily eclipsing movies in all but ginormous action set pieces. Shows like the original Battlestar Galactica were prohibitively expensive even with recycled special effects. The new Galactica, while the scripts still suffer from cranial-rectal inversion, it looks fantastic. Hollywood would have had an impossible time churning something out like that with models, Babylon 5's CGI looks dated now. Fans in their bedrooms are turning out CGI better than what a professional studio was doing ten years ago. Funny point: when that new B5 Lost Tales DVD was being put together, the new effects crew was scrambling for models. All of the original files were turned over to WB as per contract and were lost. The fans stepped in and provided a station model better than what was in the original show. You can only imagine what we'll be seeing in another decade. Still, it's going to cost money to put a proper show together and that will be the biggest barrier to entry.
2. Distribution. The Internet is a dagger in the heart of the conventional network business model. The suits are desperately trying to coopt it. Right now, the Internet's biggest vulnerability is that service is provided by telecoms and cable companies so the suits are looking to these companies to serve as gatekeepers. The suits would like to see the Net tamed into a comfy AOL model, putting up barriers to entry, filtering people only to approved and partnered sites, making sure they can start extracting profits again. I'm not sure if what we're looking at here is Tienanmen Square or the fall of the Berlin Wall -- I don't know if efforts to stop democratizing forces will succeed or fail. If they do fail, the networks will fall into ever-decreasing relevance.
3. Price Sensitivity and General Interest. The vast majority of people are casual fans of whatever they're into, they're usually not obsessive geeks. Miss an episode of a series? Not care if you don't see it? I never could understand that. But I'm a geek. Geeks are the ones who were buying Trek on tape back when it worked out to something like $10 per episode. DVD's finally made it feasible to distribute archived shows from the past and distribute new productions directly to the customer. While there have been direct-to-video schlockfests for years, Disney being a prime offender, there hasn't been as much interest in distributing things like episodic television content directly to DVD. Of course, with digital distribution, the DVD angle becomes only an interest if someone wants to keep the show permanently.
I suppose you can also throw a fourth category in here, generational adaptation of technology. People my parent's age would tape a show and play it back, not fast-forwarding through the commercials. Even more likely, they'd not be able to figure out how to record it and just watch it live. But the younger the viewer, the more readily they will adapt to the new technologies. Fast-forward another decade and you'll see middle-aged people perfectly acclimated to watching content on their laptops and ipods and cell phones. And I think that this sort of independence of choice in both content and viewing behavior will create a demand that the suits will be unable to control.
Right now there's really a conversation going on between viewers and content producers/distributors. The producer/distributors are saying "Shut up and pay what we demand, you cunts" and the viewers are saying "no thank you. We don't want your commercial-laden television, we don't want to pay $12 to go watch a movie that has 20 minutes of commercials in front of it, we don't want to be limited to just your approved content. And what you have that we like, you charge too much or you dick with show's creator to mess it all up."
Re:OH MY GOD! (Score:3, Interesting)
While the lack of previous seasons is a downmark, whatever hulu actually has is quite good.
The ads are not too long. The video quality is somewhat decent. They have a good selection of new shows, and a lot of old stuff as well.
Re:This could work (Score:4, Interesting)
The Cognitive Surplus is where it's at (Score:5, Interesting)
The studios screwed themselves on this one.
Re:OH MY GOD! (Score:5, Interesting)
Really?
Hulu seems like an awfully nice compromise between watching "regular TV," and sifting through piles of low-quality crap on sidreel.
The general scheme is that you get excellent quality full episodes in a legal manner endorsed by the content producers (for which they get paid!).
In return, you have to watch a 10-30 second ad in each slot that would normally have a 4-5 minute commercial break on TV. In the end, this works out to about 2-3 minutes PER HOUR. For free and legal content, this seems like a fantastic compromise that mostly benefits the consumer.
Of course, if they increase the ads, my approval will be somewhat diminished, but in its current form, Hulu rocks.
Re:The Cognitive Surplus is where it's at (Score:4, Interesting)
This is exactly the one advantage which YouTube gives you which the "shut up and watch" old media does not.
If you cannot popularise quality content, then the fault lies with the populace, or yourself - not the distribution medium.
We are in the early days of exploring our cognitive surplus, and yes - some of these explorations mimic the tricks mainstream media has previously used to grab viewers. So if you're telling me that 50% of the most popular YouTube videos are not just thinly-veiled sex-related enticements, then I think we can agree that we're watching a fascinating experiment unfold.
I do, however, object to the phrase "partners are now whoring themselves to get more views." If you look at the evils that a monopoly stranglehold on the channels of media distribution (everything from sitcoms to news), has wrecked upon society, then a strong case could be made that hastening the democratization and financial viability of those channels is nothing less than a moral imperative.
Improve the player (Score:3, Interesting)
Especially for a google property, I find their flash player to be of really poor quality. The seek bar (or whatever it's called) never goes to where you drop it, and there are really only a handful of places you can seek to if you want to see a part over again. It seems like every other flash video player I've come across behaves as I'd expect it to.
And it's annoying as hell to have the dock-esque related videos pop up any time my mouse goes near the vid.
Why doesn't Google just produce their own shows? (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine if Google purchased House and put all the full length episodes on Youtube, and then continued the series, allowing the episodes to only be viewed on Youtube and then eventually released on DVD. They could completely revolutionize the way Tv is done and make a bundle in the process.
Re:OH MY GOD! (Score:3, Interesting)