NAB: are vendors’ heads in the cloud(s)?
What happened at NAB? Is the industry moving forward again?
Although it’s early days…the show is still winding down, after all…it is perhaps not too soon to start trying to analyse what it all meant. Despite the fact that there seem to be some epic hangovers being nursed by many delegates, the MAC team in Las Vegas are still clearheaded enough to give their initial impressions.
It certainly seems to have been extremely busy show, with the mood being positive and upbeat although with a note of caution born of experience. We saw big crowds on the big stands…but SME suppliers seemed to be finding it harder to attract a lot of footfall.
In terms of hot topics, our impression is that 3-D has not been as dominant as expected in view of the hype at previous shows; content monetisation, interoperability, the Cloud and the ”W Word”…workflow… were all getting a lot of attention.
And talking of Heads in Clouds, while vendors have been pretty upbeat about prospects, are they getting excited about things which interest only some of their core customers…the broadcasters?
Here’s a characteristically insightful Vegas viewpoint from Broadcast Engineering’s Mike Grotticelli
The gloves are off in Las Vegas…Apple is throwing its weight about
There’s a fine row brewing in Las Vegas.
The “Supermeet” scheduled to take place in Bally’s on the Tuesday of NAB (although nothing to do with NAB itself), is organized by the FCPUG, which stands for the Final Cut Pro User Group…which nevertheless bills itself as “The World’s Largest Gathering of Final Cut Pro, Adobe and Avid Digital Storytellers.”
This is usually a broad-church kind of get together of editors and creative people, and indeed this year’s Supermeet was scheduled to be sponsored not just by Apple but by Avid, AJA, Canon, BlackMagic, Autodesk and various others, most of whom were going to make presentations at the event.
But not any more.
The organizers have reportedly informed everyone but Apple that their sponsorship and platform appearances are no longer required, since Apple are planning to use the event to announce the next version of Final Cut Pro and apparently “don’t want to share the platform with anyone.”
As you can imagine, this has set numerous cats among several flocks of pigeons. Avid were going to present the Indie film-maker Kevin Smith (otherwise known as “Silent Bob”) at Supermeet, and are scrambling to find an alternative venue.
NAB themselves, who were never overjoyed in the first place at having such an opportunistic rival event in Las Vegas during the show, are trying to find other opportunities for the spurned sponsors.
Meanwhile everyone is agog to see what Apple are going to say about the much-anticipated new version of FCP.
Here’s the FCPUG Supermeet homepage…which seems to be changing hourly. Here’s Avid’s take. And here’s the latest from Industry Blog ProVideo Coalition.
All very exciting!
By the way if you’d like to meet MAC at NAB, to talk about how our team of seasoned industry experts might be able to help you, mail us here. Whether you’re a broadcaster, a vendor or an investor, we’d love to get together. And have a good show!
Moore vs. Murphy…the NAB “conflict of the laws”
As we enter the annual NAB hysteria, delegates arriving in Vegas with projects in mind should remember that while Moore’s Law will doubtless give them some tempting new technologies to look at and admire, their purchasing decisions should be made with another Law in mind…Murphy’s.
Here’s a very interesting article from Broadcast Engineering…
6 observations about Change and TV – insight from Ved Sen
Ved has some very interesting things to say about predicting change in an era of uncertainty.
Non-British (or non-soccer-savvy) readers may not follow all his allusions fully…but we’re sure they’ll get the point!
Get me to the market on time! Is YouView missing the boat?
According to a UK analyst, the YouView initiative is taking so long to reach fruition that the whole project is under threat of becoming obsolete before it’s even launched. This is despite the recent “You’re Hired!” moment involving Sir Alan Sugar.
The See-Saw Fortunes of VOD
A very interesting article by Kate Bulkley (originally published in Broadcast) about the prospects for video-on-demand in the UK. Some good thoughts which are valid well outside the confines of British TV…
Is it time for a serious rethink about video-on-demand in the UK?
There are some winners at the moment, for sure, although not always for the most obvious reasons, and there are some services that are struggling to make their mark.
One thing is clear: online video is growing fast and the success of the iPad will only accelerate that, but as a business proposition, it is still sorting itself out.
BBC iPlayer continues to grow, with a stunning 116 million requests overall in February. But its only requirement is to be accessible and easy to use – not exactly a business model.
For commercial broadcasters, VoD is a more complex equation and there is not yet a consensus about how best to design an online video offering. They need to do it to extend their brands beyond TV and to put a dent in online piracy, but free video online can also take viewers away from linear by trading TV ad dollars for digital pennies.
Even Hulu, the US online video site backed by three of its biggest commercial broadcasters, could soon dump its ad-supported model and become a subscription service. Sky’s chief operating officer Mike Darcy recently criticised the UK terrestrials for “leaping like lemmings” to make online content available for free.
One of the companies currently suffering in this space is SeeSaw. Built on the technical platform assets of the ill-fated Project Kangaroo, SeeSaw’s owner Arqiva paid a reported £8m for it and has since pumped a further estimated £23m into the business. Yet its CEO has just been let go and Arqiva is shopping the service to potential buyers because it will require a lot more funds to get to any kind of scale.
What the SeeSaw sale process underlines is how difficult it is to make it as a standalone business without the power of cross-promotion from a TV channel or some other business model to build the brand and drive traffic. SeeSaw has also struggled to differentiate its offer from the sites of its suppliers, including Channel 4, and has no programmes at all from ITV, which is still sorting out its online offer. When all this is taken into account, any sale price for SeeSaw will likely be only a fraction of what has been invested to date.
And looking to the dominant commercial force in online VoD for lessons doesn’t help. Apple’s iTunes leads the pack, clocking up a 64.5% share of online movie and video purchases in the US in 2010, according to HIS Screen Digest. But Apple makes a negative margin on the content it sells – the iTunes store is more important as a sales tool for its iPods, iPads and Macs than as a standalone profit centre. The VoD sales are just a way of adding more traffic for potential purchasers of its devices.
Online video streaming services like Netflix in the US and Lovefilm in the UK are building their businesses on the back of their subscription postal DVD businesses, but can they transfer that from premium movie content to more standard TV shows?
ITV boss Adam Crozier admitted recently that its online business is “sub-scale”, and he’s right. There is a lot to be won and lost and the battle is only just beginning. Perhaps the biggest challenge is that, even now, no one is sure of the tactics that might help them win.
Read more articles by Kate Bulkley here
More proof that traditional media are still going strong
This report is as much about print media as it is about broadcast, but it’s still very interesting on the subject of the supposed new/social media “takeover”
Big surge in watching TV through “other channels”
New research is showing that an increasing number of US consumers are watching TV using alternative platforms such as a laptop, a mobile phone, a tablet or an OTT device.
This is yet more fuel for the debate about whether “new media” are a threat or an opportunity for traditional TV.
If it’s the case, as this research suggests, that the new devices are becoming additional delivery mechanisms for existing channels, then it must be an opportunity, since presumably the “new” viewers get the commercials along with the content and the TV business model still works.
It becomes a threat only when the new devices don’t just liberate consumers from the big screen and the couch, but encourage them to abandon TV altogether…
Google/YouTube: Friend or Foe for broadcast?
YouTube (owned by Google, of course) has moved further towards the television sector by buying the web production start-up Next New Networks.
This will doubtless crank up the already lively debate among broadcasters about whether new media in general, and YouTube in particular, are Threat…or Opportunity.
DirecTV going on the air this weekend with a 3D channel
DirecTV are maintaining their leading-edge reputation by launching a 3D channel this weekend. They were the first to launch an HD channel and clearly see a business advantage in being first to market. However it’s not clear how many consumers have suitable receiving equipment…nor how much of a 3D content library there is to show.
Read more here…