Philip Hodgetts of Open Television Network at New Media Expo

I spoke with Philip Hodgetts at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas and asked him about his new venture, the Open Television Network which I blogged about several weeks ago.

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Music by Colin Owens.

Inventing the Movies

Some of the things I love about summer are weekend trips to the Berkshires, taking time off for a vacation, and all that means more time available to read books. On my summer reading stack this year was an advance copy of Inventing the Movies, a new book by Scott Kirsner that takes you on fascinating romp through the movie industry’s hundred-year love/hate relationship with technology and innovators. The book is an entertaining read with fascinating historical research and fresh insights from interviews with a long list of contemporary luminaries including director Peter Jackson, computer graphics pioneer Ed Catmull, and entrepreneur Mark Cuban.

With a keen attention to multiple perspectives, Kirsner presents the view of industry executives who are reluctant to innovate, and contrasts their views with the innovators who have advanced the many technologies like projection, color, sound, non-linear editing, digital projection, internet distribution, etc. that have transformed the industry over a century of change and revived it over and over again for many generations of audiences. Inventing the Movies is a lively book of interest to innovators in any field, as well as people who love movies and want to take a look at the business and technological machinations behind the many screens in their life: cinema, television, home theater, personal computers, portable media devices, and video-enabled phones.

Last week I did an interview with Scott Kirsner about the book, how the project got started, and what he plans to do next. The interview is currently being edited will be posted on this blog sometime before September rolls around.

The book is now available from Amazon.com. The book is also available as an e-book from LuLu. Scott Kirsners blog post on the book is here.

The flip side of the quarterlife flop

Articles have reported that quarterlife, the online episodic that NBC licensed for television broadcast, was deemed unsuccessful when it attracted something like three million viewers on Tuesday night. In terms of broadcast television economics, that’s considered a failure, but there are a number of factors here, not the least is that it was set it up for failure from the start. But failure in broadcast does not mean the show itself is a failure, which by internet standards is quite successful in terms of the vibrancy of its online community which is evolving nicely.
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Open Television Network lauched to serve the fat middle of the long tail

The Open Television Network (OTN) was launched last month with the goal of providing a distribution network for the “fat middle” of the Long Tail, helping to build a “middle class” of media publishers. It’s a framework that allows small media producers to sell video through iTunes using RSS feeds. And that’s the clever twist behind their approach.
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Time viewers spend on then net is rivaling TV time

An IBM survey of consumer behavior, reported by the Hollywood Reporter in the article “Study: TV is taking a back seat” by Georg Szalai, documents that the time consumers spend on the Internet is rivaling their TV time. I took away two interesting data points from the article: First is that “consumers are divided over their preferences for free online content with ads or subscription fee-based content without commercials. About a third is for free content, but about 20% are willing to pay for the HBO-style model” according to the IBM report. Second is the stark numbers documenting television’s decline as our primary media device, according to the survey, “19% of respondents said they spend six hours or more each day on personal Internet usage. That compares with 8% who said so about the TV. One to four hours of TV usage was reported by 66%, compared with 60% for the Web.” Any netizen understands this trend, and it reflects my own experience, but it often takes numerous reports of stark numbers to wake up the sleeping giants. And when they awake, it will be an awakeing of “Jurrasic Park” proportions, although, in the end, the smaller, smarter, nimbler little creatures win out in the end. We’ll see how it plays out.

twentysomething minutes with Marshall Herskovitz

I just posted over at Art Film Talk an interview with Marshall Herskovitz in which he discusses the origins of Quarterlife, the new web-based project he’s producing with Edward Zwick. In the interview we cover the origins of the project, the writers strike, and what’s different about producing for the web compared to traditional film and television.

Web Video: Move Over, Amateurs

I read an article today in BusinessWeek by Catherine Holahan titled, “Web Video: Move Over, Amateurs” that claims that “as more professionally produced content finds a home online, user-generated video becomes less alluring to viewers—and advertisers,” and while this may be true, in part, and certainly makes pundits like Andrew Keen (author of The Cult of the Amateur) happy, I think that no matter how you slice it, the rules will be different with internet video and there are still many opportunities yet to be explored and user generated content ((I’m not thrilled with the term user generated content, in spite of Keen’s demonization of the term, Amateur, as in someone who does something out of love rather than money, is a apt term, but I digress…)) is here to stay. Of course this article follows on the coat tails of the premiere of “Quarterlife,” the new made for internet episodic from Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the creative team behind “My So-Called Life” and “thirtysomething.” There are several aspects of “Quarterlife” that I find particularly interesting in terms of the change that’s going on in the media industry: first, the show sets a new standard for web video with network-television production values, second: the storytelling and acting is better than 98% of network television, and third, the show is owned and controlled by its creators. This is old media reinventing itself with a new set of rules. Just as “thirtysomething” raised the standard for production values and storytelling in episodic television, I think “Quarterlife” will do the same for fictional internet video. If “Quarterlife” draws in an enthusiastic audience and generous advertising revenue, it could be among the first proof points that it’s possible to produce a financially viable fictional episodic on the web.