And now the news from NATPE

Mark Greenspan, training programmes manager at the Canadian Film Centre’s Habitat New Media Lab, attended the recent National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) annual conference in Las Vegas on behalf of Canadian NEW MEDIA. Featured below is his report, which analyzes the leading role network television plays in setting the agenda for new media south of the border. Digital entertainment distribution was high on the agenda at an annual three-day conference held by the National Associates of Television Program Executives (NATPE) in Las Vegas January 23 to 26. Dating back to 1964, NATPE’s conference currently draws over 3,000 international participants including television content producers, television programmers and network executives to name a few, and has traditionally been a one-stop destination for networks and broadcasters to sign up new content for their upcoming seasons. For the past two years, a one-day digital content event called NATPE Mobile++, produced by iHollywood Forum, has preceeded the main NATPE conference. This year’s NATPE Mobile++ drew more than 700 participants and 50 presenters from the digital entertainment industry including content producers, mobile carriers, interactive network executives and solution providers. Notable guests included Fox Interactive Media president Ross Levinsohn, Fox Mobile Entertainment president and mobisode pioneer Lucy Hood, and MobiTV VP of programming Erik Smith. Canada was represented by Raja Khanna, co-founder and chief creative officer at Toronto’s QuickPlay Media. At their core, both events dealt with the rapidly changing landscape of digital entertainment distribution across multiple platforms. Josh Bernoff, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research, gave an informative presentation titled "The Value of Video: How real are the new distribution opportunities?" In it, he reviewed what he considered to be the four main emerging distribution platforms – mobile phone video, cable video-on-demand, Internet streaming, and downloading – and analyzed their viability. Bernoff outlined the audience size of these emerging distribution channels for the American market: at present, residents of 34 million homes in the US watch online video on their computer, 25 million people have camera phones, 11 million homes use video on demand services, and four million people have video iPods. Essentially, Bernoff’s presentation claimed that TV still drives most of the revenues and establishes the brands. However, online streaming of video is the most promising of the new models and will be for some time. Niche markets can be also extended beyond their traditional "screen," but ultimately offerings must be re-purposed for new screens, not just shoveled onto alternative platforms. During a session on programming mobile content, Fox’s Hood built on Bernoff’s claims about TV’s branding power by stressing the importance of strong brands in the creation of any successful interactive entertainment product. She referred to shows like FOX’s Todd TV, which was designed with an innovative interactive component where users can affect the outcome of the show. Although the response rates to the interactive campaign were high, the television show itself did not do well in the ratings and was eventually pulled. Hood also presented the case of CBSnews.com, an established news brand where a team of 1,600 people working worldwide produce a 22-minute show and where much of the content that doesn’t make it to air is leveraged for its interactive property. At the main NATPE event, CBS Digital Media president Larry Kramer described his firm’s move toward devoting resources to web/interactive channels instead of cable channels. With the existing CBS news television property, the network was able to create an interactive property and experiment with extending its news programming into new markets. There was also much talk about Fox’s Family Guy, initially released as a television series and pulled due to low ratings. However, due to DVD sales the show was brought back to much greater success. Currently, in addition to the network television content, additional original TV content is being produced for broadband distribution. As hinted at by Bernoff, what was apparent at both conferences was that online streaming of video content is the most promising of the emerging distribution models, due primarily to a fast-growing broadband user base and an existing and growing ad revenue model. This bodes well for independent producers wishing to get exposure and "legs" for their content. Jeremy Allaire, president of online digital video distribution solutions provider BrightCove, spoke about the direct customer relationship and the dramatic control over payment and user experience that online content distribution affords. However, much remains the same: providers still need eyeballs on their content to successfully monetize it. John Davis from Halifax’s Eco-Nova Media Group illustrated how an independent production company can harness online streaming video, using his firm’s shipwreckcentral.com destination as an example. Eco-Nova’s business model centres on building and engaging a niche audience with compelling digital content; as such, the companion site to its television property Sea Hunters will soon be offering subscription-based video content. That audience-building ties in with one of the more neglected issues at both conferences, the notion of leveraging opportunities to build communities around content. Content providers such as Google Video, Current TV, Flickr, Myspace and Youtube are all banking on social networking tools, virtual communities and the broadband distribution of content to create entirely new models around content aggregation and content distribution. In his keynote address, titled "Social Networking and Content in the Mobile World," Fox’s Levinsohn addressed the issue. Fox Interactive spent US$2 billion on digital initiatives in 2005, mostly around building communities and specifically in the acquisition of high-profile social networking site Myspace.com. Communities, Levinsohn explained, are passionate, diverse, social, self-promoting and self-creating – in short, a marketers dream. Myspace is one of the largest, with 32 million monthly users, 15 billion monthly page views and an average of 78 minutes per visit, not to mention the 160,000 new members that sign up ever day. As a result of the Myspace acquisition, Fox Interactive saw a rise in unique users on its digital properties climb from 22 million unique users in August 2005 to 62 million users in December 2005. As for Fox Interactive’s future direction, Levinsohn announced that 2006 will see myspace go mobile, with a vision to replace the mobile telephone number with a myspace screen name. He emphasized the possibilities of being able to connect to such communities 24 hours a day, and said mobile carriers are helping to pave the way by offering innovative new devices, all-you-can-eat mobility plans, 3G networks, and improved marketing. While it is apparent that there is a large shift underway in how digital entertainment content is delivered to viewers and users, navigating this territory still remains a mystery to most. The heads of digital distribution initiatives at the large American networks – including NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX – all agreed that we are in an experimental phase, and the revenues currently generated by these emerging digital distribution platforms are minimal when compared to existing channels. However, the initiatives that are underway today are market experiments to determine what users want – while hopefully ensuring first place in the line-up when the demand takes off. Tempering these initiatives is the importance of preserving existing revenue streams and relationships with viewers, content producers, distributors, advertisers and analysts on Wall Street.

And now the news from NATPE

News | 02/03/2006 5:00 am EST

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