SME: Paul Sagan Keynote

In the opening keynote at Streaming Media East today Akamai CEO Paul Sagan provided a brief history of video on the web over the past decade and pointed to the ability to scale adaptive streaming technology as the tipping point that will enable online video to reach a TV size audiences. According to Sagan we’re entering a period that “we’re going to think of that of the golden age of the internet.”

“Internet video is finally competitive with television, said Sagan, “it is going to change TV the way that newspapers and magazines have been changed…What happened in cable TV, when cable was first starting, cable was the way that people who didn’t have good TV got TV.” Eventually there was “flowering of new biz model once there was a critical mass, i believe the same thing is now happening with online video”

Sagan provided a brief history of the major events in content delivery over the past 10 years:

1999, The event that did not happen: Victorias secret fashion show, problem was that websites couldn’t scale, couldn’t handle flash mobs.

2000, Presidential election was not about video, it was about data online that complemented TV. Started to demonstrate that the internet had more than TV could offer, it just didn’t have video.

2001, MTV video awards you didn’t replace television, you augmented it, incremental revenue from online.

2002, Macworld webcast reached 100,0000 viewers, starting to reach a cable sized audience online.

2003, SARS benefit concert live on Canadian TV, simulcast online programmers started to see it as an effective way to reach an audience.

2004. NASA Mars rover coverage, exclusive online. Web for its own sake, no need to do TV.

2005, YouTube, short form content, quality doesn’t match television but a very large audience.

2006, Torino olympics, internet matches broadcast rights model, still not the same quality.

2007, hulu – longform content shifts online, “major shift in audience where long form content is shifted online and people start to say “why do I need cable TV, isn’t this what I want” this is a huge sea change in the last year or two”

2008, Masters, playoff on Monday, audience shifted from TV to the web, “a critical next threshold had been reached”

2009, Inauguration day, live webcast steals broadcast share – 10 million live viewers online aggregated across various platforms. “The inauguration Captured an HD audience, this year during MMOD, for the first time the majority of the audience was watching the HD experience. This is a sea change that presents a tremendous opportunity for all of us. Tipping point, with scale going over to the internet arena.”

Huge investments in the first and last mile, especially by ISPs at the last mile. Middle mile is the bottleneck. On the argument that the internet can’t scale, “we don’t believe that that’s the case” the way you get there is by summing the last mile. In fact everyone could watch primetime TV online if they watched it on their local network.

You’ve got bandwidth that varies, if you look at the available capacitity it’s not a flat line, variable bitrate, ability to do this at scale is a tremendous breakthrough. Microsoft partnership, Silverlight adaptive streaming (SmoothHD.com) RideTV, Italian TV. Its really interesting when you say how do you blow this out to TV size audiences.

Adobe, FMS 3.5, Dynamic streaming technology. Epic site (Paramount, MGM & LionsGate, full movies online) variable bitrate technology to deliver video quality that is as good as television. Scalability is possible with the right architecture. “That will scale to tens and eventually hundreds of terabytes of data, we’re going to think of that of the golden age of the internet.”