The HBO of Online Video?
There is a great conversation going on over at Kfir Pravda’s blog in response to the question “Can Someone Please Create The HBO Of Online Video?” My thoughts on the topic are as follows.
The HBO of online can not be done until the content is so good and so well done that it trumps just about everything else. And to do this and promote it requires more money than just about everyone (other than NewSite) has.
Good content costs money and has a TV size audience. HBO has good content because they pay for high production values and the talent that requires. And they charge users for it. You can’t overnight create a subscription model online video distribution platform without Hollywood talent behind it without a lot of money.
Programs online are forced to be a lot more lean, and the artistry that goes into large scale productions on HBO are an entirely different level. Don’t discount cost by thinking of online video versus television content creation as two separate things. In the quality realm video is video and story rules assuming you do production right.
When you are able to watch something delivered over IP on your HD set in your living room in the next 5-10 years, you won’t care whether it came from g14 or HBO. But HBO will still have a hand up in promotion, and unless you can pay people with talent, HBO will lead on that as well.
There is a groovy hippie feeling in some circles that new media should not be done for the money. It’s great to do it for the love, but it still takes money to produce something good. If I work hard creating something great, I expect there to be a value exchange such that people will be willing to pay to see it. And if not then the work I am doing is probably not worthy of HBO.
This is why people who shoot something great on a low budget spend tens of thousands of dollars fixing in post what they couldn’t afford to do during a shoot.
If you put enough love dedication and patience into something shot on a 1 chip camera you may create compelling content. But eventually it needs a color correct and a sound mix at a minimum to compete with what is high quality from a purely technical standpoint.
The bottom line is, whether you’re “new media” or “old media” in the end what is created is all just media - and it is in competition with all other content for people’s time.
August 23rd, 2007 at 9:54 am
Thanks a lot for this post!
an open question is if we need to compete with TV - or create something new.
Don’t have the answer yet, but thinking about it…
August 23rd, 2007 at 11:15 am
Ben,
New Media folks shouldn’t go into producing online video content for the money, because that’s akin to someone choosing to be an actor because they think it’s a good financial career move. It’s just not realistic. It’s a bad business decision. I’m not saying that New Media content producers shouldn’t try to make money from the content they create, as long as they are realistic about it.
It’s funny, because the prevailing sentiment I hear from online content creators is that they are trying to be different from Hollywood/”old media” - in content, quality, and practices. Online content and broadcast content are, by nature, two separate things. There’s nothing wrong with that, there’s room for both, and sometimes they cross over. But I feel like what you’re arguing encourages the online video realm to move towards Hollywood practices. If that’s the case, then they should all start shooting film, yes? Because in the quality realm, video isn’t just video with all of the available formats and it certainly isn’t film.
I think that if you’re trying to produce content for the online (or any) realm, you need to be realistic about what you are able to accomplish, or what you should try to accomplish given the current limitations of the medium. If you don’t have money to produce your content, in my mind, that forces you to be more creative with what you can do and how you can do things. Or it should, anyways.
Good content doesn’t always have to cost money to produce. It doesn’t have to have a TV size audience to be good or successful either. Those are marketing strategies that studios have fed people so effectively through the years that they are accepted as truth. But there are many examples of shows (both online and broadcast) proving this otherwise, especially with the internet leveling the playing field and changing the way we market, distribute, and even create entertainment. Yes, there will always be some money involved, but if your story is good and solid, you don’t always need a ton of money to create quality content and get some sort of audience.
Ben, thanks for highlighting my points on your blog! I must admit, this is the first time that anyone has ever called me a hippie.
It weirds me out. Maybe I should have said “passion” instead of “love”. I will pull a Colbert though and just assume that, per your writing, g14 will be on the same level as HBO within 5-10 years (except in promotion/marketing - DAMN YOU TIME WARNER!). And that’s a great compliment…thank you. 
Matthew
August 24th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
I needed a few days to think some more on this - the question of whether the internet could sustain a high-quality hub of original programing is a good one. I think the crux is what Kfir asks:
Whether “we need to compete with TV - or create something new.
My belief is that while at the moment producers can hide behind a 400k bitrate, that won’t last long. TV has the money to do better than that and they already are. So if new media producers are going to stay relevant they should create content to compete on every level.
October 29th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
As an online content producer who does produce programming that could be on TV, I can say the only thing preventing us from making money is the ability to guarantee traffic.
If I can get 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 views a week I can directly approach an ad agency out there. We offer a very affordable sponsorship model (because our costs are way lower than TV or Hollywood) while the content TYPE and QUALITY is the same. (No 1 chip cameras here. We are a studio and shoot in 3ccd, sometimes HD and use professional sound equipment etc. BUT thats because that’s the business we’re in and we already HAVE all that stuff.)
So what you get with a producer like us, is high quality TV style programming without the huge production costs, meaning I can make a profit.
HOW? Our model has been to partner with high traffic websites and get guaranteed exposure/placement. If this can be done, sites that ‘revenue share’ will be history for high quality productions like ours.
By high quality we’re talking about anything you might normally see on TV: sitcoms, reality, games hows, dramas…Our newest project TheJury.TV premiers in March 2008 is not only an internet-only program but its interactive. Courtroom dram shot in the style of law and order.
So remember this: quality content + traffic partnerships = monetization directly from advertisers.
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