iTunes and video iPods: Where’s the fire?
NBC’s divorce from the iTunes store is official. The TV content that made up something like 40% of video sales has left the iAuditorium, as foreshadowed last fall when NBC Universal and Steve Jobs went to war over the network’s desire to test $2.99 pricing for some of its shows.
That primetime content now can be found on NBC.com, the new NBC Universal-Fox project Hulu and via a couple of other routes. For free.
Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey ponders the fate of video on iTunes in an eyebrow-raising piece posted on CNET. Interesting not only for its analysis, but also in the way it reflects big media’s linear thinking.
The distribution model that made the iPod, iTunes and related products so successful in music can’t be ported over or adapted to video, he notes. Blame it on the Hollywood studios:
“Most of them have still not agreed to sell new releases through iTunes — either from fear of building an Apple monster, or because of exclusive commitments to other partners in paid TV or elsewhere. That’s why, despite the back catalog of movies that Paramount, MGM, and Lionsgate feature there, the result is a stunning lack of movie content for purchase.”
Certainly the amount of content on iTunes is an issue. Output deals always are fluid; the stuff comes and goes. You still can’t buy the Beatles via iTunes.
But this think piece wanders off with the interesting idea that without these movies (or TV shows), “the value of an expensive video device is dramatically lessened.” Wonder how many video iPod owners would go along with that statement.
One commenter on a Silicon Alley Insider post had this to say about NBC and iTunes:
I have purchased numerous NBC television shows via iTunes and while I have thoroughly enjoyed them (especially because they are ad-free), I will not be pursuing that content via other distribution methods. … I watched NBC content because of iTunes/iPod, I didn’t buy my iPod because of NBC!
The Forrester analyst wrote, “Unfortunately for consumers, the movie industry won’t let you rip DVDs to iTunes.” OK, but not many consumers give a rat’s ass about what Hollywood wants — just as they weren’t concerned with the desires of their slower cousins in the music business.
Whatever it takes to make most studio content transferable and portable will become routine, just as MP3-related software made music-copying such a breeze. Once the distribution patterns are set, the hacking will go mainstream.
Any kid with some tech savvy can copy movies or TV shows on DVD to the various video iPods — just as the public has done for a decade with their CDs. (Let’s just say the homebound Apple TV is over.)
Just because you can’t download “Transformers” from iTunes doesn’t mean fanboys all over the world aren’t running around with a copy in their back pockets.
Illegal? Whatever. In the court of common sense, piracy is when the content is stolen via, say, BitTorrent — but not when a product that’s been paid for is made portable by the owner.
So it’s hard to buy McQuivey’s (interesting) notion that the Apple video portables are going to be expensive trash now that iTunes lost “Lost.” The real barriers to portable video proliferation are the significant storage issues, as the piece points out.
As for the iTunes store, Jobs and Co. have to make with more video content we want to buy or rent. Shouldn’t be too hard in this video-saturated world. Bet on Jobs.
There are additional obvious things Apple can do, like changing from a download-to-own model to a pay-per-view movie model, a strategy that Hollywood has embraced and that also solves long-term storage problems for consumers. However, the real innovation comes if and when Apple funnels more Web video — both professional and user-generated — into iTunes. Envision ubiquitous “download this to iTunes/iPod” links …
Sounds about right.
Suggest you check out “Perspective: Why Apple can’t do to video what it did to music.”
(BTW I own some Apple stock.)
Related content: Hulu: Working With CBS, Viacom After All
NBC’s latest YouTube defection a power play
NBC’s decision to pull its content from YouTube — in order to promote its upcoming Hulu video hut — is another blow to the sunshine paradigm in which visual entertainment is collected at one massively popular freebie destination.
Old media may seem dumb, but in the long run they’re not going to allow an indie to frolick with profits from their massive investments. Eventually, they assume, motivated viewers will seek out the content they want, wherever it’s posted, especially if it’s free. Grazers and samplers are collateral damage.
The effects of NBC Universal, News Corp., Viacom and other major media pulling back from YouTube include a clipping of the power that’s accrued so quickly to the user-driven video grab bag. The dark suits would like nothing more than to see YouTube reduced to nothing more than the home of Starwars Kid and foaming Pepsi fountains.
Let’s look at Google (which bought YouTube about this time last year). For better or worse, this college student startup only needed a half dozen years to became the default location for online concent searches. Its older and less imaginative competitors were reduced to fighting over search scaps. Google’s awesome power in the Internet world is of increasing concern as online content providers (including you, me and NBC) bow and scrape to keep its search engine happy. Google is about a half step away from a de facto monopoly.
No one in the media business is interested in seeing YouTube become to video what Google is to search.
NBC told YouTube on Friday that the content was coming down. An NBC Uni rep told newteevee.com that YouTube was merely a “promotional” service. NBC should know.
Here’s Wendy Davis of MediaPost on the love-hate history of NBC and YouTube:
The marks the latest wrinkle in a relationship that has had several ups and downs since YouTube launched. When the “Saturday Night Live” skit “Lazy Sunday” appeared on the video-sharing site in late 2005, the clip helped catapult the site to national prominence and also became a viral sensation. But the clip drew the wrath of NBC executives, who insisted that they wanted to stream it from their own site and, in February 2006, demanded that YouTube remove it.
Eventually, however, NBC not only settled its differences with YouTube, but forged a promotional agreement with the site, using it as a direct channel to viewers.
A YouTube statement noted the success of NBC’s promotional efforts there and hoped for more interaction down the road.
NBC recently wrassled with Apple over control and price of the network’s paid content, turning its attentions to Amazon’s Unbox.
So the network now has alienated the active youthful communities of iTunes and YouTube. Power plays are expensive in this day and age.
What’s on the Internet tonight?
Last 100’s Daniel Langendorf asks himself: “Is the Internet the fifth major TV network?”
I figure we’ve had a powerful fifth network for years: HBO, home of “The Sopranos”
But if we’re ruling out pay cable and The CW (yes, let’s), this is a perfectly legitimate academic just-for-grins rhetorical question.
Here Daniel gets good and worked up over some pop content that’s caught fire.
I’m excited to “tune in” to an Internet “channel” like MySpace or YouTube to catch the season finales of shows like “LonelyGirl15″ and “Prom Queen,” just like I was anxious to see what happened in the network finales of “Lost” and “Heroes.” I’ve even caught myself during the day wondering, “What’s on the Internet tonight?”
All things TV eventually will be distributed via the Internet or its successor anyway, but there you have a fun concept to debate over a couple of Red Bulls. What did we talk about before the Internet, anyway?
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The television empire strikes back
“The noise and the hand-wringing that have come because of the launch of companies such as Joost, and from companies such as Google, Microsoft and Apple claiming that your PC is the next television, are wrong.” So says Michael Kokernak in MediaPost’s Video Insider column.
Kokernak points out, correctly, that the television industry is fighting back. The networks and their software-hardware allies are pouring money into redefining that medium for the digital age. Nielsen, my former employer, has been under tremendous pressure to greatly improve accountability in its performance measurements for TV advertisers. TiVo changed the TV picture forever, and each day offers previews of the type of interactive techniques we’ll be seeing for direct marketing.
Kokernak adds:
With the move to digital in 2009, along with the arrival of new technology systems that will build on the legacy of television advertising, the advantages that television on the Internet has for advertisers will evaporate. So, beyond security problems and having to pretend watching “Heroes” on a small computer monitor is just as good as watching it on an high-definition TV, new “television-killing” Internet portals have nothing that television will not be able to offer advertisers in only a short time.
