Peace.. Jason.

It seems that this move by Viacom could trigger the unraveling of the current Video strategy of Google – of going after TV networks and locking up their content with promises of ad-revenues ( 500Million to CBS?). It will be interesting to watch Google go after the TV Video/ targeted advertizing market with different strategy .. and different set of deals/acquisitions in coming months…

BTW – lets not forget the rights issues as well. Most of these vast archives can’t be exploited because the lawyers don’t know who owns the rights!!

Obviously Viacom was up to something when the media company asked Google to take down more than 100,000 videos from YouTube a few weeks ago. Apparently Viacom has been talking to Joost, the Internet TV company started be Janus Friis…

well just back in the saddle as they say and making up for lost time. Anyway stay tuned for more stuff. I posted on NTV, in case you are interested. Link

Dramatic Interview Quotes from Netflix Management (very funny)

June 7, 2006 The New York Times What Netflix Could Teach Hollywood http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/07/technology/07leonhardt.html?ei=5090&en=f5560e6361bf4018&ex=1307332800&pagewanted=all Reed Hastings, CEO “Americans’ tastes are really broad,” says Reed Hastings, Netflix’s chief executive. So, while the studios spend their energy promoting bland blockbusters aimed at everyone, Netflix has been catering to what people really want — and helping to keep Hollywood profitable in the process. [30% of Netflix rentals are those 'bland blockbusters']

February 1, 2007 digitalmediawire The DMW Interview with Ted Sarandos http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2007/02/01/the-dmw-interview-with-ted-sarandos-netflix-chief-content-officer Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer “At the end of the day, Blockbuster doesn’t have the ability to change the existing merchandising policies that create demand. They’re purely in the demand fulfillment business, and we’re squarely in the demand creation business.”

February 1, 2007 digitalmediawire The DMW Interview with Ted Sarandos http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2007/02/01/the-dmw-interview-with-ted-sarandos-netflix-chief-content-officer Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer “What Netflix has done an amazing job of is personalized merchandizing, based on billions of movie ratings and incredibly sophisticated algorithms that put the perfect movies in front of every individual subscriber.”

February 15, 2007 indieWIRE World Cinema Web http://www.indiewire.com/movies/2007/02/worldcinemawe.html Steve Swasey, Director of Corporate Communications “We are a bastion of distribution for smaller independent films that wouldn’t see the light of day otherwise.”

February 15, 2007 indieWIRE World Cinema Web http://www.indiewire.com/movies/2007/02/worldcinemawe.html Steve Swasey, Director of Corporate Communications The mainstream audience still wants to watch the films on DVD, Swasey contends, “which will be the preferred delivery method for at least 5-7 years.” [Who thinks mail-order physical DVD will own rental until 2012 to 2014?]

Fast Company.com High-tech Achiever: Netflix At Netflix, the secret sauce is software. From: Issue 99 | October 2005 | Page 48 | By: Jena McGregor … Warehouse workers–those closest to the customer–get free Netflix subscriptions and DVD players… Corporate employees stay happy…with perks like no hard limits on vacation time and free trips to Sundance each January. … http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/99/open_customer-netflix.html

The ‘old’ media, the ones who own the content, can get as old as they want, they still are the kings.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves over the all powerful wizard of oz (google). He wasn’t so powerful after all.

There’s the real entertainment/content producing media and then there’s the klingons, you know the stuff that hangs from your, well you know. It can be wiped away if it gets too irritating.

Or is google the second coming of Christ? Please.

I hope MTV does make a comeback. Competition is good!

Jeff’s argument would suggest that the Internet should be a “free” or “promotional” place, whereas the broadcast world is where you really monetize the content, which is really a backwards way of looking at the future of content on the Internet. If that really is how things play out then I guess anyone planning on actually monetizing video content should hang up their spurs if they don’t own a TV network.

But back to your point. Trying to prevent the content’s access on the Internet would be dumb. But wanting to be paid is not.

As Fred Wilson often discusses, they are microchunking, freeing, syndicating, and monetizing. Now perhaps Fred was referring to some currently non-existent way to syndicate in which YouTube could run Viacom’s ads in some automated way, but what Viacom is doing, is, I think, about as close as you can get today. And it seems that they were even willing to fully syndicate the raw content with YouTube, but YouTube has not been willing to track (using filtering) and pay a sufficient fee.

Bottom line. Viacom 1 – Blogosphere 0.

if MTV can re-assert itself as a primary portal for quality videos/music (detaching oneself from personal musical preferences for a moment) then this will certainly work.

the sheer volume of poor-quality dross on youtube has reached the stage where one has to question its long-term relevance.

youtube’s true destiny seems to be nothing more than becoming an optional outlet for “you’ve been framed” types of ‘comedy-accident’ (usually staged) video clips.

quality videos (including those which are not music based) need niche outlets, so the viewer knows they’re not going to encounter the 90% rubbish scenario one may encounter on youtube, more often than not.

and the number of times one now encounters “content removed for copyright reasons” compromises its effectiveness/relevance even more now – i believe the rest of the media world is working in concert (subconsciously or not) to ensure youtube never reaches its desired status as #1 video/media portal.

interesting times.