GigaOM » Ted Turner

Kill Hollywood? You’re 100 years too late

Steven E. de Souza and Sunil Rajaraman — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 20:00:53 +0000

A few weeks ago, we both read an article by Paul Graham, rallying Silicon Valley to “kill Hollywood.” And indeed, many companies in Silicon Valley are trying to free the entertainment industry from Hollywood’s death grip. But anyone who wants to “kill Hollywood” deserves a history lesson in its tenacious will to live.

Hollywood has risen from the dead time and again, and it will continue to do so no matter who tries to destroy it. Let’s take a look a closer look at Hollywood’s many reincarnations.

Hollywood 1.1 (Thomas Edison), c. 1900-1913

Root business: Manufacturing cameras and other film equipment. In the beginning, films weren’t so much entertainment as fodder for Thomas Edison’s New Jersey-based patent and hardware business, Edison Manufacturing Company. Edison entered the content business simply to create demand for his projectors and cameras (he owned most of the patents). Just as today’s technology moguls use every trick in the book to crush nascent competitors, Edison similarly used patent law to drive out upstarts, whose non-Edison equipment violated Edison’s legal stranglehold. Early filmmakers fled the East Coast for Southern California as much for the distance from Edison’s patent enforcers as for the sunshine.
Target demographic: Professionals and prosumers
Killed: When Edison Manufacturing Company’s patents expired in 1913
Driven by: Hardware and infrastructure

Hollywood 1.2 (Adolph Zukor), 1913-1949

Root business: Real estate. Zuckor was the first to bring together production and distribution, setting the stage for today’s studio system.
Target demographic: Mass audience
Killed: By the United States vs. Paramount Pictures court decision (1949), banning “block booking” – the practice of selling multiple movies at once to theaters as a package
Driven by: Content

Hollywood 1.3 (Lew Wasserman), 1949-1964

Root business: Advertising and promotion. In the 1950s, former agent Lew Wasserman turned television into the largest portion of the Hollywood promotion machine — advertising sales fueled Hollywood 1.3’s motor. Broadcasters competed for higher ad dollars from sponsors, whose only metric was the number of eyeballs watching the shows. What remained of the motion picture business became the summer blockbuster (“Ben-Hur,” Cinerama films, “Jaws”, etc.) and foreign fare.
Target demographic: Couch potatoes and cineastes
Killed: Still alive, if not robust, and coexisting with subsequent iterations of Hollywood (sort of like when Neanderthals walked the earth with Homo sapiens)
Driven by: Content

Hollywood 1.4 (VHS), 1975-present

Root business: Consumer electronics. The ability for consumers to watch content at home was allegedly going to destroy the motion picture industry. And in a preview of SOPA and PIPA, the studios tried and failed to have VCRs outlawed or crippled. In the end, the VCR became Hollywood’s main source of revenue for decades. A lot of crappy straight-to-video movies were made as a result, pushing quality content to the back burner.
Target demographic: Consumers
Killed: Still alive, though in its dotage
Driven by: Hardware and infrastructure

Hollywood 1.5 (Ted Turner), 1976-present

Root business: Cable. Turner’s realization that a physically wired nation offered an end run around expensive VHF licenses seems like a no-brainer today. “Narrowcasting” replaced broadcasting, but narrowcasting had its own poison pill. Smaller slices of the pie meant less money to spend on the ingredients for great programming. This began a race to the bottom in production costs. Compare the typical Hollywood 1.2 soundstage (say, a routine MGM musical with Technicolor consultants, lavish costumes and giant camera cranes) vs. the Jerry Springer set.
Target demographic: Advertisers
Killed: Still kicking, but YouTube and other user-generated content platforms are slowing it down
Driven by: Hardware and infrastructure

Hollywood 1.6 (The rise of Netflix), 1997-present

Root business: Streaming video. Worried that Netflix was going to destroy the industry, the studios and mainstream Hollywood were up in arms when it debuted. Instead, even though streaming revenue passed DVD revenue in 2010, the industry has come back stronger than ever. Hollywood proved it has the whip hand when it pulled a few streaming licenses from Netflix and sent its stock into a tailspin.
Target demographic: Consumers
Killed: Not yet, but individual content creators (HBO via HBO Go, for example) still control Netflix’s fate
Driven by: Content

Hollywood 2.0 (The YouTube generation), 2010-present

Root business: User-generated content
Target demographic: Peers
Killed/shelf life: TBD. In this iteration of Hollywood, anyone with a Canon 550D can — theoretically — make a decent independent movie. Narrowcasting is going to a whole new level with fans creating entire web shows devoted to their favorite stars’ performances. The race to the bottom in production costs continues, but quality content remains sparse. Perhaps unintentionally, the YouTube generation is proving that quality content matters, and Hollywood productions trump home productions.
Driven by: Content

The Phoenix is the architect of its own immolation, and — if past is prologue — things are about to get hotter for Hollywood. But what will emerge will — once again — be a newer and stronger beast. Ironically, the very thing that makes YouTube and other UGC sites fantastic may be their undoing: rights issues. Filmmakers are willing to do whatever it takes to make it big — including giving away content for free, or insanely cheap, for the chance to be produced. That model is not sustainable, and the ultimate beneficiary is — surprise, once again – Hollywood. Hollywood controls distribution, and if quality content comes cheaper, all Hollywood is doing is lowering its cost basis, and getting more filmmakers to compete for access to its distribution.

Until Silicon Valley gets into the content business en masse, which it likely can’t (due in large part to talent issues), Hollywood will retain its power. Netflix has made strides here, but YouTube, Amazon and other upstarts have a long way to go if they want to change 100 years of ingrained consumer behavior.

With credits that include “Die Hard 1” and “Die Hard 2,” “48 Hours,” “Commando” and “Tomb Raider,” Steven E. de Souza is one of a handful of American screenwriters whose movies have grossed more than $2 billion worldwide. He has also produced more than one hundred hours of network television.

Sunil Rajaraman is the co-founder and CEO of Scripted.com, a marketplace for businesses to hire freelance writers. Scripted began as an offshoot of the popular screenwriting and crowdsourcing site, Scripped.com.

Image courtesy of Flickr user greyloch.

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Ted Turner Officially Turns On New Mexico Solar Plant

Katie Fehrenbacher — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 18:00:16 +0000

CNN founder, and “Mouth of the South,” Ted Turner has officially turned on his jointly-owned, 30-MW, solar farm in New Mexico. While Turner said last month at the World Climate Summit in Cancun, Mexico, that the plant was in the process of being turned on, in a release from Turner and co-owner, power company Southern Company, Monday morning, the duo say the so-called Cimarron Solar Facility “has begun commercial operation.”

The $100 million solar facility is next to Turner’s Vermejo Park Ranch in northern New Mexico, and took about a year to build. Southern Company owns 90 percent of the farm, while Turner owns 10 percent, and the facility will supply power to the electricity co-op, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association. The project will use panels from First Solar, and First Solar will build the project.

Turner said in Cancun about turning on the facility: “We’re pretty excited about it.” He explained his partnership with power company Southern Company: “I’ve experimented with getting on the inside and working with them rather than opposing them on things.” Southern Company is one of the larger users of coal in the U.S., while Turner is a long-time environmentalist.

But Turner, of course, is a businessman interested in making money from his clean power investments. If you remember a couple of years ago, Turner sold his solar developer company, Turner Renewable Energy, to First Solar for $34.3 million, in a combination of First Solar common stock and cash. The deal was a surprising early exit for the investor in the solar space back in 2007. The Cinmarron project is the first deal to come out of a partnership between Turner Renewable Energy and Southern Company.

During Turner’s onstage interview in Cancun, Turner said he loved the solar panels he installed on his farm 25 years ago to electrify the fences so the bison wouldn’t get out, and he likes to go out and rub them (seriously, he said that). He also made the comparison between building solar plants and building coal plants: “Nobody’s been killed doing it, which is an important thing if you are a miner. No one went underground; it’s all on the surface of the desert.” Turner is the largest private land owner in the U.S., and will be able to use his land as a place for solar farms.

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Ted Turner Turning on His New Mexico Solar Plant

Katie Fehrenbacher — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 19:16:50 +0000

CNN founder, and “Mouth of the South,” Ted Turner said this weekend at the World Climate Summit in Cancun, Mexico, that his jointly owned, 30-MW solar farm in New Mexico is being turned on “right now.” The $100 million solar facility, which was built in partnership with Southern Company and is next to Turner’s Vermejo Park Ranch in northern New Mexico, took about a year to build, and the duo has been looking to switch it on before the end of 2010.

Turner said about turning on the facility: “We’re pretty excited about it.” He explained his partnership with power company Southern Company, which owns 90 percent of the farm, while Turner owns 10 percent, that “I’ve experimented with getting on the inside and working with them rather than opposing them on things.” Southern Company is one of the larger users of coal in the U.S., while Turner is a long-time environmentalist.

The so-called Southern Turner Cimarron 1 Solar Project will sell the power over the next 30 years to local electrical COOP Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association in New Mexico, said Turner, and the COOP will also provide the needed transmission lines. The project will use panels from First Solar, and First Solar will build the project.

If you remember a couple of years ago, Turner sold his solar developer company Turner Renewable Energy to First Solar for $34.3 million, in a combination of First Solar common stock and cash. The deal was a surprising early exit for the investor in the solar space back in 2007. The Cinmarron 1 project is the first deal to come out of a partnership between Turner Renewable Energy and Southern Company.

Nobody’s been killed doing it, which is an important thing if you are a miner. No one went underground; it’s all on the surface of the desert.

True enough. Turner is also the largest private land owner in the U.S., and will be able to use his land as a place for solar farms.

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Ted Turner: I’d Be An Energy Entrepreneur

Katie Fehrenbacher — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 15:38:19 +0000

Media mogul, environmentalist and so-called “Mouth of the South” Ted Turner says if he were to start over now as an entrepreneur, he’d work in clean energy. Turner, who’s been investing in solar for the past few years, made the remarks at the Google Zeitgeist event held in Phoenix, Ariz. this week in an on-stage interview with Tom Brokaw.

Turner’s explanation for his optimism in clean energy?

“Because everybody’s gotta have it and quick. That’s one of the things we’ve failed to do, at our peril. The sun shines right there waiting to be tapped; we just need to capture and distribute it and our problems are over.” (see video, 1 hour 24 minutes or so)

Turner doesn’t have to really start over to get into clean power, and in fact, he could already be considered a seasoned solar entrepreneur. In late 2007, Turner sold his investment, Turner Renewable Energy, to First Solar for $34.3 million, in a combination of common stock of First Solar and cash. Earlier this year, Turner also announced that he’d partnered with power company Southern Company to collaborate on utility-scale solar projects.

At the Zeitgeist event this week, Turner said that he, with a group of partners, was backing a 250-acre, $100 million solar array in New Mexico that could power 9,000 homes. “I’m excited to finally get into alternative energy in a major way. And I want to make a little money, too,” said Turner.

Turner also mentioned his close relationship with oil-baron-turned-wind-and-natural-gas-advocate T. Boone Pickens during the onstage conversation. “We agree on the energy situation on most points,” said Turner, in reference to Pickens.

Turner has been a long-time environmentalist and reiterated during the interview that “global climate change is greatest problem humanity has ever faced.” Turner, who founded CNN, also said that news and journalism play an important role in helping deliver accurate information to people: “We’re not going to make it through this difficult time without solid information.”

Check out the video interview below:

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The Real Reason Google Is Buying Wind Power

Another Reason Why Ted Turner Likes Natural Gas

Katie Fehrenbacher — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:57:49 +0000

T. Boone Pickens, former oil baron turned wind and natural gas advocate, and “Mouth of the South” Ted Turner, media mogul and environmentalist, have a few obvious things in common: a heck-of-a-lot-of-money, a dose of Southern charm and worldly ambition. But recently, the two have also developed a shared love of natural gas as a cleaner burning fuel option for power plants and vehicles, and on Sunday the duo teamed up to stump for the fuel in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

Picken’s economic interests in natural gas — through both his hedge fund BP Capital, which upped its interests in natural gas producers last week, and his stake in natural gas vehicle distribution company Clean Energy Fuels — have been well documented. But I hadn’t previously heard much about Ted Turner’s natural gas investments. He has expressed interest in funding cleantech companies, but the only investment I had heard about was when he bought, and subsequently sold, a solar installer to First Solar.

But then I remembered, ah-ha, Turner has long been one of the largest land holders in the U.S. And what have we recently discovered is plentiful — an estimated 2,000 trillion cubic feet according to Pickens and Turner — and under some large portions of “mid-continent” land in the U.S.? Natural gas.

According to the LandReport, Turner was the country’s largest landowner in 2008 with 2 million acres, and including international land holdings he has amassed land that’s bigger than the state of Delaware. The LandReport quotes from Turner’s published memoirs “Call Me Ted,” specifically about his ranch land that has valuable natural gas reserves:

Then between 1992 and 1996, I bought three large ranches in New Mexico. The biggest, Vermejo Park, is nearly 600,000 acres, and together these three ranches cover more than one million acres. . . . Vermejo sits on top of valuable natural gas that is being extracted by an energy company that has the rights. They do this work very carefully, extracting the gas while protecting the ranch’s beauty and wildlife.

I don’t claim to know how much of Turner’s land has natural gas resources and Picken’s and Turner’s interests in natural gas don’t necessarily mean that natural gas won’t make a decent transition fuel to a lower carbon economy (though, as a fossil fuel, it’s a limited resource and still emits carbon). But it’s worth keeping in mind that the two businessmen have more at stake in this than their stated concerns about creating a “cleaner and more secure future.” If anyone has more details about any of Ted Turner’s natural gas assets (we’ve just given this a quick look) let us know.

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AIMS Power Slim Line Inverter to the rescue

James Kendrick — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 22:19:52 +0000

Today is our third day without power and the gear batteries started failing one by one. There’s only so long you can run before needing to charge those batteries and that was today. I remembered getting a power inverter for running gadgets in my car and I rummaged around and found it. It is the Slim Line Inverter with USB Power Port by AIMS Power. The Slim Line inverter is a tiny gadget in its own right, only 3.25 x 4.75 x .75 inches and weighing 6 ounces. It is designed to convert the 12 volts of DC to 120 volts of AC power to let you run your gear in the car. I am impressed with this little dandy so far. The inverter is the little silver box in the lower left of the picture at right. You can gauge the size by the white Apple adapter to its right.

I plugged the inverter into the cigarette lighter in my car and the MacBook Pro adapter into the inverter. It was then a simple matter to plug the MBP adapter into the notebook and let it charge away. The inverter has a fan with a vent so it’s important not to block it so it won’t overheat. I’ve only been charging the MBP for about 20 minutes and it’s over 25% charged according to the LED indicator on the battery. I’m going to let it charge it up completely and then charge the second battery which will provide me with about 7 hours of new life for the Mac. The only downside to the inverter is the single outlet so you can only use it to charge or power one device at a time. It does also have a USB port for charging phones and PDAs which is handy though.

Specs:

ACoutput power – 120V
Wave form – modified sine wave
DCinput voltage – 10-15V
Lowbattery shutdown – 9.5V +/- 0.5V
High battery shutdown – 15V
Frequency – 60Hz
Noload current draw – <0.7amps
Over temp protection – 140 F
USBPower output – DC 5V/800mA
Dimensions (LxWxH) – 4.75" x 3.25" x .75"
Unit weight – 6 ounces

This inverter was supplied by the folks at Deskinacar who make a whole system designed to convert your car into a mobile office. I’ll be covering their main products soon.

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Bill Joy, Green Tech Investing Trumps Internet

Katie Fehrenbacher — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:53:26 +0000

When Bill Joy was hired by venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Paul Kedrosky wondered if Joy would be a Bob Metcalfe (a high-profile person that moved to VC late and fits the job) or a Stewart Alsop (a high-profile person that moved to VC late and doesn’t fit the job). We’re not ready to declare his venture record a wild success (or Bob Metcalfe’s for that matter), but Joy is definitely in the Metcalfe distinction when it comes to following greentech opportunities.

At a Lux Research conference in Cambridge, Mass., Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems (JAVA) and an Internet entrepreneur, was reported as saying that he is staying away from most Internet investments and focusing on the growing innovations to fight climate change. Referring to an oft-quoted phrase from KPCB’s co-founder, Eugene Kleiner, Joy said (via CNET):

…there is a time when panic is the appropriate response. And I think we should go into a panic — not only (because) the scale of the problem but also the economic opportunity that becoming more efficient in our use of energy gives to us.”

KPCB’s Ray Lane referred to the same use of “panic” in a speech he gave to a solar convention last month. Joy joined KPCB in 2005, and over the past several years the venture firm has invested in clean technologies like Altra Biofuels, Amyris Biotechnologies, Ausra, Bloom Energy, GreatPoint Energy, Mascoma and Miasolé.

There’s been a growing trend of high-profile Internet and telecom investors shifting focus to greentech. Like Joy referred to in his talk, and Ted Turner and Ray Lane did in their speeches, the opportunities for investing in energy infrastructure and climate change innovations are massive and only just being seriously looked at.

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Top 10 Must-have Firefox Extensions from Lifehacker

Anne Zelenka — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 22:06:29 +0000

Thanks to Gina and the others at Lifehacker for rounding up their top 10 Firefox extensions. But they put them all on separate pages! Here’s their list in easy-to-read format with my own brief descriptions. For more detail, check out Lifehacker’s gallery and their comments, where you’ll get a bunch of other ideas for ways to customize Firefox for your own workflow and needs.

1. Foxmarks bookmarks synchronizer. Syncs your bookmarks across multiple computers by copying them to its servers (or your own server).

2. Adblock advertising blocker. Eliminates images, iframes, flash movies and other ads using your customized configuration based on URLs and wildcards.

3. DownThemAll! download manager. Try this instead of Firefox’s built-in download tool.

4. Tab Mix Plus tab manager. Allows stacking of rows of tabs, permatabs, merging windows of tabs, and renaming tabs.

5. ScrapBook web clippings library. Clip, store, and annotate snippets of web pages or entire web pages.

6. Greasemonkey web page customizer. Runs JavaScript by URL to make web pages work the way YOU want instead of how the web page designer and developer thought you wanted.

7. FireFTP FTP client. Conveniently transfer files between an FTP server and your computer.

8. Firebug web development tool. Lets you see what’s happening on a web page while it’s running — only for web developers, really, but a must-have tool for them.

9. CustomizeGoogle Google enhancer. Enhances search results and removes ads, adds links to the WayBack Machine Internet archive, hides the GMail spam count (who needs to know how much spam they have?), and other niceties.

10. AutoCopy clipboard helper. Transfers text to the clipboard right after you highlight it.

Personally, I love Performancing for writing blog post drafts and Zotero for gathering and organizing information about whatever I’m researching. I also like the del.icio.us Bookmarks extension from Yahoo.

What’s your favorite Firefox add on?

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Tax, Tax Baby

Jackson West — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 18:27:03 +0000

Everyone’s, uh, ‘favorite’ Dallas MC, Vanilla Ice, has turned his, um, ‘fame’ into a gig pitching a UGC contest sponsored by TurboTax. Upload your verse about taxes and you get this year’s installent of TurboTax for free. There’s also a $25,000 grand prize for the best performance. Nothing says “keepin’ it real” like exploring the intracacies of amortizing the value of stocked inventory in musical rhyme.

Not since “The Rappin’ Granny” have West African music and poetry traditions been so mercilessly abused. It’s so bad, it actually makes me nostalgic for the old Vanilla Ice. Also, I have a feeling if Vint Cerf or Tim Berners-Lee sees this, they may wonder if this whole Interweb thing was such a good idea after all.

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Mighty Mouse Review

Dan Lurie — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 22:34:10 +0000

I was able to stop by one of my local Apple Stores today and check out the Mighty Mouse. In the interest of fairness, I tried multiple mice, just incase one of them was a bad apple. Despite the fact that it was released over a week ago, I am none-the-less delighted to bring you my belated review of Apple’s new Mighty Mouse! Let’s dive right in.

The tactile feedback from the scroll ball is surprisingly tangible, and very pleasant. Although Apple claims that the only feedback provided by the mouse emanates from a small speaker within the mouse, I would swear that there is at lest some mechanical feedback system, as I could feel “clicks” at very minute increments as I used the ball. I must say, that of all of the mice I have used with scrolling devices, the scroll ball on the Mighty Mouse is not only the most innovative, but the most fun and pleasurable to use. Driving home, my fingers were craving more of the clicky-scrolly action!

The largest problem I had with the Might Mouse was the touch sensitive buttons. While I had no problem using each button independently of each other, trying to use the right click while my hand rested normally on the mouse was totally impossible. The problem stems from the fact that Mighty Mouse registers a left-click as default when the mouse is clicked, unless only the right touch sensitive area is registering input. That is, one has to make sure that their pointer finger is not touching the left-click when they try to right click. For a select few, who rest their pointer finger on the scroll ball/wheel normally will have no problem. However, for the majority of users, who rest their pointer finger on the left side of the mouse, it is really a pain to have to lift up ones finger just to right click.

Another feature that sets this mouse apart from others is the two side buttons. Although many other mice on the market have side buttons, none have buttons that are as seamlessly integrated as those on the Mighty Mouse. Unfortunately, design is the only thing these buttons have going for them. One thing I must point out before I discuss these buttons any further is the fact that I found great amounts of variation in the amount of pressure required to activate these buttons. One of the mice I tried had such stiff buttons that I was only able to activate them by squeezing as hard as I could, while on another the buttons could be activated by a slight pinch. No matter how hard I had to press, I found the process of using these buttons consistently uncomfortable. When using the buttons, one has two options; either to pinch with their thumb and ring finger (which requires much effort, but does not require them to move the position of their hand greatly), or to pinch with their thumb and middle finger (which requires far less effort, but requires a total repositioning of their hand). After 5 minutes of using these buttons, my ring finger began hurting (not badly, but one’s fingers should not hurt from using a mouse).

All in all, I can’t bring myself to recommend the Mighty Mouse. Despite the fact that it comes from Apple, and that the scroll ball is totally awesome, these facts in no way out-weigh the fact that Apple made some pretty serious mistakes when designing the other parts of the mouse. It would have been better to use traditional mechanical buttons as opposed to touch sensitive areas. Apple has always been on the forefront of technology, and historically they have made mostly good decisions about the implementation of new technologies, but with Mighty Mouse, Apple missed the mark.

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