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As EVP-programming and products for AOL, Jim Bankoff lives at what he calls the “intersection of software and content.” He’s also at the corner of subscription and wide open, part of the team creating the broadband portal to AOL’s present and future. To get a sense of his portfolio, his schedule Tuesday included a panel on the future of content at OMMA East and a release party for Sheryl Crow’s new CD. AOL.com co-hosted the party for Crow, who’s part of the upcoming AOL.com ad campaign. The description I got of the evening included partying the night away …
During our 30-minute interview last Thursday, he casually mentioned AOL.com’s beta tag coming off as a milestone of sorts. It’s not the most meaningful milestone given that Bankoff never treated it like a beta and doesn’t view AOL.com as something that can or should be finished. We talked about his take on programming, Network Live (the next live event is Green Day Oct. 11 in LA), Live 8, the fall launch of TMZ.com, search, portal strategy and more.
() Excerpts below. You can download the audio here (6.5 MB).
How do you approach programming? We actually think about audiences to start with, whether it’s audience demographics or topical passion areas we think about how can we can fill the needs of various consumer groups. We judge our success on various metrics that are usage based or frequency activity…. It’s kind of a soup of various metrics. It all starts out with asking ourselves who are our consumers, what are our consumers looking for, how can we make their experience better, how can we add value to their connected experience.
Do you have a goal of how much original content you want versus content from other sources?It may surprise you but we actually don’t. I don’t think of it necessarily in those terms. I really view it more as how can we satisfy consumer demand? … You can take content that exists and put it into an interactive context and in doing so make it an original experience. That’s what we really seek to do in everything we do is create a unique, a differentiated, an original experience by taking whether it’s exclusive or non-exclusive content and placing it into an interactive context enabling people to search, enabling people to personalize, enabling people to share, filling programming gaps that currently exist and have been abandoned, perhaps by other mainstream media, and creating something different and creating something better. That’s the filter that we use as opposed to creating a black/white original or not original.
If you look at the stuff we’ve been doing lately, whether it’s the launch of Network Live with Bon Jovi or Green Day coming up, or whether it’s the imminent launch of TMZ.com, which is our partnership with Telepictures to create a new network focused on online entertainment news or whether it’s the reality-based series we’ve launched, they all seek to meet consumer need by presenting something that is a unique interactive experience. … That’s our bar. We’re not looking just like we have shelves and we’re looking to fill up the shelves as much as possible. We’re looking to introduce great new experiences that pay off for consumer audiences and in doing so are really going to pay off for marketing partners of ours as well.
Why not brand the new entertainment channel with Time Warner’s celebrity brand, People? We have a great relationship with people and we certainly work closely with them and we will continue to. However, what TMZ is going for was probably different from the People brand represents; in fact, it is very different. It’s going to have a different editorial voice; it’s going to focus primarily on video, that is not People ‘s focus currently. It’s going to have it’s own unique voice and its own unique production qualities. We think that there’s room for what People is doing online and what TMZ’s going to do online.
Is TMZ set up like Network Live as a joint venture? It’s two divisions of Time Warner so it’s a partnership between two internal divisions but we both benefit from any revenue that’s produced. … Our method is we look to see where there’s consumer demand, we then look to see how we can use interactive programming to satisfy consumer demand in a unique and differentiated way. We look to partner with best of breed companies that have assets we do not have…. I think with AOL.com you’ll see us launching the new video and broadband non-linear products of the future. That’s part of our goal. You’ll see the video hub, along with the rest of aol.com, is focused on a broadband experience. We think that we can be a launching pad for new non-linear networks, frankly whether it’s ours or it’s other people’s we want to make sure the best of what’s out there is available to our consumers.
Is AOL.com officially out there in full force? It’s a web site so every day new things launch, there are improvements made, we roll out new features. That’s the way of the web and that’s the way of AOL.com. Is it finished? Well, no good web site is ever finished. … We’ll be introducing new features onto a platform. The way of the web is to roll things out and let your consumers give you feedback, improve, iterate, rapid release cycles and that’s the way that AOL.com is going to work. I think historically a lot of folks have to looked to our companies for major new client releases so they’ve gotten into these modes of when is 9.0 coming? What’s the big date? What’s the big launch event? That worked and does work in a client-release world, in a package-software-release world … The web is about rapid innovation, rapid iteration, getting feedback loops and acting on them. That’s the way we’re approaching our suite of web applications.
How do you talk a partner who’s only wanted to behind a pay wall into being part of an open portal?I think what we’re finding right now is two mega trends … one, broadband has penetrated to very meaningful numbers and growing rapidly; second thing is online advertising has meaningful numbers and is growing rapidly. Those two dynamics add up to more and more content providers wanting more and more distribution to take advantage of the opportunity.
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