[opendtv] Broadcasters' "parasites" dissected at IBC

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:34:02 -0400

I think this boils down to content is king, but success only comes to
content creators who make the best use of ever changing distribution
media, to get their stuff out.

Bert

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Broadcasters' "parasites" dissected at IBC

David Benjamin
(09/12/2008 10:37 AM EDT)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210601290

AMSTERDAM - More than eighty years after inventors on three different
continents almost simultaneously generated the first television images,
a lively group of technologist and broadcasters here at IBC " led by
Leonardo Chiariglione, founder of the Motion Picture Experts Group "
perpetuated the seemingly eternal argument about which is more
important: What's on TV or what makes TV go.

The crux of this argument today, as Chiariglione noted, comes down to
what he calls WIM TV " the convergence of the Web, Internet protocol
(IP) and mobile television, technologies that extend television away
from the traditional living-room TV set and beyond the control of
traditional broadcasters.

Such technologies, said Chiariglione, are necessary to the satisfaction
of consumers who expect to watch TV in a host of non-traditional places
and ways.

"Unless you keep the customer happy," said Chiariglione, "nothing is
going to happen upstream." He proceeded to lay out a series of
opportunities, challenges and threats faced by broadcasters in an era
when technological change has increased exponentially and the "cost of
innovation gets lower by the day."

Chiariglione punctuated this point by citing his own "indetermination
principle of media," which mandates that the industry can never ignore
an advance in technology. "When someone introduces something new in
media," he said, "you immediately change."

The "what's on TV" response to Chiariglione came in the form of a taped
interview with Michael Grade, executive chairman of ITV, the UK's
largest commercial broadcaster.

Emphasizing that content is always primary in media, he counters
Chiariglione's declining innovation cost scale by saying that "The value
of content is just getting greater and greater," along with the expense
of creating content. He noted that the concept for just one TVshow, "Who
Wants To Be a Millionaire," sold for 120 million pounds.

Grade said that the broadcast industry's roadside is "littered with
people who worshipped technology rather than content. He referred to the
many new platforms for video distribution beyond broadcast, covered
under Chiariglione's WIM TV rubric, as mere "railway lines" that serve
to carry content.

Grade took specific aim at Internet aggregators of video content from
various sources, such as Google. "The day that Google spends a billion
pounds a year on content production, I'll start to worry," said Grade.
"They're all parasites. They just live off our content. As long as we
can create content, content is the keys to the castle."

Grade's interviewer " and the moderator of the IBC panel " British
journalist Raymond Snoddy, undercut Grade's position somewhat by noting
that ITV had recently slipped from the list of UK's 100 top companies
and has been cited as a possible takeover target.

Part of ITV's problem has been its difficulties in adapting to the
challenges of Internet protocol TV (IPTV) and others.

Another panelist, Andrew Setos, president of engineering for the Fox
Group, put the problem for Grade and his industry into a nutshell. "The
world isn't coming to an end. It's changing," he said. "It means we have
to be more agile."

Panelist Lieven Vermaele, technical department director for the European
Broadcasting Union (EBU), elaborated. "Look at the broadcast industry,"
he said.

"In terms of technological evolution, we were always in control."
Vermaele cited a number of historic TV advances listed by Chiariglione,
from color TV to stereo, to higher resolution and the introduction of
personal video recorders (PVR).

"In the broadband domain, with new technology out of our control, we are
now squeezed into a corner, trying to react," said Vermaele.

But he offered a scenario for change. Content, said Vermaele, remains
primary but must be followed swiftly by offering the original broadcast
content on the various platforms covered under WIM TV, followed by
building additional applications, services and revenue opportunities
around the content.

David Pendleton, chief operating officer for ABC of Australia, summed it
up: "Monetizing content is the name of the game."

Setos chimed in, recalling Grade's reference to Google and other
aggregators as "parasites."

The Internet has created a class of users referred to by Snoddy as
"dot.communists " people who want everything for free."

Setos said that the flow of "unauthorized content" on the Web,
intellectual property used without payment or permission, represents
perhaps the biggest threat to broadcasting and all other forms of
content creation."

He said, "If everything is free, there's no money to spend on content
creation."

Chiariglione responded with a defense of the "parasites," whom he said
simply moved swiftly to where broadcasters were too slow to go.
"Technology is there for people to invent, to exploit, to deploy
something and use," he said. "If they [Google, etc.] have been
successful, you have to blame yourselves."

ABC-Australia's Pendleton offered an olive branch by noting that his
company has developed ways to "use Google as a distribution platform,
rather than a competitor or predator."

Perhaps the last word, however, belonged to Michael Grade of ITV, whose
defense of broadcast content was both emphatic and undisputed. "I
absolutely believe that this business has a long-term future," as long
as a British TV network can draw 12-15 million viewers to a prime-time
show.

"This is one of the few shared experiences that's left in a fragmented
world," he said.

All materials on this site Copyright (c) 2008 TechInsights, a Division
of United Business Media LLC. All rights reserved.
 
 
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