Many of you have probably already read Neal Gabler’s ”The Movie Magic is Gone” and if you haven’t you should go give it a read now.

Now, however, when people prefer to identify themselves as members of ever-smaller cohorts — ethnic, political, demographic, regional, religious — the movies can no longer be the art of the middle. The industry itself has been contributing to this process for years by targeting its films more narrowly, especially to younger viewers. In effect, the conservative impulse of our politics that has promoted the individual rather than the community has helped undermine movies’ communitarian appeal.

All of this has been hastened by the fact that there is now an instrument to take advantage of the social stratifications. To the extent that the Internet is a niche machine, dividing its users into tiny, self-defined categories, it is providing a challenge to the movies that not even television did, because the Internet addresses a change in consciousness while television simply addressed a change in delivery of content. Television never questioned the very nature of conventional entertainment. The Internet, on the other hand, not only creates niche communities — of young people, beer aficionados, news junkies, Britney Spears fanatics — that seem to obviate the need for the larger community, it plays to another powerful force in modern America and one that also undermines the movies: narcissism.

We’re not sure if we buy Gabler’s argument. It has less to do with narcissism and more to do with media savvy audiences realizing that a handful of studio executives no longer have the tight-fisted control of distribution.

Starting tomorrow, every new TV set will have to be able to decode over-the-air digital signals (in preparation for the 2009 switchover).

Starting Thursday, all new television sets designed to receive over-the-air signals must contain a tuner capable of receiving digital broadcasts, not just the old-style analog signals that we have relied on for the past half-century.

The March 1 mandate covers smaller sets, the last bastion of all-analog technology. Besides, most Americans have cable or satellite television service. Those video providers handle the digital signal through the adapter boxes they provide to customers.

This has nothing to do with HDTV which is a completely separate set of technologies. So hold onto your old analog sets, so you can tell your grandchildren what it was like in the ‘olden days.’

‘Former FT reporter” Tom Foremski has an interesting musing on the shift of media power from East coast to West:

Silicon Valley is rapidly turning into Media Valley--and New York, NY should look out--the capital of the media world is shifting about 3,000 miles westwards.

Some of Silicon Valley’s largest companies are media companies: Google, Yahoo, EBay, for example are media companies--they publish pages of content and advertising around it.

Some of the most interesting and most valuable new Silicon Valley companies, such as Youtube, Facebook are based here in Northern California. So is Craigslist, the seventh largest online media company in the English language world (in terms of traffic).

Take a look at Business 2.0’s 25 startups to watch and look at how many of these mostly “social” media and advertising companies and are based in the Bay Area:18. Only two are based in New York.

But if you work in Manhattan you feel at the center of the media universe. Midtown and the Avenue of the Americas is where the capital of the media industry has sat for many decades.

We find it particularly prescient that Tom classifies several “technology” companies as media companies as soon as you realize their money is made from eyeballs. The media deals would indeed look very different if Google & Ebay were considered media firms. But ‘Old’ media isn’t so blind either, this is why they refer to Google as a “Frenemy.”

Defying conventional logic, YouTube’s traffic has only surged since the Viacom snafu (according to Hitwise data):

It’s still early in the game, to be sure, but so far it looks like YouTube can keep calling Viacom’s bluff, especially since early research shows that YouTube traffic has surged, not suffered, since Viacom demanded the takedown of 100,000 purportedly purloined video clips.

One of the big question marks left about the transition from analog entertainment mediums to the Internet is that most Hollywood guilds have deals based on TV, DVD and other established media. There is a large dark cloud looming on the horizon when it comes to how actors, writers, editors, and a host of other crew will be compensated for internet-only content.

The problems of who gets paid and when will only heat up as Internet, TV, and mobile phone content merge. Eric Kmetz, freelance writer and director, believes the Internet will develop its own standards in the next six months as problems escalate. Many in the industry are trying to cover themselves because they don’t know what direction the digital content will take, Mr. Kmetz said.

And if that’s not enough, Hollywood execs are also thinking about what happens when the webisodes become easy to pirate, a scenario reminiscent of the early days when recording labels first sold music on the web, said Phillip Swann, president of TV Predictions.com, of Dunkirk, Maryland.

Not so fast said the Joost-ers, apparently we forgot to take into account how Joost could boost its content by playing off of the widespread hatred of YouTube. Especially after Google has taken such a snobby attitude towards the entertainment industry:

The agreement comes two weeks after Viacom demanded that YouTube, the video-sharing site owned by Google Inc., remove 100,000 clips that were posted without permission. Viacom will provide shows from MTV and BET Networks and feature films from Paramount to Joost, which is run by the same duo who started the Skype Internet calling service and the Kazaa music-sharing site.

``The Joost platform is in essence a closed system,’’ said Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner Inc., a market research firm in Stamford, Connecticut. ``The ability for piracy and content to be stolen is minimal.’’

Joost, based in New York, with offices in London and Leiden, the Netherlands, offers a ``piracy-proof’’ platform, the companies said. Content creators and viewers must both download free software, which limits sharing. YouTube, the fifth most- visited Web site, according to indexer Alexa.com, requires no software and places few restrictions on sharing.

Somewhere in PR heaven, another angel just got its wings. How else can you crown the success of the flack who managed to dump this puff piece on CIO magazine, titled ”Skype Founders Unveil YouTube Killer.” It’s so wrong on so many levels we don’t know where to start. Actually we do know where to start:

Firstly, if you are going to kill YouTube, you have to examine why YouTube is so popular. It runs on every browser, and every OS that supports Flash. ‘Joost’ only runs on high-end Windows PCs. But wait, there’s more:

De Wahl said Joost will replicate the complete television experience and ultimately fill a critical gap in online entertainment. “It will allow viewers to access all kinds of television over the Internet,” he said.

YouTube is also successful because it has loads of content (much of it illegal). Joost? They’ve been having some serious issues getting anything licensed. It gets even better though:

And how will it all work? Joost will use the kind of file-sharing architecture that powers Skype.

[...]

According to the London-based company, Joost will be “piracy proof” and capable of streaming video at broadcast resolutions, unlike other online-video services such as YouTube.

It’s interesting that they don’t mention that the founders of Skype were previously the founders of another famous company called Kazaa. You may have heard of it since it was a massive P2P filesharing system that was the YouTube-of-its-day. After they got their asses handed to them by irate copyright holders it seems that they’ve learned their lesson—sort of. They know now that they have to be anti-piracy but they are nuts if they think Hollywood will trust THEIR P2P network to be “piracy proof.”

Yeah, we’re the guys who created the Kazaa P2P technology but this time we promise to not let your products get stolen, no seriously.

Good luck on licensing all that content. So for those of keeping score at home:

YouTube runs everywhere, Joost only on new Windows boxes.
YouTube with tons of content, Joost with little-to-none.
Joost uses P2P technology originally used in massive file-piracy now claiming to be “piracy proof.”

Does that sound like a real YouTube killer to you?

(P.S.: on the plus side, Joost is higher quality than YouTube but its a pretty steep price they pay for improved images.)

Seth Steve Rosenbaum over at iMediaConnection makes an interesting argument on the future of TV:

So the future of TV is no longer about content creation, though there will be plenty of that. It is instead about content discovery-- finding media nuggets that are site-specific and user-friendly. Video discovery is at the heart of TV 2.0.

So, should Jeff, Les, or Bob be worried about their jobs? Actually, the answer is kind of yes because the media model that they manage is all about the economies of scale. Large networks deliver large audiences, which commands large dollar amounts. But the internet is about identifying, aggregating and monetizing small (but targetable) niches, and there’s little in the top-down media business that serves that purpose.

Conveniently, Seth is also CEO of Magnify.net which is a video search engine that aggregates the search facility of sites like Revver, YouTube, Yahoo! Video and Google Video.

Seth is only half right. It is true that the internet opens up the endless possibilities of specialized channels but he’s giving the traditional TV networks too much credit in the audience department. Most cable channels deliver pretty tiny audiences, so tiny in fact that many popular internet programs regularly attract larger audiences. MTV is dropping TRL for only having 300,000 viewers but Rocketboom has that many viewers daily.

Update: Thanks to Steve for pointing out his name isn’t Seth!

According to a study by media analysis firm Screen Digest, Web sites such as MySpace and YouTube will earn only a fraction of the advertising budgets available for more professional online programming.

“No single user-generated [video] site has really instilled a business model yet,” said Arash Amel, Screen Digest’s senior analyst. “The business model for user-generated sites has been ‘build it and sell it and let someone else worry about the business model’.”

With the recent shakeups at Revver and Guba it seems that the “someone else” has definitely been worrying about the business model. The question then becomes, why is user-generated video so hard to monetize? Didn’t Google just pay $1.65 Billion for YouTube?

Peter Chernin, News Corp president said at a recent conference: “We do not see big advertisers advertising with YouTube or MySpace. They have concerns about the content ... and there is no scarcity value for the content ... so there is very little ability to monetise video advertising on user-generated video.”

Now it all makes sense. Who knew that advertisers wouldn’t enjoy watching people’s cats dancing on tables as much as the rest of us?

You have all probably already read hundreds of “analyses” of Apple’s new iPhone. But what they all left out is why Apple’s device is so revolutionary.  As Ajit Jaokar so rightly points out, this has nothing to do with the slick technology in the phone itself:

The first supported carrier will be Cingular. Supported carrier? Since when did devices support carriers? Carriers support devices. Not the other way round! Hence, is the tail now wagging the dog?(Not necessarily a bad thing IMHO!)

In what is easily the most useful thing we’ve seen online in a long time, some blogger uploads the same video to 25 different video sharing sites and then places them side by side on one giant page so that you can all see the results. Want to know who will make your video look best? Look no further.

According to RedHerring, Google CEO Eric Schmidt faced some tough questions about one of our popular postings recently:

Mr. Schmidt, however, denied that Google set aside a huge amount of hush money to be paid to media companies, which create a big chunk of the content uploaded to video hosting sites, to look the other way when copyrighted material is illegally downloaded to YouTube, which hosts videos that are viewed 100 million times daily. But Mr. Schmidt said Google is negotiating with the big entertainment companies over thorny copyright infringement issues, but solutions aren’t simple. “We’ve talked to everybody,” Mr. Schmidt said. “All the [media] companies have complicated rights management systems.”

Does it really matter if there is a “hush” money fund if suddenly all the media companies are willing to “negotiate”? In the end the effect is the same, copyright infringement can flourish on YouTube while it is crushed on smaller competitors. Oh well. 

According to a WSJ email alert:

Verizon is in advanced talks with YouTube to bring the popular Web site’s videos to cellphones and television sets, in what would be a landmark link-up between telecom and Internet video.

If you thought bringing YouTube to Comcast posed a problem to your TV remote we can’t even begin to imagine navigating on your cell phone.  On the other hand, most YouTube content is perfect for the 2 inch screen on your mobile. Too bad none of us here at BBB use Verizon.

Isn’t it amazing how wireless carriers still don’t get that the open nature of the internet is what makes it so popular?

Marketwatch reports on what is the logical conclusion to user-generated content:

Comcast Corp., the Philadelphia cable-TV and Internet provider, is considering the prospect of sending user-generated content—including home videos run over YouTube Inc. and Revver Inc.—across its video-on-demand service, The Wall Street Journal Online reported. It has held talks with some of the largest Net-video companies, including YouTube, which has agreed to be acquired by Google Inc., the Journal reported.

Bridging the gap between the computer desktop and the television in the living room seems to be the obvious outcome of the death-of-television-as-we-know-it. But we wonder how Comcast will solve the problem of searching millions of short video clips from the web with nothing more than a TV remote.

As if to follow up on yesterday’s conspiracy theory:

After Viacom sent YouTube a letter last week asking the video-sharing site to remove some of its copyrighted content, the two companies appear to have reached an understanding.

Suspicious yet?

Mark Cuban recently reposted an interesting “insider” tidbit from the Google + Youtube deal:

Since everyone was reaching into Google’s wallet, the big G wants to make sure the Youtube purchase was a wise one. Youtube’s value is predicated on it’s traffic and market leadership which Google needs to keep. If they simply agreed to remove all unauthorized content and saddle the user experience with ads Youtube would quickly be a skeleton of its prior self. Users would quickly move to competing sites. The media companies had 50 million reasons to want to help. Google needed a two pronged strategy which you see unfolding now.

To sum it all up, they claim that Google set aside a large portion of the $1.65 Billion to “pay off” the big media companies in a secret escrow account. In exchange, they agreed to drop all pending lawsuits to prevent the type of demise predicted here on BBB (and several other places). It will be interesting to see how people react at such an accusation. Since lawsuits are public record, it should be relatively simple to show companies suing much smaller video competitors for content which is already on Youtube’s site.

We’ll update you, precious readers, as this story develops.

Looks like Comcast is dipping their toe in the IPTV waters:

Don’t be afraid. It’s only the future.

On Halloween, something called FearNet is set to make its debut, offering scary movies and other horror programming on demand.

The video service will be available through not just a digital cable channel, but also online at FearNet.com and via mobile phones, suggesting a prototype for what TV networks will be in the years to come, if not sooner.

It’s a niche service set up to offer viewers its programming completely on the terms of their choosing--how, when and wherever they want it.

Starting with niche programming sounds like a great idea but is there enough of an audience to justify the new infrastructure?

Are they really that afraid that putting popular content will cannabilize their current viewership?

The always insightful Jeff Jarvis makes a jab at the massive Union-related expenses at TV networks:

We are about to see an implosion of the expensive and outmoded infrastructure of media: the presses and trucks of news, the production priesthood of TV, the money that goes to everything but the information and creativity that really matter. This is good news.

On the way to one of three meetings I happened to have this week with people who are starting new, lightweight networks — because the internet lets them — I walked by a location shoot for a TV show. We see them all the time, we jaded New Yorkers, and so we’re never amazed. But what does not cease to amaze me is all the stuff it takes — or they think it takes — to shoot a show: trucks filled with lights and cables and plugs, handcarts filled just with the director’s chairs with stars names on the back, bins overflowing even with wooden boxes with the Paramount logo on the side, assistant directors running around trying to act more important than the snotty gophers they are, catering trucks with expensive caterers: expense everywhere.

While not explicitly indicting the unions, the comment stream becomes an interesting collection of anti-union sentiment. But is Jeff missing the point here? Big trucks might look intimidating but not everything looks good when shot handheld on a PD-150.

Are you old enough to remember Where’s the Beef? Now say it again but replace Beef with Money:

In 2007, U.S. advertisers will spend $5 million on online video ads. By 2011, the amount spent is expected to grow 160 percent to $1.3 billion. While spending on text ads will continue to represent a greater part of the total online advertising market, the segment is expected to grow at a slower rate—45 percent—over the same period, according to the Jupiter forecast.

Let’s ignore for the fact that their math is wrong (magazine writers aren’t exactly noted for their arithmetic). With all the buzz around online video lately you’d think that there was piles of cash just sitting around for the taking. $5 million? That’s it? There are a lot of new companies that are going to be out of business soon. The entire market in five years will be less than the entire amount Google spent on YouTube.

Marshall Kirkpatrick over at TechCrunch laments rather than welcomes Fox’s announced plan to put episodes of the O.C. on Myspace:

In some ways then, this is just a little toe being put in the water and the TV strategy remains the same it’s always been. We’ll know the web is being taken seriously as a platform when shows in high demand are put online and kept online.

Marshall is probably giving way too much credit to Fox. They probably have no idea what to do with the goldmine that is Myspace and therefore make only “toe-dipping” excursions into that large scary wormhole we call the internets. Fortunately for us, there are still plenty of illegitimate places to get the latest episodes of shows we’d never admit to enjoying in public.