Lately i found a decent approach to conceptualize business logics, that lay within TV over IP solutions. Munich´s university LMU is researching with their project intermedia in this realm. They´re approaching the convergence topic with an interdisciplinary team from economics, communication and computer sciences. Particularly interesting for me is the economic and organizational perspective, namely represented by Prof. Picot, who is well renonwed for his work in information technologies impact on organizational structure (note for example his last book on virtual cooperations.)

Business web of MSTV TV over IP solution (Intermedia LMU Munich 2005)

In this illustration, the grade of stickyness to the technical IPTV solution in the regard of being a core business or strength is been descriped as shaper>adaptors (inner/outer) and independent adaptors (affiliates).
Opposite to the MS business web, Cisco’s efforts to build an propriatary network looks like this.

For more on MSTV’s strategy and their ‘ecosystem’ see this article (german).
Complete, very clear and comprehensive presentation can be found here.

The following article is taken from upcoming study “Global IPTV: Learning from Industry Leaders” published by sapient and thebrainbehind (tbb). More on this comprehensive and in-depth overview of the fast growing IP-TV business segment and order forms on tbb´s studies homebase.

“Today the boundaries between inner and outer forces of the media are confused. And our four-century preoccupation with print has fixed our attention on so limited an aspect of the media that we find it very hard to release our attention to the whole range of media influence. What I wish to show is that today we experience, in reverse, what pre-literate men faced with the advent of writing.”

When Marshal McLuhan predicted in `55 the bluring of the industries borderlines, he could only see a first sketch of what was about to begin. His assumptions and theories based on the advent of televised media and wired, instant communication finally comes to deploy it´s potential, half a century later: After years of hype, TV over the net now comes into its own. With landmark steps as Disney/ABC´s ice-breaking coorperation with iTunes, Time Warner´s “In2TV” and the BBC´s archive opening (IMP), 2005 might well find it´s entry to history as a siginificant year of media evolution. “The damn has broken”, as Intels CEO Paul Otellini stated recently. The Giants decisions to leverage the webs distribution power fully pushed the whole marketplace in an irreversible process of change.
However, those industry news are still only the peak of what we can see. Beyond the frozen surface, aside corporate media´s own newsflash there is another, even broader shift underway. Grassroot type of media and entertainment production brings the real revolution to consumers homes.
The ‘Pew Internet & American Life Project’ determined, that half of all teens in the US have created a blog or webpage, posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations in the last year.
Terry Heaton - an US broadcast industry expert - calls this ‘the unbundled awakening’.

“This awakening of creativity among our youth — and their ability to do something with it — is the essence of what’s known as Web 2.0. We’ve moved past the early adopter stage with young people, and that will continue to flourish next year.”

The massive growth in participatory media is also shown evidently in the most recent numbers of Blogsphere´s prefered watchtool: Technocrati.

Source: http://www.sifry.com

Due to the service 50.000 posts are submitted every hour. This gives a glimpse of the potential in this field. More, the unassailable power of broadcasters in dominating eyeballs and advertising spendings is suddenly in question.
February 9th, one of the most popular vlogs, Rocketboom accomplished a thoroughly observed bidding process for ad space targeted to it´s daily viewership of 130.000. They met their planed reserve of $40.000, which equals $8000 (CPM $62). A reasonable price for up to one minute of advertising, compared to an average CPM of let´s say Channel 4´s ‘The Daily Show’ comes to round about $1050. Plus: Production costs are included in the new incumbents offerings!
It is just a question of time, that the yield management of such hand-made media becomes mature. Meanwhile for many other independent home producers it´s no longer off-limits to think about ways of capitalizing their creativity and the interest of their audience in it. Deals of pioneering Rocketboom with Tivo and Akimbo give them hope, to be able to compete with traditional media, especially in their own niche. And new startup content aggregators as Brightcove, Ourmedia or Mefeedia get a buzz, whilst they work fiercely on developing solutions to make multicast videowonderworld happen. The significance to established companies is exemplified in AOL´s/IAC´s Brightcove $16.2m engagement, which put Barry Diller in charge of the video distributer in spe. The service, which still is under development, will create a seamless flash based (and thus browser/plugin agnostic) integration to websites and has already announced a long-term partnership with Old Media´s Gem the New York Times and their lately acquired about.com site.

What we experience now is a overwhelming change in both demand and supply side, that thrive on the ‘ecosystem’ to unseen levels of complexity and dynamic evolvement. It is this reverse process McLuhan reffered to. Surely it is confusing sometimes, but in our opinion, by all complementary and network effects employed, it will result in overall growth of televised media.

While doing some research on possible business models for the fast growing phenomena of Vlogging, I found the guys at Vlogger Blogsite ‘We are the Media‘ discussing about this topic. They covered almost all commonly used sources of income, including donations, sponsorships or premium content models. Except - guess what - advertising. In some way, this neglecting of the use of advertising based revenue models reminds me of the dominant logic concept, coming from the corporate field. I´m well aware, that ad-spoiled content stands opposite to the basic beliefs of democratic, grass-root entertainment and media. And i fully admire the creativeness of all active Vloggers. They are absolutely right by searching for new ways of recouping their spending plus getting something more out of the whole thing. Doing so, they try to go their way, using their own alternative approaches (the Provocative Operation (PO) is just perfect for that). But why exclude a proven and learned business model right from the scratch (okay, apart from one ‘provocative’ attempt over there by Chuck)?
The big lack in ad-based financing nowadays is flooding the consumers with more than 2000 sales messages a day, whilst most of them are definitley low involved. This is where the opportunity for individualized media lies in. Realizing the full power of bi-directional communication by bringing attention do advertising messages their audience could be interested in. Of course in this environment one has to act thoughtful and take more resopnsibility for the promotions deployed. But I think this is obvious to everyone in this environment. It will quickly turn against you, when you disregard your viewers´ will on that. Rocketboom´s auction of a short, rocketboomish closing ad just made a good example on what you can do, without overstraining the attention capacity to much.
Combined with all the other proposed actions, put together in a decent mixture it will make this cocktail a burner.

Following this study by IBM, tv market in future will be polarized between passive usage and indidualized, multichanneled narrowcasting. Not a tremendously new perception, but a interesting fact, that more and more studies hit the same tone (eg. see here or here). Also they give some basic strategic suggestions for executives to adapt to this trend:

Segment: Invest in divergent strategies and supply chains for bimodal consumer types. Identify, develop and continually refine data-driven user profiles in order to optimize product and service development, distribution, marketing messaging, and service migration. Tailor content, advertising, pricing and reach dynamically.

Innovate: Innovate business and pricing models by creating – not resisting – wider consumer choice with windows, bundles, pricing and distribution. Take risks today to avoid losing position long-term.

Experiment: Develop, trial, refine, roll-out. Repeat. Conduct ongoing market experiments alone and with partners to study “real life” consumer preferences. Invest in new measurement systems and metrics for the on demand world of tomorrow.

Mobilize: Create seamless content mobility for users that require on-the-go experiences. Ensure easy synchronization across devices and without user intervention.

Open: Drive open content delivery platforms to optimize content and revenue exploitation, and to create optimum business flexibility and network cost-efficiency. Position open capabilities to bolster digital content protection with consumer flexibility, and for plug-and-play business upgrades necessary in the fast-changing marketplace.

Re-organize: Assess business assets against future requirements. Identify core competencies needed for future competitive advantage. Isolate non-core business components for outsourcing or partnership. From an external perspective, reconfigure business to exploit market and financial levers to buy, build or team to future competitiveness.

via informITV.com.

Lange angekündigt, jetzt ist es soweit. Das Windowing beginnt mit Soderberghs “Bubble” zu bröckeln.
Astrid Maier, FTD am 23.01.2006

Revolution im Vertriebskanal
Hollywood-Regisseur Steven Soderbergh bricht mit einem Tabu: Sein Streifen „Bubble“ läuft fast zeitgleich in Kinos, Pay-TV und auf DVD an. Eine Strategie, mit der die Filmstudios eine Menge Krach riskieren.

George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt – in den Filmen des US-Regisseurs Steven Soderbergh ist das Staraufgebot meist imposant. In Soderberghs neuem Streifen „Bubble“ hingegen treten ausschließlich Laienschauspieler auf. Der Medienrummel auf dem Heimatmarkt um „Bubble“, der am 27. Januar in den Kinos der Vereinigten Staaten startet, ist dennoch sagenhaft. Der Grund: Der Regisseur von Blockbustern wie „Ocean’s Eleven“ startet den Film zeitgleich im Kino und Pay-TV – nur vier Tage darauf erscheint die DVD des Streifens.

Das Vertriebs-Experiment des Oscar-Preisträgers Soderbergh trifft die Kinotheater mit enormer Wucht. Es ist das erste Mal in der langen Geschichte Hollywoods, dass ein Film zeitgleich in und außerhalb der Kinos zu sehen sein wird. Ein Spagat, denn die Kinobetreiber wie auch Filmvertriebe suchen gleichermaßen nach Auswegen aus der Krise: 2005 brachte weltweit das schlechteste Einspielergebnis der vergangenen 20 Jahre. Mittlerweile sinkt auch der Verkauf von DVDs. Die „Bubble“-Strategie aber geht zumindest den Kino-Betreibern viel zu weit. So weigern sich die großen US-Kinoketten wie Cinemark Entertainment, den Film in ihr Programm aufzunehmen. Ko-Produzent Mark Cuban hingegen ist überzeugt, nur auf diesem Weg sowohl die Filmpalastliebhaber als auch die Fans von Heimkino zu erreichen – und mit dieser „maximalen Reichweite den maximalen Profit“ herauszuschlagen. Cuban hat „Bubble“ nicht nur produziert, sondern zusammen mit Partner Todd Wagner finanziert. Der Produktionsgesellschaft der beiden Ex-Broadcast.com-Manager, 2929 Entertainment, gehören zudem die Kinokette Landmark und das Kabelnetz HDNet Cable Network, wo „Bubble“ zu sehen sein wird. Die Bündelung der Werbekosten beim Parallelstart „könnte bis zu etwa 30 Prozent des Marketingbudgets sparen“, sagte Cuban der Financial Times Deutschland. Soderbergh selbst setzt auf einen weiteren Effekt: „Jeder namhafte Film der vergangenen vier Jahre war am Tag seines Kinostarts auch auf anderen Formaten zu haben. Man sagt dazu Piraterie“, sagte er dem Magazin „Wired“ kürzlich. „Wir versuchen nur, die Kontrolle darüber zu gewinnen“, so Soderbergh.

Die klassische Reihenfolge – vom Kino über die DVD-Schiene später auch ins Fernsehen – dieses „Grundgesetz“ gerät immer mehr ins Wanken. „Ich denke nicht, dass es ausgeschlossen ist, dass eine DVD in demselben Zeitfenster veröffentlicht werden kann wie der Kinostart“, sagte der Chef des Medienkonzerns Disney, Robert Iger, kürzlich. Derartige Worte galten in der Branche bis dahin als blanke Ketzerei. Der US-Computerhersteller Apple bietet mittlerweile iPods an, die neben Musik auch Videos abspielen, und kooperiert bei dem Angebot mit den Medienkonzernen Disney und NBC Universal. In den amerikanischen Filmstudios wächst die Angst, den Download-Trend im Internet womöglich zu unterschätzen. „Wenn wir uns zurücklehnen und auf alte Technologien verlassen, wird uns der Kunde überholen“, sagte Disney-Chef Iger. Seit Monaten verhandeln die großen US-Medienkonzerne zudem mit Kabelsendern in den USA über ein gemeinsames Programm, bei dem Filme zeitgleich zum Start in der DVD-Version auch im Pay-TV gezeigt werden sollen.

Natürlich wird dadurch nicht von heute auf morgen die gesamte Verwertungskette in Frage gestellt, wie Martin Grove vom Hollywood Reporter weiß (via BoingBoing).

Although the issues posed by Soderbergh’s deal with 2929 are interesting, they don’t have the potential broad impact that there is with the larger question of what the window should be between theatrical and DVD. That’s a matter that needs solving because it has broad application to the entire industry. It’s in Hollywood’s interest to fine tune its DVD release strategies in order to maximize sales at a time when video piracy is a major problem. Exhibitors are likely to see a few more weeks shaved off the existing windows that each DVD distributor presently is using. Expecting exhibitors to roll over and accept the concept of films going into release in all exhibition channels at the same time isn’t realistic and might not be good for Hollywood anyway. Hollywood has proven to be very good at milking each exhibition channel one after the other to achieve maximum return. That same approach should continue to serve the studios well in the future.

Aber die Frage der Zyklen wird mit zur zentralen Komponente der Produktstrategie, sie müssen noch exakter als bisher geplant und auf die komplexe Wettbewerbssituation hin angepasst werden. Und für Independent Produktion oder andere Einzelfälle werden wir solche Sonderaktionen sicher öfter zu sehen bekommen. Eine andere spannende Frage wird auch, was bei europäischen Produzenten und Verleiher so passiert.