johnnienolan’s blog

Back in the analogue age, television was easy to understand. You made the programme, people watched the programme, and if the programme ever saw the light of day again, everybody complained about the blessed repeats! The long tail has certainly changed all that; we now need Primary Rights, then Secondary Rights, if you’re lucky Format Rights, if you’re clever Mobile Rights and Digital Rights, and don’t forget good old International Rights.

The ever changing digital age has thrown up a great deal of confusion - or should that read negotiation. One thing for sure, as things move forward with speed, we need to glance back at how we’re working and adapt the process because new business needs new models.

The music industry has had to be ahead of the TV game. As music distribution has moved from in-store to online, the major record companies have implemented - with some success - digital rights management (DRM) in an attempt to deal with the evil of piracy. But it has found the existing models of rights payment collection wanting, especially when a project crosses borders.

While the TV industry is now coming to terms with the fact that you can go online and watch Martini Media (anytime, anyplace anywhere), it’s also starting to work with DRM systems to prevent file sharing piracy. The various business models might even have been conquered as to how these things actually get paid for, with a mixture of pay-per-play, subscription and even advertiser-supported.

What hasn’t really been worked out is who owns what, and what happens when the pictures cross international borders.

Anyone who has tried to do an international co-production or attempted global distribution on a programme which contains third party rights knows the issues. The problem - sorry opportunity - with the internet is the cross-border freedoms it allows.

The problem – sorry challenge - then is to try and protect a rights model which is dependent upon limited nation specific rights or find one which works cross-border. This is certainly the case in music where different publishers and distributors stake claims on the same piece of music in different territories.

Programming made from third party sources – music, film clips, TV archive - is traditionally produced on a need to use basis and the same could be said of contributors’ clearances or artists’ rights. If you’re making a programme for two UK showings then that is what you’re paid to do and the programme is made and rights cleared on those terms – no online – no mobile – no international. How very analogue! And even when there are no third party licenses and it’s just actors, presenters and writers with residual payment agreements, an analogue option seems the simplest.

Can you hear the call for “a buy-out” coming in the conclusion?

Buy-outs are a touchy subject; they have the whiff of denying somebody of something they deserve. It’s not the concept of the buyout that’s the issue of course it’s the level of money offered. And here’s the conclusion – if we’re going to able to produce programming which can be distributed digitally we need to have Martini clearances, and if we’re going to able to get them we need to be paying fair prices for them. All we have to do then is find out who we give the money to!

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The internet is a dangerous place

nobody@vox.com(johnnienolan) — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:41:29 +0100

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The internet is a dangerous place. My advice is, if you have anything to hide, never take a ride on the digital superhighway. The internet knows your name, it knows where you live and importantly it knows what you spend your money on. What did you expect?

The internet is not a free ride, all that great free content comes at a price, and the currency is information.

I’ll say it again, the internet is dangerous place. Don’t ever go on it.

At a time when television is looking deep into its soul and its very integrity is under scrutiny the internet is not a place for those who run free with the regulations to hide.

Television has been caught telling lies and there’s a bit of bridge building to be done in the credibility stakes. Hang on though isn’t it the internet that’s full of identity thieves, phishers and credit card scam artists? Let’s get this in perspective. Television is going through a number of crises of confidence, which boil down not just to a breakdown in trust but to a breakdown in the funding models which underpin it. And you might say that technology or for that matter digital media is the cause of all of or most of those woes.

Namely “fragmentation of the audience” – everybody is on the internet or mobile phone or XBOX, and “ad avoidance” – everybody is on the internet or etc.

Some of the suspicion about television brought about by the recent “phone scandals” have not been bad people doing bad things, it’s too simple an accusation, that plays to a too readily to jury too eager to convict. The rush to phone revenue and the subsequent dependence upon it, is linked to the structural problems with traditional advertising revenue brought about by the fact that everyone is on the internet!

There is a case for suggesting that the convergence of television with the computer brought about by IPTV whether that’s application (Joost) or browser (html) based or in the case of the Vista MediaCentre platform might help restore some of the trust.

If part of the inherent danger of the internet is its intrusive nature, part of its allure is the blatant transparency that it provides.

The Microsoft Channel 9 forum which is based on the United Airlines inflight audio service “Channel 9” which allows passengers to listen in to the flightdeck, is a great example of the transparency that the internet allows.

It’s a forum where Microsoft employees and developers discuss stuff with Microsoft users! (You know all this.)

But the logic behind such a bold and open move of naked collaboration flies in the face of corporate confidentiality and it goes like this “there’s no point trying to hide what we’re doing because everyone can see” – which probably leads to “look if you’re going to do bad things on the internet you’re going to get found out, so why not do good things instead.”

It is the intrusive nature of the internet that provides the transparency that TV needs to help demonstrate it actually has nothing to hide, it is this Channel 9 principle that admits there is no point in hiding.

The big question is whether TV and by this I mean the broadcaster and production community is going to take opportunity of the internet seriously. We are at a bit of crossroads. TV needs to embrace the potential of personalised digital distribution which allows for the deeper more meaningful engagement we hear about. But first it has to get its head around the content and not just use digital distribution as a substitute for linear TV.

There’s a real opportunity here.

But as I might have mentioned the one thing the internet does well is know who’s watching, how long they watched for, what they were watching before and where and when they went to after.

There’s some real value in that level of transparency.

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The Little people....

nobody@vox.com(johnnienolan) — Tue, 15 May 2007 17:54:53 +0100

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