Fox/NAMIC Digital Media Panel Exchange: “The Future of Digital Content & Distribution”

by | Oct 28, 2012 | Events and Projects, Innovation Shifts, News and Updates, Synthesis: Cross-Sector Shifts, Tech+Change

Fox is hosting with NAMIC a Digital Media event on Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012: “The Future of Digital Content & Distribution.”

FOX / NAMIC — Digital Media Multi-Platform Panel Exchange: “The Future of Digital Content & Distribution”

Wednesday, October 30, 2012, 6:00pm-8:25pm @ Fox Studios Lot

Click here to register with NAMIC for the event

Two panels offering engaging and relevant perspectives and professional insights on the impact of digital content development and distribution across multiple platforms.

Agenda:

Networking Reception: (6:00p / 45 minutes)

Digital Content Panel (6:45p / 40 minutes)

·         Martez Moore, EVP, Digital Media/Strategy & Business Development

·         Gigi Johnson – Executive Director, Maremel Institute

·         Maureen Lane – Vice President – Programming West, Time Warner Cable

·         Maurizio Vitale – Senior Vice President, Marketing, OWN

Intermission/Networking: (7:25p / 20 minutes)

Digital Distribution Panel: (7:45p / 40 minutes)

·         Carlos Sanchez – Executive Director, Warner Bros. Digital Distribution

·         Ric Whitney – Director, Digital Marketing – Cable Distribution, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

·         Melissa Peterkin – Senior Director, Product Strategy & Partnerships, Digital Media Group, CBS Television Distribution

5 Ways to View the Ryan Seacrest/NBC Universal Deal

by | Apr 30, 2012 | Cross-sector shifts, Innovation Shifts, Synthesis: Cross-Sector Shifts, Tech+Change

A reporter from a major newspaper emailed me on Friday with three questions about the Ryan Seacrest/NBC Universal two-year, multi-platform deal.  He had found me from one of my non-Maremel roles: lecturer at UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management.  (I’m off this quarter, and back in June with their summer program.)  

He asked about (1) whether ubiquity is necessary in media these days, (2) what the deal was like from a management point-of-view with Ryan as a business, and (3) whether there is a risk of backlash.

I thought about these issues, and came back with five ways to view the deal:

  1. Diversification of his brand portfolio with this deal, to expand into prime time, sports, elections, and a broader morning show portfolio. 
  2. Comcast/NBCUniversal’s need to bring younger audiences to NBC News, and elections, and possibly women to Sports. 
  3. Social Media, essentially in “buying” a Klout score
  4. Ubiquity – Wow, he’s been ubiquitous for years
  5. Strategic role vs. being the product 
  • Diversification:  I’d contest he already is ubiquitous, though in entertainment modes across the US and some global distribution.  What this deal gives him is diversification; it helps him move from an entertainment brand to a news, politics, sports, and prime time brand.  Bluntly, it could reduce his “fluff factor.”
  • Comcast audience challenge:  The TV audiences are getting older, or younger viewers are finding other modes of engagement instead of watching network TV as network TV.  Ryan is a broadly appealing brand with a younger audience base than election coverage usually attracts.  Whether the Today Show, the news, or even Prime Time, Ryan brings a potentially younger demographic than currently is showing up to those genres.  For US elections, this age gap in attention on Network TV is of increasingly important; as Morley Winograd says in his work on Millenials, “only 5% of Super Tuesday’s votes were cast by people under 30,” while they make up a much larger percentage of the US population.  (http://communicationleadership.usc.edu/blog/post_6.html)
  • Social Media: He also brings a nice, high Klout score (85), a strong Twitter following (6.6 million), robust Facebook following (487,000 subscribers), and other direct connections with fans.  That asset set dramatically could help the interconnections with these old and new media delivery arenas for NBC Universal.
  •  Ubiquity:  Being in LA, Ryan has been everywhere for years.  I think I first heard him on KYSR back in the 1990s.  As he added in his American Idol, E!, and American Top 40 expansions, it felt to many of my friends here that Ryan was everywhere all the time…quite a while ago.

    My funny story there: My two teenage daughters joined me at a much younger age to see an American Idol live taping, I think in Season 2.  Ryan came into the audience and spoke with them a while, which both my (now) 14-year-old and I remember vividly.  She remembers that moment now, mentioning that it was so cool as he was a famous person (back then).  I asked her about him now.  “Well, he’s a lot less famous now.”  I think that the “ubiquity” might be apparent now to those Americans who spend time in traditional television; it won’t affect or even be noticed by my 14-year-old unless those outlets come into her social media sphere to do more than just hire Ryan. 

  • Strategic Role vs. Being the Product:  He already was amazingly busy as an individual.  I’m not sure how all of this will work for him.  As a leader of a production holding company, his time will be swamped out by all of this face-time.  I don’t know Adam Sher and Jeff Refold from his company management team, or his support network including his CAA team – I’m hoping that they will be able to leverage these new demands on his time, as well as the January co-investment in AXS TV and new incoming funds from Clear Channel and others.  Hopefully they can mix this all with his time and health, creating strategic opportunities for him to make it all happen. 

Some comparisons have been made with Dick Clark.  Dick Clark Productions leveraged his time, making his ideas come to life.  Dick did a lot of things himself, but seemed to structure his business world to help him amplify his influence beyond his appearance.  Ryan has made some efforts in that regard, but the deals in January would be the core to help him create robust, permanent economic legacies for him other than his charm and appearance.    Perhaps this NBC Universal deal can help him bridge in this direction as well.  I hope that it doesn’t put too much complex pressure on his time that may pull pieces out of a complex puzzle. 

Ryan Seacrest ubiquitous?  Nah.  😉 

Rethinking Creating and Containers

by | Jan 30, 2012 | Cross-sector shifts, Innovation Shifts, Musings: Humans + Connected Tech, News and Updates, Synthesis: Cross-Sector Shifts, Tech+Change, White Papers

Fifth of a Series of Blog Posts from Maremel’s White Paper: Opening Pandora’s Digital Box

Rethinking Creating and “Containers”

Workflow for creation may have shifted to more digital pathways, but most discussions assume a formal media delivery of a finished, locked product.  Products have rules based on their media segment, with set delivery dates and SKUs.With content stored in the cloud, the opportunity expands.  Creators are not confined to street dates, final publications, and locked definitions of videos, books, music, games, and the like.One example is in the changing book sector.  Enhanced books, now being distributed through major online outlets, bring this question to the forefront.  Brian O’Leary, in the 2012 Book: A Futurist Manifesto, specifically questions the “container.”  In the past, book creation systems have assumed a specific context of delivery.  Books have been designed around a single type of output, delivery date, and life after production.  O’Leary calls these assumptions pre-artifact, artifact, and post-artifact.  He examines the possibilities of what can be re-envisioned if the container is variable, and if the content is created to be able to live socially during production, at distribution, and for its ongoing life.The intriguing concept here goes beyond digital workflow before a product is released, and digital fingerprinting and social media analysis after release in a cloud world.  The concept becomes broader.  Delivery rules become fluid, separate, and distinct from content creation.  A media product, just like web-based software now, could be in perpetual beta.  The product can be changed and amended before release and after release, with part of the ownership being updates in content and possibly sequels and extensions.  This could be a premium business model, further connecting the consumer with the content creator, or separating them by enhanced re-aggregation.  PaaS and SaaS options could be created to be perpetual engagements with multiplatform products, as these begin to blur between categories.If we begin to rethink time-locked containers, we begin to see different delivery mechanisms that may have much longer product life than our increasingly quick velocity of new products being released and spun into history in this current mode of digital delivery.
  • Added Value: Blend with Live:  Value and relationship with the consumer can also blend cloud-based, connected services with live experiences.  Alternative Reality Games, such as 42 Entertainment’s Dark Knight engagement several years ago, blended online and live activities for 18 months.  Music has been doing this in its own way already, with an engaging business model.  VIP memberships are gaining certain fans integrated consumption of live and online relationships—great concert tickets, premium virtual goods, distinctive merchandise, and live engagements with the artists.
  • Added Value: Premium Context:  O’Leary also points out that there is a benefit to re-adding context to the content.  With books, digital delivery is both stripping away formatting for distribution as well as making some formats more context-driven.  iPad delivery looks and feels different than Android.  Premium products, off of the same core content, are becoming the norm with distinctive features in different platforms.  These high-touch interactive differences by the platform are becoming another ecosystem on top of these cloud deliveries.  Authoring tools are in beta to help creative producers and publishers provide high-touch interactive engagement with the same product that they are having to make available to simpler digital delivery methods.  Each of these delivery modes, in the meantime, needs a digital workflow to keep all of this straight, before, during, and after delivery.
We already are breaking open the container—the intriguing opportunity here is breaking open its locked nature of being “done” and “alone.” It also can be more than a “movie” or “book,” as we are able to step between definitions – launching interactive book products blending images, video, books, and interactivity as an example if you don’t have to stay in locked format containers.

Conclusion

By bringing content from our hard drives to the cloud, we have the potential to open Pandora’s Box.  By having infrastructures and platforms shared with new innovators, we have the potential to blur traditional boxes of delivery and of locked content.  By changing our consumption from our own “storage” and “ownership” to “just” the concept of cloud-based storage, we are in the midst of changing habits and attitudes of more than just “buy” versus “stream,” but also of what it means to be distributing, creating, producing, and engaging.Now that we are opening Pandora’s Box, we shouldn’t be startled that consumers find a different type of “hope” at the bottom.