The
Future of Internet TV: An Interview with Chris Brogan
Chris
Brogan knows something about video on the Internet, and has the resume
to prove it. Community developer for Network2, a guide to some of the
best Internet TV on the web today. Social media expert for the Video
on the Net Conference, which will be held in Boston this October
and focuses on the “disruptive force of broadband internet on
the future of television.” Co-founder of the first PodCamp, a
New Media community (un)conference that caught on and has been organized
in close to twenty cities worldwide over the past year. The list goes
on.
Thus when
he makes a comment like, “I think television is about to explode
in a whole different way; I think it’s going to get vast on the
Internet, and then what will happen is quality will continue to matter
and there’ll be small grafts of good programming,” it carries
some credence.
This is
different than what you find on YouTube, mind you, as he is referring
to what amounts to a literal TV show. There are already examples scattered
across the Internet landscape; some combine the comedic with social
commentary, such as Rocketboom
and The
Show with ZeFrank, while others are episodic serials,
like The
Guild, Sanctuary
and Something
to Be Desired. And it doesn’t stop there.
“David
Lynch on Talk of the Nation said that he would never do another
TV show,” Brogan said, “but he would consider making TV
for the Internet because it’s just a better distribution platform
for him and he can do so much more with it.”
Of course
experts in the field have been making such proclamations for over ten
years now, predicting how the Internet would change the television industry
and usher in a new wave of programming ever since webcasting was first
introduced in the 1990s. There was even a non-video webseries, The
Spot, which was the hot new thing, an Internet-based Melrose
Place featuring images, graphics and even online diaries by fictional
characters. But it fizzled out just like all the promises of that decade.
So what makes now different?
“With
the advent of ubiquitous broadband and with the downsizing price of
technology, from cameras to what it takes to edit, more and more people
are able to create good shows,” Brogan recently commented at PodCamp
Pittsburgh 2. “Which means that people who maybe had a barrier
to learning how to create decent film now have a fast track to making
reasonably quality video.”
Brogan
believes that when the mainstream US television channels realize they
can pilot more shows than they currently do now--“it costs a million-two
per episode for most average TV shows today on mainstream television
versus a couple thousand per episode in the web world”--their
mentalities will change.
“I
can take that same million and distribute it across two hundred producers
and I wouldn’t lose as much money, because if I got five of those
to be really good it’s still less money than trying to bank on
every single show,” he explained. “Television exists to
make money though advertising, and what’s going to happen is they’re
not going to go after one big nut anymore, they’re going to go
after little grafts that collect a lot of people together.”
Brogan
even offered an example. “Something to Be Desired is
a great show for Pittsburgh. It’s also a great show for urban
young people. Urban young people might not be the best market share
when you need x millions of people, but if you turn it the other way
and say, ‘I’ve got a show that relates directly to urban
young people talking about their relationships,’ and you look
at all the products that we have that match that, suddenly you can really
segregate your market place much tighter and much more controlled. And
all of a sudden those ads we always skip through when we’re watching
regular mainstream TV are important to me. I’m engaging with them
and saying, ‘Oh, this is something I do want to buy; I didn’t
know it was out there.’ It makes it a lot easier to do that.”
Not only
will this change the landscape of what we call “television,”
but will also affect those already making Internet television as well.
He pointed out how the popularity of YouTube, for instance, has altered
the entertainment industry:
“Stand-up
comics who realized YouTube was a better distribution model than going
to clubs suddenly are going up against Will Ferrell, who came out of
Saturday Night Live to start shooting his own little video
projects on the side and he’s getting twenty million views as
opposed to a friend who gets a thousand. Now the friend who had ten
thousand is now down to a thousand because he’s competing against
Will Ferrell. So
as the mainstream products that are more known and have bigger distribution
and have millions of viewers start going onto the Internet, it requires
the people who are making quality Internet TV to get better. The challenge
they are going to face is to begin making much more tighter, better
quality video. The ‘gee-whiz’ factor has to go away a lot
faster and people are going to have to create something that’s
compelling for more than the novelty factor of it being on the Internet.”
How then
will this new era work? After all, since the advent of iTunes offering
television shows, all the networks have begun making episodes available
for free on the Internet. What additional changes can the independent
video producer expect, and how precisely will it all mesh together?
“You
will be paying more attention to the fact that FOX is a production platform,
that NBC is a production platform,” Brogan answered, “and
while your show is independently produced it will work along side some
of their platforms as well. Because what they are really going to want
is the mindshare, so it’s going to open up in a lot of ways. That’s
where I think it goes.”
There are
examples of this future on the Internet already, with web sites like
BlipTV, Next New Networks and Network2. Although similar in that they
all offer Internet television shows, they differ in their approach and
business models. BlipTV,
for instance, is a hosting company that gathers quality video products
and makes them readily available on one web site, similar to a television
network.
Next
New Networks, on the other hand, not only collects
quality shows for viewing, but is involved in the editing and venting
of content, the distinction being similar to how HBO (BlipTV) is different
than HBO Pictures (Next New Networks).
Network2
is a third model, and acts like a TV-Guide-for-the-Internet in that
it collects web series of interest and then points viewers to the actual
sites of these shows. It’s a form of a meta-aggregator, a web
application that can go even further and allow the viewer to match their
personal interests with specific shows that match those interests, then
mix these interest-specific shows into a personalized “channel,”
a concept Brogan believes will be important over the next few years.
“Suddenly
it becomes Chris TV, it’s Andrew TV, it’s Anybody TV,”
he commented. “I don’t need to watch golf. It’s OK,
I understand it’s out there and people do it, but it doesn’t
entertain me. I don’t like medical dramas. So I can start plucking
things that are of interest to me. I can watch technology shows, I can
watch funny shows, and I can start building the shows around me. I’m
the cable box.”
Chris Brogan
does indeed know something about video on the Internet, and he not only
has the resume to prove it, but the informed vision of its future to
go along with it.
(For more
information on Chris Brogan, visit his web site at chrisbrogan.com)
September
10, 2007
