Constant Beta

Unrendered Motion Picture Company is now known as Constant Beta Motion Picture Company. The world is now in a permanent state of beta. Everything is changing. Constantly. Herein are thoughts on how media, marketing, politics and pop culture are transforming. Or, more curmudgeonly put, life as we know it is going to hell in a hand basket. Here's how. Some of these thoughts are the views of Arka, Constant Beta's founder. Some are the views of the company. Nobody (including him) knows which is which.

[arkapsengupta]

For Rolling Stone's Content Studio, a Long and Winding Road

Rolling Stone is on the hunt for someone to head up an as-of-yet unlaunched content studio that will create branded content for clients. The magazine is playing catch-up to digital-native publications like Gawker and BuzzFeed, and newer music-publications like Pitchfork and Complex, which are already creating content for brands.

[arkapsengupta]

There is a trend among media outlets that integrates their programming development strategy deeply into their branded entertainment efforts. They see the endeavor a bit like paid R&D: experiment with video formats and content paradigms and get the brand to pay for it. Often, their branded entertainment content is also their most visible video programming. I find this approach highly problematic.

Programming’s goal is to drive viewership. Branded entertainment’s goal is to elevate brand visibility. Programming’s goal is to create ad inventory. Branded entertainment’s goal is to sell ad inventory. Programming is developed based on strategic imperatives around audience composition and a network’s brand. Branded entertainment is developed based on a brief or an RFP - it always starts with an advertiser’s strategic or tactical imperative.

Some would argue that at the end of the day, programming and branded entertainment are rooted in the same thing: getting people to watch and engage. The problem is, the network is always trying to engage its audience while the brand is trying to engage its consumers. This may seem semantic, but the distinction is real, and the tensions that arise are often contradictory.

The plight of a Rolling Stone is really not that different from the plight of an AMC. Like AMC before it, Rolling Stone is a premium brand with an engaged audience that is suffering from intense competition for eyeball monetization. Whether it is AMC, NatGeo, IFC or TVLand, every successful media transformation has occurred as a result of successfully making huge bets on breakthrough content that drives viewership.

I don’t think the differences between the TV and digital content landscape are large enough to invalidate the strategies of one in the realm of the other. And to me, the more sophisticated emerging model is that of Participant Media’s pivot TV. At Pivot, Evan Shapiro (formerly of Sundance/IFC)  is making significant investments in programming, based on what he believes Pivot’s audience will find relevant and authentic, and is using production and branded entertainment as a way to reinvent the :30 second commercial pod business. Branded entertainment is helping to sell the ad inventory programming creates.

Ultimately, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and other digital media outlets will need to develop content strategies that work for their audience. This strategy will need to account for the media brand’s voice and POV, but will also need to be rooted in an understanding of who its audience is and blue sky notions around what they find relevant and authentic.

Beyond that, they will of course need to figure out what the content funding model is. Perhaps it is selling ad inventory (traditionally or via “branded entertainment”). Perhaps it getting the audience to pay for it (e.g. HBO, Sundance, etc.). One thing is certain: there are no “paid R&D” shortcuts. Each will all need to invest significantly in developing breakthrough content who’s sole purpose is to engage audiences on the network’s terms (versus on the brand’s)…and figure out where the money for that investment is going to come from.

[theatlantic]

No, NBC’s Premier League Deal Doesn’t Mean America Loves Soccer Now

Last weekend, on August 17, NBC launched its new coverage of the English Premier League, after paying $250 million for the television rights to every soccer match played in the EPL over the next three years. Fox had been paying a third of that price to air a much smaller slate of games than NBC will. NBC’s execs seemed to have made a big gamble, betting that flooding the American market with English soccer would draw casual viewers in, boost NBC’s ratings, and increase the sport’s exposure in the U.S. The reward was the highest overnight rating in U.S. history for a Premier League season opener.

Read more. [Image: AP/Lefteris Pitarakis]

[arkapsengupta]

NBC is continuing its bet on second tier sports leagues that it started with its NHL deal. Even if you add in $25 million in programming costs per year on top of the $250 million it paid for the rights, you are still probably looking at approximately $40K per 30 second ad spot to break even on EPL. Not a difficult proposition at all given NBC sports network’s reach and given the programming and promotional stunts it can do with the mothership channel.

By comparison’s sake, NBC commanded approximately $125K per 30 second spot for this year’s NHL finals. And it has proven it knows how to grow a league’s stature. This deal will look like a veritable bargain in three years.

[arkapsengupta]

Ron Howard's 'Rush' for Independent Film Financing

Interesting look at the process for getting Rush financed. A few things strike me about the process.

The Hollywood studio model has evolved away from a VC-centric model towards a more bank financing model. It used to be that studios would spread their bets out across a large portfolio of projects, knowing that the few that became huge hits would create more than reasonable returns and cover the losses on other projects. The large studios are now making bigger bets across a smaller portfolio that feels more secure.

A large driver for this, and the second point I find interesting: despite rhetoric to the contrary, the evidence makes it clear that it is getting harder and harder to establish audience for content. If Universal is worried about finding audiences for a F1 story helmed by one of the most bankable directors of our generation, we’ve got problems.

Finally, it is nice to see increasing evidence that substantial business models for content can be developed without the American market being the lynch pin. Add Rush to the Pacific Rim bucket in that regard (and lets not forget about the recent TV properties that have established this to be true). Foreign is quickly becoming the tail that wags the Hollywood dog.

[constantbeta-blog]

Hey, Peter Jackson, Freddie Wong is bringing high-frame rate online - and viewers are flocking to it

First, to be clear, VGHS is awesome. Second, it is interesting that people are actually going over to the RocketJump website to watch episodes in mixed frame rates. People that have been listening to me for a long time know that I am very concerned about the effect increased digital distribution and greater content portability will have on video production quality. So this, at first blush, appears to be heartening.

In the music industry, the fact that mp3's have supplanted CD's as the format of choice has had unintended (or perhaps it was intended) consequences beyond the death of the album. Stuff in general sounds worse. mp3's are an inferior sound format given the amount of compression that is required to make the format "file size friendly". But that doesn't matter much when you are listening on headphones off your iPhone or computer. Or if you are streaming the music over the internet or via a cellular connection. Less and less music is consumed in the living room, and as a result, it doesn't need to sound as good. So the labels are increasingly unwilling to spend money on top notch sound quality. It is rare to hear a truly amazing recording nowadays. And it is uncommon to hear about artists worrying about stuff like that.

As video content becomes more portable, as more of it is consumed outside the TV, I wonder if we will see similar effects. While it is heartening to see people flocking to watch video at 48 fps the RocketJump audience is a very particular one. Freddie knows his audience well, and it was a pretty safe bet that they would geek out over the frame rate. I am not convinced this implies anything about the general public and their desire to see stuff shot really well.

[reviewinhaiku]

World War Z

[constantbeta-blog]

I always love these. But this one is particularly clever with its reference to the near disaster production of World War Z was.

[constantbeta-blog]

Sold Back to Its Founder, Frommer's to Publish Anew

“There’s the availability of free information on the Internet, and there’s the fewer number of brick-and-mortar stores,” said David Steinberger, the chief executive of Perseus Books Group. “But you can still have a very successful business if you have the right brand and the right content.”

From you're mouth to God's ears, Mr. Steinberger.

In this era of crowd sourced travel guides (e.g. Yelp, Trip Adviser, etc.), there is little room for the static content experience of a travel book. The social web has created a level of customization around travel information the category never had - even with Fodors at one end and Rough Guides at the other.

It is a real shame that the Fodors, Frommers and Lonely Planets of the world didn't leverage their brands in the digital era. The off-line Trip Advisor City Guide app on my iPhone really should have been a Frommers branded app. Because in the travel category, more than others, there is real room for a blend of editorial and crowd sourced content. But then, that's the story of the digital era, isn't it?

All that said, I am always saddened when a content category is supplanted by a product of lower quality, with the initial driver of shift being "it's free" rather than "it's better".

[constantbeta-blog]

The immediate beauty of this ad is the fact that I didn't question for a second that Bayou Eskimos was a real show when I saw this ad in a NYC subway station. Which is where you often see ads for shows like this. Media placement and creative working perfectly to build the point, and a rare example of creative seamlessly leading you to the punchline.

The deeper beauty of this ad is that it is a commentary on TV, on our society and on ourselves. Which perfectly reflects WTTW's (and PBS') brand promise. And yet its very existence is bold and reflects a step forward for an otherwise staid brand.

Quite possibly a perfect execution of print/outdoor branding.

[theavc]

Netflix and Arrested Development have officially entered a “conversation" about a fifth season. 

[constantbeta-blog]

Non-standard distribution's ability to deliver focused audiences with scale continues to breathe life into a category of content that had been proven unfeasible even half a decade ago.

[parislemon]

Microsoft's Products Need Horsepower

Rolfe Winkler:

Microsoft keeps hitching its fortunes to lame horses. It shows how rickety parts of the software giant’s business are.

Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, Nokia, Yahoo and Dell all face very difficult circumstances of their own. While Microsoft’s deals with most of them make sense, its relatively unpopular products and a changing competitive environment mean they may not prove particularly fruitful.

Yep. The best of the bunch is Yahoo, a deal which was struck years ago, that they reportedly want out of…

[constantbeta-blog]

What sticks out in my mind about this article is the fact that Google gets credit for its strategy of giving away Android to fuel its cash cow search engine business while Microsoft gets penalized for giving away Windows 8 Mobile to fuel its own cash cow: the Office and desktop eco-system.

[constantbeta-blog]

Playing with the Holy Grail is playing with fire.

I know this to be true because I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark. And because I downloaded the Magna Carta-Holy Grail app.

The postmortem on the Jay-Z/Samsung link up consists of lazy-asses digital journalists getting caught up with the seemingly far reaching permissions the app demands when you download it. It all started with a New York Times article suggesting the permissions are part of a plot to allow Jay-Z to watch everything you do on your phone. (Never mind the fact that if anyone is gonna use the app to spy on you, its Samsung, not Jay-Z.) The Apple blogs ran with it, adding the word "spyware" and off we went. (For a screen shot of the permissions screen, see here.)

Here's the simple problem. The requests the app makes are not that unreasonable, or unusual. Specifically, the app asks for permission to access the phone's storage, system tools and protected storage. It also requires network access and knowledge of your phone's current state. These permissions are all required to allow the app to do what it needs to do: use the network to download songs, write them to your memory, and to play them using your phone's player (and allowing the player to pause when a phone call comes in, or when you look away from the screen, etc.). The app does require you to post a Facebook status update or to tweet about the album in exchange for lyrics, etc. but is that a really unreasonable request? This is pretty standard operating procedure nowadays for many apps.

Overall, the app may not be the most "friendly" but it is certainly not the most egregious. Given you are getting a highly prized album for free, Samsung, perhaps reasonably, felt it was justified in the requests it made of its users. Indeed, once the songs are on your phone, you don't even need the app again. You can simply erase the damn thing.

The not so simple problem is that from a brand's perspective, the potential backlash from these programs is very problematic. As a brand, in this strange, hyper-witch hunt media environment, you can no longer count on the media accurately reporting your intentions. Nor should you. And legalese around opt-ins, permissions, etc. are confusing at best.

How does a brand like Samsung protect its $5million plus "investment" into this campaign? First it needs to really understand the value exchange it is asking for from its consumers. The natural tendency will be to try to "maximize" on this exchange, but as we can see, that can bite you in the ass. What's the consumer behavior you are trying to drive? Make it simple and stick to just that. Second, the brand needs to ensure the app does exactly what the value exchange asks for. Nothing more and nothing less. The legal and physical footprint needs to be tiny, and it needs to be as noninvasive as possible. Finally, rather than shy away from the permissions issues, brands need to be overly explicit, to the public and in the app about what it is asking for and why. And they need to do this in very plain English.

In other words, be very, very explicit about the value exchange: here's what you get, here's what we ask. As a brand, if you don't feel comfortable with absolute transparency here, you probably got the "value exchange" part wrong, and need to go back to step one.

[constantbeta-blog]

The slide to irrelevance is as quick as it is long

In the secret history of music, Jay-Z's request to Billboard, and Bill Werde's response will go down as tangible evidence of the beginning of the end.

Saying the music industry is in flux is understatement of the finest order. People aren't buying albums. They are barely buying singles anymore. Music industry revenues stand at half of what they were at its peak. In this environment, Jay-Z's partnership with Samsung around his forthcoming album is a masterstroke. Samsung has purchased one million copies of Magna Carta from Jay-Z at $5 a pop, and will distribute those copies to people who own Samsung products. Jay-Z sells albums, facilitates sampling and gets promotional support. Samsung provides a valuable service to its audience, creating not only good will but a genuine platform to engage consumers. And fans get the album for free. One of those rare win/wins for all parties involved.

One of the sub-streams within content marketing is the notion of brand as utility, and this is the perfect manifestation of it. Bill Werde and Billboard have, predictably, come down on the wrong side of history. Not only has real value changed hands between artist and the marketplace, but a real transaction will take place between the brand and the audience: those who want to download the album will have to decide if their engagement with the brand is worth what they will receive in return.

The bigger picture here for the record industry is the fact that this scheme promotes record sales and product sales. Just as they did for TV shows via the commercial, brands are finding value in directly financing music content on behalf of its consumers and audience. And using its media muscle to help promote those content relationships. The industry should be bending over backwards to reward stuff like this.

To suggest an album sale isn't valid because a consumer didn't directly pay for it is like saying CSI's viewership numbers aren't valid because those people didn't pay directly for the show the way they pay for Game of Thrones or House of Cards.

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

[yahoosignal-blog]

[constantbeta-blog]

Leave it to Yahoo to develop something awesome, and to make it completely impossible to share via social platforms. All you get is an embed code. Lame.

These "disposable" web appliances are great ways to get audiences to engage with media brands, and Yahoo! News develops a lot of great ones. But making them so the average person can easily share the actual appliance (vs. the link) on social platforms is critical to maximizing their value.

[constantbeta-blog]

Fullscreen, With Comcast and WPP Backing, to Expand Into Studio Model

Fullscreen, a top YouTube multichannel network operator, plans to expand into financing original content after closing a round of Series A funding led by Peter Chernin's Chernin Group...

And so the digital reach bubble begins. Multi-channel network operators are raising huge war chests and using the cash to grab as much audience as they can. The strategy is sound: hundreds of channels accounting for hundreds of millions of video streams create a level of reach and frequency that can give cable, and even broadcast TV a run for their money. Layer on top of this the ability to profile, segment and target viewers with a level of precision that TV just can't deliver (yet) and it is no wonder the old TV networks are buying their way in.

For brands that can still afford to rely on reach and frequency as the basis of their marketing strategies, using MCN's as part of a multi-platform approach to creating effective reach makes a ton of sense. (Research continually shows that simultaneous presence of a brand message across multiple platforms creates a halo effect.) To me, there are a lot of parallels to the late 90's and the boom in ad supported cable TV. Media agencies realized they could duplicate the reach of broadcast and Tier 1 cable for a fraction of the cost by optimizing buys across dozens of smaller cable networks. The same dynamic is driving growth here.

As time goes on, we will start to see more verticals develop in the space against specific demographics or subject matter (e.g. DeFranco Networks, etc.). And we will see even more network investment (and ultimately, will see the established networks taking over the space through acquisition).

There is a lot of money flowing into these MCN's from investors and advertisers and so we are seeing a lot of content get created against this model. As CPM's continue to decline, it will be interesting to see how open the content creating community is to continuing to make the content that fuels this stuff, and how these MCN's manage their portfolio of channels and reach. A few content creators have found lasting success in the YouTube channel eco-system. For most however, it is a decent enough job, but hardly the stuff of careers.

[constantbeta-blog]

Brian Roberts Vows New Box And Network Features Will Set Pace For Innovation: Cable Show

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts used his annual presentation at The Cable Show, taking place this week in DC, to announce that his company will introduce a set-top box, called XI3, that’s four times faster and three times smaller than conventional boxes — and this fall will roll out an operating system, called X2, that offers “a seamless experience” to navigate a TV set and digital devices.

The cable companies need to understand the business they will be in, and need to learn what the widgets of that business will be. The focus on controlling the living room, the cycles spent on improving hardware...it will all ultimately be for naught. Because if one thing is certain, it is that consumers will demand diversity. So long as a cable company thinks it will deliver THE content viewing solution its consumers are looking for, it will lose. Too many consumers will desire too many solutions, based on their own content preferences.

Put another way, the best way for cable companies to win the cord-cutter/device agnostic/content everywhere battles is to make the conversation redundant. It isn't about set top boxes and it isn't about wires and remotes anymore. The cable companies need to be the one stop shop for content. Any content you want, all the content you want. Wherever you want, whenever you want.

The widgets of this promise are different from the widgets they sell today. Today it is set top boxes, tomorrow, it needs to be API's and apps that can easily be integrated and bundled and downloaded on any computer, phone and tablet. Today it is a channel lineup, tomorrow it is content portability and viewing synchronization. Today it is a better remote, tomorrow it is platforms to allow content creators to deliver rich second and third screen experiences. Today it is ad skipping DVR's, tomorrow it is the ability to customize ads, interact with ads, better target ads.

In short, the cable business will be about API's, apps and pipes. Their apps will need to bring the most joy and flexibility. Their API's will need to be the easiest to work with. And their pipes will have to be fat enough to deliver everything with zero latency (which also means it will need to be fatter than anybody else's). Who cares about the box it all sits on? Certainly not the consumer.

[courtenaybird]

Nielsen reported this spring that there are now over 5 million cord cutters in the U.S., up from 3 million in 2007. In these “zero tv” households, almost half were under the age of 35.

[courtenaybird]

(via TechCrunch)

[parislemon]

It’s important to note that “zero TV” doesn’t mean these homes don’t have televisions — most do. It simply means they’re not paying for cable. 

The graph above clearly illustrates what might be considered a “trend”. Or, to put it another way, winter is coming.

[constantbeta-blog]

I am not questioning the "cord-cutters will mean a world of hurt" narrative. But I wonder how much of this distribution can be explained by examining how content viewing behavior evolves as someone ages. After all, the older you get, the more TV you watch.

Put more simply, I wonder how many "cord cutters" are actually "I'll watch TV after I get married" types. Will there be pain for cable companies? Yes. Will it be as bad as all the charts and graphs suggest? I suspect no.

I think this chart is more relevant when considering how best to reach millennials and post-millennials with video content.

[constantbeta-blog]

Chicago Sun-Times Lays Off All Its Photographers

The death of print is becoming one of those train wrecks that you just can't take your eyes away from. Whatever ounce of compassion one may have felt for the industry has surely vanished from most reasoned souls. Have you ever seen an industry so deliberately throw away product quality in an effort to survive not fail?

[constantbeta-blog]

Barry Diller Confirms Newsweek Is For Sale

“I got seduced into Newsweek,” said Barry Diller today about his plan to sell the new magazine brand.

Further misery piled onto an already sad story. The death of print has been painfully slow, and painfully painful. After all, who would have thought that the Wall St. Journal would one day require a write off?

In some ways, Barry Diller is right about Newseek fitting in a wider publishing group. Or perhaps in a TV news organization. What Newsweek needs is content. Exclusive, long form, video and editorial content. Without content, you have two choices: be cheap, or be irrelevant. Hopefully Newsweek is not yet the later.