David Emery Online

Not learning by example

6 March 2008

It seems to me that, even though the music industry has already been through all of this and could serve as a very good example of what not to do, the film and TV industries are making all of the same mistakes when it comes to embracing the effect of the internet on their business.

First things first, they seemed to be blindly stumbling down the path of using restrictive DRM despite the restrictions it’s placing on growing their market. Consumers demand a certain level of control over the product that they are purchasing, and at the moment that control just isn’t allowed; I’m talking about things like being able to media-shift downloaded video (burning onto a DVD, for example), which is prevented by almost every major online video store I’ve come across.

No consumer control = no success.

It feels like what the online video industry needs is what the music industry got when Apple launched the iTunes Music Store; someone who understands that to get people using the service they need to be a bit looser with the freedoms they deny – before iTunes came along, most other music stores featured DRM that didn’t let people burn tracks to CD, or use them on multiple machines, which just killed any chance of them having any major success. We’re pretty much at the same stage with video, except Apple doesn’t seem to be the one that’s going to shake things up as they’ve already gone down the path of using restrictive DRM (and show no signs of giving it up).

The other major – and possibly more important – thing Apple brought to the table was the iPod, and there’s no doubt that at the moment we still haven’t got the digital video industry’s equivalent. That’s not to say that portable video is in any way important, as it’s not; a niche market at best that is already served quite well by things like iPods. No, what’s lacking is a breakout consumer device that allows you to watch digital video on the place you want to watch it: your TV. Many people have tried – including Apple with the Apple TV, Microsoft with the Xbox 360 and Windows Media Center and numerous others – but no-one seems to have developed something that has really connected with the market.

I’m not going to say I’ve got the answer for why that is – certainly there are many slick and compelling offerings, unlike the digital music player market pre iPod – but my hunch is that it’s linked back to the DRM issue again, which means that the concept of digital video hasn’t taken off like it should or could and prevents things like ripping DVDs as a source of content to use on such a device. As a side note, how successful would iTunes or the iPod have been if you couldn’t rip CDs? Answer: not very.

Another problem is the obsession with trying to sell this content. It’s obviously the inevitable conclusion – ‘Hey, we have all this great content – let’s sell it!’ – but I think that – unlike with music – people don’t care about owning (most) video. The most obvious content for online distribution is TV shows, being shorter and hence quicker to download then a film, and people aren’t used to paying for them on an episode-by-episode basis. They’re used to getting them for free, advertising supported, and this is the model that makes – by far and away – the most sense. Sure, TV show box-set DVD sales are healthy, and there definitely is a market for selling collections of programming online in this way, but online distribution has the potential to replace both traditional broadcast and timeshifting devices such as Tivo and Sky +.

The benefits of moving to an advertising-based model (which in the US is being explored by some of the networks) is that by freeing yourself from the shackles of payment you can start to get the content out everywhere. It’s impossible to talk at any length about online video without mentioning YouTube, but it (and sites like it) have been mostly ignored by traditional content owners, other then for putting out trailers and clips. Decent content – despite how many amusing videos of cats you might see on there – always does well on YouTube, so the obvious step of putting full length TV shows – including both traditional video adverts and online banner style ones alongside – and allowing people to watch and share them at will is what needs to happen. It’s a no-brainer, quite frankly, and just needs content owners to give up trying to hold onto what they think they have (but don’t) and take the leap into the unknown.