DEJA VU IS A CURIOUS THING. It happens sporadically to most of us where we think "hey, I’ve been here before."
It often feels like that time is now in the media/telecom space: That we have been here before, riding a weird, growing technological and services wave. Just like the late 1990s and into 2000-’01 it seems like we have every company (some really big, some really small) going a million miles an hour in every direction all at once.
Back then, AOL bought (snicker…) Time Warner, CanWest bought The National Post and what was the Southam newspaper group from Conrad Black. Corus was spun off from Shaw and then bought Nelvana. Bell bought Lycos, and CTV and The Globe and Mail and Teleglobe. None of those deals by these established big media companies went as planned and hundreds of millions in shareholder value was wiped out (although most of the companies have since managed to make things better).
But because we were all riding the convergence raft, all the stuff they said they would do sounded great at the time. The difference between then and now is the reporter who attends an event, blogs it or does a short hit on line, talks about it on TV and then turns it into a full story for the next day’s paper exists. This part of convergence is happening now.
Consumers can access that content on their TVs, handsets, PCs or even still in print. What was predicted then can happen now.
Also back then, new applications meant new opportunities and new companies tried new things and pushed the envelope, like icravetv.com and Napster for example. Copyright owners pushed back. Hard. While icrave is long gone, TV channels and shows are available everywhere on the net and on wireless and Napster has been revived as a legit music retail brand.
Today, though, as we’ve reported, established media companies like CTV is buying CHUM, Astral is buying Standard and CanWest is buying Alliance Atlantis with Goldman Sachs’ help. Will this produce different results than the last wave of consolidations? One would hope so.
Today, though, new companies are still trying new things and pushing the envelope, like YouTube and MySpace and Facebook and Friendster and Bebo and Revver and and and and… But, copyright owners are pushing back. Hard. YouTube was deemed a billion-dollar enterprise when purchased by Google. MySpace a $500 million dollar one when bought by Newscorp. Will those deals work out? One would hope so.
Experimentation among big media companies is rampant, too. CanWest has bbtv (BlackBerry television). Alliance Atlantis has blogtv.ca, CTV has original programming on CTV Broadband, Rogers makes its Toronto Blue Jays highlights available on wireless and other places, and offers a huge library of VOD. CHUM has a deal with Joost for Much and Space and other content. Bell is offering full two hour movies on its cell phones.
All of the wireless companies sell music and push video and other multimedia – all with various bundled pricing and services packages with those companies’ other products.
It’s impossible to understand it all. But – as everyone says (so it must be true) – people want what they want when they want it.
Former BCE CEO Jean Monty believed this. Before he and Bell Canada Enterprises parted ways, I went to an event at the Design Exchange in Toronto where the company unveiled a whole host of services, including a business-focused product that would read your e-mails to you over the phone in your car and something called TSN Max, which sent sports alerts to your cell phone.
The centrepiece of the event was something Monty called the "Combobox" – some sort of uber-device that was a Bell ExpressVu receiver, PC and Internet connectivity device all in one. Despite numerous launch promises, Combobox was never commercially deployed. Even TSN Max, in 2001, was too far ahead of its time.
Today’s telecom and cable firms offer so many things under so many pricing packages that it’s nigh on impossible to track – and it’s part of my job. And many of these new services, like MobiTV for example, have so few customers, the companies refuse to say how many they have because they’re not very popular.
Lots of the new applications and services we write about will turn out like so many Comboboxes.
I’m currently testing a Samsung multimedia phone on the Bell network. I wanted to see how its recently announced movie service works (full movies for $5.99 to $7.99 each). Technically, it works great. The video is exceptional and the audio superb – the best cellphone video I’ve ever seen. You can watch two-hour movies with barely a jitter, as long as you’re within the network, as it’s part download, part streaming.
But ergonomically speaking, it’s bloody impossible to watch a two-inch screen for two hours. To be frank. It hurts! It should come with some kind of plastic doohickey that goes around your neck to position the phone in front of your face. Or perhaps a Bell pair of Oakley sunglasses that puts the screen literally on my face.
Then again, my eight year old son watched Ghostbusters from start to finish on the phone and didn’t complain. He wants me to keep it.
I also recently tested a Rogers phone with its Music Store. Great phone. Great sound. But I’ve got an iPod and a cell phone already.
With all the company names and services and descriptions I’ve mentioned above (and that’s just a fraction of a tenth of a percentage point of what is available and will be available), are you dizzy yet?
I know I am. Editing this column is giving me a headache. Imagine how Joe Bagadonuts, regular consumer feels. Where can he go? Who can he trust? What will work? How does he know a $800 investment in Apple’s new iPhone won’t be a waste of money?
So, I’ve taken to likening our past, current and future media worlds to a flow of water. We all need water and want water – that will never change. And we want it from all sorts of places and in many flavours.
In the old days, consumers turned on the tap, powered by cable, and a flow came out of one spigot into their eyes. They changed the channel and a new flavour of water came out. Gradually, there were dozens of flavours, all easily drinkable with a TV remote.
Nowadays, at the end of that spigot, powered at various strengths by cable and satellite and wireless and other ways, is a shower head with a million little holes and instead of having their thirst sated by a strong flow of entertainment and information, it’s spraying them all over their faces and they get little splashes of entertainment at best. While they know they have control over the million little holes and can save some of the water for later drinking, they’re confused and a little intimidated at getting sprayed in the face all the time.
In the future, some company or group of companies will build a funnel with a filter (Google figures it is this company) that will catch all of the water coming from the million holes and funnel it down a few manageable spigots to Joe, who will be happy to pay for this product.
Until then, it feels like Déjà vu all over again…
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