LOS ANGELES – It was one of the more eclectic panels we’ve seen in a while at a gathering like this.
The final day’s opening general session at the NCTA’s Cable Show featured a couple of the usual suspects (Showtime CEO Matt Stone, Cablevision COO Tom Rutledge), but it also featured a disruptor (TiVo CEO Tom Rogers) a talent agent (William Morris CEO Ari Emanuel) and a newcomer (Twitter CEO Evan Williams).
While the session was entitled “Conversation 2.0, Community, Collaboration and the Future of Media”, the conversation turned to where just about every session’s conversation goes. Essentially: How do we make money as so many things change?
Emanuel, the most vociferous of the bunch, had a couple of ideas. “Television can not be a definition any longer,” he said. That doesn’t mean you’re going to call your flat screen the big magic viewing box, it instead means “we have to redefine what we define as content,” added Emanuel.
While premium content matters, and most folks think of professional produced TV or film content as premium, we have to start thinking more often of what the end user thinks is premium, which for some may well be not-so-professional content on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. That may be their “premium” entertainment.
“And my job is to monetize my client’s content whether it be on YouTube or Showtime,” explained Emanuel.
Later in the session, Emanuel articulated the second idea to emerge from this session, which is really a part of the first one: While we’re busting apart the content silos, a way must be built to track and monetize viewing so that creative talent are paid for their work as it is so widely disseminated now – well beyond the windows the traditional business plans are set up to track.
There are “huge walls” right now, he said, “We have not yet figured out interconnecting agreements so there is a system where payments happen,” he added. That may mean artists take less up front but get a lot more over the content’s entire lifetime, no matter where and when it’s seen. “We need to take down the walls… to get a true economic reading of the programs over their extended life,” he said.
Part of the problem there, and this has been identified by many already, is measurement. Despite all the work companies do in the social media space and showing content online and on demand, there is no way yet to effectively measure or monetize certain aspects of it. For example, actor Ashton Kutcher has 4.8 million Twitter followers (@aplusk) “but what’s the value of those subs and how does Ashton monetize that conversation?” asked Emanuel.
Showtime’s Stone didn’t have an answer to the measurement question but did admit it’s a lot more work now to make sure content is part of the conversation. “You have to work harder to use all the tools to get your product in front of people… so they want to consume.”
The key, added Twitter’s Williams, will be to connect all of these disparate devices consumers now have in their homes and their pockets and purses, so that an iPad can talk to a cable box, for example. (“That’s coming soon,” noted Rutledge.)
With Twitter’s trending topics and constant live feedback, broadcasters and show creators can get an instant sense of whether or not their show is liked, not, or a big hit. “You can track people watching TV by the trending topics,” said Williams. “People talk about what they like and it’s going to drive consumption… and bring us back to this idea of shared events that everyone talks about and gathers around.”
But that doesn’t mean Williams wants to see a tweetstream on his TV, or watch TV on his iPad alongside a Twitter window. With this still in everyone’s memory from yesterday, he added: “These worlds are not separate worlds but there are still too many barriers.”
“Once all these things are connected, you can actually do a lot more.”
Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien is in Los Angeles this week covering the NCTA Cable Show. For more live updates, follow us on Twitter @gregobr
