LAS VEGAS – The so-called new media space is regularly thought of as a playground for the basement producer making silly videos based on the slimmest of hope that they might hit it big and have millions of people watch on YouTube (think Mentos and Diet Coke).
While such viral successes are what consumer media most likes to report on, the simple fact of the matter is that big media rules new media.
On the web, on the cell phone, users looking to be entertained gravitate to brands they know, said a NATPE panel on technology and distribution this week.
They need the brands, simply, as a filter for all of the content they will be able to pull into their living rooms one day, either along side, or instead of, their traditional TV feed from cable, satellite or telco TV. In five years, predicted Microsoft’s corporate VP of media and entertainment Blair Westlake, there will be more than 50,000 hours of high quality professional content (major movies and TV shows) available for consumers to view on their TVs, delivered through a device like a Windows Media Centre PC or an Apple TV device.
How in the world any consumer would be able to find what they want in such a vast, overwhelming library is where brands come in. "At 50,000 hours, if you can’t find what you want, it doesn’t mean anything," said Amy Friedlander, SVP programming for AT&T.
"50,000 hours is a bit of a problem," admitted TBS EVP Dennis Quinn, who added that of the millions of web sites around the world, 10 well-established, branded sites, get 30% of all traffic. And of 200 or so TV channels people can get, "they only consider about 15," he said.
The new paradigm coming, explained AOL Video’s Josh Freeman, is video search, something his company and Google and Yahoo! and myriad others are working on. But no matter what they come up with, he said, "brands are critical because you need a filter to help consumers find things."
Look for metadata within programming streams to become more important than ever before in such schemes, said Westlake. "Metadata is not being used to its full capacity," he said, explaining that in the near future consumers will be able to find a movie or TV show "just using one line," or dialogue they remember.
"Search is the engine under the hood of all this," he added.
Greg O’Brien is editor and publisher of Cartt.ca and was in Las Vegas this week to cover the National Association of Television Program Executives 2007 conference.
