THE MULTI-CHANNEL UNIVERSE grows bigger all the time, doesn’t it?
In the 1990s, Liberty Media chairman John Malone (when he headed TCI, then the largest cable company in the world) coined the "500-channel universe" phrase. In these days of multiple digital channels and on demand capabilities, to say nothing of what we can get from iTunes or on some mobile phones, we’ve moved well beyond the 500-channel limit.
In fact, many say we’ve moved into the millions of channels universe, what with all that’s available on the web, with Google, Yahoo!, AOL and others launching various sorts of video services, too – all delivered via a growing number of platforms and cool, new gadgets.
One of the most daunting challenges facing the multi-channel universe and traditional media owners is the search functionality available on televisions, mobile phones and other devices. If we’re past a million channels, how on earth can the consumer be expected to manage that? How will they find the content they want to watch? How will content providers be able to stand out in all that mess? The current search capabilities on televisions, for example, just won’t cut it.
To deal with all of this, I think the industry has to collectively stop thinking about so many channels and so much content and believe in their hearts and minds that we are living in a one-channel universe where each and every individual is their own channel. If you start from that end, the rest will fall into place.
Take a look at myspace.com. Millions of individual "channels," all created by users. You’ll see their likes and dislikes (and maybe some images that should never be made public). You’ll see them sharing information and entertainment and content , what their favorite dog, cat, color, band, food and TV shows are.
Each user revels in their own little, well, space. There are dozens of other social networking spots like this on the web, each based on the same principles of individuality – while sharing yourself with everyone else. As myspace says: "meet your friends’ friends in your personal network."
An additional demonstration of just how important these social networks are becoming was unveiled on Tuesday when Microsoft announced it would launch one of its own, dubbed Wallop. In March, U.S. wireless provider Cingular launched Rabble, a mobile sort of myspace where users can blog and post from their cell phones, among other uses. The company also offers an exclusive, free, mobile music studio to the myspace denizens, letting them turn the music they’ve created on their own (and that hasn’t already been published) into ringtones.
Taken collectively, all of this shows that people are creating their own media sphere. Their own portal. Whatever is there or is linked to it – or is stored somewhere where they can call it up on a whim, they feel like it’s theirs. Its their channel. Their content.
Not enough traditional media companies are getting this quite yet. As media – in whatever its format – becomes available and accessible more and more on demand (The fact I watched last week’s Amazing Race from my hotel in Las Vegas yesterday – pulled into my laptop from my PVR at home, is only one tiny example of this), consumers begin to sort of take ownership of it. They can manipulate it, so it’s theirs.
Not in the literal sense of course since the copyright battle is in no way solved, it’s more of a feeling that if I can take what was once linear content and watch it on my schedule on the screen that’s most convenient to me, I’m kind of my own programmer so it’s "my" content and thus, I’m a channel. I also have a bunch of old Simpson’s episodes stored on the box as well as part of The Masters. For now, those shows are "mine".
At the National Association of Broadcasters convention this week, much of the talk has centered around making content available across all platforms. About making sure that, as a broadcaster (radio or TV) your content is available "to anyone at any time on any device," as all have claimed as their new motto.
Will everyone want to listen or watch anywhere at any time on any gadget? Of course not. Each individual will do their own thing – and we’ve just begun to scratch the surface of the possibilities of that.
But that’s the challenge (and opportunity), isn’t it? It’s tougher every day to serve a mass audience, but what myspace.com and its ilk shows is that while everyone is an individual and wants to be uniquely treated, there are still many, many groups with commonalities, niches wanting to be served.
One of the key points I took away from this conference – and the National Cable Show in Atlanta two weeks ago – is that there are so many differences and competing interests that, invariably, when you ask a media or technology executive what kind of content will be most popular on cell phones, or what devices will people use, or will people want one single mobile device that does everything or can radio make a buck streaming or podcasting to mobile phones, the answer has been "I don’t know."
Of course, they all have their well-educated guesses, as we’ve written about here all week, but as of right now, no one knows for sure. I think that’s a good thing and it’s why media companies need to be on all platforms with their content. So they can dynamically serve each individual on their own individual basis because it may be a multi-channel industry but to the lone consumer, it’s their own space.
Their channel.
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