The value of interacting with purchasers of content

Hot item in Scott Brown's blog - "When Will VOD Really Pop?". He hears that Hollywood's worked down its fear of consumer copies, such that it can consider the wealth of opportunities of secondary content markets.

Back in 1996 when I was in Tandem Corporate Strategy, some Warner execs were pushing Smart TV, a way to interact with broadcast content to build a lucrative advertising mechanism that Barry Diller said could double HSN's take - but fear held it back. Could it be that greed has finally conquered fear again?

Smart TV had a cool idea - you could interact with TV content and get things immediately. See an ad for a free coke or pizza, and you could click a button and walk over to a vendor and get the item immediately.

Web TV, podcasts, and the like are valuable secondary markets for content that doesn't have to rob the DVD, theater, or broadcast revenues. In fact, they can enhance them, by building a relationship with content consumers, who often want to acquire many versions of the same content.

Back in 1996, I met Chuck Dages and he educated me on the business Warner Brothers was in. "We're in the real estate business - we lend out space and equipment, get back content. The more we keep busy, the more content we get to put into play".

Simple to dominate here - you put different versions of content out for the "small screen's", and then you work out revenue models for each that balence demand with price point. All you have to accept is that the are seperate segments, and that one doesn't kill the other.

Hollywood is still stuck in DVD glut, hoping for the miracle of HD DVD, which maybe longer in coming than the lifecycle of HDTV displacing NTSC. The problem with betting the farm on this isn't just adoption, its that "speed matters".

The value of Smart TV was instant impact to the consumer. VOD, podcasts, and derivatives of YouTube have this. It has to make content connect faster to the market, or Hollywood suffers the fate of the print media of being too slow and obsolete.