Online video has hit prime time. YouTube now claims to be streaming 100 million clips per day. Viacom and Google are experimenting with delivering short TV clips through online ad inventory space. Most of the major US networks are delivering traditional programming via iTunes or their own download service. And social networks like MySpace are
adding rocketfuel to the explosion in viral video distribution. Is this TV 2.0? I don't think so.
Ask yourself this. How much does a medium have to change before it becomes a new one? Although tech retentives might argue the point - moving from black and white, through colour and then high definition is a big change but not a profound one. Lets face it. Despite the evolutions, people are still sitting down on a couch, flipping channels, and tuning out to a scheduled broadcast. In other words - its still TV.
In my view - new mediums are born when consumer behaviour, not technology, changes. Controversial as this may be - nothing about the current rise in video streaming is being driven by radical technical innovation. Faster and more prevalent broadband makes a difference. A big one. But the basic delivery technologies - Quicktime, Flash, Windows Media - have been with us for years. What has really changed is the way audiences are consuming content.
If you look at what people are actually watching on YouTube, you might be in for a surprise. In fact a lot of it, as Hobbes might have quipped, is nasty, brutish and short. Aside from 'funniest home video' style clips, also popular are cult TV shows, unscreened pilots, remixed animation clips, and viral advertisements. But although demand is growing faster than anyone expected, don't assume that people are trading normal TV viewing for a night of 30 second clips. Its true that there are limited hours in the day, and if you spend two hours on Myspace, that probably means less of everything else. But time spent interacting with new web based media is a new kind of social activity. Its not just Desperate Housewives on your iPod. People are using the web to discover TV content that isn't normally programmed, hasn't yet made it to their domestic market, was recently axed or never given a greenlight for full production.
The key to this is discovery. The really cool thing about social networks is not just showing off to your friends, but using qualified connections to discover new people, new products, and new entertainment media content that you might not have otherwise known about. Someone in your MySpace networks finds a hilarious new viral video featuring David Hasselhoff (again!), and uploads it too a YouTube stream on their profile page. Then they tell their friends via a MySpace user bulletin, and suddenly there are hundreds more people who find it, laugh and add it to their profile pages. The videos are tagged, commented on, and then turn up in search results and syndicated feeds on thousands of other content sites. Its a radically more connected form of media consumption. In other words - this is not TV.
Truth is, TV will continue to develop in parallel to this new medium which i have come to call 'networked media'. Display screens will get bigger and better, visuals and sound will dramatically increase in resolution, and devices will allow for greater flexibility in storage and personalisation. Networked media, on the other hand, which includes all kinds of media content (music, video, podcasts, articles) will evolve along a different path - more flexible distribution, device portability and playback, better tagging and discoverability, and smarter ways to target and commercialise audiences. Two seperate destinies. Lots of crossover.
Of course, its easy to fall into the trap of looking at new mediums and assuming immediate cannibalisation. TV kills radio, Video kills TV and then cinema for good measure. iPod kills radio. Web sites kill newspapers. And then, before you know it - everything bounces back. Actually - when you look at the long term patterns - mediums don't die, but the economics do change.
Sure, technology will change the TV landscape. With enough bandwidth, all TV content as we know we be delivered by an IP based network. But even when that happens, its a bit like when Telco's swap out copper for fibre in their exchanges. If you pick up a phone, and there is a dial tone has anything really changed? New technology, same consumer behaviour. The real magic happens when people change.
