Surfing In A Digital Entertainment Universe

The entertainment industry is in a unique transitional phase right now and I'm trying to figure out where I fit into it. There are and will be opportunities to be a maverick during this phase, but that window of opportunity will close pretty quickly. Once the media giants figure out how to control and make money in the digital entertainment television universe, the chance of being an innovator in the field will evaporate.

Over the next decade you'll see the merging of the internet and television as well as the explosion of high definition programming. The first step is merging the internet with TV, where you select what you want to watch on the internet and you download it to the harddrive on your Digital Video Recorder/Player (DVR), like TIVO. Then you can watch what you want when you want.

You're starting to see some of this already. Yahoo and TIVO have made deals. ABC and CBS are offering programming for $.99 per download and the service Akimbo has numerous major and minor content providers such as IFILM, A&E, The History Channel and Turner Classic Movies. Akimbo also recently made a deal with Microsoft to incorporate their Media Center to make high definition content available for viewing via Akimbo as well.

The Akimbo/Microsoft Media Center Offering.

The good thing at this point is that you don't need to be a major network to provide content. And I think that's the niche that's exploitable. If television truly becomes an on-demand existence, then, like the internet itself, there will be opportunities to offer niche content, specific to a smaller segment of the population, but available through the same interface. The internet has web pages dedicated to everything under the sun... video on demand will be able to offer the same variety.

There are a couple of niche's I think are waiting to be explored... but I'll keep those to myself for now. The key is going to be able to create that content in a way that can be financially supported by an on-demand niche vierwer base. The quality of the program has to be high, as you are now competing against everyone else. But the quality of the CONTENT of the program, i.e. the subject, the writing, the execution, will make you stand above the rest.

There's also an opportunity to be a player in the high definition content provider space as well. I have high def and only have about 10 channels to watch, with Discovery High Definition Theater showing the highest quality images on HDTV available. The problem is that High Defintion under the current technology and business model is cost prohibitive for the niche content provider.

Ted Turner was a genius when it came to turning content into money. His greatest achievement was when he bought the MGM library and created Turner Network Television and Turner Classic Movies. If I had the capital, I would be gobbling up content right now, as there may be a good chance to recoup that money on a per download basis in our on-demand future.

In order for a niche content provider to be able to compete against the media giants in the same virtual space will require an overhaul of the current television production/editing paradigm. There are some new technologies out there that may make high definition affordable to fill this market. And trust me, once you go high definition, there is no going back. On the right, large screen, after watching a high def image and then watching standard definition image is equivalent to watching color TV vs. black and white.

In the end, the niche content provider will need to be able to provide high definition content in a business model that supports a limited potential viewer base.

That's the challenge... and I'm working on it :)