In November we traveled to San Jose for the Streaming Media West 2009 conference. Our goal was to sit down with as many thought leaders in the video space as possible in order to determine what is working, what isn’t working and what might work in the near feature.
The Streaming Media Interview Series series was made possible through the kind sponsorship of Brightcove.
We set out to interview a variety of technology, business and creative professionals about the current state of and future prospects of live and on-demand video delivered across mobile, web and the set-top box.
The results are illuminating and we’ve collected the interviews in a single, convenient location. We invite your to take a look and listen. We also hope to hear your feedback.
Interviews were conducted by ScribeMedia’s Peter Cervieri (@pcervieri on Twitter). His notes on some of the interviews are below.
Zadi Diaz, Epic Fu
I talked to Zadi Diaz, Creative Director, Co-Founder, Smashface Productions and host of Epic Fu at the Streaming Media West conference about how she has slowly and methodically built a sustainable (revenue generating) Web TV business.
Gerald Abrahamian, Comcast
Comcast is moving cautiously forward in the digital landscape and is far from airing full shows online at the same time as the episodes air on TV. Cable and Satellite TV operators pay a hefty monthly per subscriber subscription fee so as a content producer Comcast doesn’t want to jeopardize or cannibalize TV eyeballs, which would reduce subscription revenue.
Rico Nasol, Zappos.com
Zappos has embraced online video in impressive fashion. The company produced its first video about a year ago and has since banged out over 8,000 product videos. And it is just getting started.
John Paul, Sling Media
AT&T still tries to block the Sling Player from working on AT&T cell phones, such as the iPhone. Sling thinks this is unfair because AT&T doesn’t block others, such as the MLB or the NBA, from selling apps in the iPhone app store that enable and encourage video streaming. AT&T isn’t even handed in deciding which content services it tries to block and which it lets through.
Mark Whitten, Xbox Live
According to Mark Whitten, GM Xbox Live, Microsoft’s goal is, “The entertainment you want with the people you care about wherever you are. It’s easy to find and discover my friends, the content that matters and to interact with the content and friends in meaningful ways.”
Paul Scanlan, MobiTV
MobiTV’s main focus is to help carriers create their own mobile TV networks. So while the company offers a direct to consumer service, its goal is to be the white label engine that powers Verizon TV, AT&T TV, Sprint TV, etc.
Matt Weisbecker, NBC
As part of a cross platform package, NBC is selling online Olympics ad inventory @ $45 CPM, versus the typical $10 – $20 CPM for a network show. Sponsors cannot buy an online only package. They have to buy the cross platform mix (TV, online, mobile).
Tim Siglin, Braintrust Digital
The more relevant metadata there is associated with an online video, the easier it is for end users, whether they are colleagues, customers, or consumers, to find the video and, more precisely, specific scenes within the video.
Bill Stone, FLO TV
Did you ever wonder what happened to the spectrum that was used for old (by old I mean last year) analog television before the digital conversion? Qualcomm was one company that purchased the newly vacated spectrum from the government. With it, they launched FLO TV to deliver TV to mobile devices.
Brian Shin, Visible Measures
Ad networks and video platforms have to increase the confidence of advertisers so they allocate more budget to online video campaigns. Visible Measures is trying to provide the analytics and measurement tools to help advertisers get a sense of how effective their campaigns are.
