LAS VEGAS (Hollywood Reporter) - Anthony Zuiker is on a mission to drive viewers back to television. The creator of the “CSI” franchise suggested a model, what he calls Cross Blending Storytelling, during a panel session Monday at the annual convention of the National Assn. of Broadcasters.

Zuiker said that viewing behavior has shifted. “I lost 8 million viewers on our premiere last season. Where are they? They’re on the Web,” he said. “People are consuming more and more content on the Web. … The broadcast model in terms of advertising is a little bit broken.”

Cross Blending Storytelling, he said, involves “launching a narrative from television to the Web to mobile to gaming and back to television.

“But we are going to drive them back to television, not away from television,” he said, warning, “if you don’t take care of television … the laptop will dominate.

“The good news is now you can monetize all four platforms,” he said. “We are going to monetize TV on all four platform to make up for the dollars we are losing on TV.

“People like myself and my staff will be building story lines into the script — launching new characters, launching new story lines, launching things you can enjoy beyond TV in one hour,” he added. “You have to make content specific to the device.”

Zuiker said he and his team already are creating infrastructure and exploring outsourcing for areas such as mobile and games.

He believes this can serve to merge Hollywood with Silicon Valley. “The days of just watching a show from 9-10 (p.m.) are over,” he said. “It’s all going to change. … There is no such thing as a one-off anymore.”

Zuiker’s shows are in pretty good shape. So far this season, “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” ranks No. 9 in households in its eighth year, with “CSI: Miami” tied at No. 12 in its sixth, and “CSI: NY” at No. 28 in its fourth

Just to illustrate how far ahead they are, read the article about how they are making a hugely popular show available DRM free through BitTorrent. How long do you think it’s going to take before the major US networks do the same? “Never” seems like a pretty good bet to me.

They have some articles in English but for the most part it’s in good old fashioned Norsk.

[NRK Beta (in Norwegian)]

Although her tips are nothing new they do ring true. They include defining your audience, utilizing networks, mailing lists and blog links, getting a dedicated domain and picking the right portal.

Like I said, none of these tips are new but the fact that almost everyone who has had success publishing videos online follows the same formula is a strong indicator that this is the way to do things.

… but let’s not forget that even if you do all these things your video still needs to be good great to get noticed. If your product is crap, no one will buy it no matter how good your advertising is.

[WebVideoReport.com]

“Quarterlife” was just the beginning.

NBC’s pick-up of the Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick Internet drama as a mid-season replacement has unleashed a tidal wave of Web-to-TV migrations. While savvy TV executives have been combing YouTube and other video sites for two years now for fresh talent, now the hunt is on to find fully-fledged Web properties that might play well on the big screen.

In light of my recent ramblings on the future success of shows like Quarterlife this article is well worth a read.

This section of the DMCA called DMCA Title II: Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act and it is now under fire from Rep. Howard Berman - also known as “Congressman Hollywood”.

From Ars Technica:

“Berman believes that the DMCA, in particular, needs reforming, but not in the ways that consumers have clamored for. Instead, the congressman wants to look again at the issue of “safe harbor” provisions currently extended to ISPs for infringing content flowing across their networks. He wants to examine the “effectiveness of takedown notices” under the DMCA, and he’d like to take another look at whether filtering technology has advanced to the point where Congress ought to mandate it in certain situations.”

Basically Berman wants to do what the big content providers have been asking for for years: Shut down any ability for people to share video/music/other content without that content being pre-screened and proofed by some governing body. This could be done by creating filters that would track and disallow any content deemed “unfit” in any way putting an end to the use of copyrighted music and clips along with the sharing of other owned content. The problem is such a system would bog down the sharing process to such an extent that it would become impossible to use. Which is exactly what they want. It’s a bit like having a security guard frisk you every time you go out of your apartment. The result would be a stunting of video- and other content sharing sites to the point where it would be impossible for them to continue to operate.

This is pure conjecture on my part but it’s pretty obvious what’s going on here: The big content providers (TV and movie networks, music labels etc) want to regain control over where, who and how their content is being used by restricting it’s use to their approved channels, thus gaining all the monetary rewards for it. This is understandable but it is also backwards and damn near impossible to implement without ruining the ability for average Joes and Janes to create their own content. Not to mention that even though the DMCA and other similar laws are US laws, they are implemented as if they were international stunting the use of the internet and it’s resources for the rest of the world population.

In short, this is bad news for everyone. If Berman gets his way that is.

[Full article]

Many people who talk about this topic make one big error right off the top: The TV industry is nothing like the music industry. Time and again people compare the explosive growth of video sharing sites with that of mp3s and digital music sharing. But this comparison is false at it’s very core. And here’s why: While it’s easy to make quality music on the cheap, making quality video content on the cheap is damn near impossible. Why? Because unlike music which only requires talent, instruments and some basic recording equipment, video production requires expensive equipment, know-how, talent and most of all an ability to tell a story in a compelling manner. There’s a reason why most of the people you see on TV or in movies have an education in what they do: It’s damn hard to keep people glued to the screen. Hard, that is, unless you exploit the shock value to it’s fullest and focus on that and that alone. But there’s a limit to how many people falling off skateboards, girls farting into the camera and babies laughing the viewers are interested in seeing.

No doubt many will disagree on this standing firm in their belief that the two are one and the same. So let me just say it again: They’re not. Not even close. Because while a talented musician can make the world’s best album in his basement no TV or film maker can ever reach the same standards of quality and content as the major producers and distributors without considerable financial backing. And herein lies the problem: How do independent internet video producers compete with established broadcast producers with million dollar budgets? The simple answer is they don’t. The complicated answer is they could if they managed to redefine the market.

You might know there is a strike going on in Hollywood right now. The writers guild is striking because the writers are not being paid their share of the revenue generated by their content being published on the internet. And while the big networks claim they are not earning any money off this content the reality is that there is far more money to be made in internet advertising than there ever was in broadcast advertising. Why? Because unlike broadcast where you have to shove your ads into shows and chop them to bits you can post prominent ads all around a video screen on the web and inundate your viewer with ads 100% of the time without interfering with the video content. This is a foreign concept to an industry which has spent millions if not billions of dollars perfecting the art of keeping the viewer in front of the TV through 3.45 minute advertising breaks.

And this is where internet video has an advantage: Your show no longer has to conform to the rigid standards of broadcast. But they do have to conform to the standards of the viewer. Because unlike a TV viewer who is likely to sit through tedious commercial breaks an internet viewer needs to be entertained immediately and consistently. No wonder farting girls are so popular. It’s mindless 30 second entertainment. But this kind of content will never bridge the gap between the computer screen and the living room plasma TV. To do this you need quality content.

Right now there are two very different approaches to this problem being tested out: In one corner you have the online sci-fi series Sanctuary from the people behind Stargate SG-1. This is a pay-per-view service where for a set fee you can watch the show in full quality video and interact with other viewers. In the other corner you have Quarterlife from the people behind 30something and My So Called Life. This online-only series is offered free of charge to the viewers who can watch it in full quality video and interact with other viewers. The difference between the two is that while Sanctuary is an extremely expensive production heavy on visual effects and featuring famous(ish) actors Quarterlife is relatively low-budget and features up-and-comers and relative unknowns.

What both of these have in common is that they offer up programming tailored to the viewer by keeping a close eye on the forums and interacting with the audience. That way they give the viewers a sense of belonging and create a tight-knit community where you become more than just a passive observer. And by doing this they can steer away from the mindless shock value content and focus on story driven material.

But how do you draw the line? What is “good” content and what is “bad” content? And who decides? One of the reasons why several of the major broadcast networks are now creating their own video sharing sites on the net is because they don’t want to be associated with skateboard accidents, dramatic chipmunks and dice stacking. And trust me, when you sit down in your couch you don’t want to watch this stuff either. There needs to be a clear demarcation between “cheap thrills” and “quality entertainment”. And this is where no one has succeeded – at least not yet.

The true test will come when one of the high quality sites starts accepting user generated content with proven staying power and paying the creators to help the production. For this to happen the major networks have to admit that they are not the only ones who can create compelling video material, but the average Joe with a camera must also admit that no matter how funny his cat is it will never make for compelling TV dinner entertainment.

It turns out gaming consoles like the XBOX360 and the PS3 are excellent tools to bridge the gap between internet and TV through IPTV. And the manufacturers have clued into this reality. XBOX Live Marketplace launched in the US some time ago and the service has now been made available to Canadians as well as select European countries (France, Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom). The service offers up movies and episodic TV shows in Pay-Per-View format to be paid through Microsoft Live Points. The service is quite impressive and offers up some stiff competition to video rental services, both online, through mail and in store.

[Full Engadget story]

YouTube suffers from severe limitations: Bad video quality, compression, bandwidth and questionable content. The same goes for most other video sharing services (with the possible exception of Stage 6). Of these, the first three are either being fixed as we speak or will be fixed in the near future. The fourth one – the quality of the content itself is a different matter. In this first article I’m going to focus on the technical issues:

Video quality and compression
Online video has always suffered from bad image and / or audio quality. This is because the files need to be small to be viewable. Several different platforms with different compression standards have competed to find the “sweet spot” between size and quality but so far there is no definite winner (although Flash Video and DivX seem to be the top contenders). The problem is that with no set standard for video compression there are many different codecs and platforms to choose from – all with pros and cons and all vying for the illusive prize of becoming the “standard” format. With YouTube and other similar sites Flash Video (FLV) took a definite lead but this format has severe limitations – especially when it comes to larger files. On the download front DivX reigns supreme but this codec is far less prevalent in the market. But why does this matter?

When people started sharing videos online it was to let other people view them on their computers or to embed them in websites. But the new trend in technology is to port online content into the living room and onto the TV. To put it simply: People are no longer content with watching their videos in little screens surrounded by ads, comments and other text; they want to enjoy them from their couches, on their huge plasmas, in full screen format. And that’s where YouTube fails. You can get away with murky, jittery and pixilated video when it’s in a 480×360 window but when it’s on your 50’’ 1080p plasma it looks like shit. Which is why YouTube is working on an HD version of their site.

Right now the only free online video services that provide video quality that can stand up to the unrelenting standards of a huge TV are Joost, Apple Trailers and Stage 6. And none of these use Flash Video as a base (Joost is proprietary, Apple Trailers is QuickTime and Stage 6 is DivX). Furthermore none of the content that is currently available on Flash based video sites is future proof meaning it can’t be converted into TV friendly quality.

The challenge for newcomers like Microsoft’s Silverlight, Hulu and others is to create a future friendly platform designed with the full screen TV end-user in mind. Though the market isn’t that big right now it will be in a few years and video quality will become a major factor when people decide where to go for their content.

My take: The future Top Dog of online video will be the one that provides the best, most accessible video quality. For free.

Bandwidth
Like I said, one of the major reasons for bad video quality is limited bandwidth: Not everyone has DSL or Cable internet. In fact many people are still on dial-up. But this is about to change. As the internet is transitioning from being a text-based information tool to becoming a full-fledged entertainment source bandwidth is expanded globally. This in turn opens up new possibilities for what kind of content can be shared and how it is shared.

The problem is that the best technologies for sharing such content are those created to subvert the content creators: peer-to-peer sharing and BitTorrent. And because of this the content providers are hesitant to implement their usage thus limiting their own ability to get content off their servers and onto people’s screens.

My take: The future Top Dog of online video will be the one that integrates new technologies like peer-to-peer networks and BitTorrent in their platform to facilitate easy sharing of high quality video content to the masses.

In The State of Online Video – Part 2 I’ll talk about the problem of video content and how it will define and decide the future and viability of online video.

The addition of HD support comes with the inclusion of the H.264 codec previously used by Apple’s QuickTime player and featured on some Blue-Ray and HD-DVD discs. This codec is cleaner than the On2 VP6 codec introduced with Flash 8 and supports High Efficiency AAC audio.

The new player update allows for hardware acceleration allowing your computer’s graphics card to handle the video content rather than the pure software handing of earlier versions.

Hulu, the so-called “YouTube Killer” from NBC Universal and News Corp, will feature this new technology once it launches (it’s currently in Beta).

Flash video has become the chosen format for spreading video online and with the added H.264 support and streaming HD the gap between web video and “regular” TV gets ever smaller. And on a side note it’ll be interesting to see if it fixes the compression, strobing and buffering problems that are currently plaguing internet video.