Back in the day, like 2 years ago, TV stations had ‘Green Rooms’. Places where upcoming guests could be preped, preened and soothed before going on camera. Purpose was to calm the precamera jitters and get the guest in the right mood. The lubricant was usually free drinks and snacks. Well that may be coming to a close. A combination of technology and strangled budgets is making that room a thing of the past. Evidence by this —

That’s Ben Popken of the Blog Consumerist being interviewed via Skype Video at the station WTVT in Tampa, Florida. First, cool dude. Innovative too. It shows some intelligence of the broadcaster that the world is truly getting flatter. It will not be much of a leap that we will see a 3 way talking head Skype call on Sunday Morning with Chris Wallace. If you got that far then why even bother with having the Panel show up at the crack of dawn either. Just pipe them into the Skype conference and you are done. By the way Skype has been supporting video since early this year. See here.

My only question? When will Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit be doing this from his media center?

Linky.

In a very comprehensive article Extra, extra, read all about it - or, sadly, not @ Comment, John Ibbitson covers the woes of the current pulp media –

That’s about to change. Across the United States, newspaper revenues are declining, along with circulation. As the American economy totters on the edge of recession, those declines are becoming precipitous and more pronounced than elsewhere. The Newspaper Association of America reports that classified newspaper advertising shrank by 16.5 per cent in 2007.

Circulation declines are also accelerating: Nationwide, newspaper circulation as of March 31 was down 3.6 per cent from the same time the year before; the year before that, it was down only 2.1 per cent. The Standard & Poor’s Publishing & Printing Index is declining at three times the rate of decline of the S&P 1500.

The Sunday edition of The New York Times is arguably the best newspaper in the world. Its circulation has declined almost 10 per cent in the past year alone, although part of the reason was management’s decision to cut back on discounted papers.

We have covered that before of course no new news there. But what will survive/replace the pulp media?

Small town Editions

More on Pulp is Dead, Its Just Not Buried

I won’t say I told you so, but here’s proof that online viewing goes much deeper than watching the exploits of Darwin Award candidates on Youtube. Almost 10% of all full length series views are now done online, and the percentage will continue to grow very rapidly.

Convergence estimates that 9 percent of all full-episode TV viewing was done online in 2007—a 3 percent jump from 2006. The firm predicts that the numbers will grow even further this year and next, to 14 percent in 2008 and 19 percent in 2009. As of 2010, Convergence expects 23 percent of broadcast and cable TV to be viewed online.

Shorter clips, however, are still the most popular things to watch online. Five times as many viewers watch clips of shows as those who watch full episodes, said the report, with 75 percent of the clip content originating from broadcast or cable TV content. Convergence estimates that this gap will get smaller as time goes on, but will still remain more popular than full shows. The firm expects clip-to-full-episode views to decline to a rate of three to one by 2011. (Ars Technica)

The bad news for the Telco / Cable duopoly is that this viewing is all done via the wide open net, not over their closed pay TV systems. We’ll soon see a wave of connected set top boxes that deliver open, web based TVoIP content to the big screen in the living room as easily as the pay TV box does today. When that happens, pay TV as a distribution channel unto itself will fade away like analog TV. Watch for the first network to offer the daytime soaps via TVoIP and online viewing will explode.

If I were invested in companies that are touting high profit potential in closed content delivery systems, I’d be planning my exit right now.

Here’s a bit of snake oil , cooked up for the investment folks to force on unsuspecting Wimax carriers to help pump stock prices promising huge profits from mobile pay tv.

NextWave Wireless Inc. plans to introduce today broadcast technology that will give WiMAX operators the ability to deliver multimedia services like mobile TV and digital audio over their networks.

NextWave’s new MXtv technology is compatible with the 802.16e standard, the company said.

The company said its MXtv technology will be a standard feature on its future WiMAX infrastructure products. In addition, NextWave said it signed a joint development agreement with Huawei Technologies USA that calls for Huawei to integrate MXtv into its WiMAX products. (from RCR News)

Here’s the rub: There’s already Mobile Wimax TV anywhere there’s mobile Wimax - called TVoIP. Will a big carrier or two buy in? Probably. They may even get a brief revenue bump out of it, before a sudden fatal crash. The reason? Closed systems don’t work anymore. Ask the big 3 networks who a rushing to get all of their content into the cloud. Even if it’s pay TV, you need to be out in the largeness of the ether, not in a walled garden if you are going to maximize your audience.

The cloud based alternatives to broadcast, cable, and IPTV are growing rapidly. The writers strike that halted big media production of content in the US has only accelerated the growth in prominence of smaller independent production. With a large wasteland in the tradition media channels, broad band users have been discovering online alternative en mass. Even the big media has gotten into the act, offering popular programming on demand online. An article on Make Use Of gives a good overview of many current online alternatives:

Ditching your cable company has never been more viable than it is today. The rise of online, streaming TV shows allows you to save on one of the most expensive household bills if you are willing to sacrifice a bit of the convenience of having either a cable box or DVR. The main question you will need to ask yourself is what shows you actually enjoy watching. Several name brand shows are now available online in free, ad supported formats; if your particular shows are not available then you may be stuck with your cable company, at least for now. More and more shows are always coming online, so keep checking back to see if your favorite show is available.

More on Here comes a war: IPTV vs TVoIP

Qwest pretty much sat out the merger mania AT&T and Verizon engaged in, and they are making it abundantly clear they are staying out of the IPTV and triple play game as well. They are putting thier limited funds into building a big open pipe. Some investment advisers will cry foul, but I think it’s refreshingly forward thinking, especially in view of AT&T’s recent down guidance.

“We believe very much in video, and we also believe in the power of the Internet,” Poll said in an interview Thursday. “We are trying to look a little ahead. The young consumers of the future will want broadband on demand, and they are more interested in interaction and in the symmetry of the service. We have a great relationship with DirecTV [Qwest resells that service], and they have a core competency in content. What we want to be able to provide is that 20-Megabit Internet connection that is more important to the younger consumers of today. They not only don’t want a wireline phone, they also don’t want to have a TV – because they use video on demand.” (from Telephony Online)

It may be that someone at Comcast actually gets it. License all of the content you already distribute for net distribution. Geeze, what a concept! Move your big library out onto the net where anyone, including non Comcast customers view ad supported programs or can pay to view your premium content.

Quoting CNet: Although the television component is still at a nascent stage–Comcast’s existing video-on-demand service has about 300 titles, compared with the 6,000 it eventually hopes to offer–the Web portion is further along.

Comcast has set up a site called Fancast.com where viewers can watch more than 3,000 hours of television shows from NBC, Fox, CBS and MTV and where they will soon be able to remotely program the digital video recorders in their homes. The shows on Fancast are available free. Comcast has yet to say how it will price the rest of the content as its plan moves forward.

Worst case scenario, this is just a lot hot air for getting press attention at CES and maybe pumping up the stock price.

Hey Comcast! Here’s another idea for pumping up your stock price: spin access and content off into 2 different companies. Give the world a fat pipe at a fair price, and sell content to anyone anywhere. Both are winners. One more suggestion: when your customer calls with a problem, answer the phone and be nice.

FIOS, Uverse, Direct TV all want the consumer to use a branded set top box for their ultimate viewing experience. But that dog won’t hunt and here is Exhibit #1 –

This is an open source effort called Entertainer. Entertainer, like Freevo, MythTV and LMC have functions that many set top boxes do not. Read blog feeds, watch YouTube, Watch TV, play any audio format and Video. If you can get it as a RSS feed or a channel option then these systems can display it.

Which brings me to me to the ultimate question — why? Why is Verizon, a company I own shares in, have hundreds on staff here and in India developing FIOS boxes? Most of these FOSS efforts are at most 3-5 core people and a bunch of volunteers. Yet they develop product comparable to and in many cases superior to the corporate effort. Why am I as a shareholder paying for all this? Why isn’t there an industry API for all this? [Don’t comment, I know why.] Why don’t I have a fatter dividend check as a consequence?

Entertainer website.
MythTV website.
LinuxMCE website.

[Update]

This is off of HitWise.. Yahoo and the Weather Channel topped every other news source on the net. All content probably not on your std STB. Yet another reason that closed end systems will lag in the content arena.

Susan Crawford posts on public policy issues related to technology and telecommunications. From my view a mixed bag, much of which I disagree with. But Susan has posted over at Public Knowledge — The Broadband Revolution. This time I totally agree with her assessment. An excerpt –

The International Telecommunications Union recently issued a press release announcing with joy the release of “the first set of global standards for Internet Protocol TV (IPTV).” A key sentence:

A combination of voice, Internet and video services over a single broadband link and from a single provider is foreseen as the ultimate goal of the broadband revolution.

Those of you who lived through What Is Broadband Good For? with me last summer (first post here) know that the word “broadband” is a pet bugaboo of mine. It’s a word that answers a lot of policy questions in a particular way. It connotes (and denotes) a speeded, managed “service” that happens to use the Internet Protocol but is ultimately completely within the discretionary control of the network provider. …

If the goal of the ITU is for PTT like IPTV type provisioning then the whole technology is doomed. As we have discussed here before the ecology of the diverse content sources will not be shoehorned in the confines of IPTV settop box provider menus.

A sad day when it appears that policy wonks have folded to the monopolistic desires of Big Telco.

Susan’s full article here.

The government funded BBC continues to rapidly evolve it’s online presence to provide not only recently aired shows, but extensive archives and downloads. It appears the Beeb may get it. If only BBC online programming was easily accessible to US viewers, they could have a large new audience, especially with the writers strike in deadlock.

But it’s barely out of the blocks before it’s due to be re-launched, now able to work with Macs and Linux, not only PCs, and permitting downloading as well as streaming. It’s pert of a greater revamp of the BBC site, which will include social media tools and better integration of features, reports The Guardian.

“2008 will be the year when we start to find out how [TV over the internet] gets into the living room and how users can access these services from their couch. It doesn’t make sense to make all these services available on each platform, but we need to figure out how these platforms can complement each other,” said Eric Huggers, BBC group controller of future media and technology at the Future Media conference. (from Digital Times)