That Was The Month That Was

July is proving an interesting month for the UK broadcasting and video market as companies change hands , focus and new enterants start to emerge.

First we saw the change of focus of Joost, which started with a fanfare , significant backing and support. Having been the driving force behind the groundbreaking Skype and Kazaa services, it looked like Joost’s founders could do nothing wrong. Alas reputation doesn’t guarantee success and this month Joost announced a reinvention refocus dropping its consumer video focus and reinvent itself as a business to business web-TV platform provider. The company had found it increasingly hard to stay afloat as a consumer-focussed independent ad-supported online video service.
Joost biggest problem was content, or the lack of great content and its model by the time it woke up.

to stream the video through web browsers it was too late as users had already gone elsewhere. Whether it will survive as a ‘white label’ service provider remains in question.

Project Kanageroo, a collaboration between BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 which was thwarted by the Competition Commission earlier this year and now has been acquired by Arqiva, which owns and operates part of the UK's terrestrial TV infrastructure and is a spectrum licence holder.

Argiva aims to use the technology to launch a new video-on-demand service with content likely to come from a range of content providers including the three broadcasters involved in the original joint venture.

Meanwhile Argiva face stiff competition from Hulu who continue to have discussions with UK broadcasters including ITV and Channel 4 and plans to launch in the UK later this year. Their offer is likely to include a significant amount of US content and would provide a one-stop shop for video on demand content.

The BBC's director general has suggested other broadcasters could share its iPlayer VOD service, which allows viewers to watch BBC shows online at a time of their choosing.

The BBC has revealed more detailed plans for, Canvas, its proposed joint venture with ITV and BT. It is now clear that what is envisaged is a platform and it intends to work with industry bodies such as the Digital Television Group, the European Broadcasting Union and the

Open IPTV Forum in defining appropriate standards. It is envisaged that Canvas will support a wide range of revenue options, including targeted advertising, micropayments and subscription and how these will be supported, including the approach to conditional access, digital rights management and billing.

The idea of a ‘box’ that combines broadcast and broadband delivered programmes with an intuitive interface is attractive to consumers. However, although the BBC has a role to play in establishing technical transmission standards, do they have the same role in designing the user experience of the box.

We envisage many more moves emerging, but the real test and answer lies in what the consumers decide to back.

Is 'Free to Consumer' the New Model?

Free is becoming a new business model that is causing many established players in many media sectors to rethink life.

The music sector certainly is starting to adopt the free, ‘advertising paid’ model with producers such as EMI and Universal licensing their total catalogues out to the likes of Spiral Frog and others. They didn’t have lots of choice being outmaneuvered on all fronts by both pirates, and consumers.

The newsprint world has long had the ‘free local rag’ but these are now seriously growing in terms of circulation and ad revenues. The Metro is generating in excess of £8m profit a year and it is claimed by its MD that it will overtake the circulation of the Daily Mirror within 12 to 18 months. We only have to see the litter on the underground to believe that claim. By increasing its distribution it copies circulated rose to just under 1.4 million in October, an increase over the previous month of 10.6%. In contrast, the Daily Mirror, Britain's third biggest-selling daily, sold an average of 1,525,477 copies a day in October, a fall of 4.68% year on year.

We have recently seen the wall Street Journal declare the end of its highly successful online subscription model. It is hard to envisage the subscription online model surviving.

Then we have Joost and the free over internet TV. We highly recommend you download the beta an experience the next TV generation on the Internet it is very impressive even if the content today is limited. It is free and brought to you by those smart guys who invented Kazza and Skype, so they probably know a thing or two.

In China we have written about BookGG and their free ad paid books. It may not work in the West, especially with moral rights but is an example of the ‘free to consumer’ model.

So what will happen moving forward? What is certain is the business models are changing and the only thing that is certain paying for digital content by traditional models is under threat.

TV is about to change forever

Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom are not new to this blog and no doubt they will appear again. But whereas their previous ventures are known to nearly all they remain relatively unknown. When you mention Kazza to music downloader’s, there is an instant recognition of a the pioneer of peer to peer file sharing. When you mention Sykpe, the fact that there are some people who are still not connected to this phenomenon of free internet telephony is a mystery. But today Janus and Niklas have moved onto Joost and a free broadband TV service.

Joost aspires to be a global TV network, free to enjoy and sponsored by advertising. No longer restricted to the small video window, or short YouTube clip, but full screen, higher quality with entire TV programmes and the ability to share with friends.

The trick is harder here as they have to get users watching, get content owners to supply and keep the advertisers involved. They have already signed up 800,000 in an invitation only phase. So success beckons or does it?

In many countries it looks likely to happen but the UK’s terrestrial companies have ganged up to for Project Kangaroo, which is trying to do for broadband what Freeview has done for digital TV. Interesting time with the Beebs iPlayer due out and the other channels all make their offerings. Somehow I think this duo will still achieve much and are the ones to watch.