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VIDEOTV: Time to Think Outside the Idiot Box
Internet can stop viewers from changing the channel.
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Increasingly, TV is turning to the web. “The traditional model is put up a web page about the show. There are challenges in the television model,” says Allen Debevoise, President and CEO of Machinima.com, a site offering original animated content; its YouTube channel boasts over 400,000 subscribers and over 19 million channel views. “There are opportunities to do both. Lost can be on once a week on TV and have other things going on online. We haven’t yet gotten to those hybrid creative talents.”
While January saw YouTube (GOOG) host over 100 million viewers, accounting for 42.9% of online videos viewed, February’s Super Bowl, a ratings juggernaut, had an audience of about 90 million. But those viewers couldn't come back the next day to watch it again.
“On the Internet, you just put your content up and it’s accessible to anyone in the world. That’s really liberating for people,” says Debevoise. “Then it’s how do you create big audiences and revenue models. That is still coming. Someone is going to put something on the web that will become a TV show and that will shake people up.”
Debevoise’s forecast would have sounded brash - until CollegeHumor.com got a show on MTV last month. Around the same time, Machinima hired a crew of veteran writers whose resumes include The Simpsons, The Late Show, Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld, and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Their mission: to create 15 original episodic pilots for the site.
Networks have already plunged headfirst into broadcasting their own content online. The first big push came from Hulu.com, a partnership between NBC Universal (GE) and News Corp. (NWS) that draws additional content from Warner Bros (TWX), Sony (SNE), and MGM (MGM). Hulu provides access to over 1,000 television shows and films.
Powered by a bizarre Super Bowl ad spot, the site’s share of global internet users has increased 31.1% over the past 3 months. Behold the power of Alec Baldwin.
But the introduction of CBS Interactive’s TV.com has turned the burgeoning online TV market into a saucy telenovela.
With over 20,000 shows dating as far back as 1941, TV.com’s virtual television vault even offers an iPhone (AAPL) mobile application. Almost immediately after TV.com's launch, Hulu pulled its content from the site. With 2 major players now starring alongside original content from Youtube and Veoh and upstarts like Machinima, as well as rumors of another site courtesy of Time Warner Cable, the war is on.
Machinima’s diplomatic Debevoise sees an eventual fusion between broadcast television and the Internet.
“I think the content from the internet is going to end up on your television. The TV shows that don’t get enough ratings will wind up on your computer. All of that stuff is going to merge together,” he says.
But he is aware of one big elephant in the screening room. “The next 3 to 5 years are going to be incredibly exciting, as long as we can fix the economy.”
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