dragoni reblogged
This year, mobile media accounts for the exact same share, nearly 20 percent of total U.S. media spending. So, in a very real way, mobile is today where television was exactly six decades ago.
1. U.S. advertising is declining as a share of GDP
3. The entire net growth in digital advertising is happening in mobile
4. Two companies, Facebook and Google, control half of net mobile ad revenue.
Some historical perspective could be illuminating. Because despite its rapid intrusion into the market for advertising, television did not destroy newspapers, magazines, or radio. A more diverse media ecosystem learned to coexist.
In mobile history, the year is 1955. Facebook and Google are dominant for now. But if there's one lesson from the history of American entertainment and media, it's this: Things change. News survives.
A la carte television - what a novelty. Canadians are so sensible. America facepalm. FCC, hello!
O Canada, the true north strong and free.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission said it will require cable TV providers to let their customers “pick-and-pay” for channels after buying a basic package capped at $25 a month. It’s perhaps the most sweeping reform measure ever enforced on the television industry by government regulators.
“This policy sets out a roadmap to give Canadians more choice when it comes to the selection and packaging of their TV services,” the CRTC said in a statement. “It also seeks to ensure that Canadians have access to a diverse range of content through a healthy, dynamic TV market.”
Starting in March of 2016, Canadians will be able to buy a slimmed-down TV package for no more than $25, and then have the option to supplement that with smaller packages of channels or a pick-and-pay system, according to Global News. And then in December of 2016, cable operators will have to offer both options on top of the slimmed package, which must include local channels, US channels that can be picked up free over the air, and channels the CRTC deems to be in the public interest.
This is clearly a massive victory for Canadian TV-watchers who wanted more choice in their programming without having to pay exorbitant cable fees. The cable providers, however, argue that it could result in job losses and revenue drops. If the model is successful, it could blaze the trail for other countries to implement similar mandates.
An excellent history of YouTube and how Salar Kamangar and Robert Kyncl are shaping its future!
In TV, airtime is a scarce resource, and quality programming is scarcer still, and expensive to create. Writers spend months or years developing an idea, which they then pitch to network and cable executives, who make decisions based, at least in part, on their “gut.” The majority of the ideas never get produced. If a project is green-lighted, the networks or cable channels buy it and fund its production, and the creators have to give up some or all of their control over the material.
But on YouTube “airtime” is infinite, content costs almost nothing for YouTube to produce, and quantity, not quality, is the bottom line. “YouTube green-lights everything,” as Tim Shey, the director of the site’s division for coaching content creators, YouTube Next Lab, told me. It’s up to the audience, not the executive gut, to decide what’s worth watching. “I’ve worked in TV, and I’ve been the one green-lighting projects,” Shey went on. “Believe me, the YouTube way works much better.” Kyncl told me that at Google it makes no sense to bring “a gut-based decision-making process to a culture that is based on numerically quantifying everything. Ultimately, that kind of decision-making gets rejected, as if it were a foreign body.”
When I met Kamangar, in California, he told me he thought that screen time in general was going to expand, so the battle for eyeballs wasn’t a zero-sum game. “Our data suggests TV watching is on the rise,” he said. “It seems to have increased from four to five hours in recent years, and we think it will keep increasing. Screen time in general will increase. I wake up with a Droid next to my bed, and I immediately look into the screen for my instructions.” At the mention of a screen, his eyes stole a longing glance back toward his laptop. “That’s the trend—more screen time—and we think that will benefit YouTube.”
Kyncl sees the situation in more absolute terms. He showed me a bar graph depicting the enormous advantage that TV has over YouTube in screen time. “We’re absolutely nothing compared to TV,” he said. “And this is why I came to YouTube. I want to take this”—he pointed to YouTube’s screen time—“up, and in a big way, because I think we can. And, if we do, this industry”—TV—“is worth three hundred billion dollars, worldwide, and we hope to see value shifting hands.”
... “It’s not true that viral videos are always accidents,” he said. Although people tend to think that viral videos are serendipitous, in fact, Relles said, six of the top ten most-viewed YouTube videos in 2010 were scripted and produced just like TV shows.