- Newton Minnow, Chairman, Federal Communications Commission
May 9, 1961
- Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, Democrat - Minnesota
May 9, 1961
Presently, the United States is the most technologically advanced country in the world in the area of telecommunications. Consider the following statistics:
- 126 million phone lines
7.5 million cellular phone users
5 thousand AM radio broadcast stations
5 thousand FM radio broadcast stations
530 million radios
1 thousand television broadcast stations
9 thousand cable television systems
193 million television sets
24 transoceanic communications cables
Not to mention tens of thousands of satellite uplinks and downlinks.
And we’re not even talking computers yet.
This is about content. Period.
Date: March 27, 2000
This paper was begun as an overview of my experiences at this year’s NATPE 2000 convention held in New Orleans at the end of January. NATPE is the annual convention for television program buyers, sellers and executives. There are also more than a few “looky-loos” trying to catch a glimpse of this season’s Pamela Anderson, Gena Lee Nolin or Kevin Sorbo as they strut their stuff for the producers of their new series. A dog-and-pony show by any other name; a corporate “bun-toss;” a “three-ring circus,” only with hundreds of rings. For the buyers it is a chance for local and network content programming personnel to see and bid on what is available for broadcast in the new Fall season. For sellers, ‘coverage’is the name of the game - how many TV stations, or markets, will buy the new programs…? What makes one offering stand out from the next…?
NATPE, as an acronym, means National Association of Television Programming Executives, but as we’ll see, this year it came to mean much, much more. In many ways — some subtle, some not so — this year’s NATPE convention heralded the beginning of a new business, a new means of doing business, and, most importantly, the end of business-as-usual.
Is television dead? Is the Internet the new medium? Will the latter replace the former? Will there be convergence? What is convergence? I could fill this entire document with questions and quite easily leave all of them unanswered; such is the state of the media business (the ‘industry’) as it exists today.
Since it’s birth as a mass medium in post-World War II North America, television has managed to develop to the point where it is the most ubiquitous and influential medium the world has ever seen. It is a medium possessed of right brain - left brain conflicts. One minute enjoyable and passive, the next infuriating and interactive (you throw the remote at the TV set!) It is perhaps the only medium where entertainment and annoyance go hand-in-hand with information and avoidance. But as we all know, the Internet (online, the web, the net, whatever you wish to call it) is on the cusp of creating a volcanic shift that will change everything.
Hopefully, this document will shed a little light on the other side of the convergence debate, the still-missing element: CONTENT. Without content the wired world is nothing more than a warehouse full of blank videocassettes and DVDs.
First, a little background, some context, for what you are about to read.
I have been in this business for more than twenty-five years and involved in just about every aspect of it. I’ve been a computer graphic artist, content programmer, host, distributor, writer, director, actor, financier, and a producer. I’ve created my own productions and consulted on many others raising millions of dollars through advertising sponsorship, government funding and private investment. These programs have played in all corners of the world and some continue to do so. I’ve assisted in seven start-up companies — all of them entertainment-based, two of them online — either writing, re-writing or co-writing the business plans. I have received many awards and accolades for my work including two Emmy nominations. And I have also been working online since the seventies when I hosted several film forums on CompuServe (I’ve had an e-mail address since 1978). I have always tried to find ways of marrying the two mediums that resulted in more than just a short term PR hit.
My goal with this paper is to give some perspective on where the soon-to-be-combined businesses of television, film and Internet are going and to provide some insight into the world of the big C – content. In order to know where you’re going, it’s helpful to know where you’ve been - it gives one a sense of direction if nothing else. While I hope to lend contextual, and where necessary, historical significance to this industry, I’m certain you can appreciate that it is by no means exhaustive.
Although I’ve been to NATPE on several other occasions, I really had no idea what I was in for this time. While it was clear that ‘new media’ was going to figure prominently (it had a presence at prior conventions but mostly as a support mechanism for television programs) no one had a clue that the ‘dot coms’ would dominate.
Having had a foot in both camps for so long I found this year’s NATPE convention to be exciting, exhilarating, infuriating, enlightening and astonishing. Walking the floor and attending the seminars I couldn’t get away from ‘new media’ and the speculation of where it was going, where it would all end. The largest media merger in the history of communications had just taken place between AOL and Time-Warner and there was Steve Case getting a demo of the Globalmedia Player and their e-com solution at the Globalmedia booth. You gotta like that!
We get our news in snippets - bits and pieces. We work in an information- and knowledge-based business yet rarely do we have the luxury of collating information from different sources and digesting it in context. The big picture frequently gets lost in the minutiae.
So here it is: personal observations and professional commentary combined with industry analysis from many businesses in many countries from around the world. You will also find several sidebars and footnotes containing historical or contextual perspective.
A caveat however… you will find more questions contained here than you will answers; more considerations, opinions and speculations than assertions of cold, hard fact. C’est la vie!
So, let us start at the beginning…
