Week In Review: Catering To Cord-Cutters

Originally published at TVREV.com on November 20, 2015


It’s been a relatively slow week in TV-land, meaning nothing over a 7 on the Richter scale. Still, plenty going on to talk about.

1. LOTS MORE CATERING TO PEOPLE WHO THINK THEY’RE CUTTING THE CORD
In the last 7 days, we had a number of stories come out about the broadband-only services the MVPDs are starting to offer. Comcast exempted “Stream” from bandwidth caps. Verizon added some VICE programming to Go90. And Cox announced it was launching it’s own OTT service “FlareMe TV.”

WHY IT MATTERS:
While the names of some of these services may be inexcusably lame (Cox!), the concept behind them isn’t: cater to millennial and Gen Z consumers who have zero need for a full-on cable package and get them into the ecosystem where they can be tracked for the valuable data they provide now, and upsold at a later date too.

In the interim, the MVPDs can start serving as the middlemen (middlepeople?) for all the new standalone OTT services the networks are launching, Univision being the latest, with it’s $5.99/month Univision Now. If you only watch a few channels, going the solo route can be cost-effective, but with network apps coming in at $6 a pop, that number quickly adds up. That’s why it’s likely (as we noted earlier this week) that the MVPDs will step in and become the primary vendors for these services along with hardware manufacturers like Apple and Roku, thus sparing the networks the pain of setting up their own billing and collections departments.

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO ABOUT IT:

Get over your fear of cord-cutting while simultaneously coming to grips with the notion that the world where everyone has an 1800-channel, $150/month pay-TV package is over. Keep on figuring out ways to reach your audience wherever it might be, but realize that you’re not going to disintermediate the MVPDs. Maybe call some of your MVPD contact up this week, see how they’re doing—you might want to get your programming on their soon-to-be-released broadband-only app.


2. THE FIRST TV SHOW OF THE SEASON GOT CANCELLED

ABC’s Wicked City got that dubious honor, followed shortly by NBC’s The Player (which wasn’t cancelled outright; NBC just “reduced the number of episodes ordered.” Because that’s different.

WHY IT MATTERS:
As we noted last week, networks are coming around to the realization that shows with low ratings sometimes get a second wind via streaming and on-demand. They get the notion that a smaller, more passionate audience trumps a larger, indifferent one.

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO ABOUT IT:
Figure out how to empower that smaller, more passionate audience. Involve the showrunners and use social platforms and second screen to give them the content they need to enable their obsessions. Listen to what the audience is saying and what moments are resonating. Think long term, not short term.


3. PEOPLE WATCH ROKU TOGETHER
A new Nielsen study showed that 27% of Roku viewing involves multiple viewers—friend and family watching together.

WHY IT MATTERS:
It confirms what we’ve long suspected—people use their Rokus for Family Movie Night and to binge shows together.

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO ABOUT IT:

Understand that a lot of binge viewing and other streaming happens on big screen TVs, not just iPads and smartphones and plan accordingly. TV is still a social activity— IRL and on Facebook.

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em: Why Cord-Cutting Has Ceased To Be A Threat

Co--written with Jesse Redniss and originally published at TVREV.com

It’s funny how cord cutting, the industry’s biggest bogeyman can seemingly disappear as a threat overnight. Not because of any sudden victory or clever strategy play by the TV Industrial Complex, but rather, because forces have gradually realigned and what was once unthinkable is quickly becoming the status quo.

And so it’s come to pass that no matter how you want to get your TV—streaming services, apps, YouTube or the Titanium Plus All-Channel Cable Package—all options seemingly lead to the same place: your MVPD broadband provider. It’s an easier and more cost-effective solution for everyone to feed off the same ecosystem than to try and create something new. And while viewers may stray from the classic thousand-channel cable TV package, many won’t stray all that far, and many more won’t necessarily stray forever.

Rather than people permanently severing their connection to the MVPDs, what we’ll see instead is people buying alternative packages from those same MVPDs. (Sort of like how supermarket chains now sell the organic food that was once their greatest competitor.) Instead of abandoning Comcast, Time Warner, et al, consumers will turn to them to buy access to streaming services, to individual network apps and to some form of broadband-only service with a skinny bundle and short form videos.

And they’ll do it because it makes business sense for all parties involved.

What’s In It For Streaming Services and Networks

For streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, it makes sense because when they allow the MVPDs to sell their services, they also get a free sales force, a free billing and collections department, and a whole lot of free marketing support. The latter is particularly true for those streaming services likely to be featured in the MVPD’s various promotions (“Get three free months of Netflix when you sign up!”)

If you’re a network launching an OTT app, it makes sense for you to sell your app through the MVPDs too, because of the billing and collection services you won’t have to build and because you’ll have instant access to the 95 million subscribers they have in their respective databases, which, given that you’re building your audience from scratch, is going to seem like a very good deal. And while you may occasionally cannibalize your existing audience, the new Nielsen TAM service will ensure that the views you get on your OTT service will still be counted.

What’s In It For Viewers

While both streaming services and network streaming apps will also make use of services like iTunes and Roku to sell subscriptions, those services can’t offer a single bill for TV and broadband the way the MVPDs can. While this may not seem like that big a deal, if you’re looking at five or six standalone services, plus broadband, the notion of a single bill can be very compelling.

There’s also the prospect of volume discounts, e.g. sign up for six independent services and get the seventh for free. That’s compelling because the networks are unlikely to offer much of a discount on their freestanding apps— CBS All-Access is $6/month, so if you have eight similar apps, that’s $48/month, plus $10 for Netflix, $15 for HBO Now and suddenly your $73/month bill isn’t that small, especially for what you’re getting. If your MVPD can bring that number down as part of a deal that includes unlimited broadband and a landline or cell phone, that’s going to be a lot more attractive than assembling the package yourself.

What’s In It For MVPDs

The MVPDs also stand to benefit from these arrangements. They make their money off of broadband, and the more broadband subscribers they have, and the more broadband those subscribers use, the happier they are. In addition, getting subscribers into their database, even if it’s just to buy a single HBO Now subscription, gives them the opportunity to upsell those customers, get them into the ecosystem and keep them there. That’s why we’re already seeing many (if not most) of the MVPDs introduce some sort of broadband-only service aimed at Gen Z and Millennials (Comcast Stream, Verizon Go90) that bundles traditional television and short-form YouTube-based content meant for consumption on their mobile devices.

A Journey, Not A Destination

The ability to adapt to consumers at various life stages is going to be the key to the MVPD’s success. So while a single viewer in their 20s would likely only need a few subscriptions, maybe to catch up on sports or to binge, when that same viewer settles down and has kids, they’ll likely take a more extensive package to satisfy all members of the family. Again, this may not be today’s traditional cable bundle, but it will include a broad array of options, and, more importantly, bring all the players revenue that’s in line with what they’re making today, whether that revenue comes from advertising, subscriptions or one-off transactions. As we’ve seen in recent months, ad revenue seems to be remaining constant even as the number of viewers goes down, in large part because no other medium offers the same kind of reach.

The Danger Of A Monopolistic System

Before we paint too rosy a picture, it’s worth pointing out the inherent danger of the system that seems to be shaping up: it’s based on a monopoly (or at best, a duopoly) where one company seemingly holds all the cards. Or at least that last mile cord into the home. That’s never a good thing, especially when those MVPDs have traditionally led the list of “America’s Most Despised Companies.” Giving them that much power is not the best idea, but short of government intervention or technological breakthroughs that provide alternate sources of broadband connectivity, there don’t seem to be any realistic alternatives.

As the MVPDs expand the notion of what constitutes “Pay TV” and which services they’re willing to offer, the notion of “cord cutting” will fall by the wayside. Existing networks and other content providers need to adapt to this by understanding that their viewers are on a lifelong journey through the pay-TV ecosystem, with different needs and wants each step of the way. Acknowledging this, and creating options that connect with viewers at each juncture will be the key to their success in the years ahead.

Or at least until the next major shockwave hits.

Totaling It Up. Will Nielsen Have An Audience For TAM, Or Is It Too Little Too Late?

Co-written with Jesse Redniss. Originally published at tvrev.com on November 9, 2015.

Nielsen finally revealed details and a launch date for its OTT measurement system, dubbed “Total Audience Measurement” and the industry may never be the same. We’re (mostly) impressed with what they’re trying to accomplish and believe that it will kickstart TV Everywhere, so that 2016 will be the year we finally see the radical changes everyone has been waiting for.

Total Audience Measurement: What We Like

Ad Views versus Program Views: Total Audience Measurement (TAM) addresses the issue that in the brave new world of TV viewing, ads and shows need to be measured separately. That’s because someone watching the digital broadcast or VOD broadcast of a show may not see the same commercial load as someone watching the linear feed. Nielsen’s plan is to create two different metrics, one that will allow networks to know how many total viewers a particular show has, and one that allows advertisers to know how many people actually saw an ad.

Just About Every Device: TAM will be able to count views on just about every streaming and mobile device out there: PCs, mobile devices, tablets, VOD and streaming devices like Xbox, Apple TV and Roku. A few niche devices like the Apple Watch won’t be counted, but their low usage rates would not effect ratings anyway.

Bigger Panels: Nielsen is doubling the size of their panels from 20,000 households to 40,000. While we’d still like to see a measurement system that counts every single view, we also realize that no one is going to let the MVPDs (who are the only ones who have that capability) have that kind of power. Given the complex nature of TV rights and negotiations, responsibility for ratings are always going to fall to an impartial third party.

Moving Beyond C3 and C7: Nielsen has the ability to measure way, way beyond the C7 window. The reason they don’t is that the current rules, which date back to 2006, do not allow them to. To remedy this, Nielsen is working with the major ad buying agencies and networks to change those rules, something they say they’re not getting much pushback on. So we should soon be seeing accurate ratings many days out, which will allow for a more realistic picture of current viewing habits.

Moving beyond C7 also acknowledges the rapid growth of ad-supported VOD, which means that views 21 or even 91 days out are as likely to be on VOD as they are on DVR. Those numbers are going to prove very useful to networks when making programming decisions, as they’ll be able to gauge which shows have developed bigger audiences in the off-season — a powerful piece of data since audiences who discover shows via bingeing tend to be far more evangelical and passionate than those who discover the shows via linear.

Measurement For Streaming Services: Sort of. While YouTube and AOL will be fully measured, Netflix and Amazon don’t want Nielsen poking under the hood. But it seems that several of the major studios want to know how their shows are doing on those streaming sites and are supplying Nielsen with audio files so they can find out. We wish Hastings and Bezos would stop being so secretive — we get that they don’t rely on ad revenue, but releasing ratings numbers would allow everyone to know just how popular their new shows are and with whom, data that can influence programming decisions on ad-supported networks too.

What We Don’t Like

Still No Social. As we pointed out last year, the key measurement missing from TV ratings systems is social. While Nielsen does measure Twitter, it’s an open secret that Twitter ratings are reflective of what’s popular with Twitter’s unique audience clusters and not with the viewing population at large. You can see this by looking at the social TV ratings from companies like Shareablee, where Instagram sometimes outranks Facebook, and both leave Twitter in the dust, the latter often accounting for well under 10% of audience interactions.

Adding social ratings, especially social ratings that take context into account, will give a clearer picture of what shows, ads, actors and genres are resonating with viewers. As more and more marketers move toward smarter insights like “emotional resonance” and “advanced sentiment analysis” to derive true meaning behind flat metrics. It will also give a clearer idea of what else those viewers like (Psychographic insights) allowing networks and advertisers to see patterns between the shows and the show’s audiences. In addition, the size of the social audience, Facebook in particular, provides census-level data, which can serve as a check on Nielsen’s panel data.

Or Is There? We keep hearing rumblings about Nielsen adding anonymized Facebook data to the overall Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings data set. When you break down the Nielsen SDK demo process, it seems that Nielsen will be bumping up its data to Facebook anyway in order to attach demo and psychographic info. So, while we can only assume that Nielsen’s next step, after TAM is released, will be to go to Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat (and maybe even Tumblr) and start incorporating their numbers into the social rating, the question remains as to how they’ll do it in a way that’s “fair & balanced” to their long time partner Twitter? If the social TV ratings from companies like Shareablee, which consistently show Twitter responsible for less than 10% of the social TV traffic for most hit shows are any indication, it’s going to be rough roads ahead for Twitter’s relevance here.

Branded Content and Brand Funded Content

As consumers continue to find ways to avoid interruptive advertising, brands are taking a #CreatedWith approach to ad integration, looking to place their messages within the content of the show. As these executions become more popular, Nielsen will need to start measuring their effectiveness as well. This is particularly important if these executions are going to become part of the programmatic buying systems that are all the rage today. Without a way to measure #CreatedWith and other branded integrations, TAM is going to fall short. It’s our opinion this should be the next challenge Nielsen tackles.

What Happens Next

TV Everywhere Explodes. This is the real benefit to TAM. Because once the networks know that all those non-linear views will be counted by a universally accepted measurement system, their objections to TV Everywhere melt away.

Until now, the networks have been (rightly) worried that views on tablets and VOD and streaming devices equaled money down the drain, as those viewers meant lower ratings and thus less ad revenue. Hence all the restrictions on TV Everywhere apps. But now that everything’s being counted, the networks are more than happy to let you watch whenever, wherever and however you want — the more the merrier. They know that when people have more ways to watch TV, they actually do wind up watching more TV. Ratings go up along with ad revenue, and everyone is happy.

The MVPDs, who provide both pay-TV and broadband service will also be more than happy to have you watch TV via an online connection, since the more bandwidth you use, the more money they make. That’s because MVPDs make their real money on broadband — pay TV provides very thin margins.

That means the MVPDs will be rolling out new and improved versions of their TV Everywhere apps, which will be freed from the restrictions they’ve had until now. So you’ll be able to tap into their VOD libraries, watch whatever you want when you’re away from home, pause and rewind, and otherwise enjoy a superior TV experience.

Audience Parting

As OTT viewing explodes (along with the ability to measure it), we will see much more of what we call “Audience Parting” — advertisers buying specific audiences rather than specific day parts. Time shifting will play a huge part in this as well, since buying prime time shows (or shows that originally ran in prime time) is no longer a guarantee of anything — early research shows that there are significant differences in the audiences who watch TV live, the audiences who watch 3–7 days out and the audiences who watch 3–7 weeks out. By buying specific audiences, advertisers will be able to replicate the powerful targeting capabilities currently available online, without sacrificing their ability to reach mass audiences. It may be more work for the networks ad sales teams, but should result in higher fees for the more targeted audience. If Nielsen’s TAM works as expected, audience parting should become the rule, rather than the exception.

A Data Explosion

While Nielsen may begin collecting additional data from all the OTT sites they’ll be monitoring, they’re far from alone. The networks have been busy collecting first-party data on their viewers via systems like Viacom Vantage, NBCUx and Turner Data Cloud and using that to power new programmatic style ad buying programs. These systems will serve to keep Nielsen on its toes as the first party data the networks collect is deeper and less reliant on panels. Nielsen will need to continually innovate to keep pace with TV’s new digital-centric reality, particular when it comes to data. Advertisers will be the real winners however this shakes out, since the more data they have (regardless of its source) the better decisions they’ll be able to make.

Maybe The Future Isn’t About Apps, Tim.

As much as we want to love everything Apple does, the problem with an app-based future, is there’s no program guide, no central organizing system that keeps track of your shows and where they are.
Siri might someday fulfill that role, but for now, for anyone who watches more than just a few hours of TV a week, the MVPD offerings, which combine in-home set top box delivery with full TV Everywhere service for hundreds of channels, will be the way to go, providing access to just about anything you’d want to watch (including short form content from YouTube and others) along with an easy way to find and organize it all. Throw in a single bill for all your TV and broadband needs, and it’s a hard deal to turn down. Comcast has done a stellar job of driving this paradigm to reality.

The Change Is Now.

As all TV begins to feel like Netflix, we’ll be seeing even more changes in the way we watch. It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for and with the launch of a universally accepted measurement system, there’s nothing to hold it back.

The Wait Is Over

Originally published at TDG Research on October 22, 2015

After almost two years of waiting, Nielsen has finally delivered on the OTT measurement system for which the industry has been waiting. Called “Total Audience Management” it promises to be a real game changer, boosting industry adoption of TV Everywhere.

This, in turn, will boost the amount of television being watched via OTT. Adoption of the system will launch a new era, dramatically changing the way everyone – from networks and MVPDs to the folks at home – looks at TV.

Nielsen currently has the advantage of being the only measurement system accepted by all parties: advertisers, networks and MVPDs. If the company can deliver on its promise of counting OTT views the same way it counts linear views, it could overcome the networks’ objections to releasing content for viewing on their own or MVPD TV Everywhere device apps.

If anything, networks are excited to enable this type of anywhere, any-device viewing as it will likely increase the amount of time people spend watching television. More viewing time means higher ratings and increased profits.

For MVPDS like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon that provide both Internet and pay TV service, more OTT viewing via their TVE apps increases subscriber bandwidth use. An uptick in bandwidth use benefits multi-service providers because broadband is generally a more profitable business segment than pay TV.

Also, with Nielsen counting OTT views, TVE apps likely will become more attractive to networks, leading them to release more programming and demand fewer restrictions. This would make for a superior user experience – a win for consumers and providers alike.

Some Encouraging Stats
Nielsen revealed their Total Audience Management product to Adweek this week, while providing some initial stats for an unnamed network drama. This provides very encouraging news for the TV networks.

The first bit of good news: Nielsen found that 55% of the total audience watched the unnamed show live, with 14% watching via a connected device or OTT app (6% and 8%, respectively). Counting those additional viewers should provide a healthy bump to the show’s overall ratings.

But drill down to the 25-34 year old demographic, and those numbers are even more impressive. For that demo, only 15% of viewers watched live, while a whopping 40% watched via a connected device or OTT app (22% and 18%, respectively). Since advertisers covet these younger viewers, the jump in ratings that comes from adding in 40% of the 25-34 year old audience should certainly help raise network ad revenues. It may also reaffirm television’s overall stature as an advertising vehicle capable of reaching young adults.

Broader Measurement
The new ratings system eschews overnight or real-time ratings for a broader window, looking at views over the course of a week. This is more reflective of how people watch TV now, where “real time” has come to mean “this week” (or “before the next episode airs”) as opposed to “tonight.”
It is also important to note that many views are started on one device, continued on another and finished on a third. Allowing networks and advertisers to get accurate ratings for this type of quantum viewing will allow the industry to adapt to the way viewers watch TV today.

Coming Soon: The Rise of OTT
Now that the long wait for Nielsen is finally over, OTT can begin to come into its own. As OTT picture quality rivals that of QAM (the traditional cable TV delivery format), viewers will see numerous advantages to freeing themselves from the actual cable cords – not least of which being the aesthetics. Who really enjoys looking at yards of cable strung throughout the house?

As predicted in my Spring 2015 report on OTT Advertising, OTT viewing should approach 50% of all viewing within the next 5 years, eventually overtaking QAM.

Is Facebook The New YouTube?

Originally published at TDG Research on October 15, 2015

News reports this week indicate that Facebook is beta testing a new Video tab on its mobile app. That’s not surprising, given Facebook’s emphasis on video over the past year – a push that has seen the number of daily video views on the platform go from one to four billion (from September 2014 to May 2015).This is a huge leap, and it’s likely to go much higher still.

So is Facebook going to unseat YouTube? What about the TV networks? Or Netflix and Hulu?

Facebook is well-positioned to take a sizable share of the video market. It serves up video using a very different system than YouTube, making it an attractive alternative to many people. Add to this the strong likelihood that it will start showing video from TV networks (clips or full shows), and you have a strong case for Facebook’s growing dominance in video.

Different User Experiences

Viewers are still, for the most part, finding YouTube videos via search or from an external site link. Once selected, the video plays on its own page, with a list of similar videos on the side. Immediately after the selected video ends, an auto-play feature plays a similar video. But, since many (if not most) users are not logged in, the site has no real data from which to pull, making its recommendations spotty at best.

Facebook’s recommendations, however, are anything but random. They are served up by the Mighty Algorithm. This allows the site to make recommendations based on what individual users might actually want to watch. Gone may be the real sense of boundless discovery found on YouTube, but with Facebook video, you can at least count on the content being of interest to you. For many people this is the ideal experience. They have no desire to browse through YouTube looking for hidden gems, and are happy just to lean back and enjoy whatever videos Facebook serves them.

The social platform can rely on the reams of data it has about users: what they like, where they vacation, who their friends are, etc. Further, once users start engaging with Facebook video, the algorithm can factor in what they watched and what they skipped, using that information to make its recommendations even more relevant.

Long Versus Short Form Video

Facebook has two possible paths when it comes to the TV networks. It can provide networks the opportunity to use clips to increase awareness of, and drive tune-in to current TV shows; or it can negotiate the rights to older seasons’ episodes in a bid to compete with Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu.
Option one makes Facebook an attractive venue for networks to promote current shows or, better still, to have users do the promoting for them. Given the very nature of Facebook, users are far more likely to share a short clip of Jimmy Fallon’s monologue than an entire episode of the Tonight Show. This is why Facebook might be the ideal home for “snackable” video content, i.e., short clips of 10 minutes or less. The shorter format would allow users to share something new with friends without taking too much time away from other activities on the platform.

It is also possible that Facebook might want to go long. The company could line up content deals that would put it in head-to-head competition with Netflix as the OTT operator of choice for the networks’ older seasons. This would certainly appeal to networks, providing them with a (delightfully) rich trove of data about the people who watch their shows. It would also give them pause, since that data would ultimately be owned by Facebook.

That said, we think Facebook will choose to go the clip route. This would give them the same amount of data, without the financial commitment of licensing full-length shows. Users come to Facebook to interact, so sending them off to watch hours of video seems contrary to the sort of use case Facebook desires.

You can read more about Facebook and Social TV in my report on Social TV, coming soon.

The YouTube Trap

How A False Equivalency Helped Blind The Ad Industry To How Quickly Interruptive Advertising Was Falling Out Of Favor

Originally published at TV[R]EV on September 29, 2015

Advertising Week is here and the sudden popularity of ad-blocking software has the industry wringing its hands. But perhaps it’s time to accept what is happening and acknowledge that old school interruptive advertising is in its death throes.

What killed it is not a lack of creativity (though there was certainly plenty of that) but rather a shift in culture that left us immune to the notion of sitting through blocks of unwanted interruptions at a time when the slightest bit of boredom is instantly remedied by picking up a smartphone.

The signs of interrupted advertising’s demise have been around for some time now, only the ad industry ignored them by glomming onto a false logic trap of it’s own creation.

Call it the “YouTube Trap.” Wherein agencies would post long-form versions of their most clever commercials on YouTube and millions of people would watch them. “You see,” the agency creatives would crow, “people really do like watching our commercials. They like them so much, they even watch them when they’re not being forced to.”

Yes, but…

Agencies seem to have glossed over the fact that people watch commercials when they don’t have to precisely because they don’t have to: they are happy to watch these funny videos on their own schedules. It’s when they are inserted into a TV show that watching them becomes an issue.

Ad blockers will inevitably make their way to TV. And as we watch more and more TV via OTT, the effect will be quite noticeable. Especially for an audience that’s been trained by years of Netflix (and now Amazon and Hulu) to watch TV without commercials. And as the saying goes, once they’ve seen Paris, it’s hard to keep them down on the farm.

So what will replace interruptive advertising and the $70 billion budget it represents for TV?

Lots of things. There’s the easy fix of YouTube style filtering. The sort that lets you exit a commercial after just 5 seconds. Networks can charge big bucks for the people who stick around to watch the remaining 25 or 55 seconds since we can presume they are somewhat interested in the product.

Product placement is another option, one that’s been around for a while, but which can now assume a place of greater importance. Well done product placement is subtle, and viewers are not conscious that the brand is being showcased. (Compare that to American Idol and Coke.)

There’s also native advertising, which seems to work quite well on the web and should easily adapt to TV. Native advertising is written in the voice of the publication and is meant to conform to and compete with the other content on the site, e.g. not stand out as being an advertisement. The content is related to but not directly about the brand, so that a native advertisement the New York Times did for Orange Is The New Black was a well-reported story about women’s prisons. (Yes, even the Times does native advertising.)

While TV networks are already starting to use their stars in ads that run around a show, there is far more opportunity to create programming that does not feel like advertising featuring actors and writers from the network shows. If nothing else, it’s a great way to showcase talent from the network’s newest shows and get them out in front of viewers again.

Co-branded promotions on social media can also help replace some of those ad dollars. Brands benefit from the halo effect of being associated with a popular show, and the network gets someone to help them finance on online promotion. The key here is to make sure that there’s some relevance between the brand, the show and the promotion

The final way to replace interruptive advertising, one that we think will become quite popular is with branded content. Branded content is different than native advertising in that does not rely on any overlap with the network. Rather, it should be a piece of quality entertainment that is sponsored by a brand and has an overlap with the brands values and tone of voice. Royal Caribbean, for instance, produced a web series starring several well-known YouTube stars that was a teenaged rom-com set on a Royal Caribbean ship. The characters did what characters do in teenage romcoms, they did not stop to point out any selling points of the ship.


While many in the ad industry will bemoan the end of interruptive advertising and the hard sell messaging that went with it, those moans will fall on deaf ears. When consumers actively go out of their way to install software to block advertising, no amount of  moaning is going to save it.

Voting In The Time Of Social Media

Originally published at TV[R]EV on September 18, 2015

Social media has altered just about every other aspect of our lives, so why not the way we vote. And make no bones about it, this is the first real social presidential election. Sure social media was around in 2012, but it was still in its nascency, people were just figuring Twitter out, Instagram was first coming into its own and Snapchat was just a gleam in Evan Spiegel’s eye.

Obama got wild praise just for having a Twitter account and the inability to figure out social media (and other things “the kids” were into) was an oft-cited reason for Romney’s demise. But now that even aging Southern governors are setting up shop on Snapchat, the definition of “table stakes” has most definitely shifted.

If the first two GOP debates are any indication, social media will play a major role in this year’s election, and not always for the better.

Who was the winner of last nights’ CNN sponsored debate? According to People magazine, it wasn’t any of the 11 candidates up on stage.

No, it was Greg Caruso, the previously unknown 24 year-old son of a billionaire California real estate developer who was dubbed #HotDebateGuy and who somehow managed to get more social media attention than Donald Trump himself. (#HotDebateGuy was sitting in the front row directly behind moderator Jake Tapper and was thus on camera every time Tapper spoke.)

Even  The Skimm mentioned #HotDebateGuy this morning.

So how do candidates compete with a hunky 24 year-old heir? Very very carefully.

You see in today’s Gawkerized social media world, it’s the gaffes that count. Candidates can (and should) maintain accounts across the various platforms in order to ensure that their bases are covered and that their supporters have the right messaging and imagery to share. But that’s about all those accounts are doing, supporting the supporters. Best case scenario, they might actually help a supporter convince an undecided voter, but it’s not like an Instagram video of Jeb! giving a stump speech is going to go viral.

Unless.

Unless he does something facepalm-worthy. Awkwardly grabs for a bottle of water. Mispronounces his wife’s name. Sneezes on an unsuspecting voter.

That’s social media gold and here’s why it sort of sucks.

Because actual policy statements aren’t sexy. They require thinking and they’re not “fun” like a spilled cup of coffee on a woman wearing a white dress. Blame it on America’s Funniest Home Videos or skateboarding cats, but we’ve been trained not to get too deep on our social media. or risk being branded “boring.” So if Jeb! were to propose a well thought out alternative to Obamacare, if Hillary were to suddenly reverse her position on Iran, neither of those would see much traction outside of small circle of people for whom politics and policy is entertainment.

So what’s a candidate to do?

They can start by adopting the language of social media. When in Rome and all that. So that if I were Hillary’s campaign team, I’d go find that meme of her with sunglasses on being all badass and sink a nice chunk of change into it. Keep it authentic and resist the urge to stick obvious talking points in there (no one is going to share those) and then sit back and watch the poll numbers go up. If I were Team Trump, I’d take those “Trump Face” gifs and do the same thing.

This sort of behavior is anathema to the sort of serious people who populate campaign staffs. They’ll feel it diminishes their candidate and makes a mockery out of the whole process. But like we tell brands and celebrities, that conversation is already happening, with or without your participation, so you might as well bite the bullet and join in so you can have some control over what’s being said.

It might make you feel a little sleazy, but it’ll also get you more exposure than #HotDebateGuy. And in a tight race, that could be the deciding factor.

"Over The Top" Reviewed In New York Review Of Books

The cover story in this week's New York Review of Books, Will TV Beat The Internet, by Slate editor-in-chief Jacob Weisberg is a review of both my book, Over The Top, How The Internet Is (Slowly But Surely) Changing The Television Industry and Michael Wolff's new book, Television Is The New Television.

While Weisberg takes Wolff to task for overstating the problems of digital media, he has nothing but kind words for Over The Top.

Two excerpts:

Whatever he believed ten years ago, is Wolff right that it’s now springtime for the old television machers? To answer that question, it’s necessary to step back from his latest embrace of the pre-digital in favor of more evidence-based analysis. An excellent place to start is Alan Wolk’s self-published book Over the Top: How the Internet Is (Slowly but Surely) Changing the Television Industry. Wolk, a well-connected industry analyst, points to a very different future for the television business than the one Wolff depicts. Wolk thinks that the sector is poised for major disruption, even if it’s unclear from which side or how quickly the transformation is likely to come.

and

Wolk’s book is also more interesting than Wolff’s about the way media economics is changing the shape of filmed content. The all-at-once release model, which Netflix pioneered with the Norwegian-American crime comedy Lilyhammer in 2012, was the experiment that immediately expanded the market for television auteurs. When a twenty- two-episode season was shown over six months, writers could introduce or kill off characters and plot lines in response to audience reactions. Now writers must rely mainly on their own instincts to deliver a finished season designed for binge viewing. This is another factor making scripted TV more novelistic. 

You can read the entire review here. 

5 Ways Sports Rights Holders Can Make Periscope And Meerkat Work For Them

Originally published at TV[R]EV on August 20, 2015 


With the fall sports season fast approaching, we thought it was worthwhile to take another look at the way sports leagues were dealing with the streaming services Periscope and Meerkat. The two apps burst onto the scene last spring and put a scare into sports rights holders, especially after the MayPac fight pay-per-view event, where tens of thousands of viewers were using the apps to watch the fight for free.  Shortly thereafter, all the major sports leagues banned fans from using the apps at games, with the NFL even banning teams from running their own official streams.

While we think that rights holders do have a cause for concern when people are filming a $100 PPV event off their TV screens, we think they are missing a real opportunity to use these increasingly popular apps to engage with fans who are at the game. While pirating Pay-Per-View off the TV set is an issue, we don’t see fans broadcasting from inside the stadium as a real concern. In addition to the issue of spotty in-stadium Wi-Fi, logic would seem to indicate that a fan with a smartphone is not going to get a very clean video of a game, certainly nothing anyone else would want to watch. The far more likely use case is for fans to use these streaming services to take videos of themselves at the game.

So rather than ban Periscope and Meerkat from the stadium, we’ve got 5 ways teams and leagues can use them to increase fan engagement:

1. Allow fans to stream, but give them a place to save and share their clips for possible inclusion on a highlights or scoreboard reel
It is possible to save the streams as regular video, which makes for easier upload to your site. This will keep their video within your ecosystem where you maintain rights to it . On a practical level, this means setting up an alert for anyone who is streaming from the arena and tweeting at them to let them know about the upload.

2. Phrase the instructions to make it clear that you are talking about short clips  
We’re not talking about streaming the entire game of course. Encourage fans to take videos of themselves and their reactions before, during and after the game, with an eye towards being able to use them in a highlights clip or on the scoreboard.

3. Credit the fans whose clips you do use 
Make sure your official social media accounts give them a shout-out. This will make them feel appreciated and chances are good they will promote the link to your official highlights reel. This will also encourage other fans to take part.

4. Promote your official Periscope or Meerkat account
sports teams on periscope
Use it to focus on fans during the game, with an eye towards sharing the clips on the Jumbotron or on a post-game highlights reel. That will go a long way towards making fans feel like they are a part of the action. Some scenarios you can look to capture include:

• Pre-game  prep (tailgating, face-painting, traveling)
• Fan Predictions for the game
• Fan reactions between innings or between quarters
• Shout-outs and “pump ups” for their favorite players

5. Come down hard on anyone streaming the live TV broadcast
That’s where piracy becomes a real issue and where it’s possible for someone with a high end camera to do a good job of recreating the broadcast you paid good money for, cutting into your ad revenue and otherwise interfering with your profitability.  Twitter (Periscope’s parent company) and Meerkat have both promised to be responsive to illegal streams, so let’s take them at their word for now.

Conclusion

Embracing your streaming fans and making them part of the family, giving them a purpose and rewarding them for helping to promote your teams is a far better strategy than issuing an outright ban and can really work to boost engagement. That said, it will still be important to monitor how Periscope and Meerkat develop and how quickly fans adopt these live streaming apps.

To Binge, Or Not To Binge? Why We Like Hulu’s “Not Right Away” Strategy

Originally published at TV[R]EV on August 14, 2015. Co-authored by David Beck

Bucking a trend towards enabling binge viewing, Hulu recently announced that it was going to release original series like The Mindy Project and Difficult People on a weekly basis, rather than all at once.

While “TV is dead” proponents may perceive this as a reactionary measure, we think it’s a very smart move/experiment that could:

• give Hulu’s orginal series a better chance of success
• show advertisers they are actually getting their money’s worth
• let viewers rediscover the joys of weekly viewing

Hulu actually has an opportunity to build audience and community.

One of the greatest challenges of an on-demand, binge-enabled series is how to build community.  The lack of a shared viewing experience coupled with fans paranoid about social media spoilers can create an almost anti-social viewing experience. Ultra hardcore fans will band together on sites like Tumblr, but for someone whose involvement is more restrained, the weekly debut of a new episode is all the news they need to share. This approach also allows Hulu to create a more coordinated social push, while driving live tune-in.

For Hulu, the advantage is an audience that, once they’ve watched and enjoyed a single half hour episode, might stick around to see what else Hulu has to offer. This can help reduce churn rate while building up Hulu as a brand, turning it from a destination to watch last week’s Saturday Night Live into a full-fledged network with a range of content. This is why the platform’s recommendation engine plays such a critical role, as we believe the data Hulu harvests here about the correlation between different shows will prove most valuable, both for targeting and for future programming decisions.

Advertisers might actually get their money’s worth.

Hulu is unique among the streaming services in that its subscription model also comes with advertising. So while Netflix and Amazon don’t need to worry about the needs of the advertising community, Hulu does.

Fortunately, advertisers will see real benefits from this new paradigm as they’ll be assured of reaching a set audience at a specific time every week, an audience with whom they can share time-sensitive messages and whom they can activate via social media. This allows them to buy Hulu the same way they buy network TV (or at least network VOD) which makes for easier planning. Integrating native ads or #createdwith content featuring the show’s stars is easier too, because now there’s a timeliness to the programming.

And since Hulu’s 90 second ad pods are mercifully shorter than the four minute pods found on network TV, viewers won’t be drowning in a sea of commercials, which makes each advertiser’s (non-skippable) message stand out even more.

Audiences benefit from a shared experiences. 

For those who don’t exclusively binge watch, watching weekly episodes can reduce the anxiety that certain “binge master” friends will accidentally spoil the season by revealing crucial plot points.

Those who stopped watching live TV “long before it was cool to say it”, may find they actually like episodic television: binge viewing often feels like binge eating: you’ve scarfed down the entire pint of Haagen-Dazs in one sitting and now you’ve got nothing for dessert all week. Knowing that there’s something to look forward to once a week might be appealing in and of itself, especially if you’re marathon viewing all the other series you follow.

But…they need to think about hedging a few risks

We’d be remiss not to mention some potential downsides to Hulu’s plans. While older viewers may appreciate the shared experience, younger Millennial and Gen Z viewers may regard it as hopelessly old-fashioned and give up on the series once they realize they have to wait a week for the next episode. And since no one, regardless of age, is accustomed to watching Hulu on any sort of linear schedule, the concept may prove confusing to viewers, especially if it’s not promoted correctly.

That’s why Hulu needs to develop a smart multi-platform content and engagement strategy—everything from releasing additional content across social networks to setting up live midweek Meerkat and Periscope sessions with the actors, writers and producers of these shows in order to increase viewer awareness and engagement. Given the strong existing fan bases for the stars of Hulu’s new shows, we think these sorts of tactics will be very well received.

Hulu has defied the conventional wisdom before, running commercials on a subscription service,  and then running a countdown timer while asking viewers to rate the relevance of the ads they’ve seen. The introduction of linear is just another experiment for them, one we think will yield excellent results.

If there is one rule of thumb for the TV[R]evolution, it’s to experiment and adapt. In other words, #BeBrave

TV’s Customer Experience Continues Its Downward Spiral

Originally published at TV[R]EV on July 28, 2015

File this under “and then they wonder why no one likes them”:

A new study from Verizon’s AOL unit shows that despite plummeting live viewership numbers, the amount of TV advertising is actually UP.

Commercials now take up an average of seven minutes and 30 seconds of every thirty minute show, versus seven minutes and 7 seconds in 2011. What’s more, the number of 15-second spots climbed to 37.6% from 32.1% over the same time period.

That means not only are viewers being subjected to longer ad pods but they’re also being subject to more commercials in those pods. 

READ THE REST AT TV[R]EV

Book Excerpt In The Guardian Today

There's an excerpt of one of the chapters from Over The Top running in today's Guardian. It's about the shifting value of ownership and how streaming services like Netflix and Spotify may be making owning media irrelevant.

I'll give you a tease of the first two chapters and then you can give The Guardian the clicks to read the rest.

One of the most significant changes happening today, something that affects every industry, not just television, is the shifting value of ownership. The idea of ownership is based on the concept of scarcity: if a certain good or service is scarce, it’s of value to own it. But if it’s plentiful, then ownership is of less value. Different cultures place different values on ownership. If you remember your American history, the Native Americans were often confused by the European notion of land ownership, land being open and plentiful on the Great Plains. 

So too with music, TV, and movies these days: when they are available whenever and wherever you want them, the idea of consumer ownership seems pointless. This wasn’t always the case however, and a quick look back can help us understand how we got to where we are today.  

READ THE REST AT THE GUARDIAN

USA Hacks Into Netflix's Formula With Mr. Robot

Originally published at TV[R]EV on June 30, 2015

A clandestine group of hackers takes on an evil corporation, breaking into emails and rooting through their files. That’s not the latest headline getting buzz on Twitter, but rather the plot of Mr. Robot, a new sci-fi series that just launched on USA Network. What’s newsworthy though is not so much the big-budget, multi-touch campaign the network used to launch they new series—but rather where they chose to launch the series and the audience they chose to target.

There were seven main beats to the interactive campaign, each one building on the first. What’s notable about all of them is that they didn’t run on TV, but rather online or as guerrilla tactics. USA’s plan seems to be to go after the long tail, to create devoted viewers who will watch the show online, via VOD or a streaming service. Purposely ignoring the high-Nielsen number premier is a bold move, but one we think was very warranted here. It’s also a road map for how shows might go about building the sort of hardcore involved audiences that are necessary for success in the new world of television. It’s a tactic Netflix more or less invented, and we’ve been wondering when the cable and broadcast networks would take it up.

READ THE REST AT TV[R]EV

Apple’s Flunking TV 101

Originally published at tvrev.com on May 22, 2015

Not a great week for Apple as far as their involvement with the television industry goes. First there was this article in the Wall Street Journal, wherein billionaire investor Carl Icahn claimed that Apple was still working on the mythical Apple TV set, something the Journal assured readers Apple had actually given up on sometime last year.

While tech journos get all hot and bothered about the Apple TV, those of us in the TV industry are often left scratching our heads, and so I’m sure I was not the only one surprised to learn that Apple had seriously been heading down that road to nowhere as recently as 2014.

You see, consumers really don’t have any problem with their actual TV sets, which are reasonably priced, fairly reliable and provide excellent picture quality in HD. The problem has always been with the interface and that’s dictated by the set top box — the set itself is just a dumb terminal.

That’s why the real action has been with streaming boxes (which, as Roku, Google and Amazon have shown, can be reduced to a stick the size of a thumb drive.) They are the brains of the operation, work with any existing TV set and at under $100 a pop, can be replaced every two or three years when they become obsolete. That’s important because the average replacement cycle for a TV set in the US is 7 years, which just about ensures that any Apple TV set would become obsolete long before the buyer was ready to part with it.

Which is why Apple should be focusing on the hockey puck sized Apple TV, a piece of hardware that hasn’t been updated in years. That fact is largely responsible for the second piece of bad news Apple got this week: according the latest Freewheel report, Roku is kicking their ass.

A whopping 43% of all OTT ad views (up 37% year to year) happened via Roku while only 20% happened on Apple TV (down 36% year-to-year.) That’s a huge gap and it’s only going to keep growing as Roku’s wide range of channels, native search capability, easy to use interface and multiple model options continue to make it the streaming device of choice.

While Apple is rumored to be working on an update to the Apple TV device, adding in things like voice control (another place for Siri to not understand what I’m saying) and home monitoring, the further behind they get, the harder it is going to be to catch up.

I’m a big Apple fan and I’d love to see them succeed, but right now they’re not having an easy time conquering the television industry. Given their history however, it’s way too soon to write them off.

Newfronts and Upfronts Have One Thing In Common-Data

If there was one common theme from this month’s Upfront and Newfront presentations, it is that the other guys have no idea what they’re doing. That was particularly true when it came to advertising, the raison d’etre of both events.

The MCNs and other online video providers who make up the Newfronts kept hammering home how avidly people watch commercials on their sites, given that they can’t fast forward through them or run to the kitchen for a snack. The networks, on the other hand, spent much of the Upfronts talking about fraud and “viewability,” the implication being that people may not like their 4- minute commercial pods, but at least they’re actually seeing them.

What both sides need to realize is that, by focusing on the other’s negatives, they are only hurting themselves. They’d do much better to point out the things they have in common, as those are far more valuable to advertisers.

READ THE REST AT TDGRESEARCH.COM (free registration required)

Verizon's AOL Deal Is So Money And The Media Still Doesn't Know It

Co-written with Jesse Redniss and originally published at www.braveventures.com.

The media has been doing a lot of snickering about Verizon’s purchase of AOL today, because, after all, who actually admits to watching something on AOL or even knowing what’s on there. It’s all so 1998.

Media types may not watch AOL but clearly someone is: over 65 million Americans to be exact. In fact, when it comes to video, Comscore consistently shows AOL a not-too-distant third behind YouTube and Facebook, a fact not unnoticed by ad buyers. While it may not be sexy, it is the future of TV, which isn't about "shows" but about great stories both long and short form, something AOL has in spades.

While the perception may be that AOL is stuck in the “You’ve Got Mail” days (note the number of headlines that will pun off of this today), the reality is quite different: AOL is a sleek 21st century media company that has wide-ranging content deals with everyone from the very successful millennial-focused MCN AwesomenessTV to NBC to the Huffington Post to dozens of other niche creators. It’s that range that makes them so strong: AOL covers a broad spectrum of demos which not only enables consumer choice (do I want to snack on video or do I want a full meal),  it also gives advertisers the breadth and depth they want for better, more focused targeting.

Which is really what the AOL deal is all about: targeting. If there’s an audience segment you want to reach, you can find them on AOL. And if you want a way to deliver it, they’ve got that covered too.

You see, while no one was looking, AOL made the transition from chat room organizer to ad tech powerhouse. With first quarter revenue from their ad tech units well north of $200 million. AOL has bought up a number of technologies like Adap.tv, AdLearn Open Platform, Vidible, Gravity and Convertro, which they’ve recently relaunched under the One by AOL moniker, giving advertisers an end-to-end solution across multiple screens.

Verizon, on the other hand, has a way to serve that up, via its VDMS (Verizon Digital Media Services, a content and ad delivery system that competes with the likes of Brightcove and the Platform.) And while VDMS has yet to live up to its potential, combining that platform with AOL’s ad tech services gives Verizon the ability to serve up ads to whatever segment you want to reach.

That’s just on desktop. The problem AOL, Yahoo and other web-based services have run into is that more and more views are coming via mobile and mobile means no cookies. No cookies means all that sexy ad tech software is pretty much useless, which is where Verizon comes in: as the nation’s largest mobile provider, they have all sorts of data about mobile usage, including the ability to track user identity across devices, which can make those ad tech platforms useful again. 

While the tech is clearly driving this deal, it’s AOL’s content play that make it all the more interesting,  particularly if Verizon is planning on using all this new AOL content in its upcoming V-POP (Virtual Pay-TV Operator) play.

Oh right, that.

Verizon’s V-POP is more than just a rumor, it’s something the company has actually announced it’s planning on rolling out sometime this summer and if you look under the hood, the pieces are all there for a really kick-ass system.

There’s the UX piece that they have from OnCue, the failed Intel V-POP they bought last January. There’s the distribution piece from their mobile network (we’re thinking video watched over the Verizon V-POP is exempt from bandwidth caps.) And now there’s the additional content, both short and long form, that they get from AOL to supplement the network content they’ll negotiate through FIOS. 

The combination of short and long form content reflects the way people watch video now: a two minute clip on the phone while you’re waiting for an appointment, a sixty minute show at home on the big screen TV. And it’s baffling to viewers why the same company can’t provide them with all of this, why they have to switch inputs, switch apps to go from one to the other.

A fully integrated experience is where the future is going as it gives viewers the option of choosing their own experience, sort of like a Sleep Number mattress: everyone can get the exact bundle they want with the right mix of short and long form content. (Remember Verizon’s recent pick-your-own-bundle fiasco? While ESPN and NBC certainly weren’t happy, the notion of “dialing in” the perfect bundle might just be the secret sauce behind Verizon’s new V-POP service.)

So let’s review what we have here: a strong tech play that boosts the value of AOL’s ad tech products by giving them some much needed mobile juju.  A strong content play that may form the nucleus of the upcoming Verizon V-POP’s broader content strategy. A dial-your-own content bundling option.

Looks like a win from here.

Periscope Up, Set Torpedoes To Stun The Media Market

It’s all about the headline folks, but here’s the real punchline: if you logged onto Periscope or Meerkat during the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight this weekend, you were greeted by the sight of dozens of live streams of a fight many people paid $100 to watch.

That’s right: someone paid $100, and then out of some Robin Hood-esque sense of fairness, the desire to grow their follower base, a misguided notion of sticking it to the man or maybe even some “Hey, let’s turn this on and see what happens” hijinks, some of the fans who’d paid $100 for the HD broadcast on PayPerView turned on their smartphones and broadcast the event to tens of thousands of other people who didn’t pay $100 for the privilege.

Some of the more popular Periscope streams had close to 10,000 viewers. Meerkat, which was the night’s clear runner-up, was running closer to 3,000.

Either way, there were a lot of people pirating the boxing match which equated to a whole lot of copyright violations going on.

So should HBO and Showtime, who hosted the PPV event and whose revenues stand to be affected be concerned?

Absolutely. AsAdAge reported today, during the night of the fight, copyright holders sent Perisciope 66 takedown requests and only 30 of them were removed. But should the onus here be on the copyright holders to monitor and send in requests?

Aswe pointed out when YouTube quietly shut down Katch a few weeks ago, the platform provider needs to make a concerted effort to monitor the content they are hosting and proactively shut down streams that are clearly in violation of their Terms of Service. This is the very reason YouTube spent nearly a decade in corporate litigation with Viacom, and why they are now extremely diligent in monitoring the YouTube universe with their Content ID system.

Based on the reporting that only 30 streams were shut down, Periscope could have done a much better job to identify the offending streams. The process is simple: use searchable key terms and concurrent video load alerts to identify high demand streams, manually check them out and then shut them down… by hand using humans… without having to wait for a takedown notice from the copyright holder, a notice that’s particularly futile as streams are only live for 24 hours and the appeal is watching them in real time.

Which brings us back to the headline: during the early days of social and UGC, big media lawyers spent a great deal of time trying to get comfortable with a myriad of issues such as Privacy Policy, Rights Management, Copyright Infringement, Trademark Infringement and Fair Use.

And now, thanks to live streaming, we have a Meerkat in a coal mine.

Because all these live streams create a new wave of legal and broadcast rights issues that we’re just beginning to scratch the surface of. And the answer is going to be a lot trickier than it ever was for tweets and Facebook posts.

How are we ever going to track and compensate these athletes, musicians and rights holders for all of the streamed performances once they go big time? On top of that, what’s going to happen once anyone tries to monetize these platforms?

Imagine what would happen if Jared Leto, one of the most popular casters was at the Meadowlands and decided to start casting a Jets game along with Gary Vaynerchuk, another popular caster (and big time Jets fan.) Combined, the two of them could drive a considerable audience to their streams. What if Periscope started running ads against those streams… Who owns that revenue? How is it tracked? How furious (and litigious) would the NFL be, let alone CBS, ESPN and NBC?

It’s not just about advertising. The PGA Tour had a meltdown this week when Stephanie Wei, a well-regarded blogger, Periscoped the tour’s golden boy Jordan Speith taking some practice rounds. This is not footage anyone would ever broadcast, but the PGA reacted as if Wei had drilled a peephole into the locker room: they’ve banned her from the tour for the rest of the year.

The question here is who owns that footage. The PGA says that anything that happens on the tour is their intellectual property, even if it never would have made it on air. The very fact that it could have made it on air is enough. Wei and her supporters (who boosted #FreeWei to trending Twitter status) contend that they are just enhancing the overall experience and driving more fans to the main event. But that just raises a larger question: since Wei is a “journalist” does she get a free pass? What if a couple hundred fans were Periscoping that practice round? Would that make it different?

The controversies are only going to continue as more and events from sports to concerts to court proceedings are live streamed without the “express written consent” of the people who own the rights to the event. It’s a huge boon for anyone specializing in media and copyright issues and it’s sure to spur a number of court cases challenging everyone from Twitter to fans to rights holders for years to come.

However it shakes out, one thing is clear: social and mobile based live streaming is here to stay. But, Twitter is sailing in deadly waters, do they really want to use Periscope to seek out their next battle with the major media companies?

Originally published at www.braveventures.com and co-written with Jesse Redniss