Friday 17 January 2014

Why is there nothing on TV?

Film is art and art connects. Finding something good on TV needs a better connection between consumer and creator. blog.mindrocketnow.com

I want to introduce you to my new friend, Darren. Darren works in the Apple Store, but supplements his income as an Apple genius by being a film director (or perhaps that’s the other way round). You won’t have seen his movies yet, but he’s working towards that goal. Thing is, it’s a very long and unpredictable journey from being a talented director with a great film, to you watching it from your sofa.

Film is art, and there needs to be a very difficult path from artists to public, to ensure that the art that survives is good art. Wading through the obfuscating sea of crap that is YouTube shows the downside of giving everyone a voice – it’s really hard to find someone worth listening to.

Furthermore, the art that people actually pay for should be great art. If you’ve paid good money for a back catalogue on the basis of one great album, and find that the rest of the oeuvre is filler, then you’ll have felt the betrayal of trust that I write about. This is the content discovery challenge that I’ve written about before.

However, even if you’ve created great content, it’s still incredibly difficult to put it out. Someone needs to believe in you enough to give you money for equipment hire, sets, talent, post, even before you can show a single frame. Then someone needs to like your film enough to use their wherewithal to market and distribute your film to broadcasters. Then Joe Public has to casually like your film enough to pay the £2.99 to watch it.

Each person that holds the purse strings also holds your film hostage. Each wants a guarantee that the film that they invest in, will make money. This inevitably skews the range of content that is commissioned to be very conservative. Kevin Spacey talked about this process in the last MacTaggart lecture. According to him, in 2012 US networks made 113 pilots, of these 35 were aired as series, and of these 13 were renewed. I wonder how many pitches were made to TV producers to get to the 113 pilots?

Kevin talks about the need to “send the elevator down”, for the established talent (actors, directors, producers, accountants) to set aside money to create opportunity for the next generation of talent, without any expectation of return on investment. His view is that this expectation of return that is detrimental to the quality of endeavour. The business of art ruins the art.

Poor quality affects the entire value chain. There’s no point to a new Apple iTV if there’s nothing worth watching on it. As I’ve blogged before, the industry struggles with: hardware proposition, pricing model, technical quality, quality of programming, fragmentation of content, multi-vendor customer support, format innovation, monetisation, social engagement, applying across generational shifts, content discovery, how to measure and assure performance, how to equitably share revenue across the value chain…


This is all moot if we can’t get Darren’s film onto your YouView STB, because it’s only people like Darren that are going to make movies that you want to watch from your sofa. The elevator starts from the content consumer, not the TV executive in a shiny suit. So the way to get better TV is to create and reinforce the direct link from consumer to director. We need to stop measuring the value of art needs in shekels, and change to valuing by social engagement.

Wednesday 8 January 2014

Looking back at the blog in 2013.

Welcome to 2014. First week back at work, first week back on the blog. Let’s start with how 2013 went. #TechHubris blog.mindrocketnow.com

Most viewed post
It turns out that the post you read the most was on the demise of Blackberry’s zeitgeist. The post tried to highlight the danger of relying on being fashionable in the technology sector. On re-reading, it seems to highlight my own struggles with fashion.

Post that I enjoyed the most to write
The (forced) comparison between Doctor Who and TV technology was lots of fun to write, especially the very last line. Looking back, it would have been interesting to ask the question, why (not who). The main reason for longevity is success, and the main reason for success is because it communicates with audiences in the way that audiences want. Technical innovation, though the most interesting aspect for me, is a natural consequence of the longevity. The imperative is to innovate or become obsolete. This is true of both the TV show and the TV set itself.

Predictions that I got right
To refresh your memory, I predicted that: I would finally stop buying physical content; I would spend more on physical content; I would start using wearable tech; I would buy energy monitoring devices; and that 2013 will be a lot like 2012. So how did I do?

My Amazon purchase history for physical media shows that I bought 0 books, 0 CDs, 1 LP and 2 blu-rays (excluding presents, because they weren’t for me). The average spend £14.66 per item. The most expensive purchase was £17 and the cheapest was £10. Contrast with my spend on digital media: £167 on e-books, £19 on digital music, £19 on in-app game purchases, £157 on digital subscriptions (iTunes Match, Now TV, LoveFilm and free Spotify) and £0 on digital TV. The cheapest item was 69p, and the most expensive the £9.99 per month LoveFilm subscription.

My prediction on buying fewer physical items has indeed been borne out, but my increased spending per item hasn’t. I was assuming that I’d buy more fan-boy editions, but it turns out that I don’t care as much for fancy cardboard boxes as to actually consume the content. Which explains why my spend on physical is dwarfed by the spend on digital.

I didn’t buy my iWatch, mainly because Apple inconsiderately didn’t release it in 2013. My credit card remains on amber alert for mid-2014. I also didn’t by an energy monitoring device, because I lost my fervour for micro-managing energy. In the same way that I don’t go to the supermarket any more (Ocado delivers), and I don’t manage my rental flat (my letting agent does an expensive, appalling job), I’m happy to let my energy supplier charge pretty much whatever they want, just as long as the light always goes on when I flick the switch. Better to let them do it, to give me more energy to play with my gadgets.

And 2013 really was quite like 2012. Final score: 2 out of 5.

The geekiest post
Re-reading my posts, I find that I still quite like the way they turned out. But perhaps my post on square pixels wins this particular award, because: only a very small number of people will have experienced the issue; the explanation is quite involved; and not many people actually care – the very definition of geeky.

Post that I’d wished I’d written
I’ve read some marvellous tech posts over 2013. Well-researched, cogently presented, compelling reading, grammatically precise – everything I wish this blog was. However, the idea of this award is to look at topics that I wish I’d written about – perhaps they’ll crop up in 2014. Here are some of the titles that remain on my ideas pile:

Up-selling myself, or why I always buy a more expensive version. How Spotify is killing piracy. Qualification is subjugation; there's no moral high ground in art. Commentary on Kevin Spacey’s MacTaggart lecture. Protectionism is the opposite of innovation. Efficiency of recommendation engines. How 1D demonstrates both the importance and the irrelevancy of music labels. (Perhaps not a post about One Direction – aargh, ear-worm!)

So what of my predictions for 2014? That’s a topic for another post…