EightBlack.

Everybody is touting video as the next big thing online.

Google set the standard when it paid US$1.6 billion for YouTube. Google Video was a success - but not as much as YT - and when traffic soared, the folks at Google simply had to have it.

And mainstream publishers are transitioning to video advertising as quickly as they can get their heads around it.

But there are plenty of detractors and plenty of people who would just rather than things be left as they are.

Google has an army of lawyers battling copyright suits and small cracks are starting to appear.

Thats not what this post is all about though.

What frustrates me with video content now is the paranoia behind the content owners.

Take the BBC for example. It is the pre-eminent and largest broadcaster in the world. Arguably the best too.

It produces brilliant content.

Earlier this year, one of its stable mates, Top Gear returned to the worldwide screens. It had been off air since one of its main presenters was injured in a horrific crash involving a high degree of insanity (or balls), a jet powered car and an unused runway.

As you might have expected, the test drive all went pear shaped on the last run of the day. Poor old Richard Hammond was on the front page of just about every english speaking newspaper in the world.

Lucky for Richard, all he ended up with was a “swollen brain”, which is no different to what a Manchester United fan has 90% of the time during the English football season.

Richard survived, his comeback nothing short of miraculous and the return of the show resulted in a peak TV audience of 8.6 million people - and that’s only in Britain.

The thing I can’t work out though is this. The BBC claim to have a global audience for Top Gear which they estimate somewhere between 250-350 million people.

Lets be conservative and call it quarter million for the sake of the arguement.

Now I dont buy the fact that because the BBC still has management in cardigans, that they dont know how to act and behave like a Kerry Packer run media machine. They do.

And they know Top Gear is a global hit. It has been for just about all of it’s 29 year history.

So for goodness sake, let us watch and download the content. Charge us for the privilege. Think about all the fans who just so happen to live outside of the UK, who have no need for a UK based TV licence and who want to watch their favourite content.

Mainstream broadcasters and media outlets have to get their heads around the fact that no matter what feral lawyer they unleash, no matter what threats they make, that users will find a way eventually to get what they want.

The BBC need to do a deal with iTunes and sit back and watch the meter run. They need to syndicate their content. Release the DVD series as soon as they can.

And above all, faciliate the sharing and consumption of their content. I’m convinced the commercial reward is much, much higher if they can think outside the box.

Subscribe to more posts like this

Related Posts:

Add to | | | View blog reactions

This entry was posted on Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 8:32 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.