Television?
Ahh… the good old days when we all understood it. What it was, what it did, and what it offered. And today? When asked to define “television” do most of us even know where to start? Are we watching? Who’s watching? Which version of the show did YOU watch last night? Did you watch on that screen that is typically in your living room that either has an antenna or a coaxial cable attached to it? Or, did you watch “the show” after it aired as part of a five-day ad-supported download to your PC? Or, did you watch the show on you iPod after buying it online without commercials intact?
The alternatives for consuming content just continue to grow and grow. And they are doing so with dramatic acceleration. NBC-Direct, the newly announced initiative to offer ad-supported long form content of such shows as “Heroes” and “Bionic Woman” equates to yet another option for consuming media and entertainment programming.
Creating content and moving it to the appropriate locations, in the appropriate format and making it available not before, and up until, specific time periods involve a dizzying set of requirements to actually pull it off.
Moving content FHTTH (from Hollywood to the Home) means connecting to a server where content is ingested. It means moving that content from raw form to systems that are used to edit it and finalize it. It means moving it to and from the audio editorial and mixing stage. It means encoding that final content into the various forms that are needed for the final deliverables. Then it means adding the ad-supported commercials, banners, promos, etc. and adding DRM (digital rights management). And, of course, it all has to be populated on the viewer-facing website and moved to the CDN (the content delivery network).
To accomplish this at the dizzying rate that the Media & Entertainment industry is moving is no simple accomplishment.
I’m afraid I can’t help myself: I watch “television” on a piece of glass connected to a coax cable in my family room and on a computer screen and on an iPod. I’m not there on a mobile, but as a Red Sox fan, as we get closer to the playoffs, you never know….
