Your theory can prove true in the long run (maybe), but what I think you may be leaving out is our attention span. Our attention span has grown very thin as we have continued to evolve as a society needing entertainment at the tips of our fingers. My belief is that with the saturation of indie films (shorts) and the heavy blown out budgets of features, we will begin to see more short films become more profitable and alluring for the "studios." In-fact the format of movies, will actually become more like TV shows. Short and sweet to the point! This is why YouTube is so popular and all the original content created, its short and entertaining. Thus studios are going to get into the home entertainment business to stay alive!

While the industry continues either blindness about, or inability to grasp video on demand (VOD), the question has moved beyond the one framed by Rolling Stone. Which business model will win the VOD war? -- Netflix, as a streaming video provider producing its own content in-house tailored to big data culled from customers' viewing habits; -- Amazon, as a low-cost distributor of any product, capitalizing on economies of scale with its cloud-based sales and distribution system, buying or building content based on sales and VOD data; -- Google, the behemoth of advertising sales based on search and hosted content like Machinima.com productions at YouTube, encouraging open source or alternative development through advertising-gleaned data. Creatives in cinema will have to come to terms with the reality that -- 56% of Americans carry a theater in the pocket or purse[1]; -- Women are a force to reckon with in terms of VOD consumption[2]; -- The aggregate body of consumers is aging, leaving an under-served population among the oldest viewers, and they still lean toward traditional TV and theater[3]; -- The last two 3-year periods, 2006-2009 and 2009-2012 saw doubling of VOD consumption; creatives must shift rapidly to a more flexible content-creation model to adapt[4]. This is a lot to chew on--and I haven't even mentioned machinima (lower case M) virtual filmmaking[5] and its rapidly growing part in VOD marketplace. Only Google is currently positioned to yield benefits from machinima creations. _________ [1] http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Smartphone-Ownership-2013.aspx [2] http://www.aaf.org/images/public/aaf_content/images/future%20board/Part%20III_Team%20A_FB.pdf [3] http://gointothestory.blcklst.com/2013/07/why-are-studios-not-making-more-movies-for-largest-demo-groups.html#comment-128270 [4] http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/13--The-Audience-for-Online-VideoSharing-Sites-Shoots-Up/1-Overview.aspx [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinima

Rolling Stone and yourself could be onto something. As you say originally those lil Black and White films were short. Because that's all they could do. Back in the day when I'm sure people were completely fascinated by projected moving images, and absorbed by the film regardless of story. I've known people to hole up for whole weekends watching box sets of the same show. Maybe they were in fact watching one long movie. You could say 24 was a movie, just over a literal 24 hour span. I watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy back to back. In effect a very long movie. Accompanied by a gigantic popcorn. And stiff limbs. Amongst your writer interviews there does seem to be considerable crossover between the two worlds. The times, they are a changin?

I think an important player in the concept of VOD, especially with the idea that "56% of Americans carry a theater in their pocket or purse", are the companies that control the bandwidth. Currently in Canada, at least, there is no way people are going to be watching feature length movies on their phones via VOD. The cost to stream that much video would be insane if you were commuting or did not have access to free, unlimited, wi-fi. Even for at home users, some of them are still limited in the amount they can download/stream per month and if they go over that amount the charge is insane. So the big telecom and cable providers will have a lot of influence in how much and how fast people can fully switch over to all downloading and streaming content. In a sense they might become the "movie theaters" of the digital era, because they hold all the keys to how (and how much) it costs you to gain access to your entertainment.

Very interesting post. I think the term "television" may be increasingly phased out as providers like Netflix create more content that people can watch on their laptops, tablets, phones. The future distinction will probably be "small screen programming" vs. "large screen programming", differentiating between media we want to see in theaters (for which there will always be a demand) and that we want to watch on TVs/mobile devices.

Yes, exactly, the market will differ enormously from country to country, depending on each nation/state's policy regarding technology, broadband, and access. It behooves consumers to be better advocates and activists, insisting that both Congress and SEC/FCC do better by ensuring neutral access and deep, diverse competition in broadband. I should point out that the AAF presentation anticipates 57% of internet use in 2014 will be streaming content. This may explain why some broadband providers have been dabbling in content production--see Comcast, for example, which now owns NBC, Comcast-Interactive media, and some radio. They make money on the pipe and content in the pipe. In this case, Comcast may struggle with net neutrality against any content competing with theirs in their pipe. The next three years will be highly volatile. Watch the dispute between CBS and other TV broadcasters against Aereo TV as a key example.

But does there actually have to be a limitation on whether a user can access small versus large format? The technology already exists to describe the equipment one uses to access content. Websites will offer a mobile format as soon as the device has been verified; streaming content could do the same thing, offer a different compression for mobile on the fly versus a standard compression for larger screen devices.

This has been brewing for a long time, and it's just the start. It is always -- always, always, always, always -- some little runt grunting away quietly who turns everything upside down. Netflix was the first to identify the binge viewing habit, and TV has responded with knock-out writing that gives depth of character and story you just can't get in a film. And you can take a break and go to dinner and those characters and story are there waiting for you when you get back. You can even take it with your on your iPad. When I busted our DVD player and bought the cheapest Blu-Ray I could find, guess what was on the remote? A Netflix button that took me right to my subscription. When we finally broke down and bought a new TV, plugged it in and it was pre-loaded with all the major new vendors. No cable box needed. BUT, Femme is smack on the nose. The race is on. So far, Amazon, hands down, has the best streaming. They also have a studio with an open call for pilots of all sorts. The first batch has been produced with most of them having heavy star and production power, but still one submitted by a complete unknown. The gates are open. They produce one episode, put it up, and (here's an idea) go forward with the shows viewers vote on as their favorites. Google and Yahoo and Sony are in on the game, but so is the 500 Pound Gorilla -- WalMart. We haven't tried vudu yet, but nobody knows the buying public better than WalMart, and nobody knows how to keep a secret better than them. They're building studios as we discuss this. Along with their reputation of keeping things on the down low, regardless of how vilified they've become, they're masters at creating community and offering opportunity to the littlest guy on the block...even if those little guys often bite back hard sometimes. Their retail outlets are losing money hand over fist, and yet their stock is going up? Something's happening there and it isn't massive sales of Twinkies. Near the end of his life, Campbell called for a new mythology for the 21st Century. That was fairly astounding coming from a man whose life was devoted to the commonalities in the mythology of all humankind. We may be standing on that threshold.

Not sure what you mean - when I said "large screen" I was referring to movie theaters specifically, not large screen devices.

While it's true that wrt bandwidth and signal reliability Amazon is the best at content delivery, it's not entirely clear to me that being in the studio business is in Amazon's DNA. What I see emerging is a streaming video model that closely follows Amazon's ebook strategy, i.e. studios of various sizes providing content, while Amazon dictates the pricing. And as long as Amazon implements a tiered pricing model that mirrors or even improves upon the current situation with movies theaters, the studios will be happy. As an aside, did anyone notice the BBC's announcement that they're abandoning 3D due to a lack of viewers and instead are going to focus their efforts on 4K and maybe 8K? Or where in Lynda Obst's book where she says China will only accept US content if it comes in 3D and IMAX. imho, that's where the home/cinema line is going to be drawn: you'll go to the movie theater to see 3D & IMAX movies and the rest you'll watch at home on your 4K TV set. What I'm not clear about is how marketing works in this new regime.

I believe that the episodic nature of a TV show still doesn't translate well to the "Big Screen". Having a season long storyline is something that is well done today in TV, but it lasts between 12 and 22 episodes, where we see our main character(s) face situations that serve as small steps towards this big story we're telling, mixed with several storylines that could be taken out and we would still have a coherent narrative. These small steps can be cut and put together in a movie and you would lose maybe 30% of your show (that's just guessing, I'm not sure of how close I am but still, I believe you would lose a lot of "unnecessary" footage in relation to our main character's journey) and make the storyline and the show go "faster", seeming more like a movie than a TV show. So basically we would be cutting a TV show and "adapting" it to a movie. Now I realize I may have put too many ("")

Just to add to the discussion a little, Ben Wheatley released his latest low budget film on Friday 5th simultaneously in theatres, on TV, via VOD and on DVD and BD as an experiment around viewing habits and the preliminary results can be seen HERE - Film 4 Blog http://blog.film4.com/a-field-in-england-multiplatform-release-the-results/ and HERE - Screen Daily http://www.screendaily.com/news/a-field-in-england-figures-revealed/5058103.article?blocktitle=Latest-News&contentID=1846# For a small film, and with my lack of in depth knowledge about these things, I am not sure what this tells us for the future of cinema, and I wonder whether results were slightly skewed by the free TV option....perhaps if all access was via some sort of fee it would have been interesting to see how VOD fared...it is clearly snapping at the coat tails of the cinema and was not far behind the DVD/BD sales....it will be interesting to see how those figures look when all the data is in. As I don't get to go to the cinema as much as I would hope (work, babysitting and all that jazz) I liked the idea of the simultaneous release, giving me the choice in how I watched the film, but I wonder how close we are to seeing something similar for larger budget tent-pole summer blockbusters? Personally, I think we are a long way from that....but never say never..... Me? I went for the BD option as there were no cinema showings near me and I have the luxury to watch it on a relatively large home screen. It was slightly more expensive but, my brother-in-law, who watched the VOD version, was only treated to the standard definition version - but then am an HD sponge....I look forward, salivating, at the thought of 4k and 8k screens, rather than get excited about 3D or smelly-vision and super/ultra HD VOD is going to be an even bigger challenge for delivery at home (certainly in the BroadBand poor UK) - but that is another story.... So this is only one film, but it is a low budget one, and could this herald the start of new release strategies for lower budgets movies that may struggle to get a wider cinematic release but fare better working in partnership with VOD and streaming services like Netflix? Oh, and if you get a chance, you should watch the film. You will either love it or hate it, but it is a refreshing diversion from city-levelling monsters! ;-)

But in the digital age, where content is distributed over networks, ALL display types larger than a tablet should pull "large screen" format.

[...] Via Go Into the Story [...]

Amazon has enough capital to experiment with cutting out the middlemen. In their original line of business they've already established imprints[1] to become a book publisher, creating slush piles by running contests to gather unpublished manuscripts. In VOD they've already been in production since 2010 with their own Amazon Studios[2]. The latest foray into content creation is a hybrid, Amazon Kindle Worlds[3] -- the monetization of fan fiction related to specific Warner Bros. programs. The effort looks to me like the creation of a crowd-sourced slush pile for extending WB programs; imagine it, serious fans who know WB programs in great detail, literally writing treatment and narrative which can be easily adapted into a script. (What bothers me about this concept is the bypassing of WGA members at inception of concept...) Does this portend a future deal (or one already in existence we cannot see) in which Amazon gets first rights on Warner Brothers' TV content produced from Amazon Kindle Worlds' content? I don't know about "not in their DNA"; they've been plugging away at this for years now, and with little concentrated attention by the entertainment industry or the public. Marketing, however, will be a true challenge. Netflix already set an example of how-not-to-promote with its in-house series, Hemlock Grove. While House of Cards had been well-hyped, Hemlock Grove received only cursory promotion. Unfortunately we won't see the internal numbers to know which of the two models generated return on investment; we can only assume Amazon was happy with results as a second season has been greenlighted[4]. Amazon's platform will allow for better promotion within its existing customer base, but they won't reach traditional TV viewers who don't frequent Amazon's storefront. ________ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Publishing [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Studios [3] http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1001197421 [4] http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57590219-93/netflixs-blink-and-you-missed-it-hemlock-grove-to-return/

I agree they have a marketing issue. I had totally forgotten Amazon had original content...and I'm on Amazon all the time. (Yes, virtual window shopping is a stress-relieving hobby.) Once in a while, I get a message to take a look at their streaming content, but I have literally never seen anything promoting original content. I am sure they promoted them, but I didn't get that they were either pilots or original content from anything I saw. So whatever the numbers were, I'm sure they could have been better!

This gets to the point I was making. The fact that screenwriters are actively involved with Amazon's content generation efforts doesn't drive audience/customer awareness. Moreover, just because a company has been doing something for years, that doesn't mean they really understand either the market or the customer base. I see this all the time in the computer business (my particular expertise is supercomputers). Barnes & Noble's experience with Nook is another example of what I mean. At this point, Netflix has gotten more awareness with its customers on what it's trying to do with just a single TV show than Amazon has been able to achieve in the years up to now. What does this mean? Ultimately, companies that succeed play to their strengths. Amazon *will* become the distributor of choice (and not a meaningful studio), but probably through an alternate portal that it doesn't directly control. Netflix is poising itself to become the 1st of the next generation of TV channels.

Amazon also has a habit of buying their competitors as they did with Audible. Now you can get an audio book and buy the eBook that synch where you've started and stopped, allowing you to read or listen. Amazon stated long ago that they were never interested in books. Their goal was to be the amazon of the internet and books were the easiest to store and ship without shrinkage. When they take aim, they usually hit their mark. Aside from having imprints, their gates are wide open to anybody to publish anything at any price they want to set. Fifty Shades of Grey and the work of Amanda Hocking and Hough Howey got their start by clicking a button and uploading to Amazon without anybody's permission. They shook up publishing and there's no going back. Wasn't it Ron Howard who wanted to do a combo production of a Stephen King book, producing films and additional print books to fill in the gaps between each movie release? Somebody was. Amazon is certainly poised to tackle something like that with ease. Referring back to another post, Aereo TV is something everyone should be monitoring. So far CBS is one of the few broadcast companies that's held out contracting with any other streaming options. If you binge watch NCIS you can see them changing the show's structure in Season Four from episodic to serial. They were poising their unbelievably successful anchor so it doesn't work in syndication and has to be bought season by season on DVD. They've also been causing problems with COX Communications by raising their fees tremendously. Aereo TV just received an enormous cash infusion with 50M coming from a little company that owns sites like Ask.com, all the match.com sites, NBC, and Google adSense, to name a few. Aereo is a tempest in a teacup, bringing into question who owns the very air between broadcast towers and the IP passing through that air. Aereo is ready to take on CBS and both sides have the money to make this a real donnybrook. Our IP could be at stake in this. The founder of eBay sold and started meetup.com. Great site, meet.up, but there used to be buried deep in there a ground roots manifesto to make all IP posted to the internet and airwaves the property of the people. I'll do more digging and see if that's still on meetup, and whether or not the founder is on the BOD of the company funding Aereo. It can take weeks of digging to find it, if it can be found. What a wild time this is.

I don't see Amazon stepping in and making an acquisition (however, if they wanted to buy that lackluster POS CNN and ask Ted Turner to step back into clean house...). In the case of programming, Amazon would likely run into headwinds buying an established outlet, for the same reasons other disruptors are running into difficulty. There's enough money in TV and film to make it worth fighting back. If Amazon makes any acquisition, it would be parallel to its purchase of GoodReads — a pre-established audience of readers who buy books voraciously, promote books to each other, while offering a built-in sales platform. This kind of purchase solves Amazon’s problem with building vibrant communities; they’ve never really been able to do it successfully in-house. Theorectically, Amazon might look at the equivalent of IMdb.com or RottenTomatoes.com to fill this bill. With regard to Aereo TV, it is a bellwether in no small part because Barry Diller is on board[1]. He's got a proven track record, and he understands the business — it's his lifeblood. I am digging around desperately through my reading history to find a snippet I read some weeks ago, in which it was posited the CBS-Aereo TV lawsuit would fundamentally challenge long-existing federal laws regarding carriage fees[2]. The public is already sensitized to carriage after the disputes between Time-Warner and Fox, and DirecTV and Viacom (the latter really riled up parents due to the threats to children's programming — not an audience to screw with, they tend to complain very, very loudly while shaping long-term consumption habits at home). In CBS-Aereo, CBS wants to make this about IP, but it's not; CBS already makes money on broadcast through advertising, already paid creators for the IP, and Aereo as a digital antenna doesn't cut into that. Content gets a wider audience, but CBS wants carriage fees on a per-user basis. Cable companies don’t appear to have taken a side yet, but depending on whether they are purely a carrier or a carrier-content provider, they will enter the fray with regard to carriage fees they pay. It's going to be a very bloody fight for the future of broadcast. The other niggling tidbit happening in the background that I haven't previously mentioned is Boxee's acquisition by Samsung[3]. Boxee's latest business model — up to Samsung’s acquisition — combined a device like competitor Roku, channeling VOD at users' request, but with a DVR-in-the-Cloud so that content can be viewed anywhere, any time from that cloud. Did Boxee operate the cloud? Uh-unh. Amazon was the cloud provider. Samsung killed the DVR-in-the-Cloud service on July 10th; it’s not clear why, since doing so eliminated the key differentiation between Boxee and Roku. I find it hard to believe that Samsung was so desperate for a user interface that it spent $30M in cash to buy Boxee for that purpose alone. I’m not certain that Samsung is ready to host its own cloud, either; in this respect, I’m shocked Sony didn’t make the Boxee play since it already has a cloud with the Playstation Network, and Boxee could have been integrated into PS/PSN components. If Google had some smarts it would snap up Roku and use it as the interface to a Google-based DVR-in-the-Cloud, especially since its own Google TV hasn’t caught fire with VOD audiences. Apple is yet another player I haven't mentioned, and it, too, could enter with an improved Apple TV device using iTunes as its distribution center and Apple data centers as its own cloud. Which brings me to the excellent point about CBS' NCIS programming and its migration to episodic content. First, CBS was under pressure creatively from other, newer content episodic in nature. The Killing on AMC is an excellent example, and quite frankly, the only crime programming I'll watch. The writing is marvelous; while it took two entire seasons to solve a single murder, each episode presented a new twist and a cliffhanger in a dark, moody fashion likely true to the original Danish program on which it was based. Where AMC hooked me as a viewer for Season 3 was Netflix — my daughter and I binged on all 20+ episodes and now we're addicted. This is what CBS hasn't really been able to muster with NCIS' shorter, bite-sized format, at least until now. They haven't been able to use their older programming over VOD to hook new viewers while making money on older programming, even though CBS has sold rights for streaming older broadcasting. The "making money on older programming" is a key point broadcast networks will need to grok, and creatives will need to keep in mind as generate new materials. The money for content will not all be upfront. It will exist over a much longer lifetime, and target small audiences previously marginalized or disenfranchised. The underlying theory can be found in power law distribution, or the long-tail distribution curve[4]. Both Amazon and Google excel at understanding this concept, and Netflix is mastering it as well. The film industry’s focus on blockbusters aimed at the white/male/18-24 year-old demographic represents the left-end of the long-tail, the few that dominate. But the right-hand long-tail still provides excellent opportunity to make money over a longer period of time, as both Amazon and Netflix prove. Creatives need to understand that this portion of the viewing audience has been underserved, and over time the entire long-tail may flatten as the entire demographic ages (more of us will live longer, after all) and broadband as well as devices improve to allow for greater access to content farther to the right of the long-tail. In other words, be prepared to think about your creative works in extended formats — as episodes and series — while the powers-that-be fight over broadcasting’s future. Think about audience now, and the one you’ll have long into the future. In retrospect, Rolling Stone’s article was a bit thin. As an editor I’d have been tempted to push back on the journalist for more content about the state of the markets in which Netflix was competing. __________ [1] http://nymag.com/arts/tv/upfronts/2012/barry-diller-2012-5/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carriage_dispute [3] http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/why-did-samsung-buy-boxee/ [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail

Holy toot, Femme_Mal, I'd love it if you put what you've posted here into an article and shot it off to The New Yorker or The Atlantic or anything. You know your stuff across an extremely broad range and connect the dots beautifully. I'd be the first in line to buy two copies, especially if you could dig up more on Apple. It's so odd that they're tumbling, and often that can be a move by management, especially after a dramatic change in management, of holding back and letting the shareholders squirm before launching something that whammies everyone. As an aside, I got a bit of the creeps when I turned on Netflix this morning. I'm very much accustomed to their algorithm making suggestions for me based on my viewing habits, but today's suggestions are more in line with my internet activity. Sprinkled all through the categories are tons of independent films, again tying in with my internet activity, critically acclaimed screenplays (really?), and dark movies with strong female leads. None of those match what I've watched on Netflix. The Killing is a show that has us hooked, as well as several series coming out of Denmark. It's a global offering we now have, and much of what the U.S. puts out is based on those shows.

LOL! Thanks, CydM, you're too kind. I'm afraid I'm already working on a piece under another pen name for a nationally-recognized site related to the politics underpinning video on demand and broadcast. The situation with Apple concerns me, but not enough to ditch my stock. I'll keep looking into it, though I must say nothing so far makes sense to me about some of Apple's recent speed bumps. I do think that far too many institutional investors are holding too much Apple because they are reluctant to hold other riskier stocks; this makes Apple's stock rather sensitive when the firm makes a stumble. Ethically I probably should indicate here I own both Google and Apple stock, that I'm not an investment analyst, and that my ownership is not a recommendation, your-mileage-may-vary, yada-yada... With regard to your Netflix usage: are you watching this on a PC? And if so, are you watching it in a browser window through which you also do all your other surfing? I suspect this may be the issue driving the change in suggestions from Netflix. I recommend using either a private/incognito window to launch Netflix, or using a different browser altogether dedicated to Netflix. (For example, I use Chrome for everything I do, but I might use Firefox for Netflix/VOD only.) Let me know if this helps. I have not noticed a change in Netflix suggestions to me, but then I use a dedicated gaming system as my VOD device--no internet surfing through that box.