TV Engineering Project Manager - Mountain View
This position is based in Mountain View, CA.
Television remains the single most important source of information and entertainment for billions of people around the world. Google is looking for a talented Project Manager to be the driving force in managing our cross-functional launch team and stay on task and target. In this role, you will work with Engineering, Product Management, QA, Partner Services, and Business Development to ensure a smooth and seamless release of software products to the market. You will also be responsible for special projects within the Engineering area, driving projects to completion and helping to document decisions and progress.
Hm-Hmmm. The single most important source of information and entertainment for billions of people around the world.
Is the Googleplex really the Dark Star, which attacks with sheer mental power all media conglomerates in the whole world? As we learned once from a tiny startup from Redmond, Washington: softwarebased world domination schemes are doable. It’s mostly a matter of the right timing combined with right cash flow.
Of course, Big G is to Microsoft what Austin Powers means to Mini-Me. They are much younger. Now look at that: Both are going after tv riches. The Microsofties conquer ally with old media since the nineties of the last millenium. From WebTV to WinCE STBs - nothing ever worked out. Their final (?) quest: selling Windows-based IPTV backend systems to telcos, so they can sell Windows-based STBs to consumers. Let’s see.
Googlianism works differently. The first law: For every problem there’s an algorithmic solution. The second law: If there’s no algorithmic solution, hire somebody who might find it. And, not to forget: As long as it might sell ads, it’s good.
And that’s how Google is going after the stupid box. Their cuckoo-approach, as published two months ago (listening into everybody’s home to serve the right ads) could have been a part of a Think Different! campaign. Their last move makes more sense. Google just hired Vincent Dureau, CTO of iTV/IPTV middleware company OpenTV.
FierceIPTV knows: Dureau was responsible for developing OpenTV’s key technologies, global business relationships and, in the early days, building its engineering team from scratch. OK. Quite a standard move, so far. But the good part starts here: Most interestingly, Dureau took the lead of OpenTV’s advanced advertising technologies, even penning a white paper that reads: “We believe that addressable advertising, where specific video ads are targeted to specific audiences will become central to advertising on digital television within the next 5 years… advertisers will be ready to pay premium rates to cable operators who can demonstrate increased efficiency of their advertising network through targeting.”
Here we go: Old media, be afraid. The main difference between the big tv networks and the cable networks with their smaller reach is: well, the footprint of the large networks allows them to sell their ad inventory with a premium. But IPTV means the possibility of a gazillion channels. AdSense-based IPTV should mean. the playing field gets more even. And as ad spending won’t explode, the monies have to come from some other segment.
But now the caveat: People spend onliy 5 percent of their time searching, but search commands over 40 percent of the online advertising market, writes Guide.
Via FierceIPTV
There’s a new (?) meme on the block: ad-based tv is/should be dead. The future of tv is ad-free, no-tier, and totally à la carte. Listen to Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion fame: As the technology gets more sophisticated and the generation that grew up with the Internet , iPods and always on connections become adults, I see a day coming when a lot of TV content will a) be paid for and b) consumed ad-free. Nice try. But, guess what: a) is already here and b) is highly unlikely to happen.
The fundamental misunderstanding starts with the words as the technology gets more sophisticated. Of course, technology is crucial. But at this point, usage patterns and applied business models are more important.
a) is easy. It’s called pay per tier, and is basically the pretty successful formula which has propelled US-based cable networks from MTV to CNN to Discovery into the global top position regarding multichannel tv. The basic math behind it: a multichannel operator sells easy to understand program packages to the consumer. The programmer gets a certain portion of the subscriber fee and decides by gut and market research in what programs to invest. So why not breaking it down into selling separate pieces of content?
Let’s make a sidestep. In the Boston Globe, Alex Beam toots almost the same horn (at least, according to Steve). Remind me again: Why am I paying $50 a month for services I don’t want? Oh, that’s right. Because the cable TV monopolists say I have to.
The basic principle of a successful multichannel tv environment is simple. Networks are packaging shows into a channel. Cable operators are packaging channels into tiers. According to Beam, selling tiers is just a greedy, oversimplistic one size fits all approach. According to Rubel, selling ad space is just an annoying habit of channels inc., to be broken by the powers of technology. Vivat, Ã la carte.
Beam proposes. I pay to get 80 channels, about 20 of which I actually want to watch. Hey, Mr. Comcast, let’s make a deal. I’ll pay you, say, $25 a month, and you beam me the 20 stations that I want to watch. Makes a fiver for the connection and one Dollar per channel each. Sounds good, true and populistic. But, unfortunately, not feasible. Ask Mark Cuban. He did the math (trust him, not me: I’m just running my micro tv network somewhere in old Europe - he’s a selfmade billionaire). The big difference is, that in an à la carte world, the cost of reaching an audience is outrageous.
And it’s not just the price tag. Because of the cost of reaching an audience, à la carte programming favors inherently the big, the established, the incumbents. Mark’s example is the movie market. Look at which content rises to the top in terms of revenues from consumers and visibility. The content from the biggest companies who have spent the most money to market.
OK, you might say. Unbundling tiers might not be that great an idea. But the unbundling of channels into separately sold pieces of content is a technological given. Everybody builds it. So it has to come, it’s already happening.
According to Steve, in the future - as technology progresses - you will have to pay for the best programming, even if it’s carried by ABC, NBC, Fox or CBS. These shows will be sold a-la-carte, as subscriptions or in packages and they will all be delivered over the Internet protocol. Nice try. But technology’s just one (important) piece of the puzzle.
To quote myself (sometimes, I like that): can $1.99 downloads substitute broadcast tv? Only if you’re a Hollywood producer. Or could you imagine every tv household shelling out $200 a month at least just for watching tv content (and that number’s not even based upon the real tv usage hours)? So even in a virtually broadcast-free world, we’ll have to look for ad support. Otherwise, people will have to find themselves some new (and cheap) hobbies pretty soon.
So one thing is the business model applied to usage patterns. You can’t beat free beer with almost free beer. But free beer and premium imported Pilsener can peacefully coexist. Because they’re catering to different markets.
Would you pay for a download of Jerry Springer? Nobody would. Those who watch, can’t afford. Those who could afford, don’t watch. Would you pay for a download of Desperate Housewifes - if it would have never been aired on network tv? Most likely: not. Because you would never ever heard about it (if somebody didn’t spend some gazillions on marketing). Because it would never ever had been produced (if somebody didn’t wager some gazillions on production).
What’s the future of television? Yes, delivering tv via the Internet makes a difference. Like, uhm, the difference between cable, satellite and terrestrial tv - if you just think about the web as just another distribution channel. But te fun part starts, if you take networking more literally. The BBC, mother of all tv networks, is now at the forefront again. And theyre not just opening their archives. The Beeb is sharing some data and releasing a Web API.
Want to build your own Yahoo!BBCwidget? An AJAX-EPG? The BBC Application Programming Interface delivers all the data you need. Program information, schedules, genre listings, you name it. Have just another look at the AJAX-EPG. Built using the BBC Web API and the BBC Multicast Trial, explains the header. Yes the Beeb is heavily into R&D. Because, as Terry Heaton explains, the killer app isn’t “monkey see, monkey do”.
So what, you may say? It’s just marketing material they’re offering here. But that’s what you think. Some broadcasters, like RTL Group, even stopped transmitting DVB-SI infos (which means: the EPG in most set top box won’t get any information (except the most basic like title, start and end time). Their idea: selling the data. OK. But with all due respect: That’s not the future of anything. If you want to monetize your meta data, you either aggregate everything what’s out there - or give them away. Because most likely, you lose more by not binding your audience than via peddling your meta data in 200 EUR chunks.
Via Micro Persuasion
Time to re-learn some French. Ina, the French Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, is following the lead of the Beeb and opening up their archives. You’ll find about 10.000 hours of programming, either for free or some rather modest fees in the 1 EUR range (so the French are topping the Brits here on a massive scale).
What’s happening here is the re-definition of pubcasting. Way back, they started with black and white transmissions to funny looking wooden tv furniture. Now they’re reinventing themselves into public service content and asset players.
Still missing in this game are unfortunately the players with the deepest pockets. ARD and ZDF, the German pubcasters, prefer to sponsor digital terrestrial TV. Pubcasting on VHF and UHF? That’s the future (of 1963).
Via Gugelproductions
There’s a good exchange going on between John Hagel and Umair Haque and a couple of other guys. By putting Lost and Desperate Housewives, is ABC/Disney close to finding the holy grail of digital distribution (as Fred Wilson seems to believe) - or is making exactly the wrong move.
So what’s happening here? With putting some successful shows online, Disney as a copyright holder is most likely generating some additional pocket money. That’s just fine.
Same for ABC as the traditional distributor (AKA tv network): some incremental income from some top shows. Makes sense, too.
Of course, Disney/ABC won’t get any multiples in valuation out of that. Producing content isn’t a scalable business model. Bundling, or - as Umair likes to call it: rebundling is. Rebundling is where value capture will happen - at communities, reconstructors, markets, networks - that direct people’s attention to individualized ‘casts. This is where branding will be reborn - and where advertising is already being disrupted, ripped apart, and reborn (viz, Google, PPC, pay per call, etc)
Yes, right. Google’s a good example. It’s an ad sales giant with an attached search engine. Which is either a good example that directing people’s attention to individualized ‘casts is either a phantastic business. Or a nice way of telling you that the value creation spot at this end of the value chain is already taken. (It’s getting scary if you look at MySpace. More users than a medium sized country, more pageviews than sand on mars. And Appalachian thrift store-CPMs. Is there a cure for this? That’s going to be an interesting question for News Corp.)
Hagel’s approach is a bit more sober. Now, there is nothing wrong with remaining a product business in the media industry. If you come up with compelling and engaging products (content), you will still own a profitable business. You may even attract a loyal audience. But the challenge will be to build a scalable and sustainable business. In a world of intensifying competition and proliferating options, that is going to get harder and harder. In most cases, audience “loyalty” is only as good as the most recent product issued.
In contrast, audience relationship businesses take these proliferating content options as an opportunity, rather than a challenge. The more options there are, the more value that can be created by organizing, packaging, presenting and adding to these options for specific audiences. It’s a completely different mindset, skill set, culture and economics.
Straight consultant thinking. But in any product business, loyalty is tied to your most recent product. It’s more a question of product life cycles. Designing and producing a car is a 25 years effort (including the after sales market). Media is about 5 minutes of fame. That’s why brands like Oldsmobile can experience quarter of a century long near death experiences. Media products die much quicker (anybody remembers The Sweet?).
Audience relationship is definitely a right angle. And from a consistency of performance perspective, the quantity of options to be matched with a as big as possible consumer base makes perfect sense. But the real power
of media and media production is the chance of hitting upon the perpetuum mobile of inherent brand building.
No media buying involved. You ARE the media (at least, if you keep all those necessary rights, handle distribution well …) In those cases, audience relationship building isn’t about matching and hedging. It’s about product-defined relationships, delivering emotional frameworks for people to live with.