AfterDawn: News

CES 2008: Studio executives reveal online strategy for coming year

Yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas executives from Fox, Disney, Paramount, and Warner Bros. participated in a panel discussing the future of online video distribution. Each panel member gave some insight to their respective company's strategy over the next year.

Dan Fawcett, president of Fox Entertainment Group Digital Media, focused on his company's intention to help users promote content from the Hulu web service by "letting people distribute our content virally through the Hulu player.” Hulu is a joint venture between Fox's parent company News Corp. and NBC Universal. The service has been in beta testing since last year and is expected to have an official launch some time in the first quarter.



The new president of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, Thomas Gewecke, and Disney's Executive Vice President for Digital Media, Albert Chang, stressed the importance of diversification. “One core of our strategy is to make content as available as possible and in as many configurations as possible,” said Gewecke.

According to Chang, “Product development and how we handle our video is going to change very quickly over the next few years.”

Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment president Tom Lesinski pointed to the development of set-top boxes from Apple and Vudu as positive signs for the online Video on Demand (VoD) market. He also stressed that his company's current efforts are already having a positive effect on their bottom line, saying “Our digital video-on-demand business is revenue-positive. None of these businesses are being run as business development projects.”

Source: Video Business

Written by: Rich Fiscus @ 8 Jan 2008 1:34

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• 3 comments

• nobrainer

  Quote:online video distributionso where does this leave Drm-Ray, pointless format?
  
  
  

  Tor: anonymity online HIDE your IP from the spies, post and browse anonymously! http://www.torproject.org/
  
  
  The RIAA Soundexchange Are: SONY, UNIVERSAL, WARNER GROUP, EMI.
  
  The MPAA Are: SONY, UNIVERSAL, WARNER GROUP, DISNEY, PARAMOUNT, FOX.

  8.1.2008 03:23 #1

• georgeluv

  Quote:letting people distribute our content virally through the Hulu player.^Do i get compensation for letting fox make money off my content?
  
  Quote:One core of our strategy is to make content as available as possible and in as many configurations as possible^Does this mean they will start making their content available from direct download sites in xvid (or mkv) format? Because if not they really arent trying to make content "as available as possible" and in "as many configurations as possible." they should have ended the sentence with "as long as it doesnt break or business model where you pay directly for our drm-crippled content, and we make gobs of money".
  
  Quote:Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment president Tom Lesinski pointed to the development of set-top boxes from Apple and Vudu as positive signs for the online Video on Demand (VoD) market.^Too bad lots of studios and ALL cable and satellite companies are adamantly anti-tv-over-ip. It critically threatens the distribution model they have all been using for decades. cable companies dont want to simply become connection providers competing with each other over flat rates for internet access, and studios dont want quality tv to be easily accessible over the internet because the second that happens everyone will charge their own rate for their tv shows, and it will very quickly become all free because of the vast amount of competition in the internet, with the money being made coming from in site advertisement or adds. tv over ip cuts out the cable company middle man. Cable companies want to be able to charge you that extra 50 bucks for tv on top of the 30-40 for high speed. no money for cable tv = no royalties for studios who produce the channels who sell them to cable companies. Doesn’t sound like they should be too enthusiastic about tv-over-ip does it? trust me they arent. They have been TALKING a big game about online video for a few years now, yet their ACTIONS have all been totally against switching to the tv-over-ip model. In fact, the amount of resources they spend trying to defend the old failing model far outweighs the amount of time and resources they spend trying to make you think they actually care about online tv.
  
  these douches even have most local governments in strangleholds, they have agreements that say no competitors can come in, even if they dont want to use the cables. pretty american right, no compete contracts? because of this att got the breaks thrown on them a few years ago when they ramped up to make a tv-over-ip push. oh and guess what, these same laws are the reason verizon fios cant carry tv in most areas even though the technology is ready. These old cable companies are literally stifling innovation with these non-compete contracts.
  
  people dont realize how controlling these cable companies and media giants are, they control what information is available to entire swaths of our country, you can literally see their influence unfolding on society in real time with your own eyes sometimes.
  
  its our job as citizens and consumers to pirate these very bad people out of existence. they are seriously sooooo bad for america. im not going to get into the political side of this clusterf#ck but if we had responsible media companies we would have FAR less corruption in our government and who knows, they might have even gotten enough people to call bullshit on the 00 or 04 elections to have gotten bush impeached or have the election thrown out. aside from medical and energy lobbies, media lobbies are probably one of the biggest in washington and anyone with a brain can see washington and hollywood are in bed together (it hasent always been a smooth relationship though, but recently they might as well have their hands up each others asses).
  
  look around, be observant, dont let faceless companies or horribly corrupt governments tell you whats right or wrong, and what you should pay for a non-physical item. Capitalism = screw over your fellow man for a buck. the time of rampant capitalism in america is winding down, good riddance.

  8.1.2008 13:32 #2

• borhan9

  Well the strategies seem to be pretty straight forward. I figure that where they stand is pretty basic and standard no real expectations and so they just are awaiting this year and see where this all heads to.

  9.1.2008 19:33 #3