The LAZY SUNDAY video that Undertoad references several times was made by employees of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, who are employees of NBC and GET PAID for doing that work.

Um guess what.

It was made by a group of filmmakers called The Lonely Island.

It was selected by NBC employees.

They select well, but so do digg’ers.

Oh yeah - the part about YouTube making money off SNL is idiocy in its purest possible form. I can’t wait to see what the dinosaurs do when they finally realize that they’re trying to market fire as a novelty in the nuclear age.

The program creators do not do this work. This is a full time job for hundreds of people in the TV business. That’s precisely the service that NBBC offers its content creator partners - to create a distribution and sales system that allows them to be compensated for their efforts so they can concentrate on being creative.

If you think any advertiser worth its salt will invest its advertising funds (what you dismiss as simply “slapping an ad”) with an unknown content creator with no experience and no infrastructure, then you can send me whatever you’re smoking…

NBC: “We know the internet isn’t channels, you see, it’s a vast series of tubes..” Not really a quote but you get the idea.

To be fair Youtube has channels but not in the broadcast sense. They can have a CSI “channel” for instance.

Paw, can you say “ad?” I don’t pay anything to watch Saturday Night Live. The advertisers pay my way so that they can get in front of my face.

Notice that I said, “Slap an ad on there.” The advertiser pays the creator. The more the distribution, the greater the impressions and the great the worth of the ad and the more the creator can charge.

Gosh, that sounds a lot like how TV has run for, well, decades. The bigger the audience, the more pricey the ad. Noodle that through a bit…

Richard

http://www.vintagecomputermanuals.com

I must be losing it, but let’s say you, Brett Rogers, are the content creator. You’ve spent your time and presumably your money (however much or little) on making a video. You are proud of what you’ve done and want to showcase it to the world. You also want to be paid for your work.

Assume that Youtube will provide the means of distribution but won’t pay you. Assume that none of the Youtube viewers watching your video will pay you either. I’ll also assume you have never worked in the advertising field, or else you would know how ludicrous the phrase “slap an ad on there” is, as if there is no effort involved in finding the advertiser and convincing them to pay you for the privilege of participating in your project. This would end up costing you even more time and money to accomplish.

So now what do you have? A video that cost you both time and money, seen by millions (if you’re lucky) but which earns you nothing. Youtube, on the other hand, is making a fortune off the increased traffic to their site, which they can use to convince THEIR advertisers to pay more for. Are you expecting that your labor of love will be seen by someone with a Hollywood connection, who will offer you a lucrative deal to develop more wonderful videos? Get real - the people that this happens to are so few and far between we know who they are (Lonelygirl15). Are you expecting to be able to charge viewers a la carte for the privilege of seeing your work? Good luck with that in our current “something for nothing” mindset.

The LAZY SUNDAY video that Undertoad references several times was made by employees of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, who are employees of NBC and GET PAID for doing that work.

Given these circumstances, why is it so awful that NBBC wants to provide video to web sites and seek compensation for its creators, while taking a fee for their work?

Jeff’s argument here is that NBC will not make money this way. They might for a while, but they’re missing the paradigm shift. NBC’s channel is no longer the most profitable means for distribution of the video. We are, and YouTube et al allow us to distribute. Slap an ad on there, let us distribute like crazy, and their ad’s impressions skyrocket if the video has quality and is buzzworthy.

There are no channels, Rich. There are no masses. It’s all about the point of view that I choose for the moment and if I’m creating content, the best thing I could possibly do for myself is to opt for the widest, most exuberant distribution possible. Let the public decide what they want to watch. They will anyway no matter the years of experience of the editor/nanny.

Cheers,
Kempton

Can you pick the winner? Watch what customers are paying for:

* 42 million iPods sold as of Jan. 2006
* 850 million songs sold as of Jan. 2006
* Average selling price has not fallen substantially

Why did Sony, which created the Walkman, had the electronics expertise and owned record labels fail at this? Same reason Jeff Jarvis says NBC is trying to control the market: They have too much to loose.

More at:

http://www.ondisruption.com/my_weblog/2006/09/disrupting_tv.html

“Lazy Sunday” WAS a skateboarder video. It was shot on a single cheap handheld digital video cam. It may have revived the franchise. What will revive the franchise next year?

Remember what the first web pages looked like? Okay then.

You (”We”) may very well be in charge when it comes to the Internet. But until “we” acknowledge that original content creation, beyond the typical home made skateboarder-crashing-into-a-trash-barrel video on Youtube, costs real money to make, “we” will get what we pay for…

BTW, Google isn’t giving away anything for free. They make their money from advertising, which coincidentally is how the web sites associated with NBBC will also be making money.

Final point - the way the service is described in the press, NBBC will acquire content not only from its own studio but also from NBC stations, independent producers and “we the people”, so I’m not sure why Jeff believes that avenue will not be open.