This article from TechCrunch is one of the most important and insightful articles on the future and now of Web video I have read in a long time.

Branded content of Web video harkens back to the early days of television. Will the video ad networks drive development of TV on the Web? In the early days of television, networks worked closely with advertisers to create television shows.

Now, the video ad networks are doing something similar but staying very focused on audiences in the process of content creation.

Read the article here.

Watch the YouTube video on YouTube Leanback.

To make viewing YouTube more of a “leanback” experience, YouTube says it will reduce the searching necessary to get the videos you want to watch, by tiling more videos on the screen more easily.

You will be able to move through videos in a less clunky fashion with a more intuitive design like an Amazon recommendation or a NetFlix recommendation, a design to “hook into your brain”, so to speak.

One problem they are trying to solve: how to understand your tastes and preferences and get the results you want lined up and cued up for your viewing. Think about it. if you had to search about 2.5 minutes for every new TV show, you wouldn’t spend 2 hours in front of the TV every day.

So the idea is more along the lines of pushing out content to you. YouTube users are spending 5 hrs a day on TV, but only 15 minutes on YouTube. YouTube wants to change that equation.

YouTube will offer the couch potatoes “nirvana”, just lean back and watch the videos coming at you. If you have subscriptions to YouTube, it shows you the new videos there. if you join it with your Facebook account, it shows videos that your friends are watching and sharing with you. Or you can just show the new, more popular videos, sports, music, etc.

Assuming Google TV comes on line when predicted and YouTube Leanback is available for connected devices, then look to YouTube Leanback to be a major competitor a year from now. It does offer some interactivity if you want that, but it will essentially be an autoplay surfing experience.

A strength of it is that it keys in on what TV does well, the passive viewing experience.

Will the content be there? It’s one thing to view the latest viral video, but what about the depth of content that other platforms offer? How many videos will you really want to watch in a given day? Are there really that many videos out there that you will want to watch within a given viewing period of time? Maybe quite a few, maybe not.

Compared to mass media, mainstream programming: CSI: Miami, The Colbert Report and The Daily Show, you have two hours of viewing right there. With YouTube, you may have a few videos to check out and view, and 15 to 20 minutes later, you move on to other things.

So the big question is whether YouTube Leanback will increase viewing time the way that Google and YouTube want it to. The one thing that may help to achieve that, is the fact the Leanback brings YouTube to the TV in an “autoplay” mode. You can sit back and know that the content you want to view will be brought to you automatically.

Ease of use is another issue. It will require a couple of steps to get into the service. Unlike the “turn it on and choose a channel” mode of broadcast/cable TV. Still, it will be popular right off with the early adopters and aficionados.

We do have to question how much more pleasant the viewing experience will be. Will it appeal to your brother Jerry in Portland, Maine?

Getting people to adopt Leanback will have to be a painless and easy experience – just turn on the TV, click the icon and begin viewing. We’ll see what that will look like. Of course, YouTube is thinking about that and their goal is to get to that point.

Another important part of their strategy: connecting to device operators.

The mobile device experience is a proving ground for our viewing habits, and the more we get used to that experience, watching videos on mobile devices, the more we’ll get used to new things like You tube mobile. The added controls coming to that platform will drive interest and growth in YouTube mobile viewing.

YouTube mobile is getting a re-launch in the very near future. YouTube is getting 100 million video views on mobile a day at this time. The majority of these views are on iPhones now, but we’re seeing a rapid increase on devices running on Android.

Overall, YouTube is going after the 3-screen experience, in addition to the computer screen, they’re going after dominance on mobile and the TV. They have the audience, now can they deliver on the other two screens and build audience there? Stay tuned.

In a career spanning more than two decades, Henry Rubin has played a key role in the television production of several Summer and Winter Olympic Games as an Editor and Edit Supervisor, currently with NBC Olympics, and most recently at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. He is Broadcast Operations Manager at the Center for Learning Technology in Tucson. He was Vice President and Senior Editor at Video Workshop, and Senior Editor at PBS affiliate KUAT-TV, also in Tucson.

As a broadcast media consultant with RubinMedia Consulting, Henry is a regular consultant and trainer for Sony Electronics (this week he returned from another stint with Sony at NAB), and Editor-Producer-HD consultant for the City of Tucson. He is also an Edit Supervisor at NBC Sports.

With the explosion of “do it yourself” media production, there is even greater interest among young people in getting into the television and digital media industry and enjoying satisfying, fulfilling careers. The Internet opened a new world for creation, production, and distribution of content simply unavailable to us until the last several years. The last couple of years has seen an explosion of media content on the Web that has revolutionized how young people view media and their active involvement.

For those wishing to work at the apex of mainstream broadcast and digital media, the door to entry is still a competitive and elusive one, yet open to those who seek the right opportunities and are willing to work hard learning their craft.

“It’s a multiple algebraic equation,” said Henry. “A factor in student success is the internship.”

He stressed the importance of the internship experience as a key element in progressing toward professional success. “They need this experience, to get it somehow before they commit to a career path, so they know where they want to be,” he said.

“For those who want it and prepare for it, we need to place them in those situations, whether it’s a radio station, the IT world, a TV station. Hands-on experience with professionals is what these students need.”

Henry went on to describe a simple formula for success—typical of those working at the highest levels of their industry. “Individuals who have made it in the business have a love of the craft. At that level, there is a combination of being good at it and loving what you do.”

It starts with getting a good education, he said, and whether it’s secondary school or higher education, you need qualified professors.

“At most colleges and universities, you have professors who are not qualified, often those with little professional experience. They can theorize and students need a solid grasp of theory, but many professors cannot tell you how to go from A to Z—from an interest in a career to being a working professional in the industry.”

“Both theory and academics are important so you can guide individuals to where they want to be,” he said. “It’s a good start to introducing students to media.”

However, Henry thinks many students get an unrealistic perception of what careers in television really entail.

“TV is perceived to be “cool”, but it may not be the best choice for the student.”

Awhile back, Henry considered accepting a teaching position at Western Carolina University where one of his responsibilities would be to guide students into broadcast and other media careers. These students do internships with major media corporations. While he chose not to make the move, he continues to advise the University on internships and connects students with these opportunities through his network of contacts.

Students need to be serious and pursue excellence as a prelude to networking with the right people to gain access to the opportunities they need to develop careers. Henry said the world of TV sports provides a clear example.

“The professionals doing sports now, they know intimately the teams and players of the sport they are covering. The writers and producers know that particular sport,” he said. “Look at NFL Films. They have a multi-million dollar facility in New Jersey. They recruit top students from the top schools like Notre Dame. They want people working there who can think and are invested in their schooling.”

ESPN has taken on the campus mode at their headquarters in a way similar to what Microsoft did in creating their campus in Redmond, Washington.

“The ESPN campus grew up in Bristol Connecticut and their program engages college grads, interns, as well as professionals—it’s a culture.”

Like CNN, ESPN started out as a dinky cable programming company and grew into a giant, he said.
Henry emphasized the point that once college students enter the industry after graduation and become professionals, they need to stay current. Like any profession, the learning process never stops. The field is constantly changing. Henry himself is currently at work in studies in a master’s degree program.

“With technology, it’s axiomatic—the technology changes, but the stereotype is true. The Olympics – the technology completely goes through a quantum change every two years for the Winter Olympics and Summer Olympics,” said Henry.

In 2010, NBC went through another quantum change for the Winter Olympics coverage. Henry recounted the new paradigm that reflects the rapid increase in Internet TV development and penetration.

“For the Vancouver Olympics, they told us, this is going to be the “live” Olympics. True, but the programming is stored on and delivered from servers. There are multiple distribution channels including Universal Sports, NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, USA, Telemundo, and the Highlights Factory pumps out highlights for Web entities.

“The IOC designed this as the first Olympics where all the games were online and delivered throughout the world. The exception was in the U.S. where NBC had exclusive distribution rights in their contract for which they made a huge investment. But elsewhere in the world, viewers could watch all the games anytime.”

“NBC Universal paid big dollars for rights negotiated for their first two contracts for the Sydney and Salt Lake City Olympic Games and then negotiated again,” he said (NBC is reported to have paid a record US $2.2-billion in 2003 for the U.S. broadcast rights to the Beijing 2008 Summer and Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, and actually lost money on the Vancouver Games for the first time in its history of broadcasting the Olympic Games).

At Vancouver, student interns performed a variety of tasks, he said, many of them what might be considered menial but still important, whether it’s logging program content, running and fetching, getting drinks for staff, or photocopying.

“This is a farm, a nursery for college-age kids, young talent, for the most part volunteering to learn and be involved in the process by filling the need for interns. These kids are basically volunteering or getting paid little for their work–the value is in the experience,” said Henry.

“Nowadays, kids are already producing their own videos and posting them on YouTube and other social media sites,” he said. “They’re part of the DIY generation. Each development in technology brings the individual closer to communicating worldwide.”

As each new generation, more media savvy than the last, comes along, industry professionals like Henry Rubin are taking responsibility for guiding those students who are truly passionate about the work and acquire the necessary knowledge, skills and experience.

By forming a channel and continuum through education and networking into professional experiences, we lead this new generation to positions where they can create a new future for television and digital media of all kinds.

I’ve seen big changes in the way that video gets produced and distributed over the past twenty years. Costs have come down and ease of use have increased dramatically with the advent of digital technology. Can you imagine typing a letter on a manual typewriter now? That was what linear video editing was like until non-linear video editing systems (“word processing” for video) became available. Commercial distribution of your work, if you could get it, was limited to network TV, a few cable channels, and videotape sales.

ComScore’s Video Metrix reported for November 2009: Online video viewing continued to reach record levels in November with nearly 31 billion videos viewed during the month.

31 billion. In one month. And it’s growing.

The creation of content and the distribution of video and television programming have been transformed by the Internet. Distribution channels that were solely owned by networks now face stiff competition by the proliferation of Internet TV and online video channels. The “YouTube-ization” of media culture has created an audience to be served by readily available commercial applications and services used by media producers and marketers of all kinds.

Smaller marketers are seeing obstacles to delivering and monetizing online video dissolving before their eyes and new opportunities arise every day.

Now you can take on the services of an online video platform (OVP) in an integrated package. Online video platform providers like Endavo Media now offer these products and services for entrepreneurs and small business — not just the big boys.

Sure, you can create your own player and post your videos to your Web site but you are not taking advantage of all the value of the videos you have produced and posted.

Whether you are a producer, broadcaster or telco aiming to leverage the convergence of TV, online video and social media to distribute more content to more people, you have an audience out there who want access to your content via PC, mobile and TV. And you want to be able to monetize that content through multiple revenue streams.

We need to be smart about what our consumers are doing when they access our media. OVP providers deliver analytics as part of the basic package. Knowing when consumers rewind, stop viewing, embed videos and share them with others helps you understand which videos are most interesting and helpful.

Video is increasingly being integrated into social media and customers are discovering that they need a distribution strategy that combines video sharing sites and video delivered on their own sites. If your homegrown video player doesn’t enable embedding and linking, you are likely limiting the power of your reach to your audience.

Connected televisions will give you the ability to sit on your couch and access content anywhere in the world. Niche audiences for online video content are multiplying exponentially and the hunger for good quality content will grow to match the demand.

An OVP can also enable easy access to mobile devices. With Google’s Android and associated mobile devices and Apple’s iPhone leading the way, we’ll see an explosion of video delivered to mobile devices in 2010. Mobile marketing is becoming what email marketing was ten years ago — an explosion is happening and early adopters right now will ride the wave.

Get in now and carve out your territory before the space gets crowded. You can literally “earn while you learn”. Then when the space becomes mature and crowded, you will be an expert who will thrive into the future.

it’s easy to say that 2010 will be the year that video breaks through and becomes part of the mainstream advertising buy.

Look for new models of monetization for channel sponsorships and in-stream video advertising as new formats, pricing models and standards come on board and advertisers’ demand increases dramatically for online video content.

Endavo Media offers several models for creating revenue with online video and social media. In the advertising arena, there are pre-roll and post-roll video ads, banner advertising on your video players, an ad platform that allows direct ingestion of video/banner ad content, and coming soon a platform/interface that supports both the creation and campaigning of video/banner advertising to your community and websites.

You can build an affiliate network and offer premium content including the ability to sell “tickets” to premium live events.

With Endavo’s integrated subscription module, you can offer paid subscription for memberships or access to content. Get your web pages and players customized and skinned for title sponsorship by your corporate sponsors.

Create branded channels for sponsors to publish their own branded entertainment or news content or program individual video files into existing community channels. Paid syndication is another revenue model where you can set up video feed channels offered to other account owners who then pay you syndication fees.

Breakaway Media has launched Breakaway Media TV with Endavo Media’s online video platform. Go to the Breakaway Media video player to view content there and experience the Endavo Media online video platform.

I’ve been impressed with Endavo–their service and responsiveness is top-notch. They offer a superior user experience and have all the current monetization models in place so you can make money with your content. Breakaway Media is proud to be an official reseller of Endavo Media products and services. Call 520.237.3798 or email me at glenn@breakawaymedia.com for more information or if you just want to talk about the incredible opportunities out there right now.

1. You gotta be great, not just good, but great.
This means you leave no loose ends, your craft, your networking, your brand, EVERYTHING has to be perfected to within an inch of its life. The first thing that decision makers in Hollywood look for when they consider product (a crass way to look at artistic work, but there you are) is a reason to say no–ANYTHING that falls beneath their self-set standards of excellence/perfection, no matter how small or insignificant.

It’s their way of separating the wheat from the chaff. Get your format wrong on the cover of your screenplay, and FZZZAAAAAAHHTT! Like a bug hitting a electric zapper light on a hot summer day, you’re toast. Does this arbitrarily eliminate product that could make them a lot of money? Of course it does, but that doesn’t factor into the equation. It’s the self-justifying paradigm that is important.

So by exercising your due diligence and going the extra 500 hundred miles to be absolutely the best you can be, craft your product to the industry and the market, and produce transformative work, you give yourself at least a fighting chance. Be careful–one of the most common comments editors are giving manuscripts these days is “I’ve read this before”. They are looking at fresh takes on established themes. Don’t default, go on to the second choice or third choice or beyond in how you treat your materials.

2. Hone your brand.
If you don’t create and define your own brand experience for other people, other people will either wonder what the heck you’re all about or decide for themselves something about you that could completely miss the mark and spoil your chances.

This starts with who you are, your work, and positioning it so that it creates an experience for others that YOU want them to have. An experience that creates affinity, loyalty, and yes, love. If you don’t understand branding, better study up.

3. Begin with the end in mind. (with apologies to Stephen R. Covey)
Total follow through. Visualize the book as published, as the publisher supported it from acquisition through preproduction, marketing and PR, through the sales chain until it arrived on the shelves, well-positioned and with a high level of awareness among the buying public and achieving break out sales. Then back it out to the agent, who that person is, how they really “get” the book, how it needs to get sold, to what publisher, and how it needs to get marketed successfully.

Your choice of agent may be the most important decision you make–everything flows from there. Then back it out to the hiring process—hiring the agent and researching the pool out there so that you understand the relative merits of each agent, their strengths and weaknesses and how that relates to you and your work and your ultimate goal, networking with friends and other authors to get more information and referrals that give you more ammunition and strengthen the power of your choices.

Back it out to the query letter where you position yourself and your work to give yourself the best chance to engage your chosen agent prospects in an interview process. Then …..

4. Start from the beginning.
It starts with Word One. Every page, every sentence, every word must have integrity. Integrity with your self as an artist, integrity with the marketplace.

Airport fiction.

A book that the weary traveler can pick up from the airport gift shop rack and settle back for four hours (or until it’s time to deplane) for a totally engrossing read that causes that reader to pine for that very next opportunity to sit down and continue reading.

And when the reader finishes the book, the reader feels longing for the story to go on, but it cannot, because it’s over! (“when’s your next book coming out???”).

This may not be enough, believe it or not. As the publishing industry abdicates its traditional marketing role, the base of marketing research that informs acquiring editors of what will sell becomes more porous by the day — you’ll likely need to demonstrate that there is an audience for your book, but that is fodder for another article to come.

5. Do your Research and Self-examination.
Yes, you have to figure out what you can write that will resonate with a diverse, large audience out there (who actually still reads). Know yourself, know the market, and learn from the very best in any way you can. And then transform yourself. And again. And again. Go the extra five hundred miles.

In our interconnected, interlinked, and networked society, more and more we will need to position the book as the center of a network rather than at the end of a delivery chain. We know the effect that rapidly evolving social media is having on the way we consume content of all kinds. Content is becoming more sliced up, reconnected, blended, “mashed up” and reused–and that includes books. This may apply mainly to non-fiction books right now, but look out for the new modes of delivery and the ways that fiction books are also created and presented. Check out the Vook for an example of a new trend of presenting book content through a variety of interconnected media.

New modes of reading published work are proliferating like mad, with reading platforms such as the Amazon Kindle, Sony’s e-reader and now the iPhone taking on whole traditionally-published books, e-books, periodicals, and even pdf versions of documents of all kinds. We’re getting new choices on what we read, how we read it, and when we read, and oh by the way, with whom we share it.

Not all books need to be networked books. Just like radio never went away with the advent of television, printed books will continue to satisfy the need for the physical touch, the total immersion experience of reading print on the page. And the traditional book publishers still exercise creative judgment over what they will produce and distribute and readers will continue to spend their money on product that passes through the gates of these gatekeepers. There is value in that for many readers and that will continue. But when an author can publish cheaply a novel electronically to Amazon and use search engine marketing to drive a substantial number of niche-market readers to ordering the book for reading on their e-readers, Kindles and the like, then the number of viable and sustainable business models begin to increase.

For now, “Old Publishing” will not go away. Authors will continue to get their best deals there, the money and status needed to earn a living and survive. Authors will take their novels created for large audiences to the major publishers which still wield tremendous influence and control over what the retail distribution chain offers to the buying public (although that is diminished from year’s past and even their marketing role has decreased substantially).

Going for the apex of the publishing pyramid currently inhabited by the best selling authors holds tremendous appeal for any author who wants to get their physical books into the hands of large numbers of readers. These books are carefully selected, edited, packaged by the publishers and then presented for retail sale by the drug stores, the major book chains, and Costco and Target stores.

But the value in the delivery chain is shifting from a model where the content is wrapped up with the distribution to a model that simply values the content. Publishing is evolving and so quickly that we may not even recognize it when the evolution reaches its natural state.

Traditional publishing is concerned with quality control and has inherent big-time costs associated with the business model. The New Mode of publishing is cheap for production and distribution and is an open content market unconstrained by the type of organizational taste exercised by the major book publishers.

Watch out for the new and expanding trend of Web-only fiction and alternate publishing modes. Like electric vehicle charging stations, fast print-on-demand machines are going into bookstores like the University of Arizona’s Main Bookstore on campus. Electronic editions of many kinds and destined for more and more new devices coming online every day will be offered with varying levels of editorial selectiveness. It may be something of a crapshoot on quality, but with social networking and word of mouth, readers will find their own base of “experts” and other readers whose recommendations hold weight.

In the New World of marketing and PR, where the crowd holds sway, niche markets reached through search engine marketing strategies offer ways to reach buyers where breaking into a sale to a traditional book publisher isn’t possible or maybe even desirable.

Tastes are changing and becoming more variegated. Web-only fiction is becoming popular and often doled out in episodes similar to the TV model and the serial novels of the 19th century. And some novels aren’t languishing in a market backwater. Some have built large audiences of tens of thousands of fans. Major publishers, noticing that there is a built-in fan base/market for these novels, have picked them up and given large advances to the authors, and published them well. This is an interesting track that is really different from the standard route of hiring an agent, having the book submitted to publishers and their acquiring editors, and completing a sale into the production and distribution chain.

I’ve just finished formatting two novels for Amazon Kindle, written by one of my clients. These two books were published as mass market paperbacks by Signet, an imprint of New American Library (part of Penguin USA). The books went out of print and now Amazon and other digital outlets offer a new lease on life for these out of print books that went away. Once I upload them to Amazon and begin their search engine marketing campaign, they will find new audiences.

Major new publishing roads are under construction and content creators, including new and established authors, are already traveling down those roads to reach new audiences in innovative ways. How the major publishers will evolve in line with these changes remain to be seen.

In the meantime, Internet marketing and digital distribution offer authors and Internet publishing companies rich opportunities for success.

New Roads for Publishing