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February 01, 2005

Some New Vaporware

My last blog was about the differences between James Dolan, chief executive of Cablevision, and Brian Roberts, chief executive of Comcast, as contrasted by two front-page Wall Street Journal articles last week (January 24-28). In the blog I didn’t dig into Comcast’s video-on-demand (VOD) service in much detail or its implications.

In the same week that the WSJ story dealt with how Comcast was putting pressure on the big-four networks to allow it to offer VOD of prime-time programming, both Google and Yahoo announced that their search services “…Are Extending Search Ability to TV Programs,” a headline in a January 25 article in The New York Times read. According to the NYT story by Saul Hansell, Google’s new Google Video service will allow users to search for key words in closed-captioned transcripts of some television programs and to view still images of the programs, which Google vice president Jonathan Rosenberg said was somewhat limited but was the first step toward a broader service that would allow users to watch longer video clips of a TV program.

Hansell also wrote: “Yahoo introduced a test version of a different sort of video search last year, available from a section of its site, that lets users comb through video clips from various Web sites.

Today, Yahoo will move the video search to its home page. In the next few weeks, it will introduce the ability to search for closed-captioning text for programs from some networks, including Bloomberg and the BBC. Unlike the Google service, Yahoo’s offering will let users watch 60-second video clips.

David Ives, the chief executive of TV Eyes, which is providing that part of Yahoo’s service, said some broadcasters were paying to have their programs included in the search. In other cases, he said, the broadcaster and TV eyes will split revenue from advertisements placed next to video clips.”

So, unlike Comcast’s VOD, which sends subscribers the full version of a program to their television screens, Google will initially offer stills of TV shows and Yahoo will offer short video clips on computer screens. But, we know from Moore’s law that technology will change fast and the full video on or computer, iPod, and cell phone displays are coming. In fact, on Friday, January 28, Verizon announced it plans to use Microsoft’s “new TV platform for the commercial rollout of its ViOS TV service which will provide high-definition TV, digital video recording, on-demand video services, and ultimately video over Internet and to wireless hand-held and cell phone devices,” according to a January 31 story on MediaPost.

Also on January 32, Saul Hansell, who wrote the January 25 New York Times article about Google and Yahoo extending their search capabilities to TV programs, wrote an article titled “Search Sites Play a Game of Constant Catch-Up.” In essence, Hansell admits he was snookered by Yahoo’s story by writing in the lead paragraph: “Last Monday, Google representatives called analysts and reporters to trumpet a new service that searches the transcripts of television broadcasts. Yahoo, Google’s rival, got wind of the announcement and within hours, its publicity machine had bolted into action to say it had a similar service in the works.” In other words, Yahoo was promoting vaporware and Hansell fell for it. He should have known better and so should his New York Times editors.

Yahoo’s CEO, Terry Semel, came from the movie business where hyping and publicity wars are legion—they’re in the DNA of Hollywood executives. Semel not only brought disciplined management to Yahoo but he also brought a creative flair for innovation, publicity, and marketing. Google is incredibly innovative, too, and continually comes up with the goods—Blogger, Desktop Search, Google Scholar, e.g.—but it can’t match Yahoo’s hype. Let’s hope it doesn’t try.

There are a few things I want on my iPod and cell phone screen, but TV shows aren’t one of them—news clips maybe, but TV shows or movies, no thanks. My wife Julia and I went to see “Million Dollar Baby” last night and the experience of seeing it on the big screen was over two hours of compelling magic. I can’t imagine enjoying (or getting emotionally involved in) the movie on my iPod or cell phone screen.

What this all means is, I think, that VOD and ViOS TV won’t replace anything, but will be another small shard in an ever more fragmented media landscape. Consumer acceptance of new technological distribution and display systems will be determined by their usefulness and functionality, not by hype or publicity.

Posted by Charles Warner at February 1, 2005 12:07 AM

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