Attended ‘Content Futures’ yesterday - a very interesting all-day workshop held at Melbourne Uni. It was put together by screen producer Sue Maslin and run by IBUS (Institute for a Broadband Enabled Society) and AIMIA (Australian Interactive Media Industry Association). Lots of interesting stuff discussed and different viewpoints aired – from the capabilities and limitations of the National Broadband Network – to branding and IP rights management – from the politics and shifting power dynamics around creation to authorship and thinking around what convergent content will, ah, feel like.
Just thought I would highlight a couple of points I found rather interesting ….
David Court from AFTRS railed as against the emerging hostility towards authorship – saying that that good content is made by somebody with a vision as opposed to through community consensus or some kind of user generating process without heart, ideas or intent. I’m actually extrapolating a little here as I’m all for this point. He went onto make a very interesting statement – here are my direct notes …
Audience is the really exciting thing [about working in a new media ecology] – in heritage media audience is a statistical abstraction - ratings - box office stats – you no direct connection with them – so traditionally we reward people who have great hunches about what the audience wants or thinks – what is fascinating about new media is the opportunity to engage with audience – creators need to hold onto that relationship and not to give away to intermediaries – we need to own the relationship and build it because it is the asset. We are moving off Intellectual Property as the primary asset – the audience is now the asset – owning and maintaining that relationship is the asset – it is the new business model – it looks kind of like retail … and retail is a pretty successful model.
This idea really resonated with me and fits very neatly into my Demanding Audio project about developing online features and the role programs play in developing the culture of the show…
Meanwhile, in the workshop Sue Maslin repeated the adage that it was said that every new film was like starting up a small business (and that in cross-platform production it was like starting up several new businesses at once) … discussion bounced onto the idea that creators have to develop their brands – that creators are now creator/curators - the need to understand themselves as distributors and rights managers as well as makers …
I was also really interested in Ricky Sutton’s presentation. He is from Fairfax Digital and talked about the recent (Oct 1) launch of the Age TV http://www.theage.com.au/tv. The space has been launched in very low key way with some onsite promotion – but apparently it gets most of its recommendations via Facebook. Lots of really interesting stuff tied up in this one … developing shifts from short form to long form viewing on the site, locational audiences and IPTV as a strategy to develop strong evening audiences (the age has a fat day time audience but it’s evening audience was thin), also the sorts of rights deals negotiated and the content selection process (works popular online rather than ‘generally popular’ works, questions about context - the idea that we want to ‘think’ when we watch an internet screen and feel more like ‘being entertained’ in front of the ‘cinema style’ TV in the living room…
Too much for me to attempt to unpack here – but will just end of a great problem/solution example Ricky gave about online video …. The Age had been investing in complimentary video for stories for some time – lots of money, lots of work – a great looking video player and, says Ricky – an understanding that the video needs to offer something different to the written piece… but no one was watching. So they embedded the videos on the article pages – and bang! Big audience for the videos. My reading of this is that the problem was solved by understanding that the primary attractor for audiences are news articles and features - and then building that notion with enriched media content. Maybe in the future, if or one the Age sloughs off the image that it is newspaper it wont need these kinds of solutions.
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