Hey, just in time: NBC’s Zucker lashes out at YouTube!
Jeff Zucker is NBC Universal’s brand-new CEO. Basically, he’s pissed that YouTube isn’t magically filtering its copyrighted goods from the
daily stream of submissions. “They have the capability. The question is whether they have the will.” (I know it’s beside the point, but I’m sorry Mr. Zucker, are you YouTube? How do you know?)
But the hilarious thing is, this guy was brought in to find new viewers for NBC! “This company is about producing great content in all divisions. The issue is, how do we get that great content in front of new eyeballs, on new platforms, with new money attached?”
Look, again, YouTube gets new eyeballs on both old and new platforms. And it’s doing it for free! As for the money, NBC’s already on their way: they have their TV shows up on iTunes and their website. Step 2 is to get Universal’s movies on iTunes. They need to make it as easy as possible for people to give them money. (It’ll help if they actually have shows worth watching, but that’s another issue altogether.)
And they need to relax and not shoot themselves in the foot. Things are going to change whether NBC likes it or not, and it’s futile to try and make things change on their own terms. Rather, they need to make sure they’re not left behind.
As I said before, exposure on YouTube would not get NBC any new viewers if they removed the 10 min. limit, removed the limit on bitrate/codecs, and didn’t police their own content. People would just watch it on YouTube. YouTube would then get all the ad dollars. They recently announced a revshare program, but the revenue to NBC generated from revshare is far less than network advertising.
But YouTube DOES have the limits and policing, not to mention crappy quality. That’s part of why I think YouTube ultimately works in NBC’s favor.
At the moment, Zucker doesn’t sound like a visionary that’ll bring NBC to a new era of success, he sounds like another suit whose only instinct is to keep things the way they used to be, as long as possible. The guy has a lot of experience with programming, but within the comfy confines of older revenue models. Instead, he should be thinking about how YouTube’s 20 million+ visits per month might be used to his advantage. Viewership is not a zero-sum game!
I mean, basically, NBC needs their own Bob Iger. I think it’s amazing that, until recently, Disney was the only studio selling movies on iTunes. Studios should have been frickin’ frothing at the mouth to sell movies on the iTunes Store.
eff TV.
it is sad that just as traditional industries are embracing sustainability, fair trade, and social responsibility, big media is being ever more exploitative and greedy.
Recently I became eligible for the company’s 401k retirement investment plan, and chose a couple of “socially responsible” mutual funds. These funds seek to invest money in companies they feel improve the world, or at least do no harm. For instance, weapons manufacturers, polluters, and labor rights abusers are excluded. Even so, there is one sector, and only one sector, of the economy that is absent - media.
Now media isn’t an inherently polluting industry like energy, it isn’t prone to labor exploitation like agriculture or service, but that just goes to show how evil Big Media is…
Wait, don’t confuse “greed” for “evil.” Of course corporations are greedy—they have every right to be, it’s their freakin’ raison d’etre. In this case, NBC’s in the business of getting eyeballs to advertisers, which is why they make shows. I’m trying to argue they could get more money if they changed their strategy. Anyway, it’s not like any of their shows are really “good for society”… may be Dateline or something.
Corporations embracing “sustainability, fair trade, and social responsibility” are doing it because they have financial incentive to do so: image, gov’t regulations, the cleaner tech is actually more efficient, etc. Remember, corporations don’t have hearts… hell, they barely have minds.
As long as ratings are the end result, there’s nothing that’s “good for society” on TV. Not even Dateline (why it’s bad for society). But that’s beside the point.
Gary — NBC will need to be forced into a new business model; large corporations rarely make any drastic shift in their business model unless they simply have no choice.
Sometimes I just want to kick these suits in the nuts. I mean, gee, it must be hard for a dinosaur to fit into an Armani suit, but somehow these NBC execs manage! Frickin-a.
Perversely, the reason behind the chasing of ratings and blocking of YouTube is the media industry’s surprisingly democratic pricing scheme: regardless of what they cost to produce, all movies have the same price at the box office, at the rentals, at the video store, etc. Theaters only sell one class of ticket, and while DVDs and CDs may come out with limited editions, even these are priced reasonably close to the cost of the normal one. This consumer egalitarianism comes at the cost of producer egalitarianism.
Movies, TV, and music are unique in this - could you imagine all software having the same price, or all books being the same price, or even all newspapers having the same price?
NBC doesn’t want to work with YouTube since the two companies have fundamentally different leaderships, although both make their money from advertising.
In NBC’s business, NBC makes shows or buys them from production or distribution companies. It then sells advertising, the program itself, and cross promotion rights. It’s success relies on its ability to provide content that people want to see.
YouTube, on the other hand, doesn’t deal with the content at all. Instead, it’s a mix of an Internet hosting company and a billboard company. It’s success relies on providing IT services that people want.
In the NBC world, those who make it big are those who create and those who can identify those who create the popular content. For YouTube, it’s the programmers that are paid top dollar.
In short, NBC execs’ gravy days would be over if they were to concede to the IT services model.