All The World's A Stage
Verizon's Struggle Highlights Many Of The Changes Buffeting The Industry Today
Our friend Mike Shields wrote a piece today at the Wall Street Journal, analyzing Verizon’s rocky path to becoming a media company. It’s a great read, but what’s particularly notable is that it touches on most of the trends buffeting the industry today.Shift to MobileVerizon’s Go90 mobile service started life as OnCue, Intel’s OTT pay-TV service that was going to be The Great MVPD Killer. Only it wasn’t: they couldn’t get deals with the networks, consumers weren’t all that interested in installing a whole new set of hardware, the new Intel CEO had no idea why Intel was mucking around with TV and so it was sold off to Verizon in a fire sale.And so OnCue evolved (devolved?) into Go90, Verizon's proprietary mobile app. It was originally supposed to have a mix of long-, mid-, and short-form programming, but somehow wound up being mobile-only short form. It’s struggling, but Verizon says they are committed to it for the long term.New Players Need To Put TV People In Place If They Want To SucceedTelevision is a really tricky business and yet too many people think that they can just waltz in, do some internal promotion and boom!—instant TV network. That’s not the case, as a certain Mountain View-based behemoth is finding out. You need people who understand the industry, how it works, what viewers really want to see, what programming to buy, what to produce. Not so much to replicate what’s been done before, but to navigate it in a realistic manner, as a Cupertino-based behemoth is learning. Or not learning, as the case may be.Data RulesAs the shift to mobile, digital and other trackable media continues full bore, data becoming more valuable than ever. Data works as a tool to gain and retain audiences, make better programming decisions, fuel recommendations, and target advertising. The latter is the most valuable of all, and Verizon’s purchase of both AOL and Yahoo was driven in large part by a desire to take advantage of all that data, and use it in a way that makes Verizon a credible threat to both Facebook and Google.Vertical Video Is A Thing Snapchat’s made vertical video a thing on mobile, and Instagram Stories, just announced a few hours ago, is going to help push that trend even further. Go90, on the other hand, is pushing…. horizontal video. Which means less re-editing of network content (provided they actually had any) but helps solidify the impression that it's just another piece of corporate propaganda and not an actual, viable product.YouTube As A Farm TeamIt was inevitable that Hollywood would begin to see popular YouTube stars as a potential farm team, with the ability to take their 5 million fans from the mobile web to the silver screen. Awesomeness.TV (a Go90 partner) has been particularly adept at this, teen heartthrob Cameron Dallas, he of the soon-to-be-aired Netflix series and two top-selling movies, being their Exhibit A.So we’re not surprised to see that Go90 is making extensive use of YouTube stars, putting them in scripted series aimed at millennials and throwing production dollars in their direction, and actually seeing some real results.Sharks Never SleepAt least Verizon is doing something. That counts for a lot in an industry where optics are everything. The perception that they are being pro-active, trying new formats and looking to became a strong third to Google and Facebook is a big deal. Especially when most of their competitors are taking a wait and see attitude to the future, sitting on their hands and telling themselves they’ll figure it all out when they need to.A very dangerous gamble in a world that changes so very quickly.
