Why Video Isn't Like Voice and Data

The entertainment business--music, concerts, TV, movies, downloads, streaming, mobile, magazines, audio broadcasting, CDs, DVDs and other display devices--is fundamentally different from the voice, text and visual communications business in one really important way.

Entertainment is all about the "content" or "stuff" anybody wants to watch, listen to or interact with. For communications, you and I supply our own content, so all we need are compliant networks and devices. Other humans or in some cases machines are the "content."

Everything else about the value chain--discovery, delivery, navigation, display, audio, format, business model, pricing and packaging--is subsidiary to the availability of content one wants to view, hear or interact with. Unlike the communications business, then, it is not possible to "disrupt" or "disintermediate" any parts of the value chain without the willing cooperation of the entities that own the content people want to access.

That's really different from communications, where people can build whole networks to disintermediate or disrupt the dominant providers. You might need permission for rights of way, or a license, or an operating permit. But you don't need the permission of the dominant provider to do so.

And that is what makes video a harder business to "disrupt," even if all one wished to do is create a new distribution channel. Content owners are well aware of how they make most of their money and even how they make that last incremental five percent of their money.

So they are not going to give you access to the best content before they have wrung the expected profit out of that content using the current distribution methods. Of course, that doesn't apply to user-generated content, but the point is that most people still watch commercial video most of the time, despite UGC growth.

That makes it tough for any new distribution platform, much less any new contestant using a new platform, to get access to the "really good and highly-viewed stuff" until it is proven that the new distribution method produces more revenue for copyright holders than the older methods.

The other problem is that "when" a provider gets access is as important as "what" a distributor gets access to. This is a sheer matter of exposure. By the time a popular movie or TV show gets to online or on-demand distribution, people have had a chance to watch in movie theaters, in hotels, on airplanes, on DVDs, on premium cable channels or cable or satellite TV. Not to mention illegal viewing along the way, as well.

By definition, people have had lots of chances to see something before it is made available to emerging distribution channels such as online and streaming services. All of that limits the actual market for online or streaming delivery of content.

In principal, downloads can replace DVD rentals and sales, but only once those older formats generate less than, or equivalent amounts of money as online sales do. And that is going to take some time.

So we shouldn't be too surprised that early forays into online or streaming services face a tough, uphill battle.

Any distributor needs access to the popular content, soon enough to capture some volume, on devices with high penetration of users, in a very easy and convenient way, at prices that make sense to people.

Google has stumbled, Joost might not be doing much, Wal-Mart has folded and even Apple has had to reposition and relaunch its Apple TV service from a "buy" to "rent" model.

Video won't be as easy to disrupt as voice or data.