In the NYTimes today, David Pogue reviews the number of ways NetFlix is now bringing its “Watch Now” service to your TV. What began with 1,000 movies and was only available on PCs, now has 12,000 movies and can be delivered to your PC, Mac, or your television via TiVo, XBox, or Samsung Blu-Ray players (with more deals certain to come). This is just one more example that online video – by which I mean long-form, full-length films and/or TV – is going mainstream faster than anyone predicted.
In particular, I’m thinking of an incident at my most recent job which happened about 6 months ago. I was managing the digital media department for a small cable TV network (which has since suffered a premature demise). My company brought in an esteemed researcher of all things media-related. He conducted an exhaustive survey of online video habits and came to the conclusion that no one is consuming long-form video online and wouldn’t for 5-7 years. In fact, he went so far as to say that the best use of the Internet for content providers was to dole out small, 30-second, promotional pieces that encouraged “tune-in” on-air.
I was stunned. I disagreed with his conclusion. I told him so. Repeatedly. In fact, my colleagues were giving me strange looks throughout the discussions, looks that said, “Dan, you’re getting pretty heated here, maybe you should take it easy.” I will admit that it maybe wasn’t my finest hour when it came to interpersonal diplomacy, but I was passionate about the subject. He was delivering to my company a preposterously dated conclusion based on flawed methodology (more on that below). This was the 2nd half of 2008 and we were being advised that it was to be 5-7 years before anyone watches full-length video online and that content providers should use the Internet to encourage on-air tune-in? Researchers, and almost everyone, have fallen short of the mark in predicting the growth of long-form online video, which is happening much faster than most would believe.
