Tag: on-the-downside

Final Solution

Monday, January 12th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments

The inimitable Dan Rayburn has better insight into the CDN market than anyone I know. But he has missed the point with his recent posting on the lawsuits between Akamai, Limelight and Level3.

The reality is Level3 are some way from offering a self-provisioned CDN service. In fact, in an age of self-provisioning, ASP and web services, many of the CDNs are in the dark ages compared to Amazon and their S3 and associated services. The real reason for the lawsuit was to drive down the Limelight price so that Level3 could buy Limelight outright.
I had some clever people spend months trying (OK, not that hard) to integrate with Akamai, and the technical problems seemed insurmountable. It was like setting up a business and then trying to integrate into a set of abacuses as an accounting system. The Akamai backend was developed around a decade ago and has never been evolved with the client in mind.
Why can’t CDNs give me a web console where I can load either files or URLs, and then give me a stats screen ? Why can’t they charge online and benefit from the long tail that they’re all trying to ignore? ISPs have been doing this for ages, and CDNs are nothing more than a glorified ISP.
These are companies hung up by technologies that are, at best, marginal, whereas a decent service provision would win them the market. They are companies where infrastructure and commoditisation has taken precedence over service and innovation.
Above all, they are companies that will be brought low by the burden of their overheads and their perceived, not real, marketplaces.
The CDN market is, probably, in a terminal decline of their own making. Our future is in the clouds…
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Final Solution

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Almanac – Predictions for 2009

Saturday, January 10th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments

It’s CES season, with announcements are coming thick and fast, so it’s high time for my 2009 Almanac, where I make predictions about development in the year ahead.  You can read last year’s Almanac and my more recent review of how well I’d done here.

The Death of the STB – The biggest theme of this year’s CES show will be the death of the set top box, with LG launching a screen with Netflix embedded and Intel working with Toshiba and Samsung. The screen manufacturers have finally realised that they, actually, own the eyeballs, and are likely to try and leverage this in the near future. In the past they might have used this as a means to leverage sales of their commoditized plasma and LCD screens, but now they’re more likely to look to take a share of ongoing rentals and downloads, having learnt the lesson the hard way from the likes of Apple.
Major Vendors Take Video Seriously – Twelve years ago I started to stream video over the internet. Now, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer thinks that this is a good idea. Welcome to the party, Steve! But the real reason that Microsoft and Intel take this seriously is that their mainstay – the corporate market will be spending in this sector and nearly nowhere else over the coming year, since video networks will be cheaper than flying executives business class and putting them up in four star hotels and arranging huge conventions for salesmen and resellers.
Corporate Takeup – I’m cheating here since I seem to predicting this year after year, but already 2009 has seen a flood of enquiries to VidZapper from corporates, educational establishments and government agencies wishing to launch their own channels and I suspect Internet TV will prove reasonably durable during the downturn since it presents a cheaper, more accountable way of doing video market, now that objections about bandwidth, etc.. have largely disappeared.
The Small Screen – Of course, the other major trend is going to be smartphones – just as the concept of carrying all of your record collection in your pocket seemed pure fantasy a decade ago, so perhaps does the same concept for video now; as Blu-Ray struggles we’re moving into the era of downloads taking over from DVDs and the new format may well be marginalised. Downloads will be the theme for the next couple of years, but in time both music and video will become virtual objects, living on remote servers (indeed, one of the best ways for rights owners to protect their content will be to centralise control rather than having millions of copies flying around the internet).
Rights – whilst on this theme, we’re moving into the age of more complex, and perhaps more flexible, rights management. Rights owners will need to sweat their assets as new budgets are cut; I expect it to be a busy year for the company where I am Non-executive Chairman, Rights Tracker. I still think it’s early to predict that someone will set up a company that effectively sells and deals in secondary and unused rights online, but that day can’t be so far away.
Stagnant Ads – the ad market is not likely to see any great moves forward this year, despite the success Hulu has been having; expect more complex sponsorships to come to the fore as every quieter ad agencies finally have to get clever about their business.
CDN Clearout - CDNs are likely to suffer from more competition and from the advent of cloud services. Already Amazon’s S3 has seen great takeup amongst Web 2.0 startups.
Universal broadband – with Governments all over the world now determined to invest in infrastructure to ease their ailing economies, expect initiative all over the developed world in the provision of better broadband services for everyone.
Mergers and Closures – inevitably the coming year will be one of consolidation, and services such as Bablegum and Joost may struggle to survive unless funded by the deep pockets of their respective founders.
Tune back in next Christmas as I again review how well I’ve done with my crystal ball!
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Almanac – Predictions for 2009

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Big Brother Is Back

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments

We all live in interesting times and the major business theme of 2009 is likely to be Government involvement in everything. Since many of the world’s leading banks are now, ostensibly, in Government control, this is a theme that can’t be ignored in any industry.

In France the Government has moved to remove ads during peak viewing times on all five national (or PBS) channels. To pay for this they’re levying a charge of €450m on ISPs, mobile operators and commercial broadcasters.
In the UK a similar levy is to be proposed in a forthcoming report by Lord Carter, but this time to pay for universal broadband provision and to relieve BT of the burden of its public service requirements.
This results in an Atlantic divide – just as banks and car makers are being bailed out in the US, it’s unlikely that the US will be helping out the broadcasters, but at least they may refrain from causing the unlevel playing fields (in favour of PBS) which are beginning to appear in Europe.
Consolidation, rationalisation, nationalisation and contraction are word we’re going to have to get used to amongst the major European media players.
Ironically, I believe that all of this might have a positive influence on the Internet TV market, since this is a low cost, and increasingly more feasible route to market for brands and companies alike.
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Misfiring On All Guns

Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments

ITV could do better than hire a few BBC execs. After all, the BBC are the global champions of 360 degree promotion.

I’ve had to suffer months of Strictly Come Breakfast News as the BBC turned over most of its early morning news coverage to plugging its own dance competition show. It resulted in my returning to radio – albeit with the dreadful BBC. The Top Gear franchise and the Beeb’s ability to endlessly intertwine its online offer with its traditional TV proposition show how joined up they are.
ITV are, in the meantime, utterly dysfunctional. They don’t promote their programmes in their news and don’t really promote their online presence at all. They have suddenly realised that they lost their business to Rupert Murdoch because they were too stingy to bid for major sports events – and are now betting the house on buying into soccer.
However, ITV’s coverage of football is dire. Once upon a time I was a cameraman involved in producing footie coverage for the ITV stations, the guys I worked with then would turn in their graves (or croak in their highly paid PR jobs these days, more like ).
I spend most of my live advising companies on how to grow and develop. I would have no idea what to say to ITV at this point except: ‘Sell at as high a price as you can get’.
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2008 Almanac Review

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

It’s that time of the year when I look back at my predictions for 2008 and see how well I got ‘it’ (you can read the original here):


Recession – let me start on a low note. There has been little doubt in my mind for some time that we are heading for a considerable slowdown, especially in the UK (I don’t want to get on my economic soap box, but Brown selling off our gold reserves will turn out to be a very bad move). It may not be an official recession, but a credit squeeze will result in falling house prices and consumer demand and the mass lay-offs in the City will have an equal impact). However, the good news is that means more redundant investment bankers will have time sitting at home to watch online video – and there may be considerable opportunities for them to invest in the internet TV sector, which will largely be immune from the economic setbacks. Ironically, I expect the squeeze to have more of an impact in the US, where less debt will mean less investment and a general nervousness amongst investors in riskier ventures. The European market will fare much better.

Hmm, I think I can take 9/10 for this one; only my sanguine outlook for Europe now seems off the mark.

Profitability – with the bad news out of the way, let’s be more positive. At long last, money will be made from online video; both the audience figures and the advertising demand is now of a level where sustainable businesses can be built. This is unlikely to be spectacular in the year ahead, but will point to the sector’s long term viability and potential.


2/10 I think, there were highpoints such as Hulu, but there are very few profitable services and the year ahead will remain tough.

Portal battles – there will be a concerted tussle for eyeballs as existing services try to reach critical mass; services such as Joost and Bablegum will suffer as the big boys push their portals and the UGC sites move into long form.

8/10 – traditional players have won out over upstarts and the likes of Google, NewsCorp and NBC have faired far better than companies such as Joost.

Dealmaking – will be the keyword for the year; already the market feels like .com 1999 as everyone tussles for their niche; there is great scope for some formalised systems to help the deal making (ie online open marketplace for video content and for video ads).

1/10 – this is nowhere in sight, although I personally plan to tackle this through Rights Tracker.

Google makes an impact – video ads and overlays will become an integrated part of Google’s offering in 2008, so will provide an immediate route for monetisation for many channel operators, content owners and producers. However, the Google ad model may also be in for a rough time as more and more advertisers


Hmm, not sure what happened to the original post but I’m up for 3/10 here since Google have singularly failed to monetize their service.

H.264 – driven by existing broadcasters, the quality and widespread compatibility of H.264 will gradually see more mainstream uses in the new year.

8/10 – this year has seen widespread adoption of H.264.

Long form v. short form – a realisation will dawn upon the market that these are two very different media and need to be handled and commercialised very differently.


10/10 – long form took over from short form in a serious way.

Corporate Channels – companies and organisations will start to establish their own channels and not having a corporate TV channel allied to an existing web presence will become increasingly rare.


4/10 – this remains a pipe dream and is likely to do so in the recession

WiMax Networks – already extensively in trials, the mobile companies will face very real competition as WiMax networks are rolled out in urban areas (and may provide better, cheaper bandwidth in many rural areas too).


With the development of white space networks and other similar technologies this probably deserves 4/10 for getting the technology somewhat wrong, and for being too early..

Laser projectors – this may be a somewhat premature prediction, but prototypes of mobile phones with laser projections are already appearing. This is a precursor to the day where the screen as we know it today may no longer exist and the utility of mobile devices takes a further step as you carry around a device that can hold all of your movies and TV (or can stream them) and can also project the videos onto any flat light surface, including your living room wall. However, the next step towards this will be the inclusion ofSTB technologies into flatscreens as the screen manufacturers make their play for the eyeballs in the living room.


This is all happening, albeit slowly – 6/10

The ‘All In One’ Box – to some degree we’ve already seen this appear, but expect your home set top box to do a lot more in future, covering telephony, TV, video on demand, photo and document storage and browsing and instant messaging; also expect to be able to link two or more of the above.


Again, this has become a reality in many places, but certainly not in the UK as yet – 5/10.

Overall, creditable, and probably better than any prediction city scribblers earning ten times more than I do foresaw.
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2008 Almanac Review

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