The video tools market is an interesting one. I have long expected some clever online editing tools or overlay-based technologies to appear which, in particular, make a link between the temporal feature of videos and related online content (e.g. click to put the bike in your shopping basket’, ’see the best off for this product’, etc…

The reality is that tools like Microsoft Producer have long allowed you to sync, for example, powerpoint presentations with video, but the potential to add hotspots to videos to enable shopping has still not been realised. Of course, Jumpcut is also a veteran of this market and I’ve blogged previously about MovieMasher. But a new generation of clever, commercial tools

As the Internet TV market matures and services like iPlayer continue to grow in popularity surely the next generation of internet video companies will focus on this area. The one stumbling block is that people have traditional seen TV as a lean back medium and are reluctant to interact – red button services have hardly changed the industry (although services such as QVC and Teletext show what can be done with the right approach). The good news is that all the experience I’ve had shows that viewers are more likely to inter-react with Internet video than they are with traditional TV.

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Opening The Tool Box

There are only three media companies that count now in the UK, they are the BBC, Google and Sky.

Small things are sometimes harbingers of a wider picture. The above conclusion was precipitated by the news that one of the presenters of one of the UK’s major TV channel’s longest running programme is resigning after reportedly having her salary cut by 90%.

This shows that UK commercial channels are having to face reality. The only place ‘stars’ will be able to find the salaries that they have grown accustomed to will be the BBC, who can liberally spend taxpayers’ money as they see fit, paying ludicrous salaries that would never be matched in the commercial sector.

So, where have the commercial channel’s stars’ salaries gone – well to largely to Google. The vagaries of TV advertising have been replaced the measurable certainty of click thru advertising.

Sky is largely immune to the advertising model, deriving much of its income from paid for TV and using sports as the leverage for this.

The media world is set to become a much poorer world, unless you tax your viewers….

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New Order

Well, hiking on a rock in the Indian Ocean, actually… This blog has gone for a much deserved holiday.

Thanks to all contributors, commentators and correspondents for their thoughts, disagreements and input online and offline. Please keep them coming.

Back soon with more thoughts, controversies, inside information and off-the-wall ideas.

Excerpted from:
Gone Fishin’

It’s a busy old time in IPTVTimesland with one news story after the other breaking in this sector at the moment.

Google are planning to ‘commission’ Family Guy’s creator to make Adwords driven video content (actually it’s a rev share agreement). Meanwhile, there are reports that they are struggling with implementing a long tail video ad system and also have no plans to introduce Ad Planner, the media agency planning tool that has taken US agencies by storm.

UK local news publisher Trinity Mirror is seeing its ad revenues – and share price, decline precipitously, further indicating the effect of the ‘Google Gap’.

ITV are complaining again, this time that they don’t have a level playing field next to Google and Apple and they have a serious point, their problems with Kangaroo (also called SeeSaw)notwithstanding.

But most significant news of all is my long held prediction that Kangaroo would be bounced in front of the Competition Commissioners. And lo, it has come to pass.

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News Roundup

NewsCorp are selling down their majority holding in conditional access company, NDS. This is a very profitable company that provides the security for Sky’s set top boxes, but they have been held back by their parentage – NewsCorp’s rivals are naturally reluctant to let one of their major competitors run their security. The majority shareholder now will be private equity house Premira, who also hold a significant stake in Germany broadcaster ProSiebenSat and UK production company All3Media.

So, a surprising deal in these illiquid times, but a very good one for all the parties involved, I suspect.

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Top Deal