Will there ever be a long-tail?

When I was working alongside the talented team responsible for relaunching itv.com in 2007, exposing the rich archive of content from Granada Television, Tyne Tees and other former regional franchisees as Video-on-Demand was always a huge strategic goal.

Hundreds of hours were dedicated to encoding hundreds of hours of video, developing an information architecture strategy that could make sense of that glut of content, designing a UX that would work and devising a promotional strategy that would drive traffic.

But while we were able to achieve significant success with preview content, clips and essentially time-shifted long-form catch up, very little of the traffic we wanted, and subsequently any significant ad revenue, ever arrived.

Fast-forward through Project Kangaroo, its subsequent part-resurrection as SeeSaw (which @PaidContentUK today reports is to close for good, after funds to save it failed to materialise), release of the archive on 4OD with no barrier and I'm beginning to wonder if there will ever be a significant market for archive on-demand.

A touch of man-flu this week has given me an opportunity to experiment (poorly) with my theory. And, given that my home-festering has allowed me to watch 10 wonderful hours of once-broadcast television in Band of Brothers for just £15 (on DVD), I'm skeptical - even if I could have accessed this on-demand from my Internet-Connected TV set - whether the demand for such titles will ever create a real revenue stream for broadcasters online.

A look at the astonishing knock-down prices Amazon offers on DVDs of series that performed well on TV just a few months months previous suggests that this is a rule, rather than an exception.

Perhaps the window for exploitation will always be relatively short? If so, how should production companies and broadcasters make the most of their content?

Perhaps, as Apple has done quite effectively with iTunes, it's time to refocus energies on time-shifting that includes future episodes as well as catch up - but with ad or subscription models that make this less prohibitive or unappealing.

David McCandless: The beauty of data visualisation

Very good this - well worth watching. Imagine blob graphipcs, or racecards, or medal tables created by storytellers.

It's a little bit like BB King's guitar playing, it's the notes you don't play - what you choose to leave out and WHEN you play them - that can make something meaningful.

Lots more here: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/

Costs? What costs? Why are they important?

They are. They just are.

The process of delivering digital content propositions - in my limited 12-year experience - is rarely as simplistic as it may seem. There are always complications, there are always more tasks to complete and there are always more things to think about.

In short, there are always costs. However hidden they might seem.

In a triumphant nod to this rather boring, but necessary truth, @OlThompson's bought an orginial copy of this as a gift to the Product Development department:

Those of you who 'know' will instantly recognise the Peter Saville-designed die-cut sleeve for the 12" release of New Order's Blue Monday for Factory Records - which, although obviously wonderful (and in many ways successful), didn't come without its issues - as Saville explains:

 Q: You designed the UK’s biggest ever selling 12” vinyl sleeve with New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’, a statistic that is certain never to be beaten. The die cut design meant that New Order lost money on every sale. Would you go back and change that?
 

Peter Saville: “Well, because of the way that Factory didn’t really function properly nobody costed the sleeve before allowing a wholesale price to be set. At Factory, no-one really did costings. 

"Often the artwork went directly from me to the printers. So the standard profit margin on a 12” single would not have covered the production of that design."

A good lesson. And to keep this as a constant reminder, we now have an original copy on the wall - just next to the Gantt charts, project plans and lists of deliverables...