Unexpected Media

Trading rights, delivering rights.

Two contrasting but related events in the past couple of days.

Yesterday at Pact’s Rights Lab (which was one of the projects I funded through Creative London) the discussion was much the same as at Broadcast Live last week: what are the opportunities for independent producers to do business in the new media environment and make money. I got to sessions on multichannel operators, mobile and broadband to the PC.

There’s a lot of interest in the opportunities on media for mobile devices. The traditional commissioning model doesn’t as yet seem to be an option although Morgan Holt from Three admitted to spending £100,000 on made for the medium content. Most of the operators are essentially retailers though: they provide a shop-window for content paid for by consumers and take a share of the revenue. A start-up called Snax were quite candid about their business model which, if I remember correctly, required them to achieve 33,000 downloads a day to break even. There seemed to be consensus that it was only a matter of time before advertising would pay for content and services on mobile platforms.
In a panel on downloading, Simon Gunning, Yahoo Europe’s Entertainment and Games Director, described Google as ‘evolution’ to Yahoo as ‘intelligent design’. Not perhaps the wisest metaphor to choose. What he meant was that Google take an ‘if you build it, they will come’ approach, where as Yahoo is more of a player, willing to commission content - as long as you can provide a global or US brand with an audience of over 100,000,000. Both Yahoo and Google say that they’re willing to talk to independent producers and to do deals but it mostly seems to be based on a revenue share model.

At the DTI’s Digital Content Conference in York today I shared a panel with the ubiquitous Anthony Lilley who has been helping the DTI’s Digital Content Unit to make the case for broadband delivery of public services across government departments. The DTI and RDA’s are engaged in a (very) long-term project to transform public sector procurement into a source of innovation and opportunity for SMEs so as to provide effective online services for the citizen.

The most engaging and inspiring presentation (within the limits of what’s possible when you’re discussing public services) was from Gary Simpson of e@SY, a consortium of local authorities and private companies providing “innovative means of access to specific public information and services”.

What they’re doing actually seems to work and to provide real benefits to customers and to service-providers.