What to watch on the web

September 8, 2008

Business television is designed to be wallpaper for trading floors, receptions and offices. It’s not meant to be watched and listened to. That’s why it’s got those annoying tickers running along the sides and bottoms, and you rarely see anything other than a talking head, the cheapest form of programming.

The same is true of the much of the flood of business video content available on the web. Most company results announcements are now available in webcast, CEO interviews by the score, talking heads of every shape and ugliness opining on the direction of interest rates, the oil price, Obama’s impact on the yield curve, you name it.

The problem for web video is that it is stuck between the sit forward, active viewing of computer users, and the sit back and receive viewing mode of television watchers. People who stumble upon online video content often aren’t really expecting anything specific, so when they inevitably don’t get it, they click off quickly.

Its low value, media bulimia stuff, which means that any means of differentiation or way of keeping people coming back should quickly garner value as people get more used to watching and navigating content online, broadband speeds get faster, and mobile devices become more watchable.

The differentiators will be timeliness and talent.

Companies that learn how to use online video will be able to communicate directly with investors, customers and suppliers. A four minute video can communicate a lot about a company, not just financial results, but its attitude towards people, its customers and the events of the day.

The problem is that although production is cheap – the cost of filming and streaming a reasonably slick production comes in at much less than $10,000 – proper communication skills are neither cheap nor plentiful. In the crowded market of the web, getting people to watch the thing will be the major challenge.

Unless, that it, it contains vital company information.www.investorTV.com produces company announcements as well as a line of talking head interviews for video channels made available to its corporate clients. The site’s a bit clunky but features regularly updated features particularly in the mining and energy sectors. Recent narrowcasts include a mea culpa from Marathon Resources chairman Peter Williams for the explorer’s cavalier attitude to the environment around its Mt Gee uranium project. The content is commissioned by the companies themselves, so buyer beware.

On the other side of the manager/shareholder divide sits Stephen Mayne, Australia’s top online business video talent. Mayne, shareholder activist and journalist, has his own axes to grind, and he lets us know what they are in no uncertain terms. Mayne might be Australian business journalism’s last proponent of the “stunt”, but thank goodness there’s at least one of them left.

One recent video had him putting the axe into Don “Don’t Argue” Argus (cartoon visual of Don toting rifle appears on screen), and nominating himself for the board of BHP.

“Don, its over and out with you, mate,” chirps the skinny, cheeky Mayne. It may or may not be an effective shareholder action, but I’m going to go back and see what develops. Entertainment with a business message.

Perhaps less entertaining, but no less laden with messages is 50 Lessons, a US-based site that has collected together a library of some 150 CEO and academic interviews and broken them into 750 “stories” that attempt to capture the experience and lessons of the interviewees.

The company has filmed the cream of the business world, from former CEO of BHP Billiton Paul Anderson, who reveals his cavalier attitude to safety was an impediment to cultural change, through to Sanjiv Ahuja, chairman of Orange UK, lecturing about his personal brand.

It’s a subscription only site, sold as a package to companies and educators who want to provide the lessons as training. Pricing is based on number of users and the number of lessons you want them to be able to access.

Each of these online video models finds value (read revenue) in a different way. InvestorTV sells itself as a communication tool for corporates. Stephen Mayne, well, he’s a personality, and gets money from subscribers (most video content is free, but subscribers pay for his newsletter) and 50 Lessons sells its educational content.

On top of all this micro-entrepreneurial activity sits the existing network of media behemoths putting their not inconsiderable weight behind online video. Not one of them has worked out how to make video pay as an independent business line. But it has now become so much a part of the media landscape that it is impossible for a media brand not to have an online video channel.

The winner in all of this should be the viewer, with a torrent of online content available for free. But…who’s got the time?

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