5 ms·

Why Silicon Valley and Hollywood Don’t Get Each Other

27 points by dmor 14y ago

allbombs 14y ago
Where does your 5.3 stat come from? I've heard that number recycled, but never confirmed the actual source of the report
- shalmanese 14y ago
  Nielson: http://nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports-downloads/2012/the-cross-platform-report-q4-2011.html http://nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports-downloads/2012/the...
  - allbombs 14y ago
    thank you will need to dig up the latest report as that one is almost 1 year old
    - shalmanese 14y ago
      This is the latest one. It takes time to compile these reports.
doctorpangloss 14y ago
An aside: I work between Hollywood and tech companies in Cambridge, MA. But many of our videos get predictable traffic like this Gates vs. Jobs rap battle at 33 million views (and climbing) or my favorite Mr. T vs. Mr. Rogers at 36 million. He lost me at "predictable." If an audience's taste is so predictable, go get funding for a multi-million dollar blockbuster. I think all he has shown is that he is lucky: that anyone can bruteforce various kinds of cheap content cheaply, but his bruteforcing just happened to hit the right tone. You can A/B test your videos, your copy, your thumbnail images. Nevermind that A/B testing is hilariously inefficient (ANOVA anyone?) and virtually impossible for creative content (what, are you going to permute individual lines in a ninety page script?). Hollywood has statisticians. Focus groups and audience testing has been going on for decades. Web distribution expands your population size, but it also greatly increases the variables to control. If it were as easy as he says, then of course there would be truly data-driven content by now. And video views now produced and managed by these 5 companies totals more than 4 BILLION per month. With a B. But who's paying for that content? Hollywood looks at YouTube and says, "Ok, what does content funded by Google's auction adwords ads look like? Oh, it looks like those link farm websites, which is precisely exactly content paid entirely by auctioned ads." Don't we want something cooler than literally spam? One could point to Hulu and say, perfect platform. But there is no original Hulu content. It is still largely funded by cable ads. And Hulu's profitability depends entirely on how an owner like Disney values the free broadcast licenses Disney gives Hulu. If Hulu had to pay for its shows, it would be deep in the hole. But I digress. Data-driven content works for Wikipedia one-line banner ads. It isn't going to work for video longer than 30 seconds for a very, very long time.
- doctorpangloss 14y ago
  I guess what Silicon Valley doesn't get about Hollywood is that you can't program a good TV show. Period, full stop.
- noelwelsh 14y ago
  I'm with you on A/B testing being hilariously inefficient (and have founded a startup to do better: http://mynaweb.com http://mynaweb.com) but I disagree you can't test creative content. There are two things: 1. Delivering content in movie or TV episode sized chunks is an artefact of inefficient distribution mechanisms. Smaller units of content are easier to test, easier to produce, and less risk if they tank. 2. Any script contains numerous decisions. You can test the main ones. It's viable to do this if you aren't making big bets on big chunks of contents.
  - doctorpangloss 14y ago
    I'm not sure if content chunking is an artifact of inefficient distribution mechanisms. It would be impossible to tell the Illiad through tweets, for example, for anything other than an intellectual exercise. But to be less radical, consider that there don't really exist ads longer than 1 minute. Content dictates length, not the other way around...
    - noelwelsh 14y ago
      The Iliad consists of many scenes. Each scene could probably be a five-ten minute piece. If you read the Iliad it will probably take eight or more hours. Movie's rarely exceed three hours and any movie based on the Iliad would be abridged (director's cut of Troy is just over three hours). It's not clear to me that content dictates length. It seems medium does to a large extent.
      - doctorpangloss 14y ago
        Well, to be specific, a lot of Hollywood producers looked at H+ as a test of whether or not people really wanted to watch short episodic content. After the first episode, few people came back. So while we can say "probably" in abstract, in practice short episodic series are hit or miss, for reasons that have nothing to do with length, etc. There's no formula, I guess is my point.
brianchu 14y ago
I'd agree that there is a large opportunity in direct-to-online distribution of original video content. But I think the article is somewhat overselling the content aspect. The article gives two examples of "hits" from Maker Studios: both are funny rap videos that clock in at less then 3 minutes. These are great videos - viral, easily digestible, and they've gotten tens of millions of views. But ultimately they're just a quick diversion for me; there isn't the sort of deep engagement that you would see with a 60 minute TV show (45 minutes with commercials).
visarg 14y ago
We are so addicted to the net, even though we just started in the last 10-15 years, that Hollywood will have to content with the breadcrumbs. The argument that people still enjoy passive content consumption is weak - for example, I personally spend more time on reddit and ycombinator than watching video. It's more fun to be connected in the social web than just to ingest content alone. We can cope with the social net, we don't "need" the content Hollywood produces. Moreover, there are alternatives - Japanese TV, Korean, Indian, African - they are all fresh and interesting for a person accustomed to the American productions. On the other hand, the Internet eats everything that stands in its way. There is no way to stop it. Every time a paradigm shift in communication happened to the human society (speech, writing, printing press), a 1 million fold increase in content followed. The old establishment can't do anything about it. Society itself changes - with speech came superior hunting, oral culture. With writing came much more extended repositories of knowledge and the evolution of cities. With the printing press came humanism and the scientific-industrial revolution. Now we are in the making of the 4th revolution in communication (TV and radio are just like the press - one to many, so they are not part of the information age, they are part of the mass media age). So, in a contest between Hollywood and Silicon Valley, the latter will win.
interg12 14y ago
Mark Suster is one of the most compelling VCs in the business and is worth following closely. His blog is pure substance too.
kijin 14y ago
> But here's what Silicon Valley doesn’t get about Hollywood: No matter how much it bothers you, people do like to entertain themselves with a "lean back" experience. As humans we like story telling. And we like to be entertained. Spot on. I'll bookmark this and link to it every time I hear somebody claim that books and movies are dead because gaming (or whatever interactive technology they're currently into) is so much better. Yes, I am fully aware that if you play a game, you can actually be the hero instead of simply following the hero, and you can actually write a story instead of simply consuming somebody else's. But does this mean that the future of entertainment is going to be all interactive? No, I don't feel like blowing shit up myself tonight, I want to sit back and watch Bruce Willis blow shit up.

27 points by dmor 14y ago

Where does your 5.3 stat come from? I've heard that number recycled, but never confirmed the actual source of the report

shalmanese 14y ago
Nielson: http://nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports-downloads/2012/the-cross-platform-report-q4-2011.html http://nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports-downloads/2012/the...
- allbombs 14y ago
  thank you will need to dig up the latest report as that one is almost 1 year old
  - shalmanese 14y ago
    This is the latest one. It takes time to compile these reports.

doctorpangloss 14y ago

An aside: I work between Hollywood and tech companies in Cambridge, MA. But many of our videos get predictable traffic like this Gates vs. Jobs rap battle at 33 million views (and climbing) or my favorite Mr. T vs. Mr. Rogers at 36 million. He lost me at "predictable." If an audience's taste is so predictable, go get funding for a multi-million dollar blockbuster. I think all he has shown is that he is lucky: that anyone can bruteforce various kinds of cheap content cheaply, but his bruteforcing just happened to hit the right tone. You can A/B test your videos, your copy, your thumbnail images. Nevermind that A/B testing is hilariously inefficient (ANOVA anyone?) and virtually impossible for creative content (what, are you going to permute individual lines in a ninety page script?). Hollywood has statisticians. Focus groups and audience testing has been going on for decades. Web distribution expands your population size, but it also greatly increases the variables to control. If it were as easy as he says, then of course there would be truly data-driven content by now. And video views now produced and managed by these 5 companies totals more than 4 BILLION per month. With a B. But who's paying for that content? Hollywood looks at YouTube and says, "Ok, what does content funded by Google's auction adwords ads look like? Oh, it looks like those link farm websites, which is precisely exactly content paid entirely by auctioned ads." Don't we want something cooler than literally spam? One could point to Hulu and say, perfect platform. But there is no original Hulu content. It is still largely funded by cable ads. And Hulu's profitability depends entirely on how an owner like Disney values the free broadcast licenses Disney gives Hulu. If Hulu had to pay for its shows, it would be deep in the hole. But I digress. Data-driven content works for Wikipedia one-line banner ads. It isn't going to work for video longer than 30 seconds for a very, very long time.

doctorpangloss 14y ago
I guess what Silicon Valley doesn't get about Hollywood is that you can't program a good TV show. Period, full stop.
noelwelsh 14y ago
I'm with you on A/B testing being hilariously inefficient (and have founded a startup to do better: http://mynaweb.com http://mynaweb.com) but I disagree you can't test creative content. There are two things: 1. Delivering content in movie or TV episode sized chunks is an artefact of inefficient distribution mechanisms. Smaller units of content are easier to test, easier to produce, and less risk if they tank. 2. Any script contains numerous decisions. You can test the main ones. It's viable to do this if you aren't making big bets on big chunks of contents.
- doctorpangloss 14y ago
  I'm not sure if content chunking is an artifact of inefficient distribution mechanisms. It would be impossible to tell the Illiad through tweets, for example, for anything other than an intellectual exercise. But to be less radical, consider that there don't really exist ads longer than 1 minute. Content dictates length, not the other way around...
  - noelwelsh 14y ago
    The Iliad consists of many scenes. Each scene could probably be a five-ten minute piece. If you read the Iliad it will probably take eight or more hours. Movie's rarely exceed three hours and any movie based on the Iliad would be abridged (director's cut of Troy is just over three hours). It's not clear to me that content dictates length. It seems medium does to a large extent.
    - doctorpangloss 14y ago
      Well, to be specific, a lot of Hollywood producers looked at H+ as a test of whether or not people really wanted to watch short episodic content. After the first episode, few people came back. So while we can say "probably" in abstract, in practice short episodic series are hit or miss, for reasons that have nothing to do with length, etc. There's no formula, I guess is my point.

brianchu 14y ago

I'd agree that there is a large opportunity in direct-to-online distribution of original video content. But I think the article is somewhat overselling the content aspect. The article gives two examples of "hits" from Maker Studios: both are funny rap videos that clock in at less then 3 minutes. These are great videos - viral, easily digestible, and they've gotten tens of millions of views. But ultimately they're just a quick diversion for me; there isn't the sort of deep engagement that you would see with a 60 minute TV show (45 minutes with commercials).

visarg 14y ago

We are so addicted to the net, even though we just started in the last 10-15 years, that Hollywood will have to content with the breadcrumbs. The argument that people still enjoy passive content consumption is weak - for example, I personally spend more time on reddit and ycombinator than watching video. It's more fun to be connected in the social web than just to ingest content alone. We can cope with the social net, we don't "need" the content Hollywood produces. Moreover, there are alternatives - Japanese TV, Korean, Indian, African - they are all fresh and interesting for a person accustomed to the American productions. On the other hand, the Internet eats everything that stands in its way. There is no way to stop it. Every time a paradigm shift in communication happened to the human society (speech, writing, printing press), a 1 million fold increase in content followed. The old establishment can't do anything about it. Society itself changes - with speech came superior hunting, oral culture. With writing came much more extended repositories of knowledge and the evolution of cities. With the printing press came humanism and the scientific-industrial revolution. Now we are in the making of the 4th revolution in communication (TV and radio are just like the press - one to many, so they are not part of the information age, they are part of the mass media age). So, in a contest between Hollywood and Silicon Valley, the latter will win.

interg12 14y ago

Mark Suster is one of the most compelling VCs in the business and is worth following closely. His blog is pure substance too.

kijin 14y ago

> But here's what Silicon Valley doesn’t get about Hollywood: No matter how much it bothers you, people do like to entertain themselves with a "lean back" experience. As humans we like story telling. And we like to be entertained. Spot on. I'll bookmark this and link to it every time I hear somebody claim that books and movies are dead because gaming (or whatever interactive technology they're currently into) is so much better. Yes, I am fully aware that if you play a game, you can actually be the hero instead of simply following the hero, and you can actually write a story instead of simply consuming somebody else's. But does this mean that the future of entertainment is going to be all interactive? No, I don't feel like blowing shit up myself tonight, I want to sit back and watch Bruce Willis blow shit up.