At yesterday's Content360 conference in London I was on a panel with speakers from LoveFilm, Channel 4 and independent production company, RDF.
The theme was 'long tail' content and it was interesting what different perspectives each of us had on the subject.
For LoveFilm the long tail is the movies in their collection that are seldomnly rented; for Channel 4 it was about repurposing content and for RDF about exploiting niches such as comedy. My personal perspective is that the long tail works best for niche content subjects such as sports or hobbies. These subjects are badly served by existing television; content is cheap and readily available, or can be produced cheaply; rights aren't an issue; it's easy to find the audience and market to them, and on top of this you can command higher ad rates for a specific audience.
But each of these perspectives has merit and show that there is more than one way to approach a market. What no one disputed is that the long tail is a very real business model for internet TV.
Also interesting was the emphasis on downloads and pay to own as opposed to streaming.
The theme was 'long tail' content and it was interesting what different perspectives each of us had on the subject.
For LoveFilm the long tail is the movies in their collection that are seldomnly rented; for Channel 4 it was about repurposing content and for RDF about exploiting niches such as comedy. My personal perspective is that the long tail works best for niche content subjects such as sports or hobbies. These subjects are badly served by existing television; content is cheap and readily available, or can be produced cheaply; rights aren't an issue; it's easy to find the audience and market to them, and on top of this you can command higher ad rates for a specific audience.
But each of these perspectives has merit and show that there is more than one way to approach a market. What no one disputed is that the long tail is a very real business model for internet TV.
Also interesting was the emphasis on downloads and pay to own as opposed to streaming.
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