Interview transcript from a panel I participated in at NAB 2012 on Disruptive Media: What's Next?

1. NAB 2012
Track: Disruptive Media
Session: What’s Next?
Panelist Interviewed: Stephen Bradley
1. What are some of the things you see creating tighter bonds
between content and audience?
• Emphasis been on how audiences RECEIVE & CONSUME content
• i.e., Transmedia & telling stories that span multiple media
& delivery platforms
• MORE INTERESTING (to me) is in CONTENT CREATION
• Audiences are being used to INSPIRE content
- Chevrolet’s Superbowl ad
- Project Imagin8ion
• Audiences are being used to CREATE content
- Iron Sky
- Project Amanda
• I see the barrier between AUDIENCE and CREATOR getting very
blurred in some cases.
- At it simplest, you could say YouTube was a start of that
- But there is no STORY there
2. What new technologies and business models are emerging?
• Wow... that’s a wide open question... where to start?
• TECHNOLOGIES – my world recently has been focused on
CREATION technology, and specifically breaking down the
Chinese wall between creator and audience
• While at NPD, I got a good view into how social listening
and intelligence technologies were proposing to provide
MUCH more real-time audience measurement and feedback.
• BUSINESS MODELS – This is a little more tricky... there
aren’t an infinite number of business models in the world.
- “Freemium” (free w/ premium upsell) has become a very
important model
- “Subscription” has been and will be fundamental, and is
driven largely by the cloud server storage model. Once you
have access to everything everywhere, at your fingertips,
you really stop caring about hoarding content – you just
want what you want when you want it.
3. Is mobile social media the new frontier, with factors such as
device size, location, social relevance, and rapidly declining
attention spans impacting the context for content?
• It’s hard to say that it ISN’T... and not so “new” really
• I think the important word here is “CONTEXT” !
• Where is someone... what state of mind are they in... how
much time do they have... what are they about to do... ???

2. 4. How is the content creation process itself being disrupted,
including the advent of collaborative story-telling whereby
stories are being created, not by a singular voice but by groups
(in some case large groups) of people sharing a common passion?
• This is a really exciting area for me
• So much emphasis to date has been placed on how audiences
RECEIVE and CONSUME content – that content CREATION is
really the frontier
• Audiences are being used to INSPIRE content
- Chevrolet’s Superbowl ad
- Project Imagin8ion
• Audiences are being used to CREATE content
- Iron Sky
- Project Amanda
• I see the barrier between AUDIENCE and CREATOR getting very
blurred in some cases.
- At it simplest, you could say YouTube was a start of that
- But there is no STORY there
• It’s also a VERY powerful development from a SOCIAL
perspective.
• History, as they say, has a long-standing tradition of
being written “by the victors”... that’s changing.
• Communities coming together to tell their story with
- Common voice
- Rich perspectives of its members
- Rich documentation of the events impacting them
- POWERFUL FORCE FOR ACTION
• Examples:
i. Ushahidi – “testimony” in Swahili. Map reports of
violence in Kenya following 2008 elections.
- 45,000 Kenyans act as journalists
- Reports via web & mobile phones
- The story being assembled by the community
ii. Pine Point – community in Canada developed as a
marvel of civil engineering... and then vanished
- As if it never existed
- Story told by the people who used to live there
5. How is personalized content, provided via data analytics and
discovery and recognition tools, changing the way viewers consume
and interact with media?
• I’ve been involved with personal “discovery” since I was an
early investor in and on the board of Pandora back in
2001/2. I’m a big believer in it.
• Clearly this has impacted MUSIC as an entertainment
category.
• It’s also impacted other consumer categories – i.e.,
Amazon’s basic “you bought or viewed this, so you’re likely
to like that...” technology
• Even so, I think we’re still on the cusp of what can be
done.

3. • Early data analytics were done to segment audience
populations – and that will still be valuable.
• Now we’re getting more census household and individual
level data – i.e., Rentrak data on VOD consumption.
• Web data to date has been mainly derived from tracking web
location via cookies.
• But we’re only getting access to more and more
sophisticated kinds of data
– Cross-category purchase data
- Lifestyle & behavioral data - tells us much about someone
- Location data
• And we’re getting much more sophisticated about what we can
learn from the data
- Social sentiment data
- Consumer taste / preference data
•