New Year's Resolutions for the Video Industry

Beyond more visits to the gym, spending more time with my family and dramatically shortening my to-do list, I think I’m all set for resolutions – at least ones I plan to keep.

There are, however, many changes I’d like to see from players in the video industry that I think would lift the satisfaction level high in 2013. I’ll try and be realistic here and identify change that nobody fears and everyone can believe in.

We’re going all the way up to 11, so hang on!

1.       Hollywood. Please focus on creating quality content and preferably original movies. The seemingly endless over supply of junk remakes and remakes of remakes (The Thing) have sucked the life out of current movie lovers and may not be creating any new ones.

The decrease in quality movies lowers all ships in the video ecosystem.

With quality movies, maybe you don’t need to spend mega millions in promotion and marketing?

2.        Pay-TV operators. Please resolve to implement affordable and sensible pricing for video-on-demand movie rentals. There’s no reason to rent a VoD movie for $4.99 or more when you can get it for $1.29 from a Redbox kiosk and other methods such as subscription streaming services.

I understand that your costs are high and you’re fighting hard with TV Everywhere to retain subscribers, but a more full-featured TV offering means a more affordable one. Things are tough all over and price shopping is prevalent in this challenged economy.

3.        Content owners. Please do a better job promoting how and where your precious assets can be accessed including streaming to wired and wireless devices. You have the money; now spend some on this sorely needed effort. Consumers can’t use what they don’t know about. Period.

It’d be super to have some form of “TV Guide” for content available beyond pay-TV channels. Stream on, not dream on!

4.       CE device makers. Resolve to take more time and put more effort into versions of your devices, whether iPhones or big screens. And add more basic features to them more widely. Is there any reason why new big screens don’t all have built-in Wi-Fi and countless inputs? Grow functionality and you grow the market.

5.       B-to-C companies. Resolve to explore all options to expand your brand with video. Examine the efforts of video visionaries such as Wal-Mart, 7-Eleven et al. for digital out-of-home (DOOH) systems and those companies who have pioneered other revenue generating uses of video and related information.

6.       B-C & B-B companies. Resolve to embrace video as a means to prospect for customers and pitch your services. Times are a changing in some areas where video is expanding the effectiveness of e-mail outreach. Catchy short videos have captured everyone’s attention. See YouTube (News - Alert). Let video be your calling card as it’s anything but one-dimensional and impersonal.

7.       All parties in the content ecosystem. Resolve to devour market intelligence, research, statistics, trend identification and historical data the way small kids inhale candy. You have to understand customer behavior before, during and after you make core decisions for your business. There are several companies that track and analyze the video industry to help you do just that. Because the industry evolves daily, staying connected (informed and educated, etc.) is paramount.

8.       All parties. While most business decisions are made by those not familiar with the underlying and enabling technologies for video, resolve to learn at least the basics. Get educated on make or break areas such as encoding, transcoding, compression, adaptive streaming, video search and discovery, etc. etc.

Having IT departments that already understand these and related areas is not enough. Before making a decision, you need to have a feel for what actually goes into efforts such as TV Everywhere, multi-platform video distribution, content delivery, analytics, optimal streaming, advertising advances, and so on. Learn and live, not live and learn.

9.       Video application creators. Whether they are designed for enterprise or consumer use, forge ahead in advancing your wares to empower a larger audience of video makers. Hosted options are drawing serious attention and provide an economical alternative to buying and building. Try to ramp up education on what an online video platform is and what it can do. Take your message to the masses, whether they are tech savvy or not.

10.   Going mobile. With tablets topping the general gift wish list AND the CE gift wish list, there are opportunities aplenty to reach a far broader audience than network TV can ever reach with your content, new products, advanced services and apps galore. Resolve to take advantage of a fast-widening sea of devices owned by seemingly all generations in some form factor.

11.   Game makers. This is likely a pipe dream but I’m not the only one with it. Grow up and act like an adult, not a child. Diversify games beyond the super heavy focus on shooting the world titles and stop selling games for 17 year olds to kids younger (more likely half that age).  Game age “ratings” are a joke. But, nobody is laughing. And we don’t need plastic guns and assault weapons to play video games. See Wii.

And drive prices down for your wares. Current prices are ridiculously high with no change in sight. Maybe shift to primarily digital distribution.

Social responsibility and adult behavior from those targeting children doesn’t have to mean financial ruin.

Apologies for ending on a rant coming out of the festive holiday season but the entire idea of resolutions is to drive positive change. Let’s not fear change in 2013. Let’s drive it.

Thanks for tuning in.