Digital Media And The Video Internet

AOL Acquires Lightningcast

2006-05-19T09:50:00.000-07:00

See the press release here
Check out all the great press here

ABC Experiment

2006-05-09T09:20:00.000-07:00

I watched an episode of 'Lost' last night on ABC.com just to check out the experience (as for the show, I was little lost, since I'm not a regular). I thought it was a very good implementation. The initial navigation 'arc' from which you select a show is a little awkward, but not bad, and the player is good and clean and the video quality was very good -- really quite watchable in full screen (or expanded screen, more appropriately). The ad experience (its a little disturbing that my work has now caused me to watch online video with greater interest in the ads than the programming) is just OK. They are doing what MTV and others are doing with long form content which is multi asset chaptering -- i.e. using the existing program chunks and basically just putting a post roll video ad break behind them. That's fine when its one ad, one sponsor, small audience, low bar. But I think the right way to do it is single asset chaptering where a parallel data file signifies opportunities for ads and ads are dynamically inserted (or not) depending on a wide variety of targeting and business rules. At ingest one can identify a larger range of opportunities for ad opprtunities (not to be confused w/ ad breaks), tag content in a number of valuable ways and make on the fly decisions to insert advertising or branding elements, go to a break or not, depending on what and who is in advertising mix and what their objectives are. Better user experience, better advertiser experience.

MSFT Buying Massive?

2006-04-26T14:42:00.000-07:00

If the reported $200 to $400 price tag is right that's really, really rich (I have a pretty good sense for Massive's revenues). Certainly a good comparable for Lightningcast, though.

Apple, iPods and Ads

2006-04-26T11:24:00.000-07:00

This news shouldn't surprise anyone. It was inevitable and Ad Age report (can link from here) is just the tip of the iceberg. When growth starts to slow, subscription services often look to hybrid or ad-supported models. Mobile video is going the same way. More opportunity for the leading video ad platform.

Veoh Financing

2006-04-18T14:48:00.000-07:00

This is a great deal -- I know Dimitry, know the Spark Capital guys well and have long thought Veoh the best of the flock in their space from a product standpoint.

Broadband Directions

2006-03-31T11:46:00.000-08:00

If you're in the broadband video business you should be talking to Will Richmond at Broadband Directions and subscribing to his Broadband Video Focus market intelligence service. He is the one analyst out there exclusively focused on broadband video and is a smart guy w/ some very good insights. He has a couple of great reports out: 1) How Broadband is Creating a New Generation of Video Distributors: The Market Opportunity for Google, Yahoo, MSFT, AOL, Apple and Others and 2) an interview w/ yours truly.

News Flash: Broadband Video is Mainstream

2006-03-30T11:57:00.000-08:00

OPA Broadband Video study confirming what we see everyday.

New InStream Site

2006-03-22T14:26:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my friends at EAT.tv we have a fantasitc new video-centric Web site for our InStream business -- check it out at www.InStream.com

March Madness Breaks Live Internet Video Audience Record

2006-03-21T14:28:00.000-08:00

. . . and who do you think did the live ad insertion?

Brightcove/ Metastories

2006-03-20T13:15:00.000-08:00

Interesting . . . I know, like and work w/ both companies -- Lightningcast is providing the ad tech for Brightcove's Reuters and AOL deals and same for Metastories at Scripps and National Geographic. Maybe Brightcove is filling a specific technology gap -- although I would have guessed that the Metastories publishing capabilities were a core competency of Brightcove -- or maybe its more of a customer acquisition or both.

AOL Launches In2TV

2006-03-15T13:25:00.000-08:00

AOL launches a seminal product -- http://television.aol.com/in2tv -- using Lightningcast ad tech and p2p tech from Kontiki -- that's the first delivery of several product initiatives in the market (ABC among others comes to mind) to put traditional, long-form TV programming online. Its a very strong offering from AOL and shows that they can still lead.

Slivercast is Born

2006-03-11T13:03:00.000-08:00

Good article by Saul Hansell but remember you read it here first (a year earlier) in my inaugural post "The Video Internet"!

Lightningcast in Strategic Partnership with New Publicis Unit

2006-02-22T14:14:00.000-08:00

Lightningcast is pleased to be part of the mix at Denuo and to be working with smart, forward-thinking people who have a unique agency perspective on advanced media and what advertising will look like beyond the horizon. WSJ article here

Lightningcast and MSN

2006-01-19T13:50:00.000-08:00

Lighningcast announces that its now providing ad insertion for MSN Video live events . . . more to come.

Questions for Lightningcast CEO Tom MacIsaac

2006-01-17T18:56:00.000-08:00

Q&A w/ Zach Rodgers of ClickZ

Jennings to Lead InStream

2006-01-11T13:45:00.000-08:00

Big hire for InStream . . . Bill is one of the best senior sales execs out there who understands both traditional and broadband video and the forces behind the migration of dollars from the former to the latter.

Great Press for InStream from . . .

2005-11-21T13:36:00.000-08:00

MediaWeek
MediaPost
AdWeek

Interview w/ Tom MacIsaac and Channing Dawson

2005-11-17T13:30:00.000-08:00

Good audio interview w/ yours truly and Channing Dawson of Scripps Networks

InStream Launches

2005-11-16T13:14:00.000-08:00

InStream, The Video Ad Network launched by Lightningcast -- in my humble opinion another milestone on the Video Internet. We bring a single (great) tech platform to all the fragmented video inventory on the Internet (and soon mobile, video podcasting and more?) and put a stellar experienced, digital-media-savvy sales force behind it.

Lightningcast In The News

2005-08-10T13:03:00.000-07:00

The Employment & Career Channel Selects Lightningcast's Broadband Video Advertising Management TechnologyPR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance Wed, 10 Aug 2005 4:00 AM PDTLightningcast, the leading software platform for broadband advertising, announced today that The Employment & Career Channel has adopted its technology to manage and deliver video advertising into content distributed through The Employment & Career Channel and CareerBuilder.com websites.

Maven Networks, Lightningcast Spotlight Broadband-Delivered Video, Its Promise and Business ImpactMarket Wire via Yahoo! Finance Wed, 10 Aug 2005 7:38 AM PDTThe largest cable TV networks are embracing the delivery of video over broadband Internet connections with unrivalled enthusiasm as a powerful new option for promotion and incremental revenue-generation.

Research and Markets: The Market Size for both Streaming Audio and Video Advertising is Forecast to grow by 47% in 2006Business Wire via Yahoo! Finance Wed, 10 Aug 2005 7:52 AM PDTResearch and Markets has announced the addition of Streaming Advertising and Subscription Media 2003 - 2006 to their offering

New Live Stream Ad Serving Solution

2005-07-20T12:48:00.000-07:00

Lightningcast announces state of the art live stream ad solution . . . and get's some great press too. ABC News, AOL, MSFT and many others now have an even better solution for ad insertion into live news, sports, concerts and special events.

AOL’s Momentum

2005-07-10T16:54:00.000-07:00

AOL should be surprising a lot of people. AOL.com, AOL Video 3.0, AOL Video Search, Live 8 – AOL is running on a string of successes. I’m there on the front lines (Lightningcast’s biggest customer) and it’s for real. If they can keep up their success in the Internet video realm and leverage the Time Warner assets to their advantage, the “synergy” of the AOL/Time Warner deal may end up making sense after all, in a backwards sort of way.

Instream

2005-06-27T16:53:00.000-07:00

Lightningcast announces Instream, the first integrated video ad network.

The first in-stream video ad network is another milestone on the Video Internet. We’re solving a problem the solution to which will float all boats. There’s an overall inventory shortage. Instream will help. New advertising entrants need a broader range of CPM to buy. Instream will help. New niche broadcasters need a way to make money on their investment in new programming end points on the video Internet. AOL, Google, Yahoo, MSN and others want to aggregate and create one-stop-shopping for content. Some publishers will want that, some consumers will want that. Others won’t. We finance the end points that will bring content to those users who prefer to go directly to the long tail.

Living.com

2005-06-01T16:51:00.000-07:00

The new Scripps Networks site Living.com is a milestone on the Video Internet. No one is doing more interesting things than Channing Dawson’s emerging media group at Scripps. We’re just happy to be part of the plumbing. For Living, Lightningcast provides dynamic video ad insertion into the video streams w/ synchronized graphical advertising. Beyond our market-leading broadband video ad solution, Lightningcast introduces targeted, audited in-stream video advertising capabilities for advanced VOD and IPG navigation tools that organize content into “palettes” and “regions” with the ability to target to a palette or region or transitional area as well as to manage a branded “showcase” of long-form video advertisements like the GM showcase in the Living site. Here’s the link to a New York Times article about Living.

Mobile Video Advertising

2005-05-15T16:48:00.000-07:00

I’m the first to acknowledge that mobile video advertising is a currently a very small market. But mobile video is exploding and as that happens the advertising opportunity will closely follow. Sprint, Verizon, Qualcomm, Nokia, and just about everyone else in mobile is betting big on mobile video (both real-time mobile TV and on-demand clips). As the competition heats up, as the product gets better frame rates, as subscriber penetration grows, as users look for other ways to pay for it beyond the current $15-20 per month fees, we’ll see hybrid models appear and not long after pure ad supported models. Mobile video is expected to be a $27 billion global market by 2010 – I’ll just take a small slice for leading in mobile video advertising technology and be very happy, thanks.

Media Companies Looking for Tech Solutions that Transverse Digital Media

2005-05-09T16:46:00.000-07:00

An interesting development in the discussions I’ve had with senior media company executives is the intense interest in my company’s product roadmap with a specific eye to the advanced media landscape of the future. Even though it’s the problem at hand, they’re not looking for just a “broadband” solution. They are looking for technology partners that recognize the new realities of their businesses. They’re looking for partners that approach broadband as just the beginning in a new, platform-device-delivery-playback-agnostic world where their media is accessible by consumers in a myriad of new ways and where addressable, two-way advertising is the base case. They recognize that the current approach of having a different technology for each environment -- broadcast (SeaChange), Internet (Doubleclick) etc. will not serve their needs in the new media world we’re entering. A terrific development imo.

Like Minds

2005-04-16T13:01:00.000-07:00

I'm grateful to those that have acknowledged Digital Media and The Video Internet and Lightningcast recently:

Jupiter Analyst Nate Elliott on his Blog:

Lightningcast Blog | April 5, 2005 06:18 AM

Tom MacIsaac, CEO of Lightningcast (an in-stream advertising company) has started blogging. I mention this because I love in-stream ads and will promote them forever, because Tom's in a great position to see (and hopefully say) some interesting things about the format, and of course because he reads my stuff

Paul Palumbo of Accustream does an audio interview w/ Tom MacIsaac at iMarket Media Report:

Lightningcast Part One -- Guest Tom MacIsaac, CEO of Lightningcast joins host Paul A. Palumbo to disuss the company's rich media advertising solutions and adoption.
Lightningcast Part Two -- A continuation of the previous segment with Tom MacIsaac, CEO of Lightningcast.

Kevin Newcomb from Click Z recognizes Lighningcast's powering of AOL streaming advertising: AOL Begins Ad-Friendly Media Player Rollout, April 12, 2005:

AOL is using . . . technology from Lightning[c]ast for ad serving and playlist functionality.

Brian Morrissey quotes Tom MacIsaac in a recent Adweek article on MTV Overdrive and online video advertising: MTV Joins Streaming Music Video Party, April 11, 2005:

Most video ads are repurposed 30-second TV commercials. "It needs to be catered for the realities of the Video Internet, and it's not," added Tom MacIsaac, CEO of Lightningcast, a Washington-based provider of online video advertising technology.

This blog's "The Video Internet" post acknowledged at Brightcove and Roger McNamee's The New Normal among many others.

Thanks and keep it coming.

Streaming or Forward/Store?

2005-04-07T08:53:00.000-07:00

I wonder sometimes about the debate as to whether the Video Internet will thrive on streamed content or downloaded and played back content. Well, since my theme here is my acknowledged mastery of the obvious (i.e. as plain as the nose on my face) let me just put it this way: It reminds me a bit of the ice cream question: chocolate or vanilla? My answer: yes to both and btw, I like strawberry too.

ESPN Motion has been a big success. The guys at DIG (Disney Internet Group) deserve a lot of credit for both their foresight and their execution. MTV Overdrive will include a similar capability. Maven, Kontiki, Red Swoosh, Trusted Media and others are building forward and store applications and evangelizing products that will enable efficient management of the bits and bytes in the distribution of content and the efficient management of the media on our PCs. Its great stuff – in fact, my company, Lightningcast, has relationships with all and common-customer projects underway with two of them.

More efficient use of bandwidth than streaming. Great for premium content – movies, hi-def, other highly produced content or content where visual effects are critical to the user-experience. Great for portability, mobility, viewing in a disconnected environment. But there are challenges here too – corporate network admins block them, the masses are uncertain about how they feel about similar applications that live on ones PC (Spyware paranoia) and there is the immediacy problem. Instant gratification and the frenetic way we’ve become accustomed to finding and consuming content on the fly on the Page Internet will have a big impact on our behavior on the Video Internet (along with the broadcast corollary of channel surfing) and will be a limiting factor. So, streaming, which well suits much of the content consumed today is going to continue to be a principal method for consuming free video content on the Video Internet.

What we need are tools that don’t care. Tools that enable publishers to create, publish and distribute content for consumption in a of variety ways, tools that enable rights management, transactions and advertising in a variety of ways agnostic to the distribution/delivery method, the platform/ screen or the user consumption environment.

For example, consider the approach we’ve taken at Lightningcast. Our goal is to help audio and video content owners and other rights holders monetize their content with advertising in the emerging media world. So we built a platform-agnostic, standards-based software system to manage and deliver targeted, audited audio and video advertising into audio and video content in an IP environment. We’re a market driven company and go where the need is. So, the first thing we did is make this “core” ad insertion system work in the Internet on-demand world. Next, we built the hooks to tie live streams into the core (and, if needed, strip out any existing offline ads and replace them with new ones). Now we’ve built the capability to tie downloaded and played back inventory into the core (the ads are constantly updated whenever the user is connected to maximize timeliness and relevancy until the associated content is consumed and the audits synch up when the user reconnects after a disconnected play). So an ad revenue driven Lightningcast customer doesn’t need to worry about these things in terms of monetizing his content: it doesn’t matter if some of his inventory is audio and some video, it doesn’t matter if its Windows, Real, Flash or Quicktime, it doesn’t matter if its on-demand, live or cached/ played back offline. It matters to us, but our customer doesn’t have to worry about it wrt to managing its advertising -- it can manage, target, report on all its Internet audio/video advertising thru a single platform.

The same goes for media center pcs (and their derivitives), pvrs, cable VOD, wireless or IPTV. Its just a matter of building the enabling hooks to tie that environment into our core and tie our customers content and ad inventory together so it can be efficiently and effectively sold, delivered, tracked and reported wherever and however it’s consumed.

Advertising on the Video Internet

2005-03-30T18:40:00.000-08:00

How will content providers make money? Same as always – subscriptions, pay-per-view and advertising. I think a lot about advertising -- that’s what my company does -- we enable in-stream advertising and, I think, advertising will be the single largest source of Internet video revenue. It’s the dominant broadcast method and the dominant Internet method of monetizing content – why should it be different on the Video Internet?

What will advertising look like on the Video Internet? It will be shorter, more interesting and more relevant – meaning dynamic, real-time, targeted and personalized. Advertisers and agencies will have to come up with more entertaining, interactive and more modular video ad creative. Agencies like Martin Puris’s Not Traditional Media and Alan Feldenkris’ and Alan Schulman’s Brand New World are trying new things and changing the rules, like working on “Broadband” advertising campaigns that deliver a message in multiple, smaller (than the 15s or 30s) chunks over a longer editorial experience and have multiple associated HTML messages. Nonsense to the people who say it will be a branding medium or a direct response meduim, there will be a place for both (like TV and like the Web, right?). Like content, video advertising will be dominated by Windows Media, Real, Flash and Quicktime formats. The proprietary Rich Media products -- Eyeblaster, Unicast, Eyeblaster, Klipmart etc -- will be challenged by the Video Internet. First, their primary Web businesses of video banners, pop-ups and interstitials will be impacted by increased user control (in a world where ISP’s compete on the basis of who has the better pop-up-blocker, how long can these “rich media” video units survive?). As for in-stream video, advertising should be in the same format, environment and management scheme as the content – better experience for all. Look at the experimental forays into the pre-roll world that the in-page video ad guys are making at places like New York Times -- the advertiser value, user-experience and content-owner-interests are all degraded from a true in-stream Windows or Real experience. Unbelievably, some agencies are pushing the Unicast in-page solution to in-stream publishers. How could agencies including the one that helped launch the fine MSN Video product now be pushing an in-page, rich-media, transparent Java video overlay that tries to time and transition to the beginning of the player stream (often unsuccessfully) as an alternative to in-stream (i.e. “in-the-stream”) advertising? What the Internet ad guys need to learn is video programmers and advertisers won’t tolerate OK execution -- there is a level of acceptability in the Web that will not fly in video.

In fact, right now the variety of ad formats – particularly the proprietary rich media formats – is an inhibitor to Internet Video advertising and in the near future agencies will simply distribute a creative in WM only and hit the large majority of the market (Real, Quicktime and Flash will be relevant but in some sense optional). Jupiter Research analyst Nate Elliott has written on this extensively and he couldn’t be more on point, see e.g. http://hive.jup.com/analysts/elliott/archives/006392.html.

While there may be a place for in-page video advertising it will be a smaller one and in-stream video advertising will be the unit that matters. And it will really be in-stream – again, in-the-stream, not-the-page, same format, same player, coordinated from a technology standpoint with the content (the thing that makes the ad valuable, right?). Why should it be any different? Right now, in-stream inventory is constrained and demand is high so the high-quality branded content providers will call the shots for a while and the agencies need to listen carefully to them. I can tell you that ABC News, Scripps, MSN Video won’t be leaving in-stream WM or Real encoded video advertising for in-page, rich-media, pre-roll Java overlays any time soon.

Identity and Brand On the Video Internet

2005-03-27T18:39:00.000-08:00

I’m sometimes puzzled by business plans for and predictions of the rise of aggregators of premium Internet video. Sure, that will happen to some extent – but generally speaking Internet broadcasters will be like other broadcasters and other Internet companies and want to have their own identity and build their own brand at their own end point. Yes, the cost and complexity of Internet video will be greater than that of establishing a Web presence but my observation is that aggregators are for the most part temporary solutions. Take the Feedroom for example, it’s been around for a while and has had some strong media properties use it as a turnkey solution to get their video online, but most have or are in the process of taking it back in-house for brand, identity and longer term digital media strategy reasons. In other words, as soon as it gets interesting it gets worth doing oneself and building one’s identity and brand online. Even iFilm and Atom Films which are more like the proposed aggregators of the future will disenfranchise themselves as the sites, filmmakers, artists they promote become self sustaining brands on the Video Internet. The better approach, in my view is to enable the inevitable drive toward brand building with stand alone tools that work in the background and become de facto standards for the building blocks of these Video Internet identities. Again, this is why video search will be so important – just like the Web, the good stuff will be widely dispersed and what we will need most will be the tools to find it (and the tools to monetize it, but more to come on that later).

The Video Internet

2005-03-24T18:06:00.000-08:00

The Video Internet

There’s no doubt the broadband Internet is here. We’re not looking at projections but rather historical numbers which make it clear that things are going to get interesting. 55% of all US Internet homes are broadband connected homes. 33% of all US households now have broadband access and nearly 20 million have a home network. 10% of all Internet households access on-demand Internet video content each month. This equals a mass market with a mass audience. It took longer that many originally thought, but now its happening faster than anyone thinks.

But not only is the broadband Internet here, what I call the Video Internet is upon us too -- think the wild, wild west of the Web (the Page Internet) of 1995 and think about, in the not too distant future, a number of video presences on the Internet that begins to be measurable against the number of Web presences.

I think that the Video Internet will be a massively disrupting force to the video broadcasting business as we know it (how’s that for going out on a limb?) – Broadcast, Cable and Satellite providers. For some, like the ones who are ahead of the curve today like ABC News, Scripps Networks and others, disruption may not be a bad thing, rather an opportunity. Some will seize the day, some will struggle and adapt and some will struggle and never recover. Consider how profound a shift this is: Thirty years ago an aspiring broadcaster needed an FCC license. For the last twenty five years, the only other alternative was cable or satellite carriage. Now there are virtually no barriers – if one can bear the cost of the digital equipment and bandwidth, one can broadcast online.

The result will be an Internet where user interaction may be as much with a player/video, as with a browser/page, where video programming will abound, from traditional digital media producers and distributors, from the online giants (led by Yahoo, I’m guessing) and from a new universe of niche broadcasters and video bloggers who will make up what will be the very long tail of the Video Internet.

There is little doubt as to the above – look at the way cable evolved – HBO, Discovery, USA, FX, Lifetime etc., all started with repurposed, legacy or commodity content (CNN was launched on rebranded Reuters feeds), started to generate free cash flow and reinvested it in original programming. In parallel, the channel lineup exploded from 20-30 cable networks to hundreds as the appetite for broader choices and niche content grew. Why should the Internet be different – it won’t be, just more so. The big portals Yahoo, AOL and MSN (Google?, Amazon?) are or will soon be working on original content, the next tier of existing Web presences are thinking about video programming and the huge number of new “networks” – niche Internet broadcasters - will be a surprise to all but a few.

It’s already started: ABC News launched ABC News Now a 24 hour Internet-only broadcast news network last year – think CNN 25 years ago. Scripps’ newest network HGTVPro is an Internet-only network. CBS has original online video programming – talk shows about Survivor and Big Brother at CBS.com. USA simulcast the Westminster Dog Show. Major League Baseball streams every baseball game live at MLB.com. Yahoo simulcast the Fat Actress premiere. AOL’s been broadcasting live events (concerts) for a while and has made an online video franchise out of Desperate Housewives video recaps. MSN broadcast the Times Square New Years Eve celebration live and has aggressive plans for the future. Discovery and others are using cutting room floor content to complement and cross pollinate TV programming. And not just the traditional broadcasters, but print, Internet and even eCommerce sites like NYT, Washington Post, iVillage, Forbes, theKnot, about.com and Amazon are producing and streaming original video content.

And, most interesting, the stand alone Internet broadcasters are coming. Sites like http://www.evtv1.com/, http://www.heavy.com/, http://www.travelrapidly.com/, http://www.supersphere.com/, http://www.breaktv.com/, http://www.weird.tv.com/, http://www.zugaphoto.tv/, http://www.relaxingtv.com/, http://www.televisioninternet.com/, http://www.metv.com/, http://www.legalbroadcastnetwork.com/, http://www.zilo.com/, http://www.adventuretv.com/, http://www.sputnik7.com/, http://www.brycewilson.net/, http://www.maniatv.com/, http://www.streaminglaw.com/, http://www.tvworldwide.com/, http://www.thewebvideo.com/, http://www.blogtelevision.net/, http://www.netbroadcaster.com/, http://www.videodetective.com/, http://www.theonenetwork.com/, http://www.singingfool.com/, http://www.sidewalks.tv/, http://www.ugo.com/, http://www.healthysolutions.tv/, http://www.travelago.com/, www.current.tv and many, many others. Add to that the small but growing phenomenon of Video Blogging and get ready for video on the Internet to get wild. There are new companies and products launching everyday to provide the tools to enable this barrier-less broadcasting world – Brightcove, OliveLink, Vlog it! Cable, satellite and the Internet have proven the value of niche content and the Internet has shown us just how long a medium’s tail can be and that there is money to be made from long tails (ask Google). I would not be surprised if in 3-5 years the money to be made from the long tail (from ad inventory primarily) of the Video Internet isn’t greater than from the big three portals combined, despite their head start.

Now you know why Yahoo, Google and AOL (Singing Fish) have been spending so much time and money on video search engines. The explosion of video content needs a tool through which to surface the soon to be enormous amount of video content and tools like Yahoo’s Media RSS will put the publisher/broadcasters to work to help with the task and make the connections that much better.

Digital Media And The Nose On My Face

2005-03-15T18:31:00.000-08:00

Digital Media and The Nose On My Face

My friends and colleagues suggested I take some of the emails I've bombared them with over the last few months, synthesize them somewhere, and going forward, find a more productive outlet, so here I am.

I’ve been in the technology community for a while now – and wearing a lot of different hats along the way – advisor (e.g. lawyer, consultant), venture investor, entrepreneur, big company executive. I’ve sold two companies I’ve run to public companies (AOL Select back to AOL, Backwire to Leap Wireless), made investments in companies that went public when I was a VC (Varsity Books, XMSR), but I’ve never liked an opportunity as much as the one I see now with video on the Internet. And I like it for two reasons – it’s a great investment of my time and sweat from a market timing and opportunity standpoint (I currently run a company called Lightningcast that provides audio and video ad insertion to companies such as AOL, Microsoft, ABC, MTV, A&E Networks, Scripps Networks, Infinity broadcasting and others) and, more importantly, its going to be a hell of a lot of fun. I have never been very good at predicting the future, judging the next big or new, new thing, or seeing a path for technology that others don’t see (actually I’m quite unburdened by my lack of any meaningful understanding of technology) – what I’m good at is seeing things the way they are, recognizing what’s happening now, evaluating it in light of what’s happened before and making some safe assumptions. Thus, my theme, talking about Digital Media And The Video Internet and the things about and around that topic which seem to me as plain as the (not small) nose on my face.