Bruns, Axel
Reconfiguring Television for a Networked, Produsage Context
Available in print at QUT KG library.

Scroll down to “THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT OF THIS ARTICLE!!!”

“”salience determines whether an audience will gather around and share media, not production values. In the time before hyperdistribution, audiences had a severely limited pool of choices, all of them professionally produced; now the gates have come down, and audiences are free to make their own choices.” (Pesce, “Hypercasting”, n.pag.)”

“”media people often criticize the content on the Internet for being unedited, because everywhere one looks, there is low quality”: he points out that “what they fail to understand is that the Internet is strongly edited, but the editorial judgment is applied at the edges, not the center, and it is applied after the fact, not in advance“”

“By industry standards, the production values for much of the content shared through such systems may be low, but the entertainment value – or more generally, the salience – of such content for its viewers is evidently high enough to attract large numbers of users; in the process, we can observe the emergence of new content genres from machinima to mash-up, as well as the revitalisation of older forms (such as the short film) in new contexts. This is a process of format innovation, of creative prototyping, which is likely to have impacts on audiovisual formats well beyond present online video hotspots.”

“the technologies and processes of television – once constituting an effective and powerful network for widespread content distribution – have now been outclassed by the Internet, to the point that in the absence of significant innovation on part of television operators, many users themselves have begun to do the industry’s work of shifting content from one network to the other”

“”Buy a chunk of radio spectrum, or a satellite transponder, or a cable provider: none of it gives you any inherent advantage in reaching the audience. Ten years ago, they were a lock; today, they’re only an opportunity.” (Pesce, “Nothing Special”, n.pag.)”

“users […] have “come to understand that the sharing of media is an act of production in itself”

“users who are increasingly embracing the produsage and sharing of their own media content, and of hybrid content mash-ups incorporating a wide variety of sources: such users can no longer be wooed effectively and consistently even with the higher production values which the industrial model of audiovisual content production may be able to provide, if the same model also entails their return to a relatively passive position as viewers and audiences; instead, they must be embraced through new models which allow for their participation, their creative contribution, even their leadership in content production and distribution.”

“how, then, may the television industry reconfigure itself to participate in this information and entertainment space, while remaining financially sustainable?”

“Three related strategies are now becoming visible”

• IP Networks as the New Backbone
• Harnessing Video- and Filesharing
• Harnessing Users as Produsers

“the field of television (or more broadly, audiovisual content distribution) beyond broadcasting is today in considerable flux, with new technological, corporate, operational, and content models emerging with great frequency.” Creative destruction!

IP Networks as the New Backbone
“a gradual replacement of other networking infrastructures with IP-based networks”

Harnessing Video- and Filesharing
“”The age of hyperdistribution demands the development of new economic models which can harness piracy, for profit” (“Piracy”, n.pag.)”
“outsourcing of part of the distribution effort to audiences – a process of what has been called “crowdsourcing””
“”today the broadcaster aggregates audiences, aggregates advertisers, puts commercials into the program breaks, and makes a lot of money doing this. But … wouldn’t it be economically more efficient for the advertiser to work directly with the program’s producer to distribute television programming directly to the audience, using hyperdistribution?””
“The answer to this question would require a cost-benefit analysis of conventional and new models which takes into account factors such as

• continued advertising income from commercials inserted into downloadable content, and from general Website advertising,
• direct pay-for-access fees, including potential premium fees for commercial-free versions of the content,
• additional income from content which could not have been broadcast on conventional networks due to scheduling limitations or limited mass appeal (a long tail market),
• cross-promotion effects for content shown on conventional television channels,
• savings resulting from the ability to potentially bypass broadcast or cable distribution altogether,
• additional revenues from sales to a potentially global audience, but also
• reduced revenue from global syndication deals,
• a potential decline in advertising on traditional television channels,
• losses from the unauthorised redistribution of downloaded content,
• the uncertainty of content success or failure in an unknown environment,
• and the likelihood of increased competition with other commercial and enthusiast content creators.”

“”Why has YouTube become the redistributor of these clips? Because none of the copyright holders made an effort to distribute these clips themselves.“”
“”the fundamental paradox of hyperdistribution” is that “the more something is shared, the more valuable it becomes.“”
“the gradual erosion of existing boundaries between professional and amateur content […] may allow for the emergence of new content genres to wider recognition, as well as for the discovery of new on- and off-camera talent, and could therefore also be seen as a pathway into the industry proper, similar to (but offering a significantly wider intake than) short film competitions and other events.”
“If direct download and filesharing models can be shown to be financially sustainable, then, this may ultimately even lead to a bifurcation of the television industry into live broadcasting (which may well find increasing commonalities with industries staging sports, musical, and theatrical events) and drama production (which is necessarily closely aligned with the movie industry), with these two components gradually drifting apart as the medium which once held them together, broadcast and cable television, declines in importance. Simultaneously, we may see the emergence of new direct-to-download drama production houses, and direct-to-streaming live channels, which can no longer meaningfully be said to belong to the same overall industry.” THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT OF THIS ARTICLE!!!

Harnessing Users as Produsers
“the core problem emerging from this discussion is that many new genres for audiovisual content in an Internet-based, produsage-driven environment have yet to be invented and identified”
“we may well see a similar shift from compilation and collective hosting to syndication and aggregation. In this model, video content would be widely dispersed across the network, and its availability would be highlighted through frequently updated RSS-style content feeds” -> www.koldcast.tv
“The television industry in Australia and elsewhere (and in particular in those nations where fast and cheap broadband access is readily available) is now approaching a tipping point […]. Beyond that point lies a substantial structural transformation of the industry, and an opportunity for new business models and content formats to emerge.”
“significant potential for fundamental changes to conventional broadcasting models“