Jim Louderback

(this post originally appeared on The Huffington Post)

Today we released an open letter to Conan O’Brien, inviting him to bring his show over to Revision3, and become a key part of our network.

Sure, many thought it was just a stunt, but we were serious. So serious, in fact, that I’m even willing to give him  substantial ownership stake in Revision3, if he makes the jump here over to Internet Television.

Why should he? Well first, the internet will let Conan be Conan. Anyone who loved his late night show knows that NBC has been trying to morph the guy we know and love into Jay Leno – or something else that will appeal to a broad, bland group of viewers, rather than the core that made him famous.

Network television is all about focus groups, adapting your persona to the lowest common denominator, and being all things to all people. That’s how we ended up with Kate Gosselin, the Kardashians, Paris Hilton and Jerry Springer. Internet television, by contrast, is all about authenticity, and letting the true you come out. I’m confident that an internet version of The Conan O’Brien show will be funnier, edgier, more credible and more innovative. And that will translate into more profits – both for Conan and for Revision3.

There’s precedence. Howard Stern leaped over to Sirius, and put the satellite radio network on the map. Sure, it didn’t work out as well as he’d hoped, but that’s because satellite radio is still a walled garden. On the internet, you can reach essentially anyone who has the potential to be a Conan fan.

And that’s another reason why Conan should bypass Fox, ABC or any other TV network coming to call. Global domination. By moving to Revision3, we can guarantee that anyone, anywhere in the world (with access to the internet) will be able to watch every single episode, in its entirety, forever.

We don’t have onerous carriage rights that restrict where and when the show can be watched. We don’t have licensing agreements that only allow a few minutes of the show to appear on Hulu or YouTube. That’s because the way to build an audience in the internet generation is by removing all limitations, and putting the audience in charge of the experience.

And that will translate into a better show – both for Conan O’Brien and for his current and future fans. The man (and his coworkers) are pure entertainment geniuses. But in the end, Conan is just too big, too special, and too authentic to be tied down to even a US broadcast network. Conan’s voice – and own special brand of entertainment – deserve to be viewed not just by the 300 million people in the US, but by the 6 billion people around the world.

And in the end, that’s what Revision3 has to offer Conan: a worldwide audience, and a seat at the table at the next big media company, sitting at the epicenter of the biggest media transition the world has ever seen. How can he say no?

Read our full open letter to Conan O’Brien here.

Mark Cuban has a well reasoned post on his site about how Over The Top and the Internet will never KILL cable any time soon. The comments are particularly fun to read.

But in the end, he’s mostly right.  I think that we all get caught up in the thought that’s what is new will kill what has come before.  This is a great way to get attention – back when I started at Revision3, we used to proudly shout "Kill Your TV", until we realized that a lot of (and a growing number of) our viewers were actually hooking up their notebooks and ipods to their TVs to watch our shows.

Cable and broadcast do some things really well.  Enabling less than lowest common denominator content to find a profitable audience isn’t one of them.  When I was at TechTV, we had to dumb down our content to The Thunderbirds and movie night to appeal to enough viewers to get a rating that was something close to what would make money.  Our tech-oriented shows had passionate audiences, just not enough to pay for satellite transponders, cable carriage fees and our big expensive studio.

Big things that build big audiences will be hard to serve profitably on the internet over the next few years, as Mark says.  Live streaming to vast audiences isn’t a great use of the medium either.  But building programs that can profitably appeal to tens or hundreds of thousands, as opposed to millions – now that’s where the internet really shines.  And doing it on demand – so you and I can watch at different times (maybe even downloading overnight, when demand is low) makes a lot of sense.

Cable and broadcast will be there.  Internet video will live alongside, doing what it does really well.  That’s not necessarily what cable and broadcast do really well.  After all, how many more Dancing, Idols, Survivor and Biggest Losers do we need?

I love the channel rental idea..  Here’s a free business idea I’ve noodled around for a few years..  Build a network that uses broadcast channels (ie channel 7.4) – who now have a lot of excess channel capacity — and create a new national network that you can rent out as Mark suggests.  Or put your own network together – then fight for local retrans on cable.  Tell them you’ll never charge them a fee ever.  Deliver content to the broadcast facilities via the internet, not satellite.  Do it like computerized radio was done in the eighties.    Call me and I’ll build a content network for you if you do it!

CES 2010 was a bit smaller than in years past, but there were still some groundbreaking technologies introduced. However, most of the buzz was about three things – 3D HDTV, eBooks and Slates. Here’s what I think I learned about 3D – and I’ll follow up next week with my thoughts on eBooks and Slates – just in time for Apple to launch the Jesus Tablet.

3D Won’t Save Sony: Or Samsung or Panasonic – or even Comcast or DirecTV. 3D HDTVs were everywhere on the show floor, and ESPN, Discovery and others announced upcoming 3D channel launches many were predicting that it would be as big as HDTV. That’s just not going to happen. Sure, 3D makes for amazing spectacles, including the popular movie Avatar, and top sporting events. But it’s a feature, not a brand new category.

The TV industry is desperately trying to reinvent itself as today’s cell phone or PC industry – rather than yesterday’s model. With phones or PCs, we regularly upgrade every two to three years to get the latest features and capabilities. With TVs, it’s more like a 5-10 year replacement cycle.

According to its adherents, 3D will change all that, as it inspires millions to junk the TVs they bought in 2007 and 2008 for the newfangled models. But it’s going to fall short, and here’s why:

I have a theory of technology adoption; call it Louderback’s Law, which says that any new development has to be substantially better on at least two dimensions. And if it falls short on another dimension, it must counterbalance with yet a third to become a real hit – a net score of +2, at the least. 3D TVs, by my calculations aren’t even in positive territory.

Let’s start with the plusses.

1. It Looks Awesome: Fast paced movies and sports look pretty darn awesome on 3D. If you get everything right, the experience is stunning. No argument. That’s one in the plus column.

But, Um, that’s all I have on the plus side. Let’s move over to the negative.

1. Prosthetic Devices Required: Let’s face it, unless it’s a real spectacle – like the Super Bowl or Avatar – Americans are not going to wear dorky glasses to watch TV. Can you just imagine inviting a super-hot date over to your pad to watch a little telly – and forcing her (or him) to put on a pair of glasses? Now that’s romantic. Or how about getting the family together for a little family TV watching? Heck, it’s hard enough to keep track of all those remotes, now we’ve got to track down the glasses too? And guaranteed, little Billy will throw-up before Buzz Lightyear meets Cowboy Woody. And when it comes to casual viewing, forget it. I won’t be wearing glasses while cooking, surfing the net, tweeting, reading the paper, talking on the phone, or any of the other zillion things we all do every day while watching TV.   

   Sure, there are sets that promise 3D without glasses. I’ve seen ’em. But you have to stand in just the right place, and hold your head just-so for them to work right. And apart from being a boon to chiropractors, no one’s going to want them. The future of 3D is in technology that does away with the prosthetic devices – or alternately, when we all start wearing tiny video-enabled contact lenses that can superimpose data, visualization and 3D shuttering directly into our retina. And that, my friends, is at least 4-5 years away. Except if you’re already a card-carrying member of Dorks Anonymous, that’s our first negative.

2. Dim, Dim, Dim: And when you do put on those glasses, that super-bright LED four-pixel set you paid a boatload for will be dimmer than an eight year old plasma that’s been burning pixels 24-7. It’ll look great in a dark room – or at Best Buy – but put it into the average American living room, with skylights and cathedral ceilings, and it’ll be practically unwatchable during the day – at least with the glasses on.
3. Expensive: This one’s not so bad – as it’ll cost just a few hundred dollars more for the sets at first, and eventually it ought to be nearly free. But until it is free, cost conscious buyers will be wary. Touch screens were available on notebook computers for years, yet because these features added $100 or more to the cost of a notebook, few users actually purchased them. But now that touch is ubiquitous and mostly free, it’s becoming more common. 3D will be like that. The glasses, hopefully, will be relatively inexpensive. Heck, they might even be free – if you attend enough 3D movies, and end up walking out with the pair they provide you.
4. Content Will be Expensive and Limited: In the early days of HDTV, there were limited choices. But the advantages were so stark that early adopters would watch boring nature documentaries and even test patterns – if they were in HD. Heck, almost everything – apart from Rush Limbaugh and Larry King – looked better in HD. That won’t be the case with 3D. The HD transition took about 10 years, but it will be much harder to move all video content to 3D. And the content itself promises to be pricey to create, distribute and watch. Shooting in HD requires special cameras, special skills and special equipment – along with the 3D technology licensing. That will translate into much higher costs. 

   HD consumers are already paying an extra $10 on their cable bill for the privilege of getting the channels they already pay for encoded in HD (that, too, is a crime, but grist for another post). Consumers will balk at paying yet another $10 monthly for the exact same content – in effect paying for the same show three times.

So from where I sit, there is one clear differentiator – a great experience on epic video events. And at least four negatives, for a net score of minus three. 3D video at home is not going to be the next big thing – in fact, it’s been available to gamers for years, yet even those hard-core early adopters have mostly shied away.

But even though it won’t save the TV industry, it will be big eventually; when broad viewing-angle sets are available that don’t need glasses, and at a very, very small price premium. Until then, epic events will be available in 3D at movie theaters, and your dorky friend’s house. But even he won’t use it more than once or twice a week.

Want to see what I liked at CES? Check out all the cool CES products we covered at Revision3.