From Wall Street to Main Street, the Internet appears to have made chumps of us all.
During the boom times of the late ’90s, anyone who wasn’t making a bundle either felt like a jerk or was plotting revenge against his broker. Many of those who did join the parade got in too late to make any money from the dot.com frenzy, and, likewise, were cursing their brokers.
Those few who did get rich have corrupted the real-estate market in northern California and other prestigious Zip codes by paying too much money for whatever it was they wanted to buy. In some neighborhoods, the ripple effect created an inflationary micro-economy that drove out anyone not able to pay cash for a Mercedes SUV or classic Ferrari.
Now that the bust times are upon us, it would be great if folks working in dinosaur industries could laugh and say, “We told you so,” but they’re getting slammed too. There are fewer computers to put on trucks, few buyers for expensive toys and fewer parties to cater.
C’est la vie, e-style.
Did consumers use the Internet to take advantage of impossible-to-ignore bargains, like double flight credits on Southwest Airlines? Emphatically, yes.
Would these same Net-izens pay for the unsolicited opinions of pundits on such Web sites as Salon, Slate, Roughcut, Inside and Amazon? Apparently not.
At last month’s CES, VSDA and NATPE conventions here — and further north, at the Sundance Film Festival — hardly anyone was rude enough to point this fact out to digital evangelists working the various shows. All anyone had to do, though, was read the headlines in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter.
The folks from TNT’s Roughcut.com — including prolific Hot Button columnist David Poland — barely had time to fill out their expense reports from Sundance before they were given a pink slip from the newly merged AOL-Time Warner. A few days later, some of the same folks who were singing the praises of Amazon at the Video Software Dealers Association — including those who provided supplementary editorial content for the video Web site — were handed their walking papers, just like reporters and editors for Pets.com: the Magazine a couple of months earlier.
The widely accepted axiom that “content is king” — on the Internet, as it is in Hollywood — may, in fact, be a concept several years ahead of its time. When it’s crunch time on the Web, it seems, content is the first thing to go. In an e-mail to his readers, Poland — who re-launched Hot Button on www.davidpoland.com — made the point that TNT was only spending about $750,000 a year on the Hollywood-centric Web site. This was probably about $749,000 more than the newly merged AOL-TW wanted to spend on a service that wasn’t timid about trashing movies it didn’t like, and didn’t bow before the same Celebrity God worshipped by editors at most other Time-Warner properties (although, like most reporters working the beat, Roughcut wasn’t entirely above kowtowing to certain studios and uber-publicists).
Meanwhile, in the geekopolis of Seattle, Amazon.com — whose CEO, Jeff Bezos, was named Time Man of the Year after requiring white-collar workers to don hard hats for warehouse duty during the Christmas rush — actually tried to force 1,300 laid-off employees to sign a pledge precluding them from making “derogatory” comments about the company. If they didn’t sign, the employees would be denied an enhanced package worth up to 10 weeks of additional severance pay and a $500 bonus. After much hooting in the press, and threats of lawsuits, the demand was dropped — except for salaried white-collar employees. Nonetheless, hope springs eternal, and dozens of dot.com and broadband firms converged — literally and figuratively — on the recent NATPE convention to persuade television executives to keep playing the pass line when it comes to betting on the Web.
Kentucky-based Travelago was at NATPE trying to encourage local broadcast outlets to add its travel-planning service to their Web sites.
“Many of the TV stations represented here are developing Web sites, offering various sources of information to their viewers,” said Paul Peterson, the company’s director of public relations. “Travelago is a broadband content provider that has all this pre-bundled information for travel planning, including more than 600 destinations, attractions and hotels. Plus, we have the largest streaming video catalog on the Web for travel planning.
“Booking services, like Travelocity are linked to the site, as well, and we’re starting to develop our own content.”
According to company literature, Web sites using video attract 29 percent more viewers, hold them 35 percent longer, and are 26 percent more likely to result in a purchase.
Atom Films is a “next-generation” entertainment company that provides short-form entertainment — including innovative animation — to several different platforms.
“NATPE provides us an opportunity to meet with people in the broadcasting and cable industry, as well as in the on-line, hand-held wireless and broadband space,” said Brian Burke, director of business development. “Our short-form products can be syndicated to any of those platforms. Everyone has their own strategies for how they would use our content.
“In the television spaces — HBO and Sundance channels — they use our content for interstitials.”
Countering these positive sales pitches, however, was a just-released report that suggests that only 3 percent of the nation’s consumers characterize their need for interactive TV as “very important,” and another 9 percent said it is “important.” Forty-four percent of those queried said it was “not very important.”
The eMarketer report also concluded that 33 percent of the nation either has never heard of interactive TV or doesn’t know what it means.
