PlusOne - Musings of a marketer

I was interested to read this snippet of a keynote speech given by Al Gore ( yes the US politician) at the We Media Conference in the USA.

Two things I’ve learend about the Internet: first, as exciting as it is, it still lacks the single most powerful characteristic of TV. Because of IP bottlenecks, it still does not support real time distribution of full screen video, and make no mistake, that is what drives TV, and us. It is true that video streaming is becoming common and cheap storage is becoming possible…and timeshifting is possible now. Bandwidth is increasing..but it is TV, delivered over cable and satellite that will continue to be the dominant medium for the remainder of this decade. full audio in mp3 format

The question is, why wouldn’t TV remain on top?

It’s free (for the most part) or cheap
It’s universally accessible (for the most part)
Image quality is good (for the most part)
Images are full size
There are no delays
Generally the quality of production of TV is much higher (applies to many podcasts as well when compared to radio)

Accessibility and Quality

That said, video by internet brings about increased accessibility to material that may not be produced by the corporate and cultural whores of mega media.

This raises the issue - for non-corporate produced material, the content has to be of a very high standard (perhaps bordering on exceptional!). People will overlook production deficits if they get real value for what they have to wait for (download) and pay for (download fees/monthly). We only have to see some of the desperately poor stuff on community TV to see what not to do.

Disclaimer - I don’t get community TV where I am, but the bits I have seen are my rational for the views above!

Your comments are welcome.