Archive for June, 2007

SVT goes “Fri”, hurray!

The national Swedish television (SVT) has announced that they will start collaborating with YouTube during a test period. The purpose is said to be for more people to find their content according to Lena Glaser, head of new media at SVT.

I think this is a great first step for real Fri TV (SVT has their own definition). Not only will the content now be viewed on YouTube’s site, but it will also be spread around the web more freely. Relevant sites, blogs etc. will automatically be able to embed the video on their sites, and THAT’s why I say hurray!

What I wonder though is why only YouTube? Why not spread the content on more sites, especially local sites? Because different people are on different sites, and in order to reach as many as them, there’s a need to spread the content. The reasons to only choosing YouTube are many I think. Dealing with different sites is a hassle. Different uploading procedures, spread statistics and less control I think are some reasons for SVT not to spread the content more. And of course, it’s just for a test period for now. I hope and think that the future will be different.

Even though this is set to start in September, there’s already a trailer up for an upcoming SVT production, Sanningen om Marika. And look, it’s not only on YouTube, it’s also here. Enjoy!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lXSJAaIw8c]

More interesting reading: meh (you don’t know…)

YouTube Goes Local and in to AppleTV

There’s happening a lot of things at YouTube right now.

Global YouTube goes Local

First of all, they’ve just launched some local versions of the site for Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and the U.K. There’s not only a translation of the site but the first page is localized, the search function as well and all the social functions as rating, comments etc. has also become local. Read more or see for your self the Spanish YouTube.

YouTube Included in AppleTV

YouTube has also found a way on to the big screens in the living rooms, thanks to AppleTV. If you upgrade the software of your machine, you’ll get this:

[viddler id=4acc8d52&h=437&w=370&t=374.033]

As you can see, the video starts (or should start after 6 min) after all the boring upgrade process, thanks to Viddler, a service you should check out.

Exclusive interview at Sriram Krishnan™ Live

I had the honor to be interviewed by Mr. Sriram Krishnan for his blog.

The interview is here, I thought it could be interesting… :)

Cheers!

Fri TV first Round Completed

There’s a lot of things are happening in the Fri TV project right now.

New People Involved

First of all, the group has expanded to include some new members. Most importantly is the addition of my new co-pilot Fabian Bonnier. He’ll work full time with this project and things are working great!

We’re also trying out two potential tech-guys, where one is really competent and interested to work full time after the summer. That also feels just wonderful.

Finally, we have some other people involved in this project. There’s one guy with great love to media measurement statistics, focused on the web and with a background with KIA Index. And there’s also a TV Planner from Mediacom involved in this project, at this time mostly as an advisor. And finally our mentor, Hans von Schreeb, who is one of the founders of Kanal5 and CEO there back in the days now working as a head hunter in the media industry.

First Round Completed

We’re now seeing the first round completed as we’ve met all the different companies/organisations as planned. Here’s a list of the different actors we’ve met:

The second round will start now where we’re working towards the final conditions for the Fri TV project and the participants in it. We hope to have something official to tell you before July, stay tuned!

Internet more used than TV among Youngsters

It was never a question of if, but when, internet would be used more (in daily minutes) than good old fasioned TV. Now it has happened, among the youngsters at least (MJ, swe). According to the Nordicom report from the University of Gothenburg released this week, 15-24 year olds consume 97 minutes of internet daily, one minute more than TV.

Asking people about how much they use “the internet” is of course not the best way to analyze the media consumption. What does that really include? Listening to internet radio? Having a P2P software active? Watching a TV show on SVT.se?

What I find interestning here is that a lot of this “internet consumption” is on content that was earlier only consumed on the traditional TV. According to my study at MMS, Moving pictures 2007, 16-25 year olds consume one hour moving pictures through the internet every day. And I would estimate that around 75% of that content is “TV content” (not motions pictures, user-generated-content etc.).

So what we’re seing here is that young people are changing the way they watch “TV content”, not really what they are watching. Some of this time is consumed on the TV companies domains but most of it is probably not. That is the real problem for the TV industry, that the viewers are moving from their safe and secure TV platform, to the big and uncontrolled internet where their content is floating free. So the question that they’re facing is:

Should they try to get the viewers to their domains or should they try to get their content to as many different digital places as they can?