‘The Long Tail’ and the future of film (and tv)

Posted on March 6th, 2008 by Victor

The Long TailAbout 4 years ago, with the UK launch of the new Battlestar Galactica, people were saying that the old network model of commercial programming was irrevocably broken — the new Galactica was co-sponsored by the UK’s SkyTV (a Rupert Murdoch subsidiary, like the US’ Fox Networks) and by some massive miscalculation, the US partner Universal Television’s SciFi Channel never thought that fans might redistribute the show on their own, by upoading DVR’ed episodes to the internet.

And so it went.

More recently, however, I’ve been seeing talk of The Long Tail and the new economics of media rental outfits like Netflix, Blockbuster and Gamefly that are capable of offering a larger inventory than the old brick-and-mortar stores, simply because they don’t have to make their entire inventory available at multiple localized stores: Because they deliver their rentals by mail, it’s unnecessary for them to operate at that ‘local’ level. Fact of the matter is, these new virtual rental and distribution agents do more business than the brick-and-mortar stores, resulting in things like the closure of Tower Records (also in the rental business) and Blockbuster’s expansion into the rent-by-mail option.

Sure, the Netflix model is innovative, but the business model for movies and television is about to undergo another major shift — that’s what the explosion of Pay-per-View cable offerings, BitTorrent and the WGA strike was all about — the next, always-already here model is going to be digital, transmitted over high-speed fiber-optic cable and satellite transmissions, so that there will seldom be any necessary packaging for either your rentals or purchases.

But as the Chris Anderson article also says, this change in distribution paradigm also opens up opportunities for creators. If there are more than 1,000 films submitted to Sundance each year and only 20 or so of those films make it through that inverted funnel to find distributors and screenings in real theaters. The problem here is just a shortage of venues. Sure, the venue-shortage problem has given birth to a variety of festivals — the South by Southwest Festival and the After Dark Horror Festival among them — but those festivals fall short of the exposure that such films would get as a result of commercial distribution. Enter the internet and the word-of-mouth that’s provided publicity for recent films such as ‘Man From Earth‘ (2004) and the failed pilot for ‘Global Frequency‘.

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The Long TailAbout 4 years ago, with the UK launch of the new Battlestar Galactica, people were saying that the old network model of commercial programming was irrevocably broken — the new Galactica was co-sponsored by the UK’s SkyTV (a Rupert Murdoch subsidiary, like the US’ Fox Networks) and by some massive miscalculation, the US partner Universal Television’s SciFi Channel never thought that fans might redistribute the show on their own, by upoading DVR’ed episodes to the internet.

And so it went.

More recently, however, I’ve been seeing talk of The Long Tail and the new economics of media rental outfits like Netflix, Blockbuster and Gamefly that are capable of offering a larger inventory than the old brick-and-mortar stores, simply because they don’t have to make their entire inventory available at multiple localized stores: Because they deliver their rentals by mail, it’s unnecessary for them to operate at that ‘local’ level. Fact of the matter is, these new virtual rental and distribution agents do more business than the brick-and-mortar stores, resulting in things like the closure of Tower Records (also in the rental business) and Blockbuster’s expansion into the rent-by-mail option.

Sure, the Netflix model is innovative, but the business model for movies and television is about to undergo another major shift — that’s what the explosion of Pay-per-View cable offerings, BitTorrent and the WGA strike was all about — the next, always-already here model is going to be digital, transmitted over high-speed fiber-optic cable and satellite transmissions, so that there will seldom be any necessary packaging for either your rentals or purchases.

But as the Chris Anderson article also says, this change in distribution paradigm also opens up opportunities for creators. If there are more than 1,000 films submitted to Sundance each year and only 20 or so of those films make it through that inverted funnel to find distributors and screenings in real theaters. The problem here is just a shortage of venues. Sure, the venue-shortage problem has given birth to a variety of festivals — the South by Southwest Festival and the After Dark Horror Festival among them — but those festivals fall short of the exposure that such films would get as a result of commercial distribution. Enter the internet and the word-of-mouth that’s provided publicity for recent films such as ‘Man From Earth‘ (2004) and the failed pilot for ‘Global Frequency‘.

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'track_ext_links' => true, 'prefix_ext_links' => '/outgoing/', 'track_files' => true, 'prefix_file_links' => '/downloads/', 'track_extensions' => 'gif,jpg,jpeg,bmp,png,pdf,mp3,wav,phps,zip,gz,tar,rar,jar,exe,pps,ppt,xls,doc', 'track_mail_links' => true, 'prefix_mail_links' => '/mailto/', 'debug' => true, 'check_updates' => true, 'version_sent' => '1.6.0', 'advanced_config' => true, ) Ending uga_get_option: track_files (1) Tracking files enabled Start uga_get_option: track_extensions uga_options: array ( 'internal_domains' => 'cineblog.us', 'account_id' => 'UA-3371462-1', 'enable_tracker' => true, 'track_adm_pages' => true, 'ignore_users' => true, 'max_user_level' => '8', 'footer_hooked' => false, 'filter_content' => true, 'filter_comments' => true, 'filter_comment_authors' => true, 'track_ext_links' => true, 'prefix_ext_links' => '/outgoing/', 'track_files' => true, 'prefix_file_links' => '/downloads/', 'track_extensions' => 'gif,jpg,jpeg,bmp,png,pdf,mp3,wav,phps,zip,gz,tar,rar,jar,exe,pps,ppt,xls,doc', 'track_mail_links' => true, 'prefix_mail_links' => '/mailto/', 'debug' => true, 'check_updates' => true, 'version_sent' => '1.6.0', 'advanced_config' => true, ) Ending uga_get_option: track_extensions (gif,jpg,jpeg,bmp,png,pdf,mp3,wav,phps,zip,gz,tar,rar,jar,exe,pps,ppt,xls,doc) Checking file extension gif Checking file extension jpg Checking file extension jpeg Checking file extension bmp Checking file extension png Checking file extension pdf Checking file extension mp3 Checking file extension wav Checking file extension phps Checking file extension zip Checking file extension gz Checking file extension tar Checking file extension rar Checking file extension jar Checking file extension exe Checking file extension pps Checking file extension ppt Checking file extension xls Checking file extension doc Ending uga_track_internal_url: Ending uga_track_full_url: Ending uga_preg_callback: Man From Earth Start uga_preg_callback: Array Get tracker for full url Start uga_track_full_url: cineblog.us/2005/06/14/global-frequency-2005/ Start uga_is_url_internal: cineblog.us/2005/06/14/global-frequency-2005/ Start uga_get_option: internal_domains uga_options: array ( 'internal_domains' => 'cineblog.us', 'account_id' => 'UA-3371462-1', 'enable_tracker' => true, 'track_adm_pages' => true, 'ignore_users' => true, 'max_user_level' => '8', 'footer_hooked' => false, 'filter_content' => true, 'filter_comments' => true, 'filter_comment_authors' => true, 'track_ext_links' => true, 'prefix_ext_links' => '/outgoing/', 'track_files' => true, 'prefix_file_links' => '/downloads/', 'track_extensions' => 'gif,jpg,jpeg,bmp,png,pdf,mp3,wav,phps,zip,gz,tar,rar,jar,exe,pps,ppt,xls,doc', 'track_mail_links' => true, 'prefix_mail_links' => '/mailto/', 'debug' => true, 'check_updates' => true, 'version_sent' => '1.6.0', 'advanced_config' => true, ) Ending uga_get_option: internal_domains (cineblog.us) Checking hostname cineblog.us Match found, url is internal Ending uga_is_url_internal: 1 Get tracker for internal URL Start uga_track_internal_url: cineblog.us/2005/06/14/global-frequency-2005/, Start uga_get_option: track_files uga_options: array ( 'internal_domains' => 'cineblog.us', 'account_id' => 'UA-3371462-1', 'enable_tracker' => true, 'track_adm_pages' => true, 'ignore_users' => true, 'max_user_level' => '8', 'footer_hooked' => false, 'filter_content' => true, 'filter_comments' => true, 'filter_comment_authors' => true, 'track_ext_links' => true, 'prefix_ext_links' => '/outgoing/', 'track_files' => true, 'prefix_file_links' => '/downloads/', 'track_extensions' => 'gif,jpg,jpeg,bmp,png,pdf,mp3,wav,phps,zip,gz,tar,rar,jar,exe,pps,ppt,xls,doc', 'track_mail_links' => true, 'prefix_mail_links' => '/mailto/', 'debug' => true, 'check_updates' => true, 'version_sent' => '1.6.0', 'advanced_config' => true, ) Ending uga_get_option: track_files (1) Tracking files enabled Start uga_get_option: track_extensions uga_options: array ( 'internal_domains' => 'cineblog.us', 'account_id' => 'UA-3371462-1', 'enable_tracker' => true, 'track_adm_pages' => true, 'ignore_users' => true, 'max_user_level' => '8', 'footer_hooked' => false, 'filter_content' => true, 'filter_comments' => true, 'filter_comment_authors' => true, 'track_ext_links' => true, 'prefix_ext_links' => '/outgoing/', 'track_files' => true, 'prefix_file_links' => '/downloads/', 'track_extensions' => 'gif,jpg,jpeg,bmp,png,pdf,mp3,wav,phps,zip,gz,tar,rar,jar,exe,pps,ppt,xls,doc', 'track_mail_links' => true, 'prefix_mail_links' => '/mailto/', 'debug' => true, 'check_updates' => true, 'version_sent' => '1.6.0', 'advanced_config' => true, ) Ending uga_get_option: track_extensions (gif,jpg,jpeg,bmp,png,pdf,mp3,wav,phps,zip,gz,tar,rar,jar,exe,pps,ppt,xls,doc) Checking file extension gif Checking file extension jpg Checking file extension jpeg Checking file extension bmp Checking file extension png Checking file extension pdf Checking file extension mp3 Checking file extension wav Checking file extension phps Checking file extension zip Checking file extension gz Checking file extension tar Checking file extension rar Checking file extension jar Checking file extension exe Checking file extension pps Checking file extension ppt Checking file extension xls Checking file extension doc Ending uga_track_internal_url: Ending uga_track_full_url: Ending uga_preg_callback: Global Frequency Ending uga_filter:

The Long TailAbout 4 years ago, with the UK launch of the new Battlestar Galactica, people were saying that the old network model of commercial programming was irrevocably broken — the new Galactica was co-sponsored by the UK’s SkyTV (a Rupert Murdoch subsidiary, like the US’ Fox Networks) and by some massive miscalculation, the US partner Universal Television’s SciFi Channel never thought that fans might redistribute the show on their own, by upoading DVR’ed episodes to the internet.

And so it went.

More recently, however, I’ve been seeing talk of The Long Tail and the new economics of media rental outfits like Netflix, Blockbuster and Gamefly that are capable of offering a larger inventory than the old brick-and-mortar stores, simply because they don’t have to make their entire inventory available at multiple localized stores: Because they deliver their rentals by mail, it’s unnecessary for them to operate at that ‘local’ level. Fact of the matter is, these new virtual rental and distribution agents do more business than the brick-and-mortar stores, resulting in things like the closure of Tower Records (also in the rental business) and Blockbuster’s expansion into the rent-by-mail option.

Sure, the Netflix model is innovative, but the business model for movies and television is about to undergo another major shift — that’s what the explosion of Pay-per-View cable offerings, BitTorrent and the WGA strike was all about — the next, always-already here model is going to be digital, transmitted over high-speed fiber-optic cable and satellite transmissions, so that there will seldom be any necessary packaging for either your rentals or purchases.

But as the Chris Anderson article also says, this change in distribution paradigm also opens up opportunities for creators. If there are more than 1,000 films submitted to Sundance each year and only 20 or so of those films make it through that inverted funnel to find distributors and screenings in real theaters. The problem here is just a shortage of venues. Sure, the venue-shortage problem has given birth to a variety of festivals — the South by Southwest Festival and the After Dark Horror Festival among them — but those festivals fall short of the exposure that such films would get as a result of commercial distribution. Enter the internet and the word-of-mouth that’s provided publicity for recent films such as ‘Man From Earth‘ (2004) and the failed pilot for ‘Global Frequency‘.

Start uga_shutdown Start uga_in_feed Ending uga_in_feed: Start uga_track_user Start uga_get_option: ignore_users uga_options: array ( 'internal_domains' => 'cineblog.us', 'account_id' => 'UA-3371462-1', 'enable_tracker' => true, 'track_adm_pages' => true, 'ignore_users' => true, 'max_user_level' => '8', 'footer_hooked' => false, 'filter_content' => true, 'filter_comments' => true, 'filter_comment_authors' => true, 'track_ext_links' => true, 'prefix_ext_links' => '/outgoing/', 'track_files' => true, 'prefix_file_links' => '/downloads/', 'track_extensions' => 'gif,jpg,jpeg,bmp,png,pdf,mp3,wav,phps,zip,gz,tar,rar,jar,exe,pps,ppt,xls,doc', 'track_mail_links' => true, 'prefix_mail_links' => '/mailto/', 'debug' => true, 'check_updates' => true, 'version_sent' => '1.6.0', 'advanced_config' => true, ) Ending uga_get_option: ignore_users (1) Start uga_get_option: max_user_level uga_options: array ( 'internal_domains' => 'cineblog.us', 'account_id' => 'UA-3371462-1', 'enable_tracker' => true, 'track_adm_pages' => true, 'ignore_users' => true, 'max_user_level' => '8', 'footer_hooked' => false, 'filter_content' => true, 'filter_comments' => true, 'filter_comment_authors' => true, 'track_ext_links' => true, 'prefix_ext_links' => '/outgoing/', 'track_files' => true, 'prefix_file_links' => '/downloads/', 'track_extensions' => 'gif,jpg,jpeg,bmp,png,pdf,mp3,wav,phps,zip,gz,tar,rar,jar,exe,pps,ppt,xls,doc', 'track_mail_links' => true, 'prefix_mail_links' => '/mailto/', 'debug' => true, 'check_updates' => true, 'version_sent' => '1.6.0', 'advanced_config' => true, ) Ending uga_get_option: max_user_level (8) Tracking user with level Ending uga_track_user: 1 Footer hook was not executed, but header hook did Start uga_get_option: footer_hooked uga_options: array ( 'internal_domains' => 'cineblog.us', 'account_id' => 'UA-3371462-1', 'enable_tracker' => true, 'track_adm_pages' => true, 'ignore_users' => true, 'max_user_level' => '8', 'footer_hooked' => false, 'filter_content' => true, 'filter_comments' => true, 'filter_comment_authors' => true, 'track_ext_links' => true, 'prefix_ext_links' => '/outgoing/', 'track_files' => true, 'prefix_file_links' => '/downloads/', 'track_extensions' => 'gif,jpg,jpeg,bmp,png,pdf,mp3,wav,phps,zip,gz,tar,rar,jar,exe,pps,ppt,xls,doc', 'track_mail_links' => true, 'prefix_mail_links' => '/mailto/', 'debug' => true, 'check_updates' => true, 'version_sent' => '1.6.0', 'advanced_config' => true, ) Ending uga_get_option: footer_hooked () Start uga_get_option: debug uga_options: array ( 'internal_domains' => 'cineblog.us', 'account_id' => 'UA-3371462-1', 'enable_tracker' => true, 'track_adm_pages' => true, 'ignore_users' => true, 'max_user_level' => '8', 'footer_hooked' => false, 'filter_content' => true, 'filter_comments' => true, 'filter_comment_authors' => true, 'track_ext_links' => true, 'prefix_ext_links' => '/outgoing/', 'track_files' => true, 'prefix_file_links' => '/downloads/', 'track_extensions' => 'gif,jpg,jpeg,bmp,png,pdf,mp3,wav,phps,zip,gz,tar,rar,jar,exe,pps,ppt,xls,doc', 'track_mail_links' => true, 'prefix_mail_links' => '/mailto/', 'debug' => true, 'check_updates' => true, 'version_sent' => '1.6.0', 'advanced_config' => true, ) Ending uga_get_option: debug (1) -->