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MillimeterBeyond Eyeballs: Integrating Broadcast and the Web
Aug 1, 2000 12:00 PM, Philip De Lancie
For decades, television has stood as the Goliath of American mass media, with household penetration at nearly 100 percent. In the last few years, the Internet has taken off with astonishing rapidity. However, with home broadband penetration currently only around five percent, most Internet users are not experiencing anything close to a TV-like presentation. In fact, the two media are so different that the notion of direct competition between them doesn't begin to explain what's going on. But as broadband proliferates, the lines between television and the Internet will become more blurred, and the opportunities for synergy will expand. Even today, broadcast and cable entities such as MSNBC, The Weather Channel, and CNET are also on the Web. The way they integrate the two media is one indicator of how the "convergence" phenomenon will affect the future of TV.
To Debora Wilson, president and CEO of the Weather Channel's Weather.com subsidiary, the core Internet-related issue faced by the broadcast and cable industries comes down to self definition. "We define ourselves in terms of our content rather than our delivery technology," she explains. "Cable is one way of providing content, and the Web is another. The organizations that will be strengthened by the Internet are those that see themselves as a source of information, not simply as television stations."
Seeing Beyond Eyeballs Wilson does not consider current broadband penetration levels--far fewer "eyeballs" than either TV or dial-up connections--as an impediment to integrating broadcast-originated content into the Web. "Broadband can make presentation more compelling," she acknowledges, "but we're not held back [without it]. Our content is information-based, and our streaming video is wrapped into a complete multimedia story. So we can still do a great job within the dial-up context."
John Peterson, director of corporate communication for Virage, Inc. in San Mateo, California, says that today's household penetration rate of computers and Internet devices, even with limited bandwidth, is still quite sufficient to support an integrated broadcast model. Virage develops tools intended to help achieve that integration, including Virage Interactive application services that provide content owners with the infrastructure for bringing video onto their Web sites.
"The most successful organizations," Peterson says, "are making use of the Internet in a way that complements their traditional broadcasting. Broadcasters can leverage their existing content on the Internet in a way that meets users' expectations of on-demand, anytime, anywhere access. This opens the possibility for greater audience participation, targeted advertising, direct and indirect commerce opportunities and syndication."
Terry Irving, vice president for operations at TV on the WEB in Reston, Virginia, points out that high-speed connections are much more common in offices, "where you've got a pretty high-quality audience, especially if you program financial news or business-to-business subjects." That means that material gathered for highly edited broadcast to the general public may be repurposed in a less-edited form for a targeted, special-interest audience that views over the Web. Advertisers who are willing to pay to reach that qualified audience can turn the Web into an additional source of revenue.
While both the number of viewers and the revenue from such content may currently be small, Irving says it is nonetheless important to get started now. "The most important reason is simply to get into the game," he says. "Internet broadcasting is going to happen--just as cable did--and to not be ready for it is short-sighted."
Irving's analysis is shared by David Pearce, director of broadband at CNET Networks in San Francisco. "Any media company that looks at broadband-connectivity penetration levels and thinks they can wait before jumping in is taking a risk with their brand," he says. "All you have to do is look at the AOL/Time Warner situation to see that very soon Internet users of all levels of sophistication will have content that is enhanced and broadband."
A Better Experience? While brand-building and potential for added revenues are advantages for the content provider, combined broadcast/Web presences may offer advantages to viewers as well. "There is greater depth of information when media assets are grouped with text, images, and other related content," Pearce says. "And on-demand viewing frees the viewer from time constraints. There very few types of programming that need to be seen in real-time: weather, traffic, stock and market news, and collective societal events. The rest should be available to be viewed at leisure."
MSNBC's senior producer for international news, Michael Moran, believes that the Internet makes broadcast journalists better journalists. "The enormous news hole encourages journalists who may never stray from one story to get involved in myriad other issues which would never make their station's bar for air," he notes. "NBC foreign bureaus have developed a significantly better grasp of their regions because the site is constantly demanding coverage of, for example, Ukraine and the Baltics from the Moscow bureau, which before was only about Boris Yeltsin. As these correspondents put out calls to a deeper and richer mix of topics, they learn their beat better."
To take advantage of the combined media fully, one has to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each. "Video often does a better job delivering the feel of a story," Moran says, "but no one understands a baseball game better than someone who reads a good newspaper story about it. Add a video, an interactive app that explains why the ball went through Bill Buckner's legs, and a 'sound off' BBS, and you've got the beginnings of a rich experience."
At CNET, online editors and writers began to realize their ability to deliver these kinds of rich user experiences when they stopped limiting themselves to footage from the company's cable shows and began delving into the other types of videos available to tie into a given story. "For example," Pearce says, "a story on the latest MP3 copyright fights might include a video product demo of an MP3 player or a video tutorial on how to burn MP3 audio onto standard audio CDs. This approach allows for an entirely new level of depth that gives the viewer/reader a basis for coming to an informed opinion."
What Works for the Web? While the theory of leveraging suggests that assets captured for broadcast can be repurposed for the Web, the reality of data rates and codecs can make it a challenge to maintain acceptable quality when material is not created explicitly for the Internet. "You have to shoot and edit differently for Webcasting," Irving says. "Anything wider than a two-shot tends to disappear. Pan shots have to be very slow, and quick cuts get lost when you're down to 4fps. Effects generally don't work. What works best is people talking on camera."
"Any video below a 56k data rate is going to lose clarity and degenerate quickly," Pearce agrees. "Our cable shows have many quick cuts, high-resolution graphics, and location shots, all of which don't lend well to lower bit-rate streaming. This was actually one of the roadblocks to bringing our library online. Today the codecs are pretty sophisticated and handle these elements well, but, in part, that's because we made the decision to focus on viewers with DSL or faster connections. Our target data rate is 220kbps."
Pearce sees video producers as "the first line of defense against bad-looking video" and says they need to be educated to the limitations of Web delivery. "As a general rule, try to avoid pans, jerky camera movement, scrolling graphics, and high action. Also, many people assume that since Internet video is smaller they can use low-end gear. Not true. Good lighting, good gear, and a strong encoder help a lot. At CNET, we shoot every single Internet video with the same lighting grid, cameras, and audio gear as our broadcast shows."
For an operation that already has facilities for broadcast video production, the equipment cost for supporting video on the Web may be fairly low on the production side. "Assuming that you have standard video decks, an editing system and a master control board for mixing," Pearce says, "the next hardware expense is going to be an encoding machine with a decent video and audio capture card, preferably with the fastest chip speed and the most RAM you can afford. Make sure it has at least 10GB of hard-disk space, too. For a video capture card, you can go with something as cheap as a Viewcast.com Osprey 100, which gives high quality at a 320 x 240 frame size. For audio, try to avoid the consumer cards, and find something that supports a balanced line input to ensure high fidelity."
Pearce estimates the entire initial package may run as little as $5,000 to $8,000. "Once it's all installed and wired into your patch bays," he says, "you are ready for live or on-demand encoding. From this point on, the biggest cost is actually delivering the streams to the viewer. It is possible to set up your own media server, but I suggest using a third-party vendor, most of which offer distributed networks that serve the requested stream from the closest point to the viewer. They will also provide you with tech support, in-depth reporting, and other services you may not have even considered. Most importantly, these vendors bear the high cost of building the network infrastructure and paying license fees and upgrade costs, all of which can take you into the hundreds of thousands of dollars."
Putting Video in Context In a Web context, of course, the video is only one part of the whole story. "On a Web page, your 'show' is not just the video box, it's the entire page," Irving points out. "Pay attention to how the Web graphics add to the presentation and offer additional downloads of text, related Web links, or other background information. And if you have gorgeous pictures that get lost in the tiny video box, offer stills at full resolution."
Gathering these non-video elements requires a flexible setup in the field. "Our interactive teams carry a laptop loaded with Sound Forge, Photoshop, Word, Outlook, and our proprietary MSNBC.com newsroom operating system," Moran says. Also on the list, he adds, is a Sony Walkman-Pro for digital sound equipped with a good mic, Sony Mavica digital cameras "to give to correspondents who aren't photo pros," and Sony's smaller Pro-Am video digital line. "We try not to get too bulky-it just invites robberies, or worse," he notes.
Another consideration for work in the field, Moran says, is getting the material back to the base operation. "We generally suggest a Hotmail account when going abroad. Taking into account where you are going, a cell phone is a must, and a satellite phone is also useful in many situations. We've often used sat phones to transmit pictures, audio, and, of course, text. And we have the luxury of remote access to Microsoft servers around the globe, which is no small advantage."
Of, course, not every broadcast operation contemplating a Web presence will enjoy the same advantages-or face the same challenges-as MSNBC. But Moran is convinced that everyone will come around to the Internet sooner or later. "Competitively, it's hard to argue anyone will survive without a good Internet wing in the future. It may well be that television as we know it is doomed. What is certain is that the way people use televisions and computers now will continue to morph."
With change expected to be a constant, Irving argues for a "rational" approach to blending traditional and Internet operations. "There is no point in building a hideously expensive Web site right off the bat," he says. "Someone is just going to come along and cut the budget. Repurpose your existing broadcast material and look for ways to reuse raw material. Develop an online community with chats and e-mail, and listen to them. And don't create a site that's simply an advertising vehicle for the broadcast outlet, a brochure site that's not kept current. People are not going to come back to a site that doesn't change."
It may be years before the Internet can deliver the numbers of viewers that TV shows are expected to draw in week after week. But following Irving's measured formula may well give sites the time they need to develop a viable following. At the same time, they'll be defining a new medium at the intersection of two technologies, with results that cannot necessarily be fully envisioned from today's vantage point. "Broadcast/cable organizations," Peterson says, "have yet to scratch the surface of what is possible by integrating TV with the Web."
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
