The Future of TV Stations

When was the last time I watched cable TV?
Many many years ago… when I flipped my cable TV on recently out of EXTREME boredom, I didn’t realize which channels were which anymore. The station had revised the channel numbers TWICE and I missed both iterations!

How do I use my TV now?
Hook up my laptop to my HD TV using a HDMI cable, stream/play video on my laptop, watch away on the nice, big clear screen.

Will I get Cable TV when I have my own home? Will my friends get Cable TV?
MOST PROBABLY NOT.

But why??!!
Isn’t it obvious?! We’re arrogant. We don’t arrange our schedules around television programs anymore.. waaay too troublesome. We’ve tried that in the past and have always ended up going “When did this guy die?? o_O??”.

A couple of weeks back my colleague Calvin and I were talking about how long it has been since we last watched TV.. I realized that all I remembered was that it was EONS ago… leaving my Cable TV to collect dust (and continue feeding the TV station subscription fees). The interesting thing is, we know it is happening to majority of youths now, we’re sure the TV stations know it too but we still see the usual “$XYZ per month for 100+ channels” packages being promoted all over. However, instead of laughing at the death of these stations, we embarked instead on a discussion of how TV stations would change their models in the near future.
 

Model 1: Pay Per Channel Collection model

Saying Pay Per Channel may be very misleading as there are Cable TV stations that allow you to pay according to the number of channels you subscribe to. Instead of saying channel to avoid confusion, I’m going to say Collection. Every TV Station now have their own line of series like AXN with CSI and House, Star World with American Idol, MTV with Punk’d, Sweet Sixteen and the list goes on. I love watching all these programs and I’m subscribed to all these channels! but I watch them online now.. all because they do not fit into my schedule.

Instead of making viewers pay for PROGRAMMED Television, why not give them UNPROGRAMMED Television? How it works is simple. I subscribe to the channel and I instantly get on-demand access to any show shown on that channel, whenever I want. The next question that came was, whether there should be ads for these shows.. Currently, we are paying for channels and am kind enough to tolerate the ads shown on them. This is a convention that has been in place for years and people have gotten used to it.. When it comes to paying for on-demand access however, we have gotten used to a no ad policy and will probably be really unhappy if we saw ads popping up here and there. It doesn’t help either that a large portion of a station’s revenue comes from ads, hence a subscription-based on-demand model might not work.
 

Model 2: iTunes, meet TV

How about we apply the iTunes system to TV programs instead? Pay per episode of a series you want to watch. I admit that I am unsure of how much cost actually goes into the creation of each series but my guess is each episode would not exceed $1 million? So assuming that the cost of producing an episode of a TV series like Prison Break is $1 million and we charge users, say, $3 per episode taking into consideration users are already willing to pay $1 for a 4-minute song, $3 for a 1-hour video should be well-received. Multiply $3 with the average number of viewers during its worst season, we have:

$3 x 5.3 million viewers = $15.9 million

This is a profit of $14.9 million per episode not taking in the in-movie advertising and endorsements by companies. Even if the cost of the episode was $10 million the profit would be $4.9 million for each episode..

Prison Break was a huge success, so lets take a lesser known TV series instead. Lets try Harpers Island. Their latest episode only managed to garner 3.62 million viewers. Assuming that as this is not a popular series, we have only 20% of these 3.62 million viewers willing to pay for the episode.

20% x 3.62 million viewers = 724,000 viewers
$3 x 724,000 viewers = $2.1 mil

This still covers the cost of $1 mil per episode.
 

Consequences of model
The model actually feeds into a trait of consumers becoming more and more selective. If we feed into that trait, that would mean we are giving consumers a free hand to pick whatever they wanna see.. which also equates to lesser known TV series and movies dying. Is this a bad thing? No because even today, bad TV series are being pulled out by stations very quickly except that with this model, it may be pulled out faster as there are no ads to reduce losses. The result will be an ever more competitive market leading to an increase in the quality of media produced.

But what about series which are actually good but fail to succeed due to bad marketing? What if consumers only stick to the few series they are only aware of and never give the other series a chance? To tell you the truth, I, as a consumer actually do pay attention to the little icons and animations that pop up at the corner of the screen every now and then advertising an upcoming new series. I look forward to those as they give me a guide of what to check out in the gazillion series to choose from out there. In other words, I don’t mind paying for episodes that have some little animations and bars appearing to promote an upcoming series that is currently being practiced by TV stations. I believe most consumers wouldn’t mind those unobtrusive elements either.
 

Conclusion
If TV stations want to continue operating, they have to move towards new models that feed into the traits of UNPROGRAMMED, on-demand televising. If they don’t change their models soon, they will start to see their finances dwindle until it is too late and we will all be left with nothing but old video archives on the internet to watch. Coming up with a “Support TV stations! Don’t let them die” campaign won’t work because the benefits of on-demand streaming online is just too good. Better change before it is too late for all of us! (and we’ll just stick with computer games and box office movies).
 

Note: This post was written from a consumer’s point of view. I am unfamiliar with the inner workings of the TV industry and as I couldn’t find much information of what elements of costing goes into the production of a TV series, my values were made based on estimations from costs of blockbuster movies

Lobbying: Formula for Facebook Pages?

During a recent conversation my friend told me he had set up a Facebook page for his company’s new initiative. The first thought that went into my mind was “Not again..” but before jumping to any conclusion, I replied “Oh hey, that’s interesting. What are you doing on the page?”. To my disappointment, I got the answer I expected. “Engaging users, posting videos, links, news and inviting people”.

Many companies nowadays are setting up Facebook pages for their products and initiatives to “engage users” but most of these end up being a gathering of inactive users who either joined the page out of interest for the company/product, or out of goodwill for an invite from a friend. There are definitely several companies who have done well by doing what my friend did like Coke, Intel and Seventeen Magazine but the rest, especially by lesser known brands are quite dead.

What is the formula then for creating a successful Facebook Page? This is the question I was wondering before I decided to find common traits between 2 successful campaigns which I believe might work for other companies as well. The keyword that popped into my head was:

Lobbying…

Note here what I mean by lobbying is not lobbying done by the company but rather by users and fans of the company. Also note that this probably applies more to specific events / campaigns rather than general company pages. Let me illustrate by drawing on 2 examples:
 

1) Victoria’s Secret PINK Campaign (Over 1 million fans)

This was a hugely successful campaign not because it gathered lots of fans, but because its fans were voluntarily creating groups, activities and content around the campaign. What Victoria Secret did was create a PINK collegiate collection where users could nominate and register their school to be part of the collection. Victoria Secret would manufacture a PINK collection branded with the school’s logo and mascot. This created a lot of excitement and gave their users (aka college girls) enough reason for them to lobby their friends into it, garnering more than 1 million fans.
 

2) Target Bullseye Campaign (Over 75,000 fans in 4 days)

Image from Inside Facebook

Target wanted to donate US$3 million to charity this year but didn’t want to do it in the traditional way where charities receive the money and a picture of them holding a gigantic mock cheque appears in the papers. They wanted something that would capture the attention of youths on Facebook as well, and hence created a Facebook application on their page. In the application, fans could vote for their favorite charities and at the end of the 2 week campaign, the US$3 million will be split amongst the 10 charities based on the percentage of votes they received. Almost immediately, this campaign has given the charities MORE than enough reason for them to lobby all their supporters to get onto the Target page and vote for them. The campaign is now over but according to Inside Facebook, the campaign garnered 75,000 fans after just 4 days.
 

Reason for lobbying??
The next question is how do you go about creating these incentives for people to lobby their friends. I’m no expert at this either as I’ve not created any successful Facebook pages/groups before but these are my observations based on what gets me to lobby my friends:
 

1) Something I want or strongly believe in…
If a campaign would give me something I want should I get my friends in, then I’d lobby for it. One example would be to look at the immensely popular and addictive Facebook game PackRat (sorry for picking a game, but I think they have great incentive systems). PackRat is a game where you go around collecting sets of collectible cards and stash them in a vault by stealing from your friends. They give 2 very strong reasons to lobby your friends:
i) You’d have more friends to steal cards from and grow your collection
ii) Inviting a certain number of friends gets you a limited edition card

Note here that there is a clear guarantee of reward if you achieve certain milestones which I believe beats crappy “invite 3 friends and increase your chances” incentives.

For an example closer to home? Take the latest GI Joy SoyJoy campaign which got bloggers like Nadnut to rally all her friends, blog readers and companies she knows to vote for her and participate. The prize for her? A trip to Japan (and all the buzz that comes with it).
 

2) Something I can own…
This may come a little hard as if you’re a company on a low budget / just starting out, you wouldn’t want to spend money on physical products as rewards that people can own. The alternative is a digital solution which a lot of people have come to dislike.. my friends still prefer handwritten letters and physical greeting cards to electronic ones anytime. However, if you give them something they can own and show off to their friends, chances are they will participate more. This reminds me of the super old and probably forgotten Vampire & Werewolves game on Facebook where everyone was literally inviting everyone else to get the side they were on (Vampire or Werewolf) to get bigger than the other for “world domination”. The items they are owning here are was something very simple. A small tiny square badge on their profile with a vampire/wolf picture that would evolve with their rank and 2 lines of statistics.
 

3) The Cold Start problem
Like many new brands / products, there is the cold start problem. Not every company has a huge database of customers whom they can already mass mail to start getting them lobbying for them. The key here is to reach out to key people in your target audience who will be inspired to do the lobbying for you. This brings me back to the NEXUS ’07 by TDM which attracted over 800 registrations within 2 weeks (and we had to turn some away). The publicity was done purely through only social media and none of the traditional press methods. I’m not trying to promote NEXUS or anything here but I thought this was a good example of a cold start problem to highlight. Back then I was very skeptical about the power of social media and had a very traditional mindset of how events should be publicized but Ming Yeow, the founder, was trying extremely convert me. This started with us looking for key experts to work with us on the conference programme. Believe it or not, the very first person we contacted was Kevin Lim. We met up with Kevin, told him what NEXUS’07′s inspiration was and from his immense knowledge of Second Life, we invited him to run the Virtual Worlds track of the event. What I didn’t expect after that was that the plug on his blog would lead to many other blogs plugging us as well and a sudden surge in website hits. o_O
 

4) Eat your own dog food
Okay.. this is starting to sound like a start-up lessons thingy but seriously, this point is very relevant here as well since you are creating something to market your initiative. Nothing much to elaborate here except the simple point: Will you be excited enough to get your friends involved? Or will you only be excited to submit an entry and not be motivated to tell your friends about it? The first question should be the one you’re answer “YES!!!” and the second question is where you say “NOPE!”. If it is the other way around, then the chances of visitors to your campaign lobbying their friends for it will be low.
 

Concluding Words
I know coming up with a good reason for getting people to lobby their friends and organization members for your initiative may be hard as you don’t want it to sound too gimmicky either (and potentially end up ruining your company’s reputation) but if you get it right, you should have a pretty good chance of generating a lot of buzz around your Facebook page. And trust me, this is much easier than creating a successful Facebook application. If I’m not wrong, the only somewhat successful Facebook app by a company to date is Whopper Sacrifice by Burger King? That is like a once in a blue moon thing.
 
 

Other formulas for a successful Facebook page:
Successful Facebook Fan page article by Mashable
How to develop a Facebook Page that attracts millions of fans by All Facebook

Facebook Developer’s Garage 2 & Some UI Notes

Last week E27 and the Singapore PHP User Group organized the 2nd Facebook Developer’s Garage in Singapore. As a fresh Facebook developer, I was ecstatic when my teams and I were invited to present 2 of our applications there: AntRush and Prosperity Garden.

I have not written about AntRush before because the application is still in Beta so here’s a quick introduction:

AntRush is a simple online turn-based strategy game where you’re given an ant colony which you can grow and some eggs which you can morph into workers and soldiers. Once you have a big enough army, you can invade your friend’s colonies, kill their ants and rob them of their resources in the process.

Coming back to the event, I felt that we didn’t really give a good presentation because we didn’t have time to prepare for it and hence went with an impromptu style presentation. We mainly spoke about our experience developing the application, how we came up with the idea, the technology used and problems encountered(especially with the user interface(UI)). As promised, I’ll spare the technical details as they can get pretty mundane and focus on writing about the interesting points I learnt UI-wise from my experience of developing these 2 Facebook apps.

Heritage in Pictures

Highlighting an interesting event by a friend. ^_^

Pictures are a snapshot of moments in our lives, memories which we would like engraved in the stones of our heads as long as we live, to remind us of the few important words among the 1,000 a picture is worth. However, more often than not we fail to capture the tiny significant moments that have shaped our lives, culture and memories indirectly like the traditional ding dang candy stalls that used to roam the sidewalks of Singapore. Speak to elders about the ding dang candy and it should ring a bell with joyful stories of them craving while waiting in queue lines. Speak to the younger generations about it and you will get a model-perfect “o_O?” expression. As expected, these little intricacies have vanished over time as our priorities and lives are continuously sculpted around the ever-changing world. Many of them have waiver off to become only vague words which will only be remembered as long as the older generations live. Once they leave, so will these intricacies.

Some of you might say “Hey we have pictures. Why not just capture them?”. True, but how many of us have captured them? Most of us take pictures of our friends, festivals, beautiful buildings and sceneries but neglect these tiny tiny times. (Who knows, 2 generations in the future we might not have hawker centres anymore). Next time you roam the streets, just take out your camera and start shooting some pictures you had never thought of taking before; the Chinese music peddlers on the sidewalks, the folded grass origamis or even the scene of the 3 ice-cream stall uncles having territorial quarrels at Bugis Junction. Never know what happy thoughts these pictures will spark in your mind when you look back in the future.

Need an incentive?
Not a problem. I’m just as much a procrastinator as every other human being(sometimes probably more than usual). As part of the Explore Singapore! campaign by the National Heritage Board this year, there is a photo blogging competition where you can win a Nikon DSLR camera. Don’t have a blog? Start one just for the competition. All it takes is one blog post with a photo and your personal story. Dunno what to start snapping? Well, the 80 heritage events being organized might be a good place to start getting some ideas.

What would I personally snap? Haha well I already gave some hints about that earlier! (Pretty sure you can guess which of the examples I’ll be snapping right? ).

Till later! ^_~

Resources:
Sweet Sweet Ding Dang (One of the more interesting entries)
Explore! Singapore website
More about the photo competition

Nokia’s new 14 Days campaign = not that interesting

Got a request to check out the new “Nokia NSeries 14 Days” campaign.

Its this new initiative where Nokia will show viewers some out-of-box things they can do with the Nokia N95, with a new trick introduced every 14 days. Their first trick is already online showing how you can create your own “Fast & Furious” car racing scenes.

Wow, how do you do that with the miserable camera phone?

Those were the words that ran through my head until I watched the demo video. According to the instructions, all you need to do is strap 7 N95s to 7 different locations of your car using ONLY double-sided tape. Sounds relatively simple if you ask me but I wouldn’t even dare try this out with one N95, what more 7.

I have to admit that they really got it going on the creative side, opting to show what the phone is capable of by pushing its boundaries rather than using the age-old hard-selling strategy. However, I didn’t find the video or the campaign particularly interesting. (Sorry guys, I know the host was hawt but not enough to compensate for the downsides). Fellow blogger DK says its mainly due to the fact that the trick is too unrealistic to excite any of us to try it at home. I agree with this but I believe there’s more to our lack of excitement.

This lack of excitement is because of the campaign’s lack of participatory opportunities for the viewers. The most viewers can do is watch the video and comment on it. *yawn* How boring! In this age of web 2.0 and social media, Nokia should be doing something to get viewers more involved. Let me throw a simple random idea from what other companies have done. For example, instead of just giving ideas, they should invite viewers to submit their non-conventional ideas as well. The person who submits the most popular non-conventional idea will get a free N95 and the gadgets needed to try out the idea. Now wouldn’t that be much more engaging? People might even talk about the feat after the campaign.

Nokia, you have the creative juices flowing with the concept behind the campaign but something is still missing from making it truly memorable.

Qik.com – Live video streaming straight from your phone

Quick quick update, not really an article but some new cool technology I found: Live video streaming/casting straight from your handphone! Cool eh? I just did a quick write-up about it on the TDM blog, posting it up here as well to share it with you guys.

Side note: Oh yea, those of you who would like me to give you a live tour of NUS / my hall, just drop me a note! ^_~ If I attend any conferences/meet any cool people soon, I will do an impromptu interview and live-stream it for you guys.

Here’s an excerpt from the write-up I did:

———-

When we talk about live online video streaming, the first thing that comes to people’s minds is Ustream. Ustream was a great service that enables users to conduct live video streaming online with just a web cam and Internet service. However, it is not very convenient in terms of mobility because you have to carry your web cam/laptop wherever you go (and, you had to make sure you have an Internet connection).

One company in California decided to take this further by creating a technology that enables users to do live video casting easily from the convenience of their mobile phones via any 3G/GPRS/Wi-fi Internet connection. This company is Visivo Communications which created Qik.com. Recently, the guys at Qik contacted us to help them source for testers from Singapore. As it is still in the alpha stage, they’ll need all the feedback they can get to improve their service. So, if you’ve always been wanting to livecast events or have been waiting to try your hands on some, this is the time to start.

———-

For instructions and more info, hop onto the full write-up here.

Enjoy! ^_~

Applying “2.0″ to art?

Recently I had the privilege of attending a talk from the University Scholars Seminar series by Mr. Kwok Kian Chow, director of the Singapore Art Museum. It was a talk on the challenges faced by the museum in obtaining rare pieces of art, portraying non-conventional pieces like seal carvings as art to the public and bringing more awareness to various art forms around the world.

One of his points which caught my attention was how art pieces no matter how minuscule, are dramatized and enlarged when they are placed within the frame of the museum. Art pieces showcased in a museum are perceived as having a greater value and recognition than before. This made me wonder, as the idea of “art” is so subjective and obscure, how does the museum select pieces that qualify to be showcased? I got the impression that the museum is similar to an examination body which passes and fails its candidates (in this case potential artists) based on performance. Those who pass get their pieces showcased and labeled as artists while those who don’t, remain as “aspiring” artists.

Frankly speaking, there are many art pieces (especially MODERN art pieces) which leave me wondering “Is this art?” and “How is this worth hundreds of thousands??”. In this era where everyone’s talking about web 2.0 being the new way the world works, I can’t help but wonder what would happen if we took a “web 2.0” approach to art, one where the public is given the freehand to define art, one where they can nominate and vote for art pieces they believe deserve to be showcased in a museum.

In my opinion, a few things will happen:

1) No more kindergarten looking doodlings!
The following art pieces will definitely be left out in the cold. I personally don’t understand how these pieces can be considered as art. To me they are just a bunch of random scribblings which you commonly see little kids produce.

2) Picasso’s work left out in the cold?
I’d say that Picasso is one of the well-known artists among the populace who was the bridge between conventional and modern art. Picasso’s works consist of both modern and traditional art. However, when you talk to people about “art”, the image that goes into their heads are those of Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and beautiful imageries of landscapes.

Imagine we showcased some of Picasso’s more modern works without his name attached to it. Will the general public still consider them as art?

3) A BORING and biased museum?
Think about it, we might have a museum of very conventional, European-styled paintings and sculptures similar to the likes of Da Vinci, Rembrandt and Michael Angelo. Most of the pieces will be realistic looking, aesthetically beautiful, peaceful and non-radical. Non-radical because people in the past have been known to avoid/shun/despise radical pieces of works. E.g: The book on the Theory of Evolution by Charles Darwin.

The museum will be a more boring place than it already is because we might end up having very similar-looking/themed art pieces for DECADES. There will be no art pieces that make you work your brain like the INFAMOUS dot in the middle of a black canvas. Everytime I look at the piece, I try to understand how critiques came to claim that the dot depicts life. I stress my brain to find a connection even though I find it utterly ridiculous that people consider that art.

Coming to biaseness, As the general public’s perception of art is very European, we might leave out various lesser known art forms and styles from the rest of the world like Chinese and Batuan paintings.

These art styles and forms are very beautiful but as time goes by, they may be forgotten because people are less aware of their existence. Ever heard the saying that people are like herds of sheep, just following the masses?

Taking a “2.0″ approach to art may be both a good and bad thing. On one hand, the museum will be showcasing pieces which the public would like to see but on the other, there will be a tendency to favour the more conventional and widely accepted art forms and styles. Then again, I may be wrong. It’d be fun if someone tries this “2.0″ approach for an art exhibition some day soon, then we can see what the masses really think is art.

PopOut’07: Bezurk (The “Google” of travelling)

2 days ago, the TDM team and I organized PopOut’07: Emerging Web Startups which is the very first episode of a series of startup showcases to come! At PopOut, we got local web startups which we thought had rather interesting initiatives to strut their stuff and share their personal stories.

I won’t be writing about what happened as fellow TDM’er Angela live-blogged about it here along with a few other bloggers. Instead, I’m gonna write about what I thought of the companies who participated (both presenters and showcasers on the side booths), starting with Bezurk. If you want to read about what happened during the presentations, read here, here and here.

Bezurk – Travel Search Engine

I’ve never heard of Bezurk before PopOut but after Ross’ presentation (which left me quite clueless with all the technical jargon), I decided to check it out myself. All these while, I’ve been using STA Travel to get my cheap student tickets since its the brand name for students with tight budgets.

The very first thing I did was to search for the same trip on both STA Travel and Bezurk to compare prices. Yes, I’m a cheapo! What will keep me is the service that will give me the best price.

Trip: Singapore to Chicago
Bezurk’s Price: SGD1645 on Northwest Airlines
STA Travel’s Price: SGD 1670 on Turkish Airlines

Although the price difference wasn’t much, Ross is right. Bezurk’s concept of searching and returning results from all travel websites instead of just one database produces better results. Also personally, I’d go for Northwest over Turkish anytime. So test 1 has been passed!

Next came the interface which utilizes a lot of AJAX, reducing the amount of page loads and having results updated on-the-fly even when you’re still browsing a page to ensure you get the best and latest prices. In fact, their usage of AJAX is a huge advantage over other boring, static travel websites making it extremely navigatable and swift in returning results.

Bezurk’s simple, straight forward front page

The super user-friendly interface!

Apart from just flights, their search engine caters to hotels and tour packages as well. What I particularly like is how detailed their filtering system is. You can filter your results by pricing, airline, hotel star-rating & etc. My MOST favourite filtering of all is “Features the hotel MUST have” which of course for me was the broadband Internet access. Too bad they couldn’t take this filtering a step further to “FREE broadband access”.

As I’ll be going to Shanghai soon, I searched “Activities” for Shanghai and it returned a variety of tour packages offered by travel agencies within Shanghai itself which makes things a lot cheaper. Upon clicking the “Book Now” button, Bezurk redirects me to the travel agency’s booking page for that particular tour, saving me the effort of navigating the travel agency’s website. This is also a useful feature for people like me who CAN’T SPEAK Chinese and probably won’t be able to buy the right tour packages in Shanghai without help.

Jade Buddha Temple anyone?

Bezurk really seems like the solution many travellers have been looking for. It saves the trouble of having to go through Google search results individually to find what you want (and the best deals of course). In fact, I would call Bezurk the “Google” of travelling. As mentioned before, the big plus point for me is the friendly and efficient user-interface.

The only additional feature I hope Bezurk would have is a comment/rating system of each travel agency associated with the hotel and travel packages. I don’t mean to be a prejudice but there are numerous stories going around on how Chinese businessmen cheat tourists, and hence I’d appreciate it if I could get a feel of which travel agencies are the more reliable ones from fellow travellers.

Other than that, I’d say “BYE BYE STA TRAVEL! You’re OBSOLETE!! “. Bezurk’s the new way to travel!

Side note: They’ve recently been named “31 of the world’s hottest startups” by Fortune Group Inc, putting Singapore on the web2.0 map! ^_~