More Web T.V. Stuff–Still Looking for a Business Model

‘Took a week off for Thanksgiving. Probably a mistake.

But, I’m back and I’m back on this web t.v. horse. I’ll organize some more links here. These are not going to be super recent or up to date, but they will be useful. If nothing else, I’ll at least have them all in one place.

Freakonomics: Is Web Video Really Hurting T.V.?

They had a link in there to an interesting paper, that was written by Wharton professor Joel Waldfogel about the ability of the web to increase program viewing where he writes:

Web viewing grew by 96% on unauthorized sites {like YouTube}, 188% on authorized sites{like abc.com}.

The rapid growth of authorized web viewing in the sample suggests that the networks have been successful at undermining the relative appeal of unauthorized distribution. This should not be too surprising given the quality of the the viewing experience at say abc.com in contrast to YouTube.

While conventional television viewing falls by 5% this is more than offset by increases in time spent viewing network authorized web programming.

But the problem isn’t viewership, its economics. I believe people are reading more news than ever before. They’re listening to more music than ever before. But are newspapers or music labels making more money than ever before? No.

When I called Waldfogel to ask him about this, he said he didn’t examine the business side of web video. He did say that if television studios make less off web ads than they do on conventional ads, then “that’s a very big problem.”

I’ve heard from t.v. executives at the New Tee Vee Live! conference that total television ad revenue is between 60 and 80 billion dollars. Emarketer projects total online t.v. revenue to hit $2.6 billion in 2012. I think that is a modest projection. But lets say they are $40 billion off the mark, doesn’t this represent a problem? Or will the two outlets-t.v. and web-work together to create a fluid revenue stream equal to $120 billion?

A month ago there was a story on CNNmoney.com about newspapers that I can’t find. In the it the writer proposed that print ads and circ would drop, while online ads and circ would rise. Eventually they’d meet in the middle and there’d be a new equilibrium for newspaper profitability. They wouldn’t be as wildly profitable as in the past, but they still earn a nice amount. Enough to sustain their news organizations.

When I mentioned this to a managing editor at the Wall Street Journal he said there was a word for that type of thinking, “wishful.” He dismissed the notion. Similarly a SVP at MTVN dismissed the idea that the web will generate enough revenue to sustain current capacity content creation.

He like many others, my professor included, seem to think it’s near impossible to make money off the web.

Yet.

My professor talks about up start 19 years old bloggers making money. And the MTV fellow is proposing making big bucks from web ads.

But my prof also points out that this is not content creation. This is reusing original material.

So is there a viable economic model out there in the Internet for professional, original, material?

If so, please show me.