The series examines the digital transformation of the media and entertainment industries through a series of in depth interviews with practitioners, executives, and analysts.
But what does digital transformation actually mean?
It’s a fair question, because digital transformation is a phrase you’ve likely been seeing appear all over the place, whether it’s in relation to industry sectors such as retail, transportation, and finance, or, as would be the case for most readers of this website, to legacy media organizations.
A top tech site defines digital transformation this way:
“The idea is to use technology not just to replicate an existing service in a digital form, but to use technology to transform that service into something significantly better….but it's not just about the technology: changing business processes and corporate culture are just as vital to the success of these initiatives.”
It’s a fair question, because digital transformation is a phrase you’ve likely been seeing appear all over the place, whether it’s in relation to industry sectors such as retail, transportation, and finance, or, as would be the case for most readers of this website, to legacy media organizations.
A top tech site defines digital transformation this way:
“The idea is to use technology not just to replicate an existing service in a digital form, but to use technology to transform that service into something significantly better….but it's not just about the technology: changing business processes and corporate culture are just as vital to the success of these initiatives.”
Just as it wasn’t hotels having websites, but the power and utility of an aggregating, reviews-based platform like TripAdvisor that permanently altered the landscape for the hospitality industry, producers and creatives have seen new links in the value chain of the media and entertainment industries emerge. And with such shifts come new opportunities, but also new competitors and often the need for new approaches to one’s business.
As a quick guide to the Now & Next podcast I've assembled this list of some of the most essential things learned from the conversations with people from companies ranging from YouTube to the user-generated content writing site Wattpad.
Takeaway #1: You can now build a media business by going direct to consumer
Episode 01: Inside YouTube: Beyond Dogs on Skateboards and Viral Videos
In the inaugural episode we learned about the new business opportunities offered by YouTube, for both producers and individual creators, with guest Mark Swierszcz, head of Toronto’s YouTube Space. Among other things we learned about Skyship Entertainment, the company behind the entirely YouTube-based kids’ channel Super Simple Songs that has over 11 billion views.
“Once the ecosystem for content started to change and kids programming became a little bit more on demand through DVDs and through collections of kids content that you take with you…I think producers like Skyship started to see, “Well look, we could completely run our business and skip the whole distribution problem, or distribution challenge on tradition broadcast television, go directly to YouTube”. They've figured it out and they've got a built in global audience and they're not really concerned about the whole distribution conundrum that the traditional Canadian system maybe 10, 20 years ago had.”
- Mark Swierszcz, Head of Toronto’s YouTube Space
Episode 02: The Audio Renaissance
The second episode focused on a part of the media industry that historically had little overlap with TV & film: Audio.
Guests Steve Pratt & Dan Misener of the podcasting company Pacific Content helped us understand how and why there’s been not just a boom in audio production thanks to podcasting, but how a new relationship exists between the things first heard on earbuds and things seen on screens, as witnessed in such podcast to TV success stories as Dirty John.
“If you’re looking for original IP that you might license or auction for a movie or for a television series, radio and audio is a relatively low-cost way to experiment and try new ideas. And I have seen that up close and personal just in the attendance of industry events over the past couple of years.”
- Dan Misener, Pacific Content
“Podcasting’s wide open and I think, the same way as the rest of the internet, you can get some really powerful niches being built where you can be the best show about a particular niche that would never, ever make it on radio and you can find a huge, passionate, loyal audience precisely because it’s like nothing that’s ever existed on radio before.”
- Steve Pratt, Pacific Content
Takeaway #3: Data can take on the industry’s 90% failure rate
Episode 03: Wattpad: Leveraging a billion points of data per day
Episode 3 takes on what is perhaps the Achilles heel of the entertainment industry: About 90% of shows fail. Recently deceased Oscar-winning screenwriter and author of the bestselling book ‘Adventures In The Screen Trade’ William Goldman reduced Hollywood’s astonishingly high failure rate to just 3 words: ‘Nobody knows anything’.
But Wattpad, the online writing platform that generates a billion points of data per day from its millions of readers and writers, thinks they can user their data to improve the odds, and have plenty of examples to point to. Take The Kissing Booth,for example. It started out as a story written by a teenage girl on Wattpad, and in 2018 was one of the most watched shows on Netflix.
“We’re really diving into data that nobody else has access to, which does give us that unique view of how stories are growing, how genres are changing, how writers are writing. And that’s a very important way we look at data…We can use data to better predict success…whether it’s a 90% overall fail rate or 80% of shows that can’t make year two, that audience is going to make the difference, and it is going to make it easier for us to better see our chance of success.”
- Aron Levitz, Head, Wattpad Studios
Takeaway #4: Blockchain can unlock new value with one-of-a-kind digital assets
Episode 04: Cryptokitties: The cats that reintroduced value to digital assets …and broke part of the blockchain
This episode looks at internet economics, through the lens of, believe it or not, digital cats.
The democratization brought about by digital technologies came with great promise. Anyone could do anything and reach anyone. And usually at a minimal cost. But as we’ve come to know that comes with an upside and also a downside. At the same time we’ve gone from the free for all of the early days of the internet to a highly centralized internet dominated by a handful of a companies.
And so there have been new winners and losers over the past 20 years or so since most of us were signing up for our first email addresses. The media and entertainment industries are among those that are still working through the turbulence.
Enter blockchain technologies. They make possible a future of decentralization, which of course comes with much complexity and many, many unknowns.
But could people shelling out $140,000 for a digital cat be a bellwether for the future? Bryce Bladon, one of the founders of Cryptokitties, thinks so. Their individually distinct digital cats became so popular upon release that they crashed a part of the blockchain, thinks so.
"There can be just one of a digital asset. This asset can actually belong to someone. There is a record of who made this asset, where it came from, who it belongs to, who has owned it."
- Bryce Bladon, Co-founder, Cryptokitties
Takeaway #5: Streaming means competing globally -- and also financing globally
Episode 05: Fear & Risk Taking in Kids’ TV
How can producers of kids’ content differentiate themselves in a newly global and therefore more competitive marketplace? In episode 5 I talked to JJ Johnson of Sinking Ship Entertainment to find out how his company, started with a few friends from Ryerson, now has shows on in over 100 countries around the world. Sinking Ship is the producer of, among other things, Annedroids, the longest running show on Amazon Kids.
What’s worked for JJ and the team at Sinking Ship is expanding their thinking to the global level. Including financing.
“ I think Canada, or at least how we've always looked at Canada, should always be a wonderful home base and a place where you can take some risks and get a piece of the pie, but it should never be the whole pie. We're not competing just in Canada. We're competing globally, and we should finance globally. If that means that you need to change your strategies, in terms of what you're producing, to attract a global audience, and if that means that you need to maybe make some riskier content.”
- JJ Johnson, Sinking Ship Entertainment
Takeaway #6:
Skills for location-based entertainment are found across various industries & sectors
Episode 06: VR & AR: Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You
This episode digs into the integration of VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) into physical spaces, in an industry sector abbreviated as LBE, which stands for location-based entertainment.
We may not realize it but the cat ears we can put on our faces on Snapchat are an example of the mass market availability of AR. And VR is widely available through gaming boxes played at home and at the VR arcades that have popped up across the country over the past few years.
Some major new developments in LBE in Canada include strategic moves from Cineplex, Canada’s largest theatrical chain. In addition to a partnership that has brought a VR experience based on the popular Ghostbusters franchise to locations in Toronto and Edmonton.
Cineplex recently became an investor in Seattle company VR Studios. The result will be several dozen VR arcades installed in their cinema properties across the country, which means new opportunities for content producers for the immersive, in person experiences.
Our guest for this episode, Alexis Macklin, is a San Francisco-based analyst on the VR & AR industries. She points out that the talent pool for LBE is unique, coming from both the traditional and digital corners of the industry.
“If you're doing more of a location based experience, you may need people with theatre backgrounds to be able to think about setting up the set, then building props and thinking about how people would go about the space. You definitely need gaming background for those game engines, but you would also need the cinematography background as well to know how to best bring up a shot, especially for those VR movies. When we look to the future, we'll definitely need developers that are more of a mix between the cinematic Hollywood background and the gaming background, and visual effects as well.”
Note: A version of this post originally appeared on Trends.
This episode digs into the integration of VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) into physical spaces, in an industry sector abbreviated as LBE, which stands for location-based entertainment.
We may not realize it but the cat ears we can put on our faces on Snapchat are an example of the mass market availability of AR. And VR is widely available through gaming boxes played at home and at the VR arcades that have popped up across the country over the past few years.
Some major new developments in LBE in Canada include strategic moves from Cineplex, Canada’s largest theatrical chain. In addition to a partnership that has brought a VR experience based on the popular Ghostbusters franchise to locations in Toronto and Edmonton.
Cineplex recently became an investor in Seattle company VR Studios. The result will be several dozen VR arcades installed in their cinema properties across the country, which means new opportunities for content producers for the immersive, in person experiences.
Our guest for this episode, Alexis Macklin, is a San Francisco-based analyst on the VR & AR industries. She points out that the talent pool for LBE is unique, coming from both the traditional and digital corners of the industry.
“If you're doing more of a location based experience, you may need people with theatre backgrounds to be able to think about setting up the set, then building props and thinking about how people would go about the space. You definitely need gaming background for those game engines, but you would also need the cinematography background as well to know how to best bring up a shot, especially for those VR movies. When we look to the future, we'll definitely need developers that are more of a mix between the cinematic Hollywood background and the gaming background, and visual effects as well.”
- Alexis Macklin, Analyst, Greenlight Insights
Note: A version of this post originally appeared on Trends.