All Things Digital

When last we checked in with NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, he was merrily trashing Steve Jobs and Apple.

What a difference a three-month-long writers’ strike in Hollywood makes.

Yesterday, in an interview in the Financial Times, Zucker said: “We’ve said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple,” he said. “We’re great fans of Steve Jobs.”

Hmmmmm.

It was only at the end of last October when Zucker (pictured here) was slapping the digital media business, and especially Apple, in an interview with New Yorker writer Ken Auletta at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School.

In it, Zucker blamed Apple for ruining the music business.

To be fair, Zucker did add “in terms of pricing” to the idea that Apple was the villain, noting that NBCU only had $15 million in revenue for its video fare on iTunes in its last year (a service it had just pulled off of to do its own thing).

He wanted NBCU to have the ability to raise prices on some shows it was selling to get better returns, even though Apple’s Steve Jobs has stuck to his guns on keeping pricing lower.

The entertainment industry, long used to controlling all the action, has long hated this, of course, since Apple’s iPod device has essentially been the only one widely embraced by consumers.

“We don’t want to replace the dollars we were making in the analog world with pennies on the digital side,” said Zucker, in what is admittedly a very good metaphor for the fast-changing situation for old media caught in the new media tsunami.

But then he stepped right into it by suggesting Apple should pay back media companies like his. “Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content and made a lot of money,” he said.

At the time, I noted: “That’s sort of like Britney Spears asking the tabloids to hand over a big bag of Benjamins for making such bank covering her riveting high jinks and crotch emergencies. Frankly, she has a better argument than Zucker.”

Nonetheless, NBC has been fast-forward on its efforts with its Hulu video sharing site, a joint venture with News Corp. (owner of this site).

And, quite correctly, in the FT piece, Zucker noted that the strike has spurred him to begin cutting back on some old television traditions, like the pilot season and the once-glamorous upfront presentations to impress advertisers.

“Things like that are all vestiges of an era that’s gone by and won’t return,” said Zucker. “I think there were a tremendous number of inefficiencies in Hollywood and it often takes a seismic event to change them, and I think that’s what’s happened here.”

Seismic, indeed.

It seems the media industry across the pond is taking its cue from Hulu, the fledgling U.S. online video effort from NBC Universal and News Corp., at offering consumers TV content online in better and more flexible ways.

Three of the main British TV networks–the BBC, ITV and Channel 4–are planning a joint on-demand service, so consumers can see professional video programming of all kinds in one place.

It’s another step in the right direction by media giants for consumers–well, in Britain, at least.

Such a move is akin to all four U.S. majors (CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox) joining together in a helpful service. But don’t hold your breath on that happening anytime soon.

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What, oh what, can we say about the latest inane quote from yet another Hollywood mogul about Apple’s Steve Jobs and his hugely popular iTunes and iPod products.

The latest piece of hoo-ha comes from former Disney CEO Michael Eisner (pictured below), pointing a finger at Apple as the real villain in the ongoing strike between the Writers Guild of America and Hollywood entertainment behemoths

At fault? Steve Jobs, of course!

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So when, if ever, will there be a truly bona fide Internet hit?

And please, pretty please, it just can’t be “lonelygirl15″ (pictured below) and some clever music videos.

The lack of lasting and profitable professional content online is once again in sharp relief with the writers’ strike now taking place in Hollywood.

In a Wall Street Journal piece yesterday on the struggle between the Writers Guild of America and entertainment studios, Ken Hertz, a Los Angeles lawyer who has worked on digital music issues, made an interesting observation:

If anything, the strike could create an opportunity for the online world to step up and prove its value to the guild. A strike could in a strange way damage the studios by creating online competitors who come forward to offer the union writers a new model that no one would have otherwise had the time or effort to conceive of.”

If only.

Because, while the main point of contention between the two sides is how to split future revenues from digital distribution, I am not sure exactly when it will become more than the middling revenue (and not much income) online content generates today, which is more like splitting up a tip jar at Starbucks than raking in big bags of dough from some Hollywood blockbuster.

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In case you missed them, check out these stories from last week:

Kara Visits VC Peter Thiel: A video interview with the first investor in Facebook (pictured here), who also sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion.

Thiel’s take: Web 2.0 is underhyped!

Writers’ Strike!: The battle is on in Hollywood, as writers and studios fight over DVD fees split, but there is also wrangling over potential profits from new media efforts.

While that income is still pretty small, it’s a canard that producers are trying to insist that they can’t fork over better percentages because the market needs room to grow. Writers deserve their fair share as the online business gets bigger over the next decade.

Maka-Maka Melee?: Google took a solid shot at Facebook with its new OpenSocial offering, which lets anyone become a Facebook! The signing of MySpace at the end of the week was another slap, of course.

But this week Facebook fires back with its SocialAds offering to compete in the online ad game, where Google rules.

Hulu Doesn’t Stink: I and many others were surprised how good an experience the new online video joint venture from NBC Universal and News Corp. is so far.

While it is certainly not perfect (no downloading, limits on hit shows), it is a clean, easy-to-use service that gives users a lot of ability to control content and a quantum leap in attitude from Hollywood pooh-bahs.

Maybe they could become that enlightened when it comes to ending the writers’ strike.

Just as NBC Universal’s Hulu online video-sharing site debuted yesterday to decent reviews, including by BoomTown here, its CEO Jeff Zucker managed to fall all over himself to diss the digital media business.

Hooray for Hollywood!

In an interview with writer (and BoomTown friend!) Ken Auletta at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School, the voluble Zucker (pictured here) blamed Apple for ruining the music business.

Not the shortsighted music companies that foisted crappy albums, onerous distribution methods and too-high prices on the consuming public. But Apple, which, of course, had essentially launched the digital music business for paid downloads.

To be fair, Zucker did add “in terms of pricing” to the idea that Apple was the, sorry, spoiler, noting that NBCU only had $15 million in revenue for its video fare on iTunes in its last year (a deal it recently pulled out of, with plans to create its own service).

Zucker said NBCU only wanted to raise prices on some shows it was selling to get better returns, even though Apple’s Steve Jobs has stuck to his guns on keeping pricing lower.

That has driven the entertainment industry nuts, since the iPod device has essentially been the only one widely embraced by consumers.

“We don’t want to replace the dollars we were making in the analog world with pennies on the digital side,” said Zucker, in a sound bite that his PR person doubtlessly spent all night crafting (and it’s choice!).

More astonishing, he even seemed to ask for a vig from sales of the hugely popular iPod device, since “Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content and made a lot of money.”

Oh my. That’s sort of like Britney Spears asking the tabloids to hand over a big bag of Benjamins for making such bank covering her riveting high jinks and crotch emergencies. Frankly, she has a better argument than Zucker.

In fact, the NBCU honcho has been in a bit of a rant of late, saying at an antipiracy summit hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently that the government must act as if we were in a shock-and-awe war from copyright thieves.

He even asked for intellectual-property enforcement bureaus run by the Feds and also federal monies for state and local governments to investigate dangerous teen CD ripping.

“We need, across the board, to move IP enforcement up the agenda of the federal government,” said Zucker, noting the mission was “absolutely critical to our economic prosperity.”

Although I would agree piracy is an important issue, here’s what is most critical: That Zucker leans more to the mindset that took baby steps in creating Hulu as more of a distributed operation than a command-and-control style that Hollywood has favored so far, despite a complete rejection by consumers.

Piracy and a whole lot more will be assuaged when entertainment companies stop fighting a trend, which is that consumers have taken control and they are not handing power back.

Not everything about Hulu is great–no downloads, limiting hit shows’ availability, not enough social-interaction tools and, eeeek in the Age of YouTube, no user-generated content section.

Still, there is much Hulu gets right, especially in its easy-to-use embedding capability and seeming willingness to let consumers decide what clips they want.

Thus, Zucker’s words made me worry he had some sort of multiple-personality disorder when I read them yesterday, because he needn’t have picked such a public fight with the digital media’s most potent symbol just over his pique over price.

In the antipiracy speech, Zucker joked: “Our business models today are changing faster than a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit gets posted on YouTube.”

You got that right, Jeff. Now try and pay attention to yourself.

OK, I will admit, I was busy sharpening up the knives at BoomTown HQ to prepare for the debut of Hulu this week.

Let’s just say that I have been dubious that two lumbering media companies–in this case, News Corp. (owner of this site!) and NBC Universal–could make more than a mishmash of premium video, especially given Hollywood’s glacial and cloddish approach to the Web.

Not so with regard to Hulu, whose name is still arguably as goofy as ever.

From a demo (here are some screen shots of pages) I was given Friday by Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, the boyish former Amazon exec who seems to have learned to swim well with the Hollywood sharks, I am impressed thus far.

I will, of course, reserve judgment until I get to test-drive it for a while, but in concept and tone and aims–that is, more open than I ever expected the service to be–it is off to a good start. (Actual reviews of these sites I will leave to Walt Mossberg.)

By way of background, Hulu was announced to much fanfare and much more dubiousness, given that joint ventures between media behemoths tend to be like two elephants dancing gracefully. That is, not.

Even within the companies, there was much pooh-poohing of the idea, with some divisions silently vowing noncooperation, even though bosses–like NBCU’s Jeff Zucker and News Corp.’s Peter Chernin–backed it strongly.

In addition, there are a plethora of competing efforts to digitally distribute premium content, of all different types, including the much-hyped Joost, Veoh, Babelgum and many others. Major networks are also offering streamed shows.

Let’s just say, it’s crowded and confusing out there, beyond the obvious news that consumers seem to like YouTube’s short user-generated videos and sampling all those tasty stolen clips from TV shows and movies. (Keep in mind, NBC pulled its channel off YouTube recently and still has no licensing deal with the Google-owned site.)

So how much premium content people are willing to consume in a legal setting–given all the restrictions and lack of ability to access and manipulate great content–is still unclear.

But it is a market major media companies need to wade into and fast, given another clear trend: most media will become digital in the next decade, desperately needing the much wider distribution only the Web can provide.

Enter Hulu, a venture that is approaching the market with a free, ad-supported browser product, offering premium video content, including TV shows, clips and a small handful of movies.

“We hope to grow over time in terms of content and functionality,” said Kilar (pictured here). “We obviously have to respond to the consumer from day one.”

Actually, there will not be many consumers quite yet. The site will not come out of private beta for some months, although its offerings will be available on portals, such as AOL, this week.

Here are some highlights and info:

• There will be no user-generated video. Sigh.
• There will be no download of material. Whine.
• Videos can be embedded in any Web site and shared using email. In the niftiest feature, you can cut your own clip.
• The player is one created by Hulu, using Adobe technology. Very nice.
• Content on Hulu, which is pretty good to start, is mostly made up of TV shows from Fox and NBC, and more than 15 cable channels including Bravo, E!, FX, SciFi, Sundance and USA.
• The site has most of the prime-time hits from FOX and NBC, including “Heroes,” “30 Rock” and “The Simpsons.” But I prefer the oldies like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Lost in Space” and “Kojak.”
• Movies–there are only under a dozen–will come from Fox and Universal, as well as from Sony and MGM (who will also provide TV fare). More movies please!
• TV shows will become available after they have aired on regular broadcast television. The new ones will only be the last five episodes, which is not a good thing and should be changed.
• Other cool tools: You can leave reviews and vote shows up and down; you can pop out a video from a window; you can darken the rest of the page, for better viewing.
• Advertising varies: sometimes in the video, sometimes overlaid on top or sometimes nearby. Standard, and it would be nice to see some innovation here.
• Major initial advertisers are Cisco, Intel and a bunch of car companies (Toyota, Nissan and General Motors). Cisco?
• Major portal partners include: AOL, MSN, MySpace, Yahoo and Comcast’s Fancast.

Along with the private beta rollout, Hulu also announced confirmation of a well-known $100 million investment by Providence Equity Partners for the joint venture.

There are, of course, a lot of open questions, such as how costly all these media rights are and how to make advertising pay for them. And it is not clear consumers are willing to embrace yet another destination site.

But Hulu’s willingness to send its content far and wide from the get-go, with very little friction and using easy tools to do so, is perhaps the most compelling aspect of its debut.

Finally, someone in Hollywood has realized that ubiquitous distribution, which is being driven by consumers’ desire to move their media anywhere they want, whenever they want, is the future.

Now if Hulu could just bring back “Arrested Development”–Steve Holt!–we could all be happy.

Here’s a bunch of screen shots of Hulu, the new premium video-sharing site and distribution play from NBC Universal and News Corp., debuting today in private beta and soon on major portals, such as AOL. (Here is a detailed post on Hulu’s debut.)

It’s unusually clean looking, but quite full of information, which is a good thing.

(Click on the images to make them bigger.)

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