Digital Convergence and the Future of Entertainment - DaveTV and others
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Would you pay to watch programs from a cable company named DaveTV? Before you answer, you need to know that this is no ordinary cable company. The Atlanta-based company plans to offer more than 100 channels featuring 100,000 hours of licensed programming. For you backyard grilling buffs, the “bbq” channel alone will make up more than 1000 hours of that programming.
This isn’t simply fluff fare, either; one of the programs features Bill Eason, a North Carolina cook, delivering what he describes as an “all-day, whole hog class edited down to 45 minutes on how to find, select, prepare and serve whole hog from the man who cooks several hundred per year.” North Carolinians take their barbeque very seriously; it’s a completely different style from your typical Texas variation, and could be quite eye-opening for folks used to the hot, red, spicy sauce.
The catch is that, to begin with, you’ll only be able to view DaveTV on your computer. Dave is not the name of the CEO; it stands for Distributed Audio Video Entertainment. Users will be able to download and view programs from DaveTV’s copious offerings. With the $200 set-top box that the company plans to make available in the future, users will also be able to play downloads on their televisions.
Nor is DaveTV the only one getting into this space. In Massachusetts, Brightcove Networks plans to offer video content for consumers, without the need to resort to a set-top box. Users simply link their TVs to one of the newer computers that run Microsoft Windows Media Center software. Like DaveTV, the company will provide its customers with very diverse programming. Suppliers will include everyone from your standard TV producers to video bloggers to video-on-demand startups.
Brightcove’s CEO, Jeremy Allaire, summed up the sentiments of many of these Internet television startups recently in an Associated Press article. “I deeply believe that over the next several years it will be this blend of very popular shows to kind of middle-of-the-road, down to you-happen-to-be-a-fly-fishing-guy, and you watch fly fishing videos made by some guy in Kansas, and you’re paying him $10 to see it,” he said. By the way, if Allaire’s name sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because he’s the former chief technical officer of Macromedia –- a company that understood graphics and the Internet so well that it was recently purchased by its biggest rival, Adobe.
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