A cautionary tale

I recall the early days of cable TV, when an eccentric advertising pitchman named Ted had a chance to complete with superstars like Shelley Duvall and the Big 3 networks.

To make CNN work Ted Turner entered into all kinds of distribution and retransmission schemes, from smaller local TV stations that couldn't afford their own newsgathering operation to airports and grocery stores. Ted understood that the new world order was going to be about who could do the best job of aggregating, normalizing, and redistributing a certain kind of data; in his case, national news video. No one else saw this as an opportunity; until the first Gulf War no one could believe that anyone would need more than an hours' worth of news a day.

Those others that got excited about the explosion of eyeballs; well, those whose focus was not quite as sharp found themselves, like Shelley (who is really a wonderful, accessible person, IMHO) with a great business plan but no enterprise to go forward with. Those like Ted - and later Larry and Sergey and Mark - who understood the importance of being the apex aggregator; well, those are the guys who we will all remember.

Digital sharecropping, indeed.

wow, nick! 2 great posts in one day -- you eat your Wheaties this morning? :)

Is anybody arguing that you can produce small numbers of "x" and compete with those who produce, or aggregate, large numbers of "x?" I thought the whole argument was that aggregating long tail items was what could compete with the head.

It doesn't sound like this guy is either aggregating, or producing in the quantity that would be relevant to the long tail concept.

Tom Slee's excellent critique of Anderson:

http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2007/03/the_long_tail_l.html

I think this film maker is making the mistake to think that because Amazon can sell it, he can make a movie with similar principles as big-budget feature: assistants, reels, scenarist, etc. Less, probably a half, a quarter--but a at a comparable scale.
Distribution was transformed because its costs changed in scale; a new demand appeared and was revealed, but still at a negligible scale. Remember that long tail is a logarithmic thing: go down one step, and you are a tenth of what you where a step higher.
What I encourage him to do is either to turn into a YouTube producer, and do everything himself--still though, but an increasing number of video platforms will help make it. Maybe the direction he should be looking for is to offer an interactive product, or have different version, different cuts: short, long, action, romance aspects of his story more developed; not just "Standard" & "Director's Cut", but plenty. He might increase his audience this way, with hardly more shootings and more cuts, but less decisions on what to ad and what to drop.

His last mistake could also be that you can be an independent producer in the same country as Hollywood--OK, I'm trolling: the last ten good films I've seen were Sundance worthy (i.e. not Long Tail?)

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