newcritics

Based on this report from metrics company comScore, the TV Strike was good for the Internet Video business. US Internet viewers watched more than 10 Billion videos during December 2007, a time that TV was filled with, how shall I put this nicely? — crap.

Online viewers watched an average of 3.4 hours (203 minutes) of online video during the month,representing a 34-percent gain since the beginning of 2007. Thee average online video duration was 2.8 minutes and The average online video viewer consumed 72 videos.

(And hey, that doesn’t even include those videos from sites we’re too polite to mention in public.)

Today I spoke with Andrew Lipsman Senior Analyst, comScore, Inc. regarding these stats for an upcoming talk I’m doing at TIMA in Raleigh next week. One thing he noted that isn’t in the press release is that viewing went up over 7% from November to December, and 4% of that was in YouTube alone. (Silicon Alley Insider did a nice analysis of the YouTube business model in August. It’s left as an exercise for the reader to replace 1.7B views with 3.3B views on the top line).

One thing Andrew and I discussed was that when spikes in usage occur, say, in ecommerce during the Christmas season, the curve steps up a bit, and never goes back to the original level. Now, people have been watching TV for more than 50 years, so that’s a pretty strong habit, and once the writers start writing and the IV drip of regular TV heroin gets going again, people will go flocking back.

But, I suspect that online video viewing will also be a part of people’s new habit and we’ll see more interest both from the content viewing side, the content creation site, and even the marketers who noticed - “hey, I can get pretty good cost-per-thousand on some pretty good content.”

The networks are still challenged to make this whole TV business work, comp for writers or not…More math that doesn’t work from Diane Mermigas at Mediapost:

The only math that still doesn’t make sense on the broadcast network side is resuming a business model that consistently renders an 80%-plus new series failure rate and deficit financing estimated at $3 million per episode for scripted drama and as much as $2 million for comedy episodes.

Even more important, I wonder how many writers are thinking, “Well, I can either pray my show gets picked up, and the pilot produced for $2MM, and then I can get a few cents everytime it shows on the net, OR, I can produce my own content and get all the profit.” Now, that’s not an easy road, but it certainly is not out of the question.
What did you watch while the strike was on? Personally, I got my news from Goodnight Burbank.