CES 2012, Here Comes Syncbak

CES 2012 is just around the corner. As is often the case this time of year, I find myself thinking back to CES 2000, my first. That was the year I launched TitanTV.com, a short 9 weeks after it was born on my kitchen table. Our booth was right next door to another company launch that year, TiVo. Needless to say, their booth was a little larger than ours. Still, our t-shirt line was just as long as their stuffed TiVo thing-a-ma-jigger line.

At the time I was absolutely certain about two things. First, I was convinced that consumers needed a single point of navigation for all their entertainment needs. Second, as cool as TiVo was, it seemed to me a technology which would very quickly become obsolete. Even in the nascent days of the Internet, it was clear to me that a consumer would eventually never actually come into contact with their digital assets. With offerings like Hulu, Netflix and the emerging SilverLight, that prediction appears spot on. Not sure where TiVo goes from here…

I also learned over time it is more important to deliver content than it is to simply show someone what’s on. Therein lies the opportunity for over-the-top. Syncbak, while tiny and mighty, has figured out one thing very well. That is, search is a two way street. While everyone else, including Google, has focused on making it easy for consumers to search for content, we’ve focused our efforts on making it easy for content to search for consumers.

Think about it. For OTT to really become OTT, companies need to look more like Match.com and less like Google, Hulu and others. Syncbak, I think, does that. I’m excited to start unveiling that vision at CES 2012.

If you’ll be there, stop by our Syncbak booth or set up a meeting with us by emailing info@syncbak.com.

Is the success of Internet Television predicated on the demise of cable TV?

In a word? No. Yes. Well, kinda, sorta, maybe…

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting on a luncheon keynote panel about the future of television with co-panelists: John Hane, a top notch regulatory & copyright attorney, Tara Mantra, SVP at TiVo, and Professor Greenwald, Ph.D. from Columbia University. While the topic was the future of television, the undercurrent, from an investor point of view, was to discern whether or not to be bullish on cable.

Cablevision, DISH, Charter, DirecTV, Mediacom, and, yes Comcast, will be providing content to you for many years to come. They aren’t going anywhere. In fact, they’ve committed to bringing you TV Everywhere.

But, if cable is going to thrive for the foreseeable future, that means internet television can’t possibly make it, right?

In a word? Wrong.

Take a moment to connect the dots. How many devices capable of reaching the internet do you use on a daily basis? Likely the answer is at least two, but perhaps three or more. Every day you impact your life with swipes and clicks. Right this moment you can use your smart phone to entertain yourself…likely for hours. Has that caused you to cut the cord? Not likely….at least not yet.

My job, as I see it, isn’t to think about ways for you to cut the cord. My job is to build a platform that brings you the promise of 1:1 television.  Whether or not you cut the cord is entirely up to you. Done right, you’ll watch internet TV whether you subscribe to cable or not.

A few truths to consider…

Advertisers want to reach you, regardless of what you are watching.

None of the abovementioned companies from Cable Town to the Gateway City have anything close to a monopoly on local ad dollars. Not even Google, LivingSocial, Facebook or Groupon can make that claim. Advertisers vote with how they allocate their budgets. How they vote is about to change. When it comes to internet TV, they want in. The guys mentioned earlier in this paragraph don’t have the means to take local advertisers there…at least not yet.

For our part, we’ve stacked the deck. Our partners in all of this have been calling on the local advertiser for 40, maybe 50 years. Syncbak.TV, at launch, will bring you the live and on-demand content, to the more devices, and from anyplace as close to free as humanly possible.

Content is created to be watched over and over and over and over and over…

Buried deep within the DNA of any content creator is to create something that appeals to as many people as possible and to have those people want to watch that creation over and over. It is in the content creators best interest to partner with as many players as possible to get their content seen as much as possible at the highest possible return on investment possible.

Content lives forever. If it is relevant to you, because of internet TV, it’ll eventually find you. This paradigm shift will happen with or without the blessing of the cable-powers-that-be.

When does it (cable as we know it) come to an end?

Did cable kill broadcast TV? No. Did satellite kill cable TV or broadcast TV? No, and no.

What will happen is that cable will soon learn that TV Everywhere is not for everyone. Given that viewing can go from roughly 3 hours per day in the living room to 10+ hours of viewing regardless of time, device or place, the disruptors will get the attention of Cable Town.

My daughters, 21 and 24 years old, are split. One subscribes. The other is 100% FREE over-the-air, plus Hulu, Netflix and etc. My son is 10. Will he ever subscribe to cable, at least cable as we know it today? Not likely.

TV in the future, your TV, will be the result of a collision between broadcast television, advertising, content and the internet. Does that collision care whether or not you cut the cord?

In a word? Hardly.

Steve Jobs: Vision

My staff asked me to blog about the passing of Steve Jobs and what it means to me. I have to admit, considering the importance of the man and his contributions to the world, I am not sure I can write anything that comes even close to doing justice as a memoriam. So, while reluctant, I will try.

As a young tech guy in the late 80s and early 90s, Steve Jobs was the guy you aspired to be like. Why? Simple. He had vision. He was a visionary. Whether we knew it at the time or not, Steve Jobs gave many of us the courage to go after our vision, to realize that to succeed you have to risk failing. He also made us realize that failure is not the end of the road; it is a mere step along the way to success, sometimes stratospheric success.

To a job well done!

5 Ways I Want Internet Television to Impact My Life

1. I’ll get the NFL on any device, in any place.

I am a brand new Vikings fan. Mark my word, in the next 10 years, fans will become used to hearing, “Touchdown. Christian Ponder to Allen Reisner.” Important as the Vikings v. Chargers game was to me yesterday, it paled in comparison to watching my ten-year-old son play in his first ever tackle game.

To see the Vikings in real-time, I shouldn’t have had to buy a Slingbox. As great an invention as it was in its day, it never got beyond being clunky and it never will. The NFL will figure out a way to reach their viewers without too many, if any middlemen. It’ll happen.

2. Oops, American Idol started 27 minutes ago…

We are an American Idol family. Try as we might, with all that is going on, getting situated in the family room on time for each and every episode is hard.

True, a DVR can handle that, but do I really need a TiVo? No. Networks, and their local affiliates, will get together on this and offer you TiVo without TiVo functionality. It won’t matter if you use cable, satellite, over-the-air or OTT.

3. Iowa Hawkeye Wrestling on my smart phone from Happy Valley, Pennsylvania.

My son in-law, Jay Borschel, won the NCAA Wrestling Championship in 2010 with a perfect 37 – 0 record. He might just be the best ever college wrestler at 174 pounds. Because it didn’t make much sense to travel to the east coast to watch him pin a kid in 6 seconds, we’d often times go to great lengths to find a stream to watch or listen from home. To say that was hard to do would be an understatement.

Niche sports will make their way over-the-top of the Internet and sports that may seem niche to you or I, will find an audience worldwide.

4.  The newscast I see will be packaged up just for me.

Local TV news is big business. Big. In many cases it is the only way for a local advertiser to reach you. At our house we switch between KWWL (NBC) and KGAN (CBS). The local FOX channel is put together by CBS. They each have their strengths that range from having the best on-air talent to, the best weather, to the best local sports coverage. It really comes down to whom has the remote in their hands when the news comes on.

My OTT news cast in the future will be a mashup of my favorite anchors, personalized weather, sports by category / location and human interest stories all derived from my likes and dislikes. It’ll be available to me on any device, from any place, at any time.

5. Instead of 500 channels, I will only have one; mine.

Why not? It’ll happen.

So now I ask you, how would you like to see internet TV impact your life?