I was in NY for most of the week.  Everytime I walked past a newstand or street vendor it disturbed me to no end that they wore their own clothing. In particularly , their own T-Shirts. Why ?

Because it made absolutely no sense to me that some entrepreneur had not done a deal that required the employees of these businesses to wear branded T Shirts.

Dexter was everywhere in NY promoting the premiere of the show. Except on these T Shirts.  How much would a hot dog vendor charge to wear a Dexter T Shirt ? A T Shirt promoting any product or brand ?

Would some smart person PLEASE find out if there are any ownership groups of street vendors and newstands and work out a deal with them ?

Unless there is some law I dont know about, there must be  a shot for someone to make some good money in major cities. Please do it so I feel better.

TV Everywhere is a concept put out by TV distributors that basically says that if you pay for cable or satellite, you should be able to watch the content you want, where you want. Everywhere. To some people this is not a good idea.  As is always the case,  many people think tv programming should be widely available for free on the internet.  Of course the content is never free. Someone has to pay to create it and we purchasers of cable and satellite services pay the subscription fees that pay the content companies and allow them to create all that content. Someone always must pay for free. Its unfortunate that there are some incredibly greedy people who think their entertainment needs should be subsidized.  We aren’t talking healthcare, we are talking The Simpsons.  No one in the country has the right for their Simpsons to be subsidized.

Those of us who pay for cable and/or satellite really shouldn’t care if there are people who want to “cut the cord” and discontinue paying for their programming services.  Those of us who pay our bills to cable and satellite should be all over TV Everywhere because it has the potential to be a HUGE VALUE ADD . In fact, if you pay money to your cable or satellite tv provider, you should be demanding TV Everywhere be implemented quickly in your neighborhood.

Let me ask you a question. Is there any bigger hassle than trying to get the content you want to watch on to the device you want to watch it on ?  Try getting last nights episode of your favorite show on to your ITouch or laptop to watch on the train or plane.  You cant do it unless you want to go through a huge hassle  that is not worth it. Try streaming a live feed to a mobile device. Huge Hassle.

Back in the day it was ok to be forced to be tethered to our PCs in order to watch content. Watching on our PC was an incremental convenience we didnt have before. Being limited to watching on a PC was acceptable.  No longer.

The true value of TV Everywhere is not that our TV distributors will let us watch the shows we already pay for on our PC.  It’s a given that they will. The true value of ‘TV Everywhere is that they will take all the hassles out of enabling us to watch TV …..everywhere.

I want Comcast, DirecTV, Dish, Charter, etc to take the responsibility of making it easy for me to put the content I pay for on any device I want to watch it on. Ipod, Itouch, Zune, Laptop, whatever device I own that can play video,  I want my provider to make it easy to happen. Now.

I want to be able to easily copy my favorite shows from my DVR to a flash drive and watch those shows from my laptop on the airplane.  I want you to be able see my Itouch on the Wifi Network in my house and make it ok to move shows on to it. Then I can take it to the gym and catch up on my shows while I work out. I dont care if you do like Rhapsody does for music subscriptions and make sure that Im current on my bill with you. That is fair.  But its your job to make sure that any content I buy from you can be moved to any device I want to watch it on.

I recognize that its a lot of software , a lot of work, a lot of investment and not necessarily easy. That’s your problem.

I want my TV Everywhere, and I want it now !

Just read a great article at the Neiman Journalism Lab site about Google’s plans to help the content industry.  In a nutshell the concept is to utilize Google’s Checkout, their payment system, to enable publishers of news and other premium content to both sell their content as part of subscriptions and/or via micropayments.  What caught my interest was the concept of allowing multiple publishers to work together to offer subscriptions or premium content together.

Could Google convince Newscorp and say the New York Times Company to work together to offer a “super subscription” to their publications online and then divvy up the proceeds on a pre agreed basis, much as they do with advertisers and site publishers ?

Maybe.

It would take a lot of work and a lot of convincing and negotiating to get it right.  Then , even if  you could get these cats and dogs to finally live in harmony , the question would arise as to whether or not Google Checkout has enough users.  RIght now they don’t. Which would mean most users would have to sign up for CheckOut.  Would people go through the process of signing up for Google Checkout in order to participate in these “SuperPublication Subscriptions” ? .

I dont think they would. In fact, while its a great idea on Google’s part, I think Google Checkout has more to gain than the publishers.

That said, this same approach could be a digital media nirvana to Amazon and its users.

Amazon has pretty much everyone’s credit card.  They have a growing user base for Kindle.They already sell digital video downloads and rentals, as well as music.  They even sell good old fashion magazine and newspaper subscriptions.

They have the ability to create  the path of least resistance for users to purchase and consume digital media.

I thought it was a good idea for media conglomerates to package all their digital assets into subscription offers.  Its a far better idea for a marketer like Amazon to package cross company offerings into bigger and better packages.

While their Kindle revenue shares , IMHO, are far too beneficial to Amazon, if they can work out a fairer revenue share for Kindle distribution, things could start to get very interesting.

Across all the digital assets that Amazon sells, the packaging and marketing options are endless.

Like the freemium approach ? ,Package the USA Today, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Investors Business Daily into a single price subscription for Kindle Delivery.  Price it a big discount for the first 3o days, with an automatic expansion to full subscriptions at a price that is a discount to their individual subscriptions. With Free Website Access included.

Want to make the bundle more attractive ? Bundle in a movie download. A book delivered to Kindle. Music. Software.

When they come up with even better ideas, Im sure the Publishers, Movie Distributors, Music Distributors, Software Vendors  will be more than happy to give you OEM prices if you commit to minimum quantities.

In fact, it could be even more interesting if Amazon took a page from Google and allowed Marketers to bid on digital content to include in subscriptions, product bundles or one off sales and then market and resell them.

Think of the ecosystem of content sales that could be created if Amazon (or EBay or Google) created a “wholesale” market for content where marketers could bid on 100 annual Wall Street Journal Subscriptions , 100 Downloads of the movie Wall Street, and 100 copies of the book “Random Walk Down Wall Street” to be sold as “Graduation Gifts for Business Majors”

Lame example, but you get the point.

In a world where the marginal cost of delivery of digital content is almost zero, why not throw it out there to be bid on so that great marketers can come up with great marketing and sales programs ?

Why not take those marketing and sales programs and offer them for sale right on Amazon ? They already have a wholesale sales program that  leverages their marketing, order processing and  physical fulfillment advantage for 3rd parties. Why not create the same type of program specifically for digital media and the same Amazon advantages, as well as  their cloud services to let anyone who wants to participate quickly create a digital media store?  This could be the ultimate market for digital media.

Its hard to find ways to sell content, particularly content in any one silo, be it news, sports, business, etc. When you start looking at how to package any  digital content into products and letting the market help set pricing, things could get very interesting very quickly.

Ebay allowed products to be aggregated and sold by anyone. Google allowed anyone to quickly and easy buy advertising and reach a huge audience.  Both based on an auction system. An Amazon Media Market could create a bourse  that leveraged the vast amounts of creativity out there to  find new ways and models to sell digital media.

It certainly could not make things any worse…

That is what the US Department of Labor is saying to everyone and anyone who wants to get their foot in the door.  You are SOL. There is no such thing as an unpaid intern anymore.  Our government at its finest.

This summer, in response to the changing sports media landscape, I wanted to create a “media pool” for the Mavs.  I wanted to assemble a group of unpaid interns that would acquire video, write game reports, track unique stats, do interviews, interact with fans, and then compile all of this incremental media and provide it free to any and every outlet we could think of. If a middle school newspaper or website wanted up to the minute Mavs reports, check. We had em.  Social networks ? All the content you need. Of course we would update our Mavs.com, mavswiki.com, friends.mavs.com websites and offer the content to any and every blogger out there.

The good news is that we would create fresh content and make it available in realtime. Call it “Event Driven” media.  The bad news is that there was no way we were going to be able to charge for it. Nor was there any assurances that we could generate enough traffic for the content that we could reasonably believe that we could earn any advertising revenue. In fact, it probably would have cost us more to try to sell advertising via ad networks (contracts, monitoring,  reports) than we could recoup in ad revenues.

Given we were lightyears from this being a self sustaining business, and that with the economy in the shitter we didnt have excess financial resources to subsidize this effort, I decided to use unapid interns.

One silver lining of a “great recession” that we are now in is that there are a lot of incredibly talented people without jobs, or who have lost their jobs. I didn’t care if they were 18 years old or 73 years old.  I thought we could assemble a talented group who would enjoy the internships and could also gain valuable experience to add to their resumes.  When the economy opened up, one of two things would hopefully occur.  We were generating revenue from this effort and we could hire them, or they had just built up their resumes and improved their chances of finding a paying job.

Makes sense right ?

Wrong. Enter the US Government.

This is what our HR person, who his supersmart and really knows his stuff came back with

“The law says that interns have to be paid unless they are perfoming work that is of no value to the organization; ie., helps them in some way but we get no benefit from their work.  Thus we would have to create work that is useless to us  if we choose not to pay them.  How silly is that? “

Silly indeed.  My response:

“So u r sayin g there r no legally unpaid interns in the state or country ?”

This is what he sent me, proving  that our government was truly ridiculous:

Unpaid Internships – Common but Illegal

A common, but frequently unreported labor violation is the use of unpaid interns in violation of minimum wage and possibly overtime laws.  The scenario is fairly typical: a company offers an opportunity to ‘break into the business’ in exchange for the intern working for free.  You see many examples of this in the entertainment industry.  In fact, despite jobs sites such as Craigslist prohibiting the posting of unpaid “internships,” you can almost always find one posted.  Some companies try to get around the law by requiring that the internship be part of a college program.  However, there is no exception to the law allowed just because the “intern” may receive college credit.  While it might be possible for a college credit course to require some type of training for a company, the vast majority of these internships are in violation of Federal as well as California labor laws.

In order to qualify as an unpaid internship, the requirement is simple:  no work can be performed that is of any benefit at all to the company.  That is, you can not deliver mail, sort files, file papers, organize a person’s calendar, conduct market research, write reports, watch television shows and report on them, read scripts, schedule interviews, or any other job that assists the employer in any way in running their business.

Examples of internships that have been legal are where the job is a “dummy” job.  For example, there was a case of an internship for working on a train.  The company had the interns driving trains from one end of their yard to the other under close supervision.  The moving of the trains was completely unnecessary and was just being done to train the potential employees. As such, no “work” was being performed, so the internship was legal.  On the other hand, if the workers were moving the trains as part of the regular re-positioning of the trains, but were still performing it under close supervision, they would be required to be paid for the work.

Thus, if in the entertainment industry, you read scripts that have already been read and rejected by the company and the company will not use your input in any way but is simply instructing you on how to read scripts, then they would not need to pay you for your time.  However, if you read the scripts and perform any work that is used by anyone in the company to make any type of decision about that script, then you must be paid for your time.

Another common type of unpaid internship is in martial arts schools that require students to teach classes in order to receive additional belts.  This practice is illegal unless the student is paid for the time.  Because the act of teaching a class is work that benefits the employer, it must be paid for.

The U.S. Department of Labor has outlined a list of criteria that ALL must be met in order for an internship to be unpaid.

1. The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to that which would be given in a vocational school;
2. The training is for the benefit of the trainee;
3. The trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under close observation;
4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees and on occasion the employer’s operations may actually be impeded;
5. The trainees are not necessarily entitled to a job at the completion of the training period; and
6. The employer and the trainee understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.

From the above list, #4 is really the key one – all the others will follow from whether the employer derives any immediate benefit from the activities.

The main reason that you do not see more lawsuits regarding unpaid internships is that the interns are very unlikely to sue.  In most cases, they fear being blacklisted, as they will undoubtedly need to use the internship as a reference to get any future work.

This is where California’s Private Attorney General Act comes in.  Because this law allows anyone at the company to sue for labor violations, even if they themselves are not affected by the violation, it is now possible for these companies to be brought into compliance with the law.  If you work for a company that uses unpaid interns and would like to put an end to this illegal practice, you should consider bringing a Private Attorney General cause of action.

Of course, if the internship is work, not only minimum wage must be paid, but also California overtime (8 in a day / 40 in a week) as well as meal and rest breaks.

Welcome to the USA of the 2009. Where the government, both Republicans and Democrats,  thinks that doing nothing is a far better alternative than being productive and gaining experience ! Where our politicians would rather see you pay out of your pocket to go back to school rather than get valuable on the job experience.

If you are in a position where you think an unpaid internship would benefit you and your career, please contact your local state representative and senator and let them know how stupid you think this law is.

And in the meantime, for all of you who have been sending me emails asking for an unpaid internship and telling me how valuable the experience would be to you. Now you know why I dont respond.

Youtube, CBS, NBC, ABC are going to have an awful lot in common in the not too distant future

Which company uses its traffic to drive eyeballs to programming on which it sells advertising ?  They all do.

The biggest difference between Youtube and the broadcast networks is that one actually produces content or pays a licensing fee for the content before they sell advertising around it. Youtube doesn’t.

I dont think there is any question that the Youtube model is better.  Now that they have stopped hiding behind the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, Youtube has taken the very smart step of letting content “audition” for the right to sign a license for Youtube to send it traffic and sell advertising around it.

Anyone can post content on Youtube. If that content generates enough interest (even if its interest that is artificially created by the content production company), Youtube will offer it a license that allows Youtube to sell advertising around the content and share that revenue with the content creator (Without a license,Youtube is not allowed to sell advertising around the content. By the DMCA, they are not allowed to even know it exists. Youtube acts only as a host). It really is win win.

Which leads to the question of whether or not broadcast networks like CBS, NBC, ABC should try to copy the Youtube model ? Should they create an “audition” environment and let the winners get slots of broadcast TV ?  The answer of course is no.  As networks have already found out, what works on the internet has yet to  work on broadcast TV.

I think the real approach is for the broadcast networks to “Game” Youtube.  There is nothing that says that they cant use Youtube to audition their pilots. By putting pilots on Youtube and Hulu as well, its a chance to see what the level of interest is for the pilots. This “crowdsourcing” approach, when combined with some traditional research and analysis could allow broadcast networks to be smarter in chosing which pilots to put on TV.

Not only would it allow broadcast and cable networks as well to be smarter, but it also would allow them to get paid to promote the show. Its in Youtube’s  financial interest to promote the pilots heavily. Its the most professionaly produced content available to it to promote. So why wouldn’t they ? More promotion means that pilots would actually generate revenue in addition to awareness prior to a network scheduling decision being made.

From a bigger picture perspective, unless youtube can reach a position where it generates more advertising revenue online than a slot on a broadcast network schedule, this approach would cement Youtube’s position as the “minor leagues” for broadcast network content.  Pilots would be auditioned online and then possibly get “called up” to the major leagues, also known as the network schedule. Those pilots that didnt warrant a call up can get polished up for a 2nd audition, or the production company could choose to stay on Youtube and produce future episodes, working with in the revenue levels earned online.

Its also interesting to project where this could lead.  If Youtube generates significant enough revenue for professional content producers to consider it a viable platform to invest in, then it faces the prospects of having to decide which content to generate traffic to.  Content producers will recognize the revenue available and that will act as a magnet for more content created at greater expense.  Those who have made significant investment will expect that Youtube will send traffic its way. Of course even on Youtube, not all content will get equal traffic. At some point decisions will have to be made as to which content gets the most traffic pushed its way. Put another way, Youtube will have to “schedule” its traffic.  It may be done algorithmically, but its a schedule . Just like ABC, NBC, CBS try to schedule their shows to optimize “traffic”.viewers, so will Youtube.

The first step for Youtube is deciding where to send its traffic.  Which in turn should allow Youtube to maximize its revenue from that traffic. Right ? Absolutely, but it may also lead to a recognition that some content producers are better at generating revenue for Youtube than others.  If there are a couple that really stand out as stellar revenue producers, how long before they demand minimum guarantees or licensing fees rather than just a percentage of ad revenues ?

What if there is a Mark Burnett or Jerry Bruckheimer of Youtube Video ? So good at what they do, generating so much revenue for Youtube that the leverage switches from Youtube to the content creator ? Will Youtube just walk awayfrom those producers ? Or will  they pay the license fee  ?

And if Youtube finds itself paying its best content producers a license fee and slotting those programs in the highest traffic slots in order to make money on their content investment, how does that make them any different than any broadcast network ?

Both make all their money from advertising and pay license fees for content around which they sell advertising. Right ?  Yes, Youtube can host unlimited hours of content, BUT they also deliver far fewer viewer hours than broadcast TV (remember people still watch 141 hours of tv per month compared to 3hrs plus of internet video consumption). So how will Youtube address “programming’ their traffic allocations ? Its going to be interesting.

But wait, there is more ! At some point Youtube traffic will level off.  It may not be for 10 years, but it will happen. Then what ?

we live in interesting video times