“Amateur-Made Stuff” Not Industry. Hollywood Should Dictate Video Models.
Revver’s recent change raises questions about the sustainability of amateur-created content, and whether Hollywood should be “dictating business models.”
In a recent CNET article titled “YouTube Rivals Look for Answers,” Greg Sandoval reported that Revver co-founder Oliver Luckett and Revver’s Chief Technology Officer Rob Maigret have left Revver and are working together on a video project. The article also reports “sources close to Revver say it will now focus on improving the core businesses: video sharing and ad distribution, and is less concerned with big studio deals.”
Reports Sandoval:
They do say they learned one crucial lesson from YouTube: The public wants professionally crafted video made available on the Internet. Clips from TV shows such as NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” and other copyright material are to a certain extent responsible for YouTube’s popularity, Luckett asserts. Eventually the TV and movie producers will want greater control. Helping them do this is what Luckett says he plans to do in the future.
“Among the public, there will be a flight to quality,” Luckett said. “The amateur-made stuff found on these (user-generated) sites is the same content found on ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos.’ It was one of the most syndicated shows of all time. It’s a fabulously funny show, but it’s not an industry. Hollywood studios own the content people want. They should be dictating the business models.”
Don’t you have to *have* a business model before you can dictate a business model? Shouldn’t part of the program be educating the suits to grasp the concept of *less* control? Just sayin’…
I told you revenue sharing to amatuers was a fad. The Hollywood suits will not stand long for just any Joe Blows from Kokomo ( an homage to “In the Soup” ) siphoning off their coke and whore money. Believe it.
If revver and all those other startups expect to be the next youtube, they’re wrong. The “video sharing” field has been mostly locked up by the major players, and the cost of entry for new competition is too high. Comcast might be able to buy their way into it, because they have ungodly amounts of money, but don’t expect anyone else to.
What revver should be focussing on is increasing their appeal to original content producers and assisting them in getting ad-revenue, sponshorship, et cetera. What Nalts did a while ago with Mentos was good, but companies that you can successfully, directly approach about sponsorship are probably quite rare. Suits prefer to deal with suits. I have about as much chance of getting a sponsorship from coca-cola as getting my videos featured on the Disney channel. It’s just not gonna happen.
The average video artist shouldn’t have to deal with advertisers. That’s what’s great about revver, in theory, it lets artists focus on making videos, while they handle dealing with advertisers. This is a similar approach to what adsense did for small websites. It was an easy way for them to get advertising revenue.
Revver should focus on doing what they do well better, and not try to be something they’re not.
That quote from Luckett was hilarious. It must have been taken out of context, he can’t be that stupid.