User generated Video Game Content

Machinima: A YouTube channel for user generated video game content. Gamers edit, comment and upload their plays  on MW2 or CoD to the Machinima channel, and some receive over 3 million views on their content. Not my cup of tea, but for 3 million other people it is. 24 billion views in total.

Who will pay for content

A small insight of Cindy Gallop, who wants to revolutionize the adult film business: “The future of television is inextricably bound up with the future of payments.” Yeah, free is good for the consumer, but not so good for the producer. Who would have thought?

Must-Tweet-TV

It’s now called must-tweet-TV. Twitter as a TV companion. Twitter’s Tony Wang: “80% of under-25s are using a second screen to communicate with friends while watching TV, while 72% are using Twitter, Facebook or a mobile app to comment on the TV shows that they’re watching”. Hashtags and @names forever.

Who is the companion?

Lisa Hsia, of NBCU’s Bravo Channel created a companion digital series for Top Chef called The Last Chance Kitchen. It received over 8 million streams over 12 weeks. Their regular Top Chef TV episodes get around 2 million viewers. Who’s the companion now?

Story telling is growing up

Some of the MIP talks where moderated by Robert Tercek. Watch his Tedx talk about how story telling is getting it’s chance to grow up.

Robert Tercek Tedx Talk 2011

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More info about the subjects covered at MIPTV you can find at the Mip Blog

On Tuesday Jim Gaffigan announced via Twitter (@JimGaffigan) that in April he will make a one-hour comedy special called JIM GAFFIGAN: MR UNIVERSE available on his website for $5.00. Let’s keep an eye on that. Follow him on Twitter to be first in line.

After the successful Louis CK play in December, the next comedian is giving it a shot. Pay-per-download is a great distribution model for this genre. By definition comedians don’t have many outlet options for their art. Everybody want’s to get into HBO, but their appetite for this programming is limited, and on the networks it becomes a bleep-fest. Jim Gaffigan has roughly the same amount of followers on Twitter as Louis CK. If that was an indicator for Louis CK’s success, then Jim should make also around 220,000 downloads with his special.

The nice part about it is that $1.00 per download will go to the Bob Woodruff Foundation who I have worked with for the past 5 years. Their efforts help US soldier to heal the physical and psychological wounds of war. During their last big fundraiser in November 2011 Jim Gaffigan was one of the comedians who took center stage. He was extremely funny. The picture of Jim above I took at that event in November of 2011.

Good luck Jim!

He made the video available for download (DRM free) on his website for 5.00 US$ via paypal four weeks later. If you want to make a good looking DVD out of it, you can download the disk artwork and the dvd cover artwork. After only 12 days it was downloaded over 200,000 times. Grossing over 1 million US$. Not bad. No licensing deals to be negotiated, no lawyers spending days of legal work for the contracts, no distribution fees, no variable production costs for the DVDs and no licensing partners trying to tell him that 62 minutes is an odd format. So, for him to net that amount under traditional terms he would have had to sell probably around 600,000 units retail. Plus, under regular distribution terms he would not have seen any revenue for at least 12 months if not longer. Now 6 weeks later everybody is more than recouped and a happy camper.

The other interesting metric are his 850,000 twitter followers, he can directly address. So do 850,000 followers = 200,000 downloads?

Bottom line: Own the content, know your fans.