Who’s going to fill all these screens?

The democratisation of creativity and production

“It doesn’t cost anything to make broadcast quality video, all you need is talent. The tools out there are so cheap and easy to use that any nine-year-old can operate them. We’re at a unique moment in history where two technologies come together to completely change the world. The two that line up together are the tools have become idiot-proof and essentially free, which is astonishing. Ten years ago if you wanted to create a TV network you needed to have a billion dollars to invest.

The second, which is important and in some ways even more interesting, is the explosion of platforms. Previously if you wanted to make television it was the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky, which meant that a handful of TV executives got to control what people saw on their screens which almost unthinkable today. Today, we have this explosion of platforms on the internet in general but also it’s the amount of screens that are out there today.

As screen technology becomes less expensive and streaming and compression algorithms improve, it means that every screen is going to be populated with video. It relates to this idea of Grisham’s law, whereby more dynamic media drives out less dynamic media. When multiple channels came to Europe people tried Teletext by putting text on television – nobody wanted to see it. When video comes to screens, nobody will want to look at text anymore, that’s just the kind of people we are.

The average American and the average European now spends 8.5 hours a day staring at screens between television, computers, phones and tablets. We’re really only at day one of this and the appetite and demand for low-cost, high-quality video is going to be astronomical. It’s a business that didn’t even exist until recently.

Any media organisation or individual that doesn’t understand video is dead. It’s just like trying to sell your car with text classifieds these days, nobody is even going to come and look at it. I think that making content will become the number one occupation in the world. I’ve got a book coming out in the Autumn called iPhone millionaire: six weeks to change your life, which is essentially about filming TV shows on your iPhone, which is entirely possible.”

Video and SEO

YouTube is now the second biggest search engine in the world after Google, but you still have to tag the videos. Ultimately, face recognition technology will catch up and you’ll be able to identify the content you want based on what’s in the video. There will be macros built into the software, which will enable you to identify places, locations, buildings, faces or events, so I’m not too worried about SEO.

Culturally, everyone is switched on to video. Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers said that if anyone spends 10,000 dedicated hours they can become an expert at anything. The average American has spent 30,000 hours watching television and movies by the time they reach 30, so when it comes to content production, the quality has to be commensurate with that level of sophistication, as they have a high level expectation and a trained eye. That’s what makes training so important.”

‘We’re all in the media business now’

Michael goes on to talk about the digital skill set and the market for these skills, saying that these skills are no longer just the preserve of TV producers. “Anyone who wants to sell anything in any industry, has to be literate in the medium in which everyone communicates. The best analogy for this is when Gutenberg invented the printing press. There must have been lots of peasants running around saying “Why would I need to read? Priests do that!”

That’s the world we live in now, where the “priesthood” of the BBC has decided what the peasantry read. Suddenly Gutenberg’s printing press has come along in the form of an iPhone and all the “peasants” are learning how to create. This whole notion of digital literacy is critical to be a functioning member of society. Zappos said that for every product they sold with a video attached to it, sales went up 10%. There’s a natural resonance with the medium, people love video. Advertisers are moving fairly quickly to this understanding already.

I used to teach at CUNY and I used to tell my students to leave. It’s expensive – about $40,000 (£25,000) a year. So go and get your money back, go and buy a camera then get on a plane and go and make some stuff – then we’ll talk about it. We’re aiming to compress a year of NYU film school into four days. We’ve been running boot camps like theGuardian Media Academy for years because I like face-to-face. There’s no substitute. I can’t read manuals anymore!”

‘Legacy media companies are finished’

The conversation turns to that of the broader industry and the changing nature of the media business; “I was the president of New York Times television for two years, and logically they couldn’t bring themselves to move themselves quick enough. When I meet CEOs of major media companies they often say “I know, you’re right” but they can’t turn the aircraft carrier around, there just isn’t the will to do it.

The idea about local television, the brain child of Jeremy Hunt, was basically to build another ITV. If Apple came along and built a commercial online TV channel it wouldn’t look anything like the channels we have today. The problem is that they’re so top-heavy and they don’t leverage new technology, they simply apply it to old ways of working. The philosophy in these media companies should be saying to their staff: “Here’s the camera, go and make TV”, but psychologically they can’t bring themselves to do it. We could do our jobs from home, but emotionally, the big companies struggle to adapt.”

A message to entrepreneurs

“The opportunities have never been greater, the door is wide open and it’s a gold mine out there just waiting to be take. The whole media business, a trillion dollar business, has been turned upside down. I was very fortunate to be a video producer at CBS but then I quit, bought a video camera and went around making videos. I was just messing around and having a good time.

In the book The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, they reference a man named Stenbeck who was a real person, a kind of Richard Branson of Scandinavia. He found me and flew me to Stockholm because he understood the economics of what I was doing by getting rid of the sound man, the producer, the lighting man and the building. His lawyer spoke to me and said he wanted to capitalise and form a company with me. That’s how I got started – we basically started building TV stations across Scandinavia based on this model. We gave people cameras and laptops and said “go and make TV”, and the cost was very small.

To give you an idea of how this doesn’t work – I was asked by Associated Newspapers to build Channel One in London by Sir David English. They bought the building, they bought cars, they just couldn’t unwind their thinking and the thing was a disaster. But as far as making money is concerned, there’s a fortune to be made here and the door is wide open. All you need is a camera, even just an iPhone and a good idea. There are thousands of satellite channels out there and they all need content.”