Connections

At the late-2013 “HITS Digital Marketing & Analytics Summit” in Los Angeles, Jonathan Taplin, director of the Annenberg School of Innovation at the University of Southern California (USC), offered up a keynote address, where he predicted that the world of TV distribution was about to be turned upside down.

Fast forward to the May 25 “Holly-wired: Where IT and Entertainment Meet” event, and don’t be surprised if Taplin has a little bit of “I told you so” in his keynote “Five Billion Smartphones = The Mobile Video Revolution.”

“In the address I said that the whole world of TV distribution was about to go through a revolutionary change with OTT Internet delivery,” Taplin said. “I said that I believed that even HBO would deliver a service direct to consumers who had no cable subscription. At the time this was met with a good deal of skepticism in the audience, though now HBO Now has more than a million subscribers.

“My thesis for this year’s keynote is that there will be 5 billion internet-enabled mobile devices by the end of 2017, which will present an amazing opportunity for the media and entertainment business,” he added. “For instance if you could get 5% of that audience to pay $1 for a movie, that would be $250 million in revenue. But to get to that promised land the industry is going to have to make some radical changes. That will be the subject of my talk.”

Considering Taplin’s track record on the future of entertainment, attendees at the event will want to listen to not only his keynote, but also the panel he’s moderating directly after the smartphone address: “The Globalization of Delivery as Localized Content Drives Revenue Growth.”

That panel will see experts from several major studios and Google tackle the challenges of wading through the standards and interfaces needed to deliver content to more than 100 countries, via various platforms and storefronts, all while keeping languages, ratings, and rights management in mind.

“If 80% of the online VOD views are for 2% of the product, how do we get consumers to sample more catalog content? How will the cloud be used for global on demand Internet distribution to multiple platforms? And will there be a good set of standardized API’s for multiple operators to access the content for distribution?” Taplin said of the topics he and panelists will be addressing.

Taplin’s panelists include Emmanuelle Borde, EVP of global mastering and servicing of studio operations for Sony Pictures Entertainment, Gordon Prince, VP of content management and distribution for Warner Bros. Technical Solutions, Catherine Retat, VP of technical operations and servicing for EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) for Warner Bros. Technical Solutions, and Mo Rhim, head of industry for media and platforms for DoubleClick at Google.

To register for “Holly-wired: Where IT and Entertainment Meet,” click here.