With all the news this week about Comcast’s “On Demand Online” trial and the number of broadcasters who announced they will be offering up programming for the trial, I'm still not seeing where the business model exists for such a service. How many consumers are going to be willing to pay an additional fee every month on top of their cable bill, just to get the same content they get on their TV to their PC? Why do content owners think consumers are going to pay for the same piece of content over and over, simply to be able to consume it on different devices?

I don't think I'm different than most consumers, when I say that I would not pay more money on top of the $95 a month I already pay for cable and Internet, simply to be able to get that same broadcast signal to my Mac. What's the added incentive for me to spend more money with the cable company? Why wouldn't I just go out and pay a one-time cost to buy a Slingbox and then watch TV on any device I want?

While I keep hearing people say that over-the-top video delivery threatens to disrupt the traditional TV model, I don't see that being a reality. If cable companies actually thought about adding such services for free, to enhance their current offering, it would make a lot of sense. But you know that no cable company is going to offer any kind of over-the-top service for free. And while some have speculated that such services could be offered with a "small additional fee", I have yet to see any study that says consumers are willing to pay for it and what exactly is classified as a "small fee". We all know it's not going to be just a few extra bucks a month.

For all the talk of online video disrupting the traditional cable TV model, keep it mind that online video as yet to change the financial aspect of the business. Yes, it's been a disruptor as far as the technology goes for getting video to lots of devices, but it has not changed the underlying business models that exist today. I know the bigger picture here is what it will do for the future, but right now, only Comcast is even talking about testing a service, to a base of only 5,000 customers. Nothing is being disrupted, as measured by actual revenue from such a service and won't be for years, if at all.

Keep in mind that every time such a service is talked about, rarely does anyone talk about penetration numbers, how many consumers will sign up for it, over what period of time and what it will cost. It takes a really long time for any new service like this to make any significant impact and even longer when the business model makes no sense on paper. This also applies to STBs and all of the other devices like Xbox 360, TiVo and Roku's that are capable of playing a role in the over-the-top debate.

I think the key point here is that no cable company is willing to have over-the-top replace your cable but rather try to make it look like they are providing you with more value and as a result, charge you more money each month, for the same content you're already paying for, but to a different device. Does that really sound like a compelling offering to consumers that would get them excited? It doesn't to me, but maybe it does to others.

And while I'm on the subject, I hear phrases like over-the-top (OTT), Web TV and Internet TV all used interchangeably but rarely are they well defined. What do people think these phrases mean and what's the differences between them, if there is one? Maybe it's just semantics, but I'd be interested to hear how others would define these phrases.

The advance program for the Streaming Media West show is now completed and currently available for download as a word file. In the next few days we'll have the entire program online and will open registration. Now that the session topics, presentations, keynote speakers and workshops have been decided upon, I have to start the task of going through the hundreds of speaking submissions and placing speakers.

I have about two months to place all the 100+ speakers but typically, 75% of the speaking spots are filled in the next two weeks. If you didn't get a speaking submission in when the call for speakers was open, you need to email me right away with a proposal, like today. Please keep in mind that of the 110 speaking spots we have, nearly 80 of them go to content owners, content creators and publishers. We don't stack seven speakers on a 45 minute session like many conferences do and we don't fill sessions with vendor sales pitches. Only about 30% of the speaking spots go to vendors and the ones that are chosen are those that invite customers, introduce us to content owners and help us get some of the leading speakers in the media, entertainment, broadcast and enterprise verticals.

This year we will be showcasing a lot more videos during the sessions and mini-demos so attendees can see it in action, so please keep that in mind when sending in a speaking request. Talking about online video is great, but showing it in action is even better.

I'm also on the look out for a few more moderators that have prior moderating experience and know the role and responsibilities of a moderator. Take a look at the agenda and email me if there is a session that has no moderators name attached to it that you might be interested in.

While we're on the subject of speakers, even with the poor economy we're in, our show in May had the most traffic of any of our shows in the past seven years. This is a testament to the quality of the speakers we continue to get each year and for every show we produce, we continue to get a lot of help from PR companies and many third party speaker placement bureaus. I just wanted to thank them for all of their continued help in getting us so many qualified speakers and look forward to any suggestions that have for West.

I can't reinforce enough how quickly speaking spots will go, so please, don't wait to contact me as I won't have anything open as we get closer to the show. Thanks.

This afternoon, I had a chance to chat with Move's new CEO Roxanne Austin about her new role, the current problems at the company and her steps on how she intends to fix them. While Roxanne gave what I would consider to be all the right answers to the questions I asked, she has a lot of hard work in front of her to execute on her plan. As I told her, she steps into Move at a time when it has no focus, no identity and is quickly losing ground to other platforms in the industry.

For far too long Move's value proposition was simply about quality. Three years ago Move was in a class all it's own but that's not the case today. Move has always been more than a one trick pony but for some reason, the previous folks at Move never truly highlighted all of the features of their solution, their broadcast services or the advertising and monetization tools in their broadcast platform. This is something Roxanne is well aware of and one of the first things she intends to do over the next few weeks is focus the company around these strengths.

Roxanne made it clear that Move has to "follow the rights" and focus their efforts on providing monetization options for content owners who own the rights to content. Her feeling is that Move's real strength lies in their entire platform capable of delivering a full linear service for content owners and cable operators and while that makes sense on paper, I truly don't yet see that being a reality in the market. Yes, we see operators talking about wanting to offer video to any device at any time, but if they expect a large number of consumers to pay an additional fee for that ability, I just don't see it happening. That said, Roxanne's feels that if the cable operators did more than just offer some on-demand video and truly offered a full linear service, the opportunity for Move is a good one.

While I had quite a lot of questions for Roxanne, many of them were just too early for her to comment on, being today was her first day at the office meeting the majority of the company. She said over the next few weeks, she plans to sit down and focus on understanding all of Move's relationships in the market and figure out the ones to focus on that are most strategic to the company. This is crucial for Move as they have a lot of "partnerships" with multiple CDNs in the industry that are not very well managed and they have the relationship with Microsoft that has never matured.

While she would not comment on the Microsoft relationship until she gets all the details and history of what's been going on, she did comment that there are many relationships at the company that need to be re-started. When Move originally did the deal with Microsoft, Move was expecting Microsoft to use their HTTP streaming technology for Microsoft new Smooth Streaming service, something that didn't happen. At the same time, Microsoft was expecting Move Networks to integrate a lot of their unique advertising functionality into the Silverlight platform which never took place. While both companies were excited when they originally decided to work together, the relationship quickly fell apart over time and both sides have admitted that the deal just never worked out like both expected. Personally, I think Move's opportunity with Microsoft is now gone, but lets see what happens.

The two things I got from Roxanne from having spoken with her is that she clearly understands what she is stepping into and the work that will be required to fix it and the importance of focus for the company. Without Move having a defined product offering, a focus on what customers their should be targeting, and a clear message in the market, the company does not have a shot at surviving. But if they can act fast to deliver a very clear and concise message of who Move is, what their value proposition is and how they can help content owners, I think they still have a shot. It was good to hear Roxanne say that Move is already hard at work on their new messaging and will be re-branding the company and roll out a new website sometime this quarter.

As for the financial stability of the company, Roxanne said that Move has a "short window to being cash flow positive," which if true, is clearly as a result of the company cutting 30% of their work force in February. While no one will say how much revenue Move booked into 08', I keep hearing the investment community using a number of $45M, but I have yet to verify that number from any source I trust.

While it's way to early to know what success Move could have with new focus and direction, I think they still have a window of opportunity to be successful. Even with their recent problems, Move has a long list of very large and well known customers who aren't going away anytime soon. The major broadcasters and sports organizations only continue to put more content online, for more devices and in higher quality every single quarter. This was part of the reason Move felt it made sense to acquire Inuk Networks back in April as more broadcasters are beginning to look at ways of moving traditional broadcast content to other devices.

Roxanne has a lot of work ahead of her but from what I can tell, clearly understands that. At no time did I get the sense that she thinks this will be easy and she didn't try and sugar coat any of the problems I outlined within the company. I also liked that at multiple times during our conversation she said the way to prove to the market what Move can do is by showing examples of real customers using the solutions and showcasing the value they see from Move's platform. For me, that's exactly what I look for as anyone can say something works really well, but seeing it first hand, with real customers, that's what gets my attention.

Expect to hear a lot more from Move in the second half of this year as they re-launch their website, deliver their new message to the market and potentially do some media day type events to give others a clearer picture into what Move offers besides good quality video. We'll be watching.

This afternoon, Move Networks announced that it has appointed Roxanne Austin as the new President and CEO of the company. For the past five years Roxanne was President of Austin Investment Advisors, a private investment and consulting firm focused on new media and technology and before that, was president and COO of DIRECTV.

I'll be speaking to Roxanne in about an hour and will update this post after my call. You can read about my conversation with Roxanne in a new post here.

Related Posts:

– Move Networks Acquires IPTV Company, Adds To Their Confusing Portfolio

– Move Networks Lays Off 30% Of Company, John Edwards Still CEO

– Move Networks Rasies C Round Totaling $67.9, Not $91.3 Million

In the past 36 hours, I've seen 37 stories in my Google reader about the the MJ webcast and unless I missed it, not a single article talked about anything pertaining to the business side of live broadcasting. Every time a large webcast takes place on the Internet, the industry wants to speculate about the Internet breaking or failing in some way and everyone seems to want to cover the story only from an infrastructure angle.

While some seem to think it makes for great headlines by asking if the Internet will crash under the strain and want to imply some sort of doom and gloom from too much traffic, in reality, the titles of many of these articles should be seen for what they really are – a headline.

Does it really matter to any industry how much traffic is delivered if there is no business model behind it to sustain it? Sure, lots of traffic is great for the CDNs, good exposure for the companies that make the video platforms and some of the other vendors involved, but what about the content owner who is paying to make this happen? Over the years, I've done enough large-scale live events for many of the major portals including Yahoo!, MSN, MTV and VH-1 to know what live events truly cost to produce and they are not cheap. At a time when content owners are trying to create a sustainable online business, the industry only seems to be writing about traffic numbers for webcasts or how many Facebook updates took place.

What we should be talking and writing about is the costs associated with putting these events live on the web and the potential ways content owners can turn this into a business over time. How much money does any major newscaster lose during a one-off large scale live event? Are they trying to sell sponsorships during the event? Do they have any type of ad model specific to live events? Are they seeing any success at all when it comes to covering their costs? These are all questions we should be asking and more importantly having discussions about so we can try to figure out the business models to sustain these events. At some point, all of this technology boils down to a tool content owners need to use to sustain themselves in some way. Why is no one talking about that?

Instead, those who cover the industry are so caught up in the traffic numbers and the many ways they can turn those numbers into nothing more than a headline. Think to yourself how many articles you read on the MJ webcast and ask yourself if you learned anything different from all of those stories you read. I know I didn't. Nearly all of them simply said the Internet didn't break and reported the traffic numbers. Nothing wrong with reporting the traffic from an event, but there is a bigger story here that we should be discussing as an industry. There is a business somewhere behind the technology of online video, even for large scale live events.

This is what disappoints me about the industry sometimes. 2009 marks the fourteenth year since streaming was first used on the Internet. Fourteen years. There is more to this than infrastructure and when all you ever see people writing about after a large broadcast is stuff involving bandwidth, it makes it look like we have not progressed much as an industry. This industry needs to grow, we need content owners to be profitable and we need to be discussing how that is going to take place and what we can do to get there faster.

Related Posts:

– We Need To Remember, Online Video Is A Cost Center, Not A Profit Center

– Webcasting Large Entertainment Events Still Unprofitable

Larry Kless and Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, co-chairs of this year's inaugural Online Video Platform Summit, are posting updates about the event as well as news about the online video platform space on Twitter. Check it out — Twitter name is @ovpsummit, and the event hash tag is #ovps09.

Late last night, Neal Page, Co-Founder and CEO of Inlet Technologies passed away after a year-long battle with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). A few months back, Neal and I were chatting about the industry and he mentioned that he was stepping down from the day to day side of things to take care of some medical issues, but I didn't realize how severe it really was.

Neal co-founder Inlet Technologies in 2003 and before that, founded Osprey Technologies in 1994 which is now a division of ViewCast Corporation. For anyone who did webcasting back in the days, Osprey was the "de facto" capture card for enabling live video over the Internet. The Osprey product line was a big factor in the success of live webcasting in the early days of the streaming media industry.

While I wouldn't consider myself to have truly known Neal outisde of business, he was always professional, polite and someone I never heard a single negative comment about; something that carriers a lot of weight in this world when it seems many people in business forget that your reputation and professionalism is all that really matters.

Inlet has a short announcement of Neal's passing on their website and co-founder John Bishop is doing a 100-mile LIVESTRONG bike ride looking to raise $7,500 in support of Neal. He's already at 75% of his goal so lets try and help him reach it.