Category Archives: The Mediascape

Sandvine profiles Internet usage in 2019

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Cam Cullen,VP of Global Marketing for Sandvine, has announced the release of the 2019 Global Internet Phenomena Report (registration required.)

There are lots of valuable takeaways here.

For instance, this year Netflix has been bumped into second place for downstream traffic by HTTP Media Stream, the collection of video streaming sites that use a standard video streaming protocol that Sandvine does not track individually.

Nevertheless, Netflix still accounts for 12.6% of global downstream traffic.

More:

  • Video is over 60% of the total downstream volume of traffic on the internet.
  • Netflix is 12.60% of the total downstream volume of traffic across the entire internet and 11.44% of all internet traffic.
  • Google is 12% of overall internet traffic, driven by YouTube, search, and the Android ecosystem.
  • Gaming traffic and gaming-related bandwidth consumption is increasing as gaming downloads, Twitch streaming, and eSports go mainstream.
  • BitTorrent is over 27% of total upstream volume of traffic, and over 44% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) alone.
  • Facebook applications make up over 15% of the total internet traffic in APAC, the Asia-Pacific region.

And fragmentation is only going to get worse. “There are a number of new services that will be launching in the next year that may yet again change the traffic landscape by the next Phenomena Report:

  • Disney+: Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and decades of TV and movies, all priced extremely well with compelling original content. How could this fail?
  • Apple TV+: With the offer of free original content with purchase of an Apple device, this could drive up usage in Apple-heavy markets.
  • Universal: Another library with decades of content, with attention being given to “The Office,” which was one of Netflix’s most watched TV shows.
  • HBO Max: Warner Bro’s offer with another massive content library that will build on HBO Go and will leverage popular TV series, especially “Friends”, this service promises to be, ‘there for you when the rain starts to fall.’
  • Other video services: DC Universe, Facebook Watch, and Discovery have all announced planned services.
  • Google Stadia: It’s not just streaming video that is coming, Stadia is maybe the “Netflix of Gaming,” perhaps something totally unique with bandwidth requirements between 10-35Mbps and expectations of low latency.”

Even more interesting: over 43% of the internet is consumed by Netflix, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple.

“The biggest bandwidth consumption for applications or content libraries for each brand included:

  • Google (Alphabet): YouTube, Android Market, Google Search, Google Docs, Google Drive, DoubleDlick, Gmail, and Crashlytics
  • Netflix: Netflix Video
  • Facebook: Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Video, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Oculus Rift
  • Microsoft: Xbox Live, Windows Update, Skype, Outlook 365, Office 365, SharePoint, OneDrive, Windows Store, LinkedIn
  • Apple: iTunes, iCloud, Apple Software Update, FaceTime, Apple Music, Apple.com, iCloud Photo Stream, Mac App Store
  • Amazon: Amazon Prime, Twitch, Amazon.com, Alexa, Amazon Glacier, Amazon Music”

I highly recommend registering and downloading the 23 page PDF for all the insights.

My take: I think the most interesting stat here is the 43% share of the Internet by the six largest tech companies. It won’t be long before their share is more than half. What happens when more than half of the traffic on the information super-highway is by the Big Six?

Theatrical dreams, quantified

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Stephen Follows and Bruce Nash in a post for the American Film Market answer the question How Many Independent Films Get A Theatrical Release?

For 2017 films, as of mid-August 2019, the answer is, “Not many.”

Fully three out of four films did not report any box office earnings. And only one in six reported theatrical earnings of over $100,000.

However, some genres performed better than others:

“Large releases are the realm of the drama, with 23% of independent dramas earning over $100,000 at the domestic box office. Comedies (16%) and thrillers (15%) are also more likely to get into this top tier.”

In addition, provenance matters:

“Adaptations are three times as likely to secure a large theatrical release compared to independent films with original screenplays. That’s a significant jump, and shows how hard it is for an independent film based on original material to get a substantial theatrical release.”

They conclude:

“Seeing a film played in a theater is still regarded as the best way to experience the art form. It’s also, understandably, the goal of many film producers…. However, the numbers say that an independent film will, five times out of six, not go on to make much money in theaters. Knowing how to maximize revenue from the home market remains an essential skill for an independent producer.”

My take: these are sobering statistics! But then I think of how many films I’ve seen in a theatre versus the number I’ve seen at home. The one bright light in exhibition is Theatrical-On-Demand. See Tugg, Gathr or Demand.Film

Curation coming to Netflix?

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Sarah Perez of TechCrunch reports that Netflix tests human-driven curation with launch of ‘Collections’:

“Netflix is testing a new way to help users find TV shows and movies they’ll want to watch with the launch of a “Collections” feature, currently in testing on iOS devices…. According to Netflix, the titles are curated by experts on the company’s creative teams, and are organized into these collections based on factors like genre, tone, story line and character traits.”

A Netflix spokesperson confirmed the test, saying:

“We’re always looking for new ways to connect our fans with titles we think they’ll love, so we’re testing out a new way to curate Netflix titles into collections on the Netflix iOS app.”

My take: This is fascinating because it’s a bit of deja vu all over again. Years ago Netflix bragged that its algorithm would learn from our viewing habits and only recommend movies to us that it calculated we would want to watch. It worked to some extent; my home screen is quite different from my wife’s. However, we both still have to do a lot of scrolling to find something we want to watch. I think brining back curation is an acknowledgement that we all yearn for some degree of commonality. Remember that, before the internet changed everything, the media was a de facto curator, only showing us what they had already selected. I would like to see a blending of curation and algorithmic selection so that I can see what the masses are consuming in Collections, and personalized offbeat suggestions in Recommended for Me.

2019 Internet Trends Report released

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In June at the Code Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, Mary Meeker delivered the 2019 instalment of her Internet Trends Report:

There are lots of insights here. Some to note, courtesy of CMF Trends:

The Internet’s penetration rate is now 51% of the world’s population. The two countries with the largest untapped markets are India followed by China. Nevertheless, one third of users live in those two countries.

Use is growing. Average daily online use has passed 6 hours for the first time. Moreover, mobile use has surpassed TV viewing this year.

Here’s the full slide deck or PDF.

My take: one takeaway for me is that the freemium model is alive and well. Unfortunately, two of my favourite tools did not figure this out (never having had paid levels) and have disappeared: Toonlet and Ujam Studio. 8- I wonder how the freemium model could be adapted to fiction films. Give away the movie and charge for the (DVD) extras (remember those)?

Inside a Virtual Production

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BBC Click has revealed glimpses of the virtual production techniques Jon Favreau harnessed before the “live action” Lion King was digitally animated.

The discussion of virtual production technology starts at 0:40. Details begin flowing about the Technicolor Virtual Production pipeline at 1:38.

Director Favreau explains further at 8:01 below:

My favourite line is: “We’d move the sun if we had to.”

Here’s Technicolor’s pitch for virtual production:

More here.

My take: Am I the only one that thinks it’s absurd for photo-realistic animals to talk and sing? I can buy the anthropomorphism in most animation, as the techniques they use are suitably abstracted, but this just looks too real. Maybe thought balloons?

Korean AI can predict your film’s chances

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I would have loved to have been at the 2019 Storytelling Workshop in Florence, Italy, when Koreans You Jin Kim, Yun Gyung Cheong and Jung Hoon Lee presented their paper “Prediction of a Movie’s Success From Plot Summaries Using Deep Learning Models”.

Their idea is to train an AI to read summaries of movies and then pass judgement:

“The primary hypothesis that we attempted to answer is to predict a movie’s success in terms of popularity and artistic quality by analyzing only the textual plot summary.”

It’s all very complicated and, I’ll admit, is on the edge of being incomprehensible to me.

One thing I did gather — their AI seems better at determining which films will NOT be good:

“It seems that predicting ‘not popular’ or ‘not successful’ movies performs better than that of predicting ‘popular’ or ‘successful’ movies.”

My take: Another of the takeaways for me in this paper was this chestnut: “The frequency of sentiment changes may signal the success of films.” Even though they’re talking about summaries of films, I believe this could mean the greater the number of reversals, the greater the success of the film. Could this be true? Maybe. Maybe not. But maybe. No, maybe not. Definitely — maybe.

The Riz Test joins Bechdel

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First there was the Bechdel Test, and now there’s the Riz Test.

Both test representation in media: the first, of women; the second, of Muslims.

Inspired by a speech by Riz Ahmed to the English House of Commons, the Riz Test was devised by Dr. Sadia Habib and Shaf Choudry and asks five questions:

“If the film/show stars at least one character who is identifiably Muslim (by ethnicity, language or clothing) – is the character…

1. Talking about, the victim of, or the perpetrator of terrorism?

2. Presented as irrationally angry?

3. Presented as superstitious, culturally backwards or anti-modern?

4. Presented as a threat to a Western way of life?

5. If the character is male, is he presented as misogynistic? Or if female, is she presented as oppressed by her male counterparts?

If the answer for any of the above is Yes, then the Film/TV Show fails the test.”

See Riz Test tweets.

My take: it’s about time. It would be great if both the Bechdel Test and the Riz Test were added to all movie sites, like IMDB’s Advanced Title Search or AllMovie’s Advanced Search.

The truth about YouTube

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Speaking specifically about YouTube, Rasty Turek of PEX declares, “Not all content is equal,” and then sets out to prove it.

Some facts:

  • YouTube is the most popular and largest video platform
  • YouTube hosts over 5 billion videos and over 1 billion hours of content
  • Over 10 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every second

Some things you might not know about YouTube, according to PEX’s insights:

  • “The length of videos is increasing, driven mostly by long form content, primarily gaming videos and live streaming.”
  • Annual uploads may top out at 1.5 billion in 2020
  • The number of users uploading may top out at 110 million in 2020

This is where it gets interesting.

According to PEX, it seems only the Gaming category is gaining share, and all other categories are on a downward trend:

As to views, only 1 in 156 videos gets more than 100,000 views.

Further, that 0.64% of videos generates 81.6% of all views!

To put it another way, 99.36% of all videos get less than 18.4% of total views, which is less than 100,000 views each. Ouch!

To conclude, Rasty states:

“Music is the only category that consistently attracts hundreds of millions of users to watch the same videos over and over. The first video that ever broke 1B view mark was a music video. The vast majority of videos with over 1B views are music videos.”

Not surprisingly, the most subscribed to channel on YouTube is Hindi music channel T-Series, with over 105 million subscribers.

My take: Who knew? But I wonder if there’s more to this. Fifteen years ago, the revenues of the music, film and video game industries were tied. Now, gaming pulls in more than the other two combined. Hence, the only growing category on YouTube. Could it be that gamers are just listening to YouTube music playlists in the background as they while away the time?

1000 episodes for BBC’s Click

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This week the BBC celebrated the 1000th episode of their technology magazine show Click with an interactive issue.

Access the show and get prepared to click!

One of the pieces that caught my eye was an item in the Tech News section about interactive art, called Mechanical Masterpieces by artist Neil Mendoza.

The exhibit is a mashup of digitized high art and Rube Goldberg-esque analogue controls that let the participants prod and poke the paintings. Very playful! I’ve scoured the web to find some video. This is Neil’s version of American Gothic:

Getting ready for the weekend with another piece from Neil Mendoza’s Mechanical Masterpieces, part of #ToughArt2018. pittsburghkids.org/exhibits/tough-art

Posted by Children's Museum of Pittsburgh on Friday, September 28, 2018

And here is his version of The Laughing Cavalier:

Check out Neil’s latest installation/music video.

My take: I love Click and I love interactive storytelling. But I’m not sure the BBC’s experiment was entirely successful. What I thought was missing was an Index, a way to quickly jump around their show. For instance, it was tortuous trying to find this item in the Tech News section. Of course, Click is in love with their material and expects viewers to patiently lap up every frame, even as they click to choose different paths through the material. But it’s documentary/news content, not narrative fiction, and I found myself wanting to jump ahead or abandon threads. On the other hand, my expectations of a narrative audience looking for A-B interactive entertainment is that they truly are motivated to explore various linear paths through the story. And an Index would reveal too much of what’s up ahead. But I wonder if that’s just me, as a creator, speaking. Perhaps interactive content is relegated to the hypertext/website side of things, versus stories that swallow you up as they twist and turn on their way to revealing their narratives.

Another streamer announced: BET+ joins crowded market

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With the tagline “Stream Black Culture. Anytime. Anywhere. Finally.” BET has announced the launch of its streaming platform BET+ this Fall.

So what’s BET+?

“It’s a new online streaming service. It’s thousands of hours of your favorite black content. It’s the movies that you love. It’s the tv shows you grew up with and new series you can’t live without. And it’s exclusive originals from the best black creators. No commercials. At all.”

Variety has more details and claims Tyler Perry “likely has a stake in the venture as he is contributing his own library, which is a big selling point.”

They quote Perry:

“In our industry, the way people consume content is constantly evolving. I’ve paid attention to my audience and what works for them and, for that reason, I’m very excited not only about the idea of partnering with BET to create new and exciting content, but also about the idea of giving people a personalized experience through the ability to curate the content they love to consume. On a personal level, this will also be the first time I’ll be working in areas like unscripted and variety television, which will afford me the opportunity to work in fresh, creative ways with new voices and to discover new talent.”

My take: Although no pricing has yet been announced, I believe BET+ will be one of the winners in the upcoming streaming sweepstakes. Disney+, AppleTV+, et al, will be going up against these 100+ streaming services.