“…the secret to the future of all Content and its value as an investment vehicle, lays in age old tradition of compelling storytelling.”

The above quote comes from Gerson Lehrman Group.  It is part of the summary of a much longer analysis; a rebuttal to an article by Ethan Smith in the Wall Street Journal about streaming technology.  Gerson Lehrman’s piece is entitled Be Careful How Fast You Give Away Your IP and it…

…challenges entrepreneurs to see that the world of Media and  Content need not be wholly controlled by the big Six Media conglomerates:  Disney, Time Warner, Viacom/CBS/Paramount, Sony, Fox and Comcast/NBCUniversal.  Their monopoly is primed to get taken down.  It also infers that the secret to the future of all Content and its value as an investment vehicle, lays in age old tradition of compelling storytelling.  Technology cannot take the lead, it can only be an exquisite partner to those who tell stories people want to see.

At Wednesday’s Digital Dialogue mounted by the OMDC there were a lot of calls for more capital in Ontario for the creation of digital content.  This article gives investors good reasons to meet this need.

A few more quotes:

If there’s a bet to be made by entrepreneurs in the Content space, it would be to invest money directly into the hands of storytellers and create transparency in their backend upside. If you do that you control Content that people want, and then they have to come to you to experience it.

The upside of entrepreneurialism is in the looming million “channel” world the Internet resides in and controlling the Content for the ravenous nature of those URL’s that are available.  The mistake, more a byproduct of limited technology to date, is to think Content for the Web only comes from User Generated uploads, niche topics or pornography consumed in 30 second to 3 minute bites.  The phenomenon of those has been more a byproduct of an audience impatient with the sketchy viewing experience they are subjected to on the myriad devices they view their Content on. Because of those inconsistencies, Content has been relegated to short windows of expression and therefore has little, if any upside value for the suppliers.

Content is still king and the final stages of pristine streaming technology will auger the end of the television networks as we know them, forcing them to be more facile with Content and more streamlined with their infrastructure while creating opportunities for thousands of new “networks” to emerge.

For the first time, Private Equity, Venture Capital, institutional investing or just opportunistic monied people will have a shot to create true ROI in the Internet space because they will no longer be reliant on someone else saying “yes” to their ideas.  They can now dream, commit funds, build a production apparatus, shoot their Content, Post it on a Mac and Upload it at a fraction of the cost of traditional Content.  That doesn’t’t mean it should be cheap, because cheap Content is disposable. It means redefining what Premium Content, streamed pristinely and for 15-30-60 minutes at a time will cost. The x-factor related to what the true cost of Premium Content will be is the level of talent associated with that Content; the greatest game changer in terms of who decides what gets made.

Enough quotes.  Go read it for yourself.