I notice Stephen Colbert is getting some props for not denigrating YouTube stars.
Last week, he had a thoroughly respectful and funny conversation with Felix Kjellberg, the Swede
who is PewDiePie on YouTube, and has 39 million subscribers. Nobody has more.
That was in contrast to Jimmy Kimmel, who was roundly criticized for making fun of the new YouTube Gaming site a few weeks before, though really,
Kimmel’s a comedian and the whole gamers-watching-gamers is hard to be real serious about.
Still, those contrasting approaches suggest a question advertisers and publishers and
viewers should be asking about the quality of what they see online. Right now, the buzz phrase is “premium content” — and everybody wants it. The definition, obviously vague to start
with, has gotten even more elastic as more clients demand it.
It reminds me that when the Chicago White Sox were building a new stadium, allegedly they theorized a lot of people
wanted tickets “behind the dugout.” So the team owners made the dugouts about twice as long. Problem? Solution!
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Premium content can’t be just star power or budget.
Some of the best and most popular YouTube videos have neither. And it certainly can’t be length. Some pretty miserable half-hour comedies and hour-long dramas have been made for television, and
calling them premium because of their heritage is crazy, too.
If the definition is, “content my brand wouldn’t be ashamed to be next to,” that’s close. But
for advertisers and publishers, maybe it’s “content that hits a target audience, in sufficiently large numbers and basically reflects a similar, agreeable style.”
As AOL’s Tim Armstrong said to Financial Times, “If you’re in
our industry, your definition of premium content is where you work.” I'm sure he meant that as a joke, but it's really true. Your "premium content" is a reflection of what your bosses want. So
it depends.
“Premium content” falls into that giant pit of vague concepts that includes “pornography” on one end and the phrase “serving the public
interest” on the other. Broadcasters never buttoned down that idea, probably for their own good, too.
I wonder because as prime time sputters through this fall
season--it may be setting a record for inspiring a record number of “Is This The Worst Season Ever?” stories--it gets a little dangerous and a lot hilarious to believe streaming video is,
in poundage, any better or any more premium.
It may be far less so. Is where all the viewers are going really an improvement, or just more portable? What do you think?
The
brevity of online video is often its salvation. “Funny or Die” videos are often funny, but quickly head toward death. There’s a lot of that going around. The short videos produced
for publishers often serve as a click bait, a whole industry churning out material that will be welcomed at Taboola and forgotten everywhere else.
pj@comcast.net