Commentary

Forget The Long Tail, The Real Action Is In The Expanding Middle

What does “video” mean to two of Hollywood’s biggest online video players? Well, according to Velocity’s Ross Levinsohn, it’s about giving users the same of lean back, “passive” media experience that television has dominated for 50 years. The big difference said his partner, Jonathan Miller, is where that content will be coming from.

Dividing the burgeoning online video marketplace into three categories: user-generated content, the so-called “prosumer” market, and “super professional video” from studios and networks, Miller said the real action is among the prosumers. Or what he called the “expanding middle.” After glancing down at his own gut, he said the term is really about the kind of less-than-studio, but higher-than-consumer-generate media market that has been unleashed by the Hollywood writer’s strike and the changing economics of digital media.

“I think that is one of the phenomenon right now, the expanding middle of content,” Miller declared. “Then the question is how the money gets there. The money will follow the consumption, and the consumption is going there.”

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