Emmy Awards for Cellphone Content

At the beginning of this month the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences created and Emmy category for "outstanding original programming for computers, cellphones and other hand-held devices."

I find this hilarious on several levels -particularly the one where I imagine viewing sixty seconds of grainy cellphone content at a bus stop, putting my phone down and saying to myself: "That was outstanding."

Humour aside, this does mark a very interesting shift in the global mediascape. The recent success of making programs such as Lost and Desperate Housewives available for download for a small fee shows that the old media is wiseing up to web video. Online is the second fastest growing advertising category in the world (behind Hispanic media). Media execs have worked out that the audience is definitely there to stay.

Then let the experimenting begin! Considering it costs almost nothing to re-purpose video content for online delivery you will begin to see even more companies testing the waters of the alternate revenue streams -working out which ones will net them the most returns. In his article in USA Today on April 4th, Mr Maney had this to say:

So, really, it all adds up to a tipping point or strategic inflection point
or that moment when the coffee starts perking, if anybody can remember when
coffee actually perked. The established industry has come to feel safe
experimenting online. Ad sales have mushroomed. Technology has made
experimentation cheap and easy. And a sense of fear -of not wanting to get
Napstered all over again- has created a sense of urgency.

Great. So more and more content (and the advertising that comes with it) is starting to move to the web. Online video in the post-YouTube environment is set to become what mp3's were in the mid-nineties. A global phenomenon.

And where does this leave New Zealand? Let me just go out on a limb and say "well and truly behind." In my estimation we have a scant couple of months to force local loop unbundling if we even stand a chance of keeping up with the developed world. It takes time -and I am talking years- for the market to have any effect on Telecoms monopoly and it will take even longer before we will start to see the results of other companies such as Ihug and Telstra (fingers crossed) investing in our national broadband infrastructure.

If you think we have a brain drain now just wait and see what it looks like when people and companies find themselves incapable of doing business online because of our pitiful speeds.

Think about it. The rest of world has got to the point where they are developing award shows for a type of content that is not even on New Zealand's internet horizon.

Who wants to move back to Sydney with me?