Show Mode vs Curiosity Flow Mode

When I was 30 years old NBCamp8217s Paul Klein made up an idea he called Video On Demand It stuck in my mind In 1993 almost nobody in Hollywood knew what I was talking about when I used the phrase I had to explain it to Oliver Stone and Francis Ford Coppola and everyone else because my 1990s tech company Next Century Media NCM had a plan to digitize all movies ever made capturing them in Ultra High Definition 6000 vertical lines of resolution equal to 35mm as a means of preserving the content which was rapidly fading away in the nitrate base film stock triple separation negatives used for amp8220preservationamp8221 that worked for only a couple of decadesThe NCM proposition in the early 90s was for NCMamp8217s investors to invest the cost of digitization in return for exclusive VOD rights until those costs were recouped Then the VOD rights would become nonexclusiveOne morning I woke up at the Drake in Chicago and saw the headlines in the newspaper delivered along with breakfast My partner IBM had gone and sold the VOD idea to the world and our stealth approach was going to need a major pivot I decided to focus just on the addressable commercials and the set top box return path data part of the plan Now almost 30 years later the American Academy of Television Arts ampamp Sciences is giving me and NCM an Emmyamp174 Award on April 25 2022 for inventing and pioneering the technology implementation of the first privacy protected big data televisionamp8217s set top box data now rapidly morphing into digital server logsToday VOD in the form of streaming is rapidly replacing the idea of amp8220showsamp8221 because there are no time constraints You watch or do whatever you want whenever you want Within a few more years virtually all of entertainment television will be used that way whereas timed live news and live sports will persist into the far future Showtime will come to mean the first available moment a particular episode becomes availableWhen I first got into the business Nielsen was reporting that the average US adult spent 4 hours a day with TV Today that number is 10 hours but it is for all screens combined And itamp8217s not just for shows A gradually increasing share of screen activity has been migrating from shows to other uses which I group as amp8220curiosity modeamp8221 the experience in which one floats around following momentary hunches and interests or plays videogames or does all the other fun things you can do besides watching shows The two use cases can intermix such as when the floater gets interested in a show in progress or stumbles upon a VOD program that seems interestingWith a digital controller in the hand or voice command one can play the intermix even more easily With augmented and virtual reality AR ampamp VR now together called XR embellishments the curiosity use case could become dominant Perhaps one mix of the near future will be going to the movies with a friend met in VR Some will go to a museum or exotic beach in a faroff country with a friend met in VRPaul Klein who coined the term amp8220Video On Demandamp8221 also coined another term amp8220LOPamp8221 standing for the Least Objectionable Program theory Paul saw that no matter how good or bad the shows were the total usage levels of television remained high from night to night each night having its own typical high level always more than half the population all watching shows not indulging their unbounded curiosity unleashed from a static framework of sitdown showsBecause the TV usage levels were steady regardless of quality Paul concluded rightly that it wasnamp8217t the shows people were watching it was the medium itself The audience liked the couch potato quotentertain mequot experience with the changing pictures and interesting talk and drama and laughs amp8220They will watch anything so if they donamp8217t like one show they will circle the dial to find the LOP and stay there rather than turn the box offamp8221 Paul said That was indeed a more forgiving timeWhat we thought of as a tough audience back then was a walk in the park compared to todayamp8217s audience ADD and ADHD were in their infancy then Acceleritis had reached DEFCON 2 but now itamp8217s at DEFCON 1The old guard knows how to make successful shows Now the new entertainment providers coming out of the technology sector have quickly found the best creative talents and coopted them leaving them as day workers and therefore not yet having their loyaltyBut no one is figuring out how to use those talents to create the new type of content that wins in the noshow environment sought when the user feels like curiosity instead of feeling like showsQuibi took a first shot at it Best to grok that case before leaping off in a guesswork directionQuibi had not departed from shows They were still perceived as the proscenium arch the open wall they were still shows just shorter episodes not amp8220curiosityamp8221Curiosity is userdriven second to second The best way to understand the possibilities is to watch Hyperland the classic 1990 documentary by Douglas AdamsEven Hyperland did not depict the fullbore VR envisioned by The Matrix for example We are far from that degree of realism but can still give people the ability to act out in public situations from behind the veil of The Masked Singer The possibilities of lowtech roleplaying games that can be engaged in within an easymoving curiosity platform that encompasses all of the Internet and television in one place are endlessFrom the perspective of that world which is technologically close at hand in lowres todayamp8217s social media and search curiosity stage will appear neanderthal It will grow from here to there through the bridge of gaming massively multiplayer roleplaying games MMRPGs As they go into first stage lowres AR the fun beginsThe first one could be here next year Iamp8217ve been working on it since 2000 when we consulted for Worldscom where David Bowie had his own World Worlds was the predecessor of Second LifeThe first game I created to playability level was called Cosmopoly We played it on a board sitting on the floor The secret of the game was that it could only be won by the players discovering how to work together But it was still fun to play even after that was figured outThe game I was developing for Worldscom was called Identity Crisis It starts at a posh cocktail party where your avatar comes into the scene with amnesia and has to rediscover who he or she is One gradually becomes aware of an undercover spy operation which is going on Certain actions bring back certain memories You begin to piece together who you are and the meaning of your role in this gameThese are some of the kinds of content that the Hollywood creative community and todayamp8217s TikTok power users could create later in this decade Picture users able to gain magic powers in VR which allow the user to create new sharable VR worlds in real timeThe main draw for the adult customer in VR and AR will always be the vicarious and safe pleasure of meeting other people and having conversations in exotic settings and the quest to find romantic love or its semblance if only for an hour at a timeImprov actors and actresses will form the nucleus of each such game lifting the level of conversation and theater Shills one might call them or rabbis In the Catskills they were known as the toomlers The Brickmansamp8217 toomler was Chubby LentzThe amazing race we have been in since television began is moving faster now as new technologies inspire creativity to flower in new directions for entertaining and informing humanity for most of their waking hours Hang on It gets really wild from this point onClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writersamp160amp160

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Show Mode vs Curiosity Flow Mode

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Bill Harvey

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