Monday, May 04, 2009

And People Say There's No Money on The Web...

Maybe not right this second, but by jiminy there will be!

From our friends at New Tee Vee:

More than 40 percent of young adult U.S. households (ages 18 - 35) watch web video on their TV at least once a month, according to new numbers from In-Stat. The research firm predicts that by 2013, revenue from web-to-TV streaming services will hit $2.9 billion.

Web video in this instance is defined as any video coming from an Internet source (e.g. Netflix, Hulu, YouTube). In the next five years, In-Stat predicts that the number of U.S. broadband households watching web video on TV will grow to 24 million from 2.5 million today.

One of the drivers of this transition will be game consoles, which, as we saw from the 1 million Xbox subscribers who activated their Netflix streaming earlier this year, are proving to be a popular way to access web video on televisions. Currently, In-Stat says 29 percent of 25- to24-year-old game console owners use those devices to stream video from the Internet.
You will see movies and TV Direct 2 Netflix.
You will see movies and TV Direct 2 XBox.

That is, if you target your content to this growing revenue stream of viewers who like video games, comics, toys and SFX driven movies.

In fact, you could make a low budget movie (Under $500K) and also sell a tie-in comic, toys and possibly an iPhone app video game. Then you license out to international territories.

Oh, but that sounds too much like work. Better to go the traditional film festival route and neglect the target audience entirely. After all, a theatrical release is what's required for real filmmakers.

3 comments:

Lara said...

Very interesting stats. Thanks for posting.

S. Harlan Cone said...

Awesome friggin' post. "But that sounds like work." Don't encourage the slackers! Let them slack! Leaves a more open market for me to bust my ass for.

Phoebe said...

Really interesting perspective, thanks!

As you say, filmmakers and other artists need to be watching these trends just as much as anyone else in the industry in order to take advantage of new opportunities for bringing their work to interested audiences.

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