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To: Charlie B. who wrote (5403)	7/7/1999 11:25:00 AM
From: art slott	Respond to of 13157

Content Conference Shows Hollywood Yearns to Learn By LINDA HAUGSTED July 5, 1999 Culver City, Calif. -- It was held on the Wheel of Fortune set, but a conference staged by MediaOne Group Inc. here last week to educate potential developers of broadband content might have been housed more appropriately at the Let's Make a Deal digs. Executives from the Road Runner cable-modem service hosted more than 250 new-media developers and other Hollywood honchos at a broadband developers' conference in an effort to sell them on speed. There was certainly an appetite for the information: Initially set up for 200 attendees, conference backers had to go to the fire marshal for approval to put more chairs in the soundstage, and they still ended up turning interested producers away. The day's message? Be our partners in early content development and think beyond "repurposed TV" -- that is, free TV content rerun on the Web. MediaOne vice president of Internet services Tom Cullen admitted that it would probably take two more years before cable modems reach profitable penetration. Cable modems will be deployed in only 220,000 Road Runner homes by the end of this year, he said. But content developers can build awareness and market share by investing in high-speed content now, MediaOne executives argued. Audience feedback made it clear that MediaOne would have to revise its marketing strategy to forge some of these partnerships. At the moment, Road Runner's predominant message is "fast." Producers indicated that they expect marketing support if they are going to spend development money. Vice president of marketing and sales Kelly Ruebel indicated that Road Runner was about to make a marketing shift. In its current markets, Road Runner has captured the early adopters, and the service has done focus groups to determine how to best sell modems to more resistant consumers. They found that nontechnical consumers are confused about the speed issue. Asked their preferences between 56.6-kilobit-per-second modems and 1-megabit-per-second modems, respondents picked the former "because it's bigger," Ruebel said. New campaigns should focus on ease of use and the capacity to change the way people use the Internet, she added. MediaOne also uses its video capacity to drive traffic to current programmers, showing profiles of content providers once a month, she told potential producers. Consumers aren't the only ones who are unclear about the concept. "We wanted to know what they meant by 'broadband,'" two executives from Internet-production firm Rampt said when asked why they came. "We think we understand now." Other misunderstandings were revealed. When asked if they already worked over high-speed-data lines, about 40 people raised their hands. One-half of those people were using cable modems. The rest use digital subscriber lines from the local phone company because modems are not available in their areas. But one man said he'd heard that cable modems could slow to 56.6 kbps during heavy traffic. Thus, he'd opted to get "his own" line. This prompted a frustrated Cullen to shout from the sidelines -- three times to make sure he was heard -- "All networks are shared!" Content that works well in a fast, video-streamed environment, Columbia TriStar Interactive vice president of online services Rob Tercek said, includes exchange (online auctions or directories); "metacontent," which offers not just content, but context; and incomplete content, such as games. He agreed with MediaOne in advising against envisioning a TV network on the Web. "Free TV's market is disintegrating, and you'll just accelerate that," he said. Revenue is possible during the high-speed-data platform's formative years, but not profits, ZDTV producer of broadband content John Gilles said. Sources include rich-media ads, which harvest data from users for sale to others; transactional ads; and bounties from partners and service fees. "You probably won't make money for a while," Gilles said, noting that with costs at 5 cents to 20 cents per stream, popular sites prove the most expensive to developers. "But your model helps to reserve market share" until the eyeballs are there, he added. Anthony Bay, general manager of streaming media for Microsoft Corp., advised developers to examine the World Wrestling Federation's Web site, which he described as the most visited nonporn site on the Web. The WWF is a leading innovator on the Internet, he said, vacuuming incremental dollars out of the pockets of fans with streaming video for sale of pre-bout pay-per-view programming, merchandising and other uses. . NEXT