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SPEAKER 1: So Chad, what do you make of that?
You're the man who started all this, and here you have a group
of hugely distinguished broadcasters and people
involved in online.
Where does that leave you thinking YouTube sits in
the ecology of all this?
CHAD: Well, I think what you heard was that we're all pretty
optimistic that there's huge potential for online video.
And the ways that traditional media and these new medias can
work together in terms of the synergies that are available,
in terms of connecting those audiences and driving them
to better experiences.
But we're all still trying to figure it out as well.
It's only been a few years really since things have taking
off in this space and it's very early to tell how it's all
going to work out, but I think with the things that we're
working on today, and with the users participating already
with the level of content they're already sharing with
one another and creating-- I mean, I think there's just
a very bright future.
SPEAKER 1: I mean something that underpinned and underpins
YouTube-- we saw spectacularly last night in the performance--
is this kind of DIY libertarian ethic.
Is there any sense in which that may be dampened down as
the traditional broadcasters get in on the act.
CHAD: No, I don't think so.
I think there's enough people in the world that everyone's
going to have a chance to gain an audience.
And good content is good concept.
If that's coming from Hollywood or coming from an individual
in their bedroom, people are going to enjoy watching that.
They'll be different types of ways to deliver that message--
if it be short form video or a longer form TV show
or even movie.
But I think if it's a studio or network or user, everyone's
just going to have a chance, and that just wasn't available
just a few years ago.
SPEAKER 1: So there are no tensions in this, actually?
SPEAKER 3: Well, I don't know.
We're all competing for the same eyeballs so that will be
some competition and there will be some tensions.
And I think that BBC [? KK's ?]
Britain's third biggest website, and so you know, to
some degree we're jockeying for space with MSN and
YouTube and so on.
I think it'd be naive to say that we can all get along 100%,
but actually I think that there's more that binds us
than divides us actually.
But we see YouTube as a hugely important distribution
channel for our content.
SPEAKER 1: As you've said with Kangaroo, do you see that more
of an outcrop of the revolution that chat personifies, or as
just something that's come together with more traditional
broadcasters adapting and evolving?
SPEAKER 3: I actually think Kangaroo's pretty fundamental.
And I think that as people increasingly want to watch
television on their terms.
The amount of television they want to watch, on a device they
want to watch, and the time they want to watch it, and how
they want to watch, and how they want to share it.
Then sites that can offer that, but still give them what they
love from television, which is an unambiguously quality
experience, those sites are going to be a pretty
important part of the mix.
I'm pretty confident that Kangaroo is not a side show.
It's going to become-- if not the sky of tomorrow, then
hopefully at least a significant player.
SPEAKER 1: And Christian, you're an entrepreneur.
You're confident this entrepreneurial
spirit can survive?
SPEAKER 4: I'm confident.
I agree with Chad.
I mean, I think the word mix is also the right word to use in
that context because users are the going to mix their media
take in, they're going to watch television, they're going
to be on YouTube, MyVideo.
And the [UNINTELLIGIBLE PHRASE]
likes to say that yesterday content was king.
Today content is King Kong, meaning, you know, it's just
as relevant as it always was.
The only difference is that it's not only Hollywood and the
television stations producing it, but it's also the users
producing a lot of irrelevant or not so interesting content.
But also a lot of very interesting content.
And well, let the user choose what he wants to see.
That's really the point.
SPEAKER 1: Good.
I think it will be a great time to take some questions.
We have about 20 minutes remaining.
So this your chance.
AUDIENCE: Not having lived in the UK for a long time, I'm
just wondering, how is iPlayer funded?
Is it a fair game?
Especially also to the other guys, would you prefer
tax money over VC money?
I don't know.
When will iPlayer be open for people outside the UK?
SPEAKER 3: The iPlayer is funded out of the BBC license
fee, which is an annual license of 130-- God.
I should know that, shouldn't I?
6 pound 50.
And a proportion off the BBC's license fee, something like
about five pounds, goes to our entire internet spend of which
much more proportion goes on the iPlayer.
It's gone through an extensive market test and had to be
approved by the trust to make sure that the positive impact
that it had outweighed any potential negative
market impact.
Would I prefer to be in a free market?
Well, there are obviously swings and round abouts.
I am from a fixed revenue organization, so there's
only so much I can do.
No matter how successful iPlayer is in fact, that's
part of the problem.
The more successful iPlayer is, my costs go up and
my revenue is fixed.
Now that's actually quite a challenge, as well as thank
you very much for the granted money in the first place.
SPEAKER 1: Do any of the panel feel that there's
a protectionist dimension to iPlayer?
That you have a public funded competitor.
You're very relaxed about this.
Very laid back.
CHAD: I mean, it would be nice to have tax money.
SPEAKER 1: That wasn't the question.
CHAD: Serving video is expensive, but I don't know.
I think the situation in the UK is much difference than the
rest of the world in what we're dealing with, with kind
of the online world of user-generated content.
So I don't know.
I think what they're dealing with is much more competitive
to traditional TV broadcasters than it is with what
we're doing online.
SPEAKER 4: Well, coming from Germany where the situation is
similar with the two big state television networks being
funded from the fees paid by everybody in Germany, I still
have to say that from a personal point of view, I
really like the quality they're producing.
I like to watch the Tagesschau in Germany, which is, I think,
the highest quality news you can get.
And so I think it's only fair that they also go online
and show their stuff there.
[UNINTELLIGIBLE]
in Germany is doing something very similar.
SPEAKER 5: Not in the U.K., but I think that [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
had these kind of things in its mission now because it seems
like you participate not to the progress in terms of
[UNINTELLIGIBLE]
of the media of the country.
But the question is, and it goes back also to the previous
comment is that, given that in some cases, like YouTube or
[UNINTELLIGIBLE], you describe it like that, and like
summarize you were saying that a tool is a tool.
But a tool can be used in many ways.
So my question is, it's true that at the moment that
relationship to me is very complimentary.
There is already content, like I said, professional content,
like I said, professional at the moment.
[UNINTELLIGIBLE]
But if I go back to the mission that the founder of Google was
explaining yesterday was that this search engine, ad sales
application, and it is a path toward that.
I mean, I'm not saying that-- it's a path toward starting
from a kind of technological tool [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
towards creation of culture.
So what if they enter into the mechanics of making that
community can produce more relevant content, more
organized content then they can be servicing and
advertising a better way.
So my question is, at that point probably the freak
show could be bigger also with the other players.
SPEAKER 1: Do you have a question, sir?
AUDIENCE: Actually two questions.
[UNINTELLIGIBLE]
from [UNINTELLIGIBLE].
You stated a lot about TV and internet, the future.
It would be great to get a snapshot from the four
of you what you think is going to happen.
Are those technologies going to merge, are they going
to continue to coexist?
Or is one going to kill the other?
And then, short statement, is we're going to have the next
European cup four years from now, hopefully with
British participation.
Where do you think most of the audience will watch?
Via the internet or typical broadcast TV?
SPEAKER 1: Good question.
Chad, go ahead.
CHAD: Well, I think they're all going to exist.
Just like someone mentioned yesterday, someone thought VHS
were going to kill the movie industry, same with the DVD.
You know, advances in technology actually add
to the bottom line.
I feel this online video format is new and unique and it's
going to be a different way people consume their media.
And it's just going to add to the choices that
people have today.
And so I don't see one or the other kind of killing each
other, there's just going to be more choices for the consumer.
That's how I feel.
SPEAKER 5: I agree in a sense that at least to our
experience-- I may be wrong, but we have seen during the
years-- media, that we're complimentary
to other experience.
Then we have seen support disappear, VHS was an example.
And probably in the future DVD.
But at least for our user experience, when a media is
able to conquer a space, my space and time space in
people's lives tend to resist on that sense.
Only if it's not substituted by something completely
cannibalized.
SPEAKER 3: Broadcast is very cheap.
It's very cheap to send the same signal to millions of
people, and I think that the sunk infrastructure in
Britain and elsewhere will live for many years.
And so I watch to see IP becoming a bigger
part of the mix.
I don't ring the death knell of other means of distribution.
And so for your next football match I think that those live
events will always be the events that bring people
together around the television set.
And yes, there will be a significant number of those
probably getting it over IP, but I bet the majority in 2012,
and 2010 going on to the next Olympics, will be via good, old
fashioned distribution methods.
SPEAKER 1: But will a television set be a television
set as we understand it now?
SPEAKER 3: Yeah, it's something we've obsessed about.
That kind of how do you get IP signal to the television set?
And it's interesting because first of all, it matters
less than I thought it was going to matter.
More and more people are quite happy to watch television on
their laptops or on their PCs.
And more and more people have got media centers or whatever.
But that hybrid set-top box that Sky announced a couple a
days ago that they're going to light up the IP connection
in the back of their Sky
box, and you've got BT Vision looking like it's
finally making traction.
Obviously you've got cable.
Yeah, I think that that's the next big change.
It's been a long time coming, but I think 2009 is going to be
year when the television set connected via IP starts to
become a mass market, and then we'll see something happening.
SPEAKER 1: Christian?
SPEAKER 4: Yeah, I think I've not seen Juice killing TV at
all during the last year as it was, I think, announced.
And especially, for live events, definitely I think,
soccer I will always want to watch with my friends on the
couch or even public viewing in front of Brandenburg Gate
with one million people during the World Cup.
That's not going to be on MyVideo or YouTube.
And I think they're going to coexist.
SPEAKER 1: You had a question, sir?
AUDIENCE: I'd like to ask about video search.
As more and more content becomes available, helping
people find what's most pertinent to their interests is
going to be a bigger challenge.
I think the EPG model of the iPlayer is far from efficient,
and I think the volume of content on YouTube means that's
finding the nuggets relies on the community to
put them forward.
So that's difficult.
So I'd like your thoughts on how video search will evolve.
And is there a context to that?
I think many content owners would envy the fact that Google
has managed to grab an awful lot of the revenue by not
originating the content.
And is this something that the content owners amongst you in
the video space worry about?
That the mechanism to bring the audience to the content, that
that mechanism of the future will grab the lion's
share of the revenue?
SPEAKER 1: Chad.
CHAD: In terms of the technology, I think, yeah,
you're talking about the volume of videos that
receive on a daily basis.
It's really hard to find what you're looking for.
We're looking at ways to improve the algorithms, to
improve the relevance of the videos that we're
recommending-- the recommendations for you
based on browsing activity.
We're trying to incorporate more social aspects
into the site.
I think a majority of the people find an interesting
video by someone e-mailing to them.
We're trying to capture more and more of that on the site by
improving sharing and creating a customized home page that
captures some of that activity.
If they're sharing, uploading, rating, or commenting.
You can kind of see what your network of friends are doing.
So I think that'll add a nice kind of new angle to what we're
doing with the service, but talking about the content
itself, we also have to do a better job in terms of
compensating our users.
Like I said, we wouldn't be here without them, and we have
a long way to go in terms of incorporating our new
advertising models, but I'm confident we're
going to get there.
And we'd love to see people actually have a chance to
support themselves by creating something unique that they're
sharing with the world.
But I mean, beyond that I think a lot of the users-- that this
online video movement isn't necessarily motivated by money.
It's motivated by having the chance to be seen, and just
sharing their talents with the world.
And--
SPEAKER 1: Huge numbers of uploads on how to do
impressions, for example.
One guy I noticed the other day, had a thing.
I didn't see the whole thing, I must confess.
An hour on how to do a Christopher Walken impression.
CHAD: Can you do it for us?
SPEAKER 1: I can't.
Al Pacino I can do.
It starts high and then it goes down low.
CHAD: But I think people just like to share.
People like to share what they're doing, and other
people find that interesting.
And hopefully, we can serve as kind of a stepping stone or
stage for people to take things to the next level.
We know we're not the end all be all, in terms of you make
it on YouTube and you have a career for yourself.
You can go on to produce your own content, to write movies,
to get a record contract.
We're happy to serve as kind of that middle man.
We don't want to own their content or own their careers.
We just want to help them get their voice out there.
SPEAKER 1: Sure.
Who do you search?
SPEAKER 4: Well, we've seen some very interesting
technology in the field off speech to text, which works
real time and you get very good results from it.
Of course, for a user-generated site that only covers part of
your videos because not all of the videos contain speech, or
at least not speech you can understand.
Sometimes it's singing, sometimes it's just noise
and crash noise or things like that.
It won't cover all of it, but at least maybe 50%.
It will enable us to actually, for the first time, look
into the video like Google does with text analysis.
Because so far, you have to see that for Google AdSense, for
example, the video really is a black box and they
cannot look into it.
I think that's going to help also in the video search part.
SPEAKER 3: I'd be interested to know how much of your
traffic comes from people coming in on a search?
And then, how much of it comes from people serendipitously
going on a journey?
Because I mean, search is pretty important to us.
We've had a voice-to-text and subtitles, closed-captioning,
search running on our news site from Blinkx and other providers
from quite awhile now.
And we're trying to get into searching of the images within
the video working with IBM Marvel project.
And it's interesting, but actually, what's the BBC been
about for the last 80 years?
Well, it's scheduling this program after this program
after this program to have more audiences across.
And I think that just as important is working out what
your audience want and offering up that program either in
adjacency or following the program that they watched.
I think that's going to be a combination of technology,
but I hope, sort of betting Kangaroo on this to a bit.
Is that it's also a skill in working out who your audience
is and actually giving them content they didn't know they
wanted, but are going to enjoy.
CHAD: I mean, what we've seen on the site is about 50/50 in
terms of how people are interacting.
And half the people search for what they're look looking for,
but the rest of that experience, the other half is
filled with browsing through the recommended videos on
the right hand side.
You start your experience with a search and then you kind of
stumble through the site by clicking on the next video.
SPEAKER 1: You had a question, ma'am?
AUDIENCE: I think we're out of time.
I can make into a remark.
SPEAKER 1: Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: I think from the point of view of the platform
operators or the Telecom and the cable companies, if I
understand it rightly, there's already lots of complaints by
British Telecom since the iPlayer is out, that their
whole network infrastructure is overloaded, and that they're
now forced to upgrade the network infrastructure to glass
fiber and all those kind of things.
SPEAKER 3: If we are out of time I at least need to be
able to come back on this.
Because British Telecom haven't said that.
In fact, British Telecom, on the record, the new CEO,
Ian Livingston, said quite the opposite.
That he welcomes the iPlayer.
It has no impact on their network.
What we're seeing here is that the impact.
if there is one, has been marginal and it's on some
of those internet service providers who have to buy
capacity wholesale from BT and haven't necessarily locally
bundled their local network.
It's a complicated argument, but the majority of ISPs have
gone on the record to say actually services like the
iPlayer drive demand and they're a good thing
in the market.
But we can have a really long conversation about
this over a few beers.
SPEAKER 1: You know, I've just realized I'm surrounded by red
lights, which means that I will shortly spontaneously combust.
Nikesh has a button which will do that, which
I don't want to do.
Can you please join me in thanking our excellent panel?
Thank you very much indeed for your time.
[APPLAUSE]