Ken Auletta: The Future of Online Original Content | Big Think

Ken Auletta: The Future of Online Original Content

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The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta on the future of online original content.

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Ken Auletta:

Ken Auletta has written Annals of Communications columns and profiles for The New Yorker magazine since 1992. He is the author of eleven books, including five national bestsellers: Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way; Greed And Glory On Wall Street: The Fall of The House of Lehman; The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Super Highway; World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies; and Googled, The End of the World As We Know It, which was published in November of 2009. His other books include: Backstory: Inside the Business of News; Media Man: Ted Turner’s Improbable Empire; The Streets Were Paved with Gold; and The Underclass.

Auletta was among the first to popularize the so-called information superhighway with his February, 1993, profile of Barry Diller's search for something new. He has profiled the leading figures and companies of the Information Age, including Google, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, AOL Time Warner, John Malone, Harvey Weinstein, and the New York Times; he has dissected media meteors that fell to earth like "push" technology and inter-active TV, probed media violence, the PAC giving of communication giants, the fat lecture fees earned by journalist/pundits, and explored what "synergy" may mean to journalism. His 2001 profile of Ted Turner won a National Magazine Award as the best profile of the year. He covered the Microsoft antitrust trial for the magazine. In ranking him as America's premier media critic, the Columbia Journalism Review concluded, "no other reporter has covered the new communications revolution as thoroughly as has Auletta." New York Magazine described him as the "media Boswell." In another life, Auletta taught and trained Peace Corps volunteers; served as Special Assistant to the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce; worked in Senator Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 campaign for the Presidency; and was Executive Editor of the weekly Manhattan Tribune.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Ken Auletta: Amazon, YouTube and Netflix have three different models. They do original content but they do it in a different way. In Netflix’s case most of their content is not original. Only roughly two percent of their budget is originals but they’re increasingly spending more money. House of Cards they made 100 million dollar commitment for two seasons but now they’ve just signed to go to a third season of that and they’ve got some other original programs like Orange is the New Black and some others. What Amazon has done is the different model there is they basically said if you spend $79 a year to get free delivery of any Amazon product we will throw in free video. So you can watch movies or some of the original Gary Trudeau series they’ve just done, some of the originals like that that you can do.

But essentially it’s – you’re not an individual subscriber. Netflix you’re paying $8, you know, a month to be a Netflix subscriber. And Amazon you’re paying the $79 for delivery. And we don’t know and they don’t tell you how many of them are watching video. Amazon’s very secretive about its numbers. But in a way what they’re doing is what they did with the Kindle or with books. They subsidize. They give things at a low price to you in order to get you into their store to buy other things. And they’ve been very successful. What YouTube does – still another model – they moved away from user generated content.

But increasingly they’re trying to produce more professional content. It tends to be of shorter form, you know, quicker shows, et cetera. But they are buying product, as is Verizon and AT&T and some others. So there’s a lot of competition in that space. And increasingly, I mean, Reed Hastings of Netflix predicts that within just a couple of years half of the television that we watch will be delivered over the Internet. That’s a big deal because it means that you can do binge watching. You can know more about your customers and you can schedule for yourself. Then one of the questions would be – and this is a big question - if I control my television set for the digital video I’m watching and be it through my cable box or some other form, I can skip ads.

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