Power and network companies often talk about the "last mile" in their distribution networks -- that is, the mile between a network substation and the customer's house. The last mile is the hardest to build, the most expensive to maintain, and the most important part of the network. Well, I think the "last mile" for internet video is the distance between the office chair and the couch. Internet video is exploding but it will be restricted to the tech-savvy until there's a simple, cheap, way to bring that video to the couch where people currently watch traditional television.
About a minute into the latest B-Cast by Liz Stephans and Scott Baker of Breitbart.TV (whom we interviewed a few weeks ago on PJM Political), they casually mention that their previous show attracted about 400,000 views.In and of itself, that's an impressive number for a newscast. (Any show on MSNBC would be considered a hit if it pulled those numbers.) But consider the extreme economy of scale going on here:
As of 2005, CNN in primetime attracted less than 700,000 daily viewers, but with a budget of zillions of dollars and a ton of real estate, technicians and on-air talent. In contrast, the B-Cast is, I believe, run out of an office in Pittsburgh by two people with one set, a couple of cameras, laptops for the on-air talent (in other words, Liz and Scott) to cue those cameras and YouTube clips, and I guess another computer or two to record the sum of all those parts and upload the show to Andrew Breitbart’s news aggregation site.
I know there are a lot of ways to do this already, but none of them are simple enough that I've bothered yet, and I'm hardly a technophobe.
(HT: Instapundit.)
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