Vevo, T-Mobile, CNN iReport, All Impacted By Hacking TV Trend

Vevo, T-Mobile, CNN iReport, All Impacted By Hacking TV Trend
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Television has, since its infancy, been something that was left to the professionals. The technology was complex, the costs stratospheric, and the ability to reach an audience required an FCC license. Making TV was hard, watching TV was easy. The dividing lines were clear.

Today there's a category of companies aiming to take over TV. Barbarians at the gates of a billion-dollar business. What makes TV so ripe for reinvention? It's a 200 billion dollar global market today and growing - even as it's under siege by a band of feisty insurgents.

The olden days of TV are fading to black, and what comes next is very important because video is powerful and profitable. It moves people. It influences voters and consumers.

Now we're starting to see some big hacks that challenge the old rules. And three big, but seemingly unrelated headlines all tie back to the Hacking TV trend.

Let's start with music. While people tend to talk about Pandora or Spotify when they think about the music business - young people will tell you that a significant portion of their music consumption now comes from YouTube.

Nielsen Music data reports that YouTube is growing 60.6 faster than the non-video streaming services. That means 76.6 billion music video streams in just the first half of 2015. A jump of 109 percent over the previous year. And Vevo - which is a consortium of record labels that has been built mostly on YouTube traffic, is now starting to make noises about wanting to grow up and branch out on its own.

So this week Vevo released a brand new iPhone app - and already critics are pointing to Vevo's drive to build its own audience independent of YouTube. The new app feels more like Tinder or Snapchat -using music to drive a community/social experience. The app is full of great big and beautiful artist images - using pictures to give new users a tactile 'match' with an artist they love. Once you log in and tell Vevo which artists you like, the home screen presents videos of your favorite artists - and then mixes them with suggested artists you might like. At first look, the app is a winner - with a sexy and intuitive user-interface and Vevo says that tests of the app show that users are spending less time looking for video, and more time enjoying artists. Given that

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YouTube is admittedly late to the mobile party, it's not hard to imagine that Vevo, with its direct access to artists and now modern mobile experience, could start to offer music lovers a new first-stop destination for their music appetite.

With the new app, the YouTube/Vevo frenemy relationship heats up. Yes, YouTube is Vevo's largest distribution partner, but based on industry complaints that the revenue isn't what the labels expect - this could be the first step toward branching out on their own. The question is - will fans follow?

At the same time - also in the mobile space - T-Mobile shook the earth with the announcement of Binge On, an offering that makes video viewing free on the mobile carrier's network. T-Mobile will allow subscribers to stream video from 24 services without hitting their data plans. Sites including Netflix, HBO Now, HBO Go, Watch ESPN, Fox Sports and Hulu.

"Binge on. Start watching your shows, stop watching your data" said T-Mobile CEO John Legere,"Video streams free." There's no doubt this announcement rattled ATT and Verizon, who see video and the sale of data as a big part of their future profits and more users shift video viewing from cable to mobile devices. Critics say it violates net neutrality, but T-mobile disagrees. "I make it very clear that we fundamentally believe in a free and open Internet," Legere responded to a question from Re/code. "We know the principles -- you don't slow down or throttle. We abide by all of that."

To offer unlimited streaming, T-Mobile is bringing down quality a bit - but it's hard to image most consumers will care. The details of the deal with providers is a bit unclear - but Legere did make it clear that video providers didn't pay T-Mobile to participate in Binge On. Missing from the list so far are YouTube, Facebook, and Snapchat.

Clearly T-Mobile knows who it's talking to. 57 percent of Millenials watch video on their phones. "They don't even watch TV," said Legere.

And even as Vevo and T-Mobile are moving toward TV - CNN is strangely waving the white flag and declaring itself defeated by the social web.

When CNN launched iReport in 2006 it was clearly ahead of its time. Now CNN has announced it's shutting down the user-generated video service. Back then, the citizen journalism initiative invited viewers to contribute video stories that were shared on the CNN website and occasionally on air.

Instead of asking viewers to submit, CNN will now source content from Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter - inviting users to tag their work with #CNNiReport.

But iReport had an odd history. Stories that were submitted went live without any form of editorial review or checking - which exposed CNN to some awkward outcomes. There was - for example - a 2008 story that stated that Apple's CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a serious heart attack. It turned out to be untrue. CNN says the new version of iReport will vet stories they pick up from the web before they go live - but it begs the question of why they didn't embrace user-content and evolve the product sooner - when sites like Twitter were gaining momentum.

So - the Internet is changing. Video is moving to the center of how mobile users consume and create content. And the big winners in this transition aren't likely to be the players who've been the gatekeepers of TV for the past 50 years.

So, as they say - stay tuned.

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