by José Alvear
January 18, 2000
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Channelseek is essentially a way to find streaming audio and video content on the web. It has various channels on topics like business, movies, radio, sports, and more. It lets users browse through their listings which tell them the category, language, player type and bit rate.
Recently Channelseek re-designed its web site to make it more "Flash"-ier and dynamic for broadband users. But it's not just for broadband users, says Britt. Dial-up users can get a good experience too. In an effort to be the "TV Guide" for the web, Channelseek announced in December 1999 that they were creating a monthly printed guide. Plans are to distribute it to users of Channelseek's broadband partners like Sprint, Road Runner and Comcast.
I spoke at length with Tom Britt and hit upon a number of various topics like deep linking, broadband, streaming ads and even about adult streaming media content.
Streaming Media Newsletter: So you call yourself a "non-content, non-player specific" portal
right?
Tom Britt: Exactly, we're what you call an open model. We take anybody's content in any player type and aggregate it into one directory.
Q: Do you think that's what people need or want. Personally, I think
it's limiting to find good content when you're only looking at
Real.com's site, for example.
A: Yes, I think it's necessary for the industry as a whole and I think it's necessary for the Internet. The Internet by nature is an open platform. But the point you're making too, and it's a good argument: what about all that bad content? Nobody wants to sort through amateur home videos when you're looking for a music video. Our solution to that is that we have everything indexed in our database in several different fields, not just what player type, but also how long the video is. We also rate them internally based on what kind of bandwidth they're providing. If they're using a host like INTERVU or Globix or trying to do it out of their garage. And what you're going to be seeing in the next month, is user customization. You come in and put in a profile about yourself and filter out all that stuff you don’t want to see. And unlike My Yahoo or My Excite where you just get the first page customized, we customize every page based on your preferences. And that's really unique to the industry. That's a necessary tool we'll be providing people.
Q: What about the Real.com portal. Do you find yourself competing with
them more and more?
A: I don't think see us competing with them head to head, I think Real's changing their business direction. I see them becoming more of music portal site--a destination site. And the RealGuide was a way for them to help leverage their player for their customers which are the people using their player platform. If they could come out to you and say, "We'll license you our software and part of this is we'll put you on the RealGuide site. We get X number of hits a day on that and we'll generate traffic from that." That became a good synergy for them, something they could offer their customers and for the customers themselves. Really the RealGuide wasn't a part of their core business but it became an extension of their business to help them get more market share.
Q: It seems it's getting more important to them now. They're often
compared to Netscape.
A: You're right, they have. But as long as they only collect RealPlayer format and content, it's flawed, in my opinion. Because there's a lot of Windows Media stuff, and a lot of QuickTime and Emblaze. So once people learn and they realize, that hey RealNetworks doesn't have everything, they have a lot, but they don’t have it all, they're going to look for a site like Channelseek that does have everything. And that's why we become important. So are we afraid of Real? If we're scared of Real we have to be scared of everybody. But I think what's important is that we differentiate ourselves from our competition like Real and we're niched and very focused on our core and that is an open model, open guide.
Q: Do the other streaming media portals legitimize the whole business?
A: Most definitely.
Q: Because there have been a lot of other portals coming out.
A: Yes it does legitimize the space. If you look at our business model and how we're set up, nobody has really come out and hit us head to head. There's people doing a little of what we do, or a derivation of what we do. There's a lot of "live" sites. We don't just do live events, we do live and on-demand. And we don't consider chat bids and auctions events either. We're sticking with our core. We will diversify our offering down the road but we want to be known as a streaming media portal, then diversify the offering in the next two quarters.
Q: You recently re-did the website, was it just to focus on all your
broadband customers?
A: Um, it's not so much that. The real reason we wanted to re-do our site were a couple of reasons. Number one was to separate ourselves from the competition. The people coming into our space and saying we want to be like Channelseek. So we had to do something. Our site at that time looked a lot like our competition or functioned the same way. It didn't really reflect how we are internally. And secondly, it was to be a little sexier for broadband users. Broadband users expect, and they're going to expect more, they expect to see a more flashy more dynamic site. Your content is flashy, that's neat, but if your site's like driving a Model T, people won't come back and want to take it for a ride. So we had to differentiate ourselves in the marketplace. Plus we're starting to structure ourselves more for how we see Channelseek being in the future.
Q: The broadband future?
A: Yes, it's broadband. The standard for that is lowering as compression ratios go up. Broadband five years from now, won't be an ISDN line. Essentially a 56K connection could be broadband. As compression goes up and the infrastructure gets better and the players get better, you can have broadband down the road at 56K.
Q: Do you think that people look for content by going to a site like
Channelseek rather than going to sites like Sony or Universal to watch
movie trailers or listen to music?
A: I think right now that's debatable. The answer would be no, they don't want to come to a Channelseek every time and find stuff. I'm just trying to be honest. I think down the road, as more and more content comes online and as we keep up with the growth of the industry, people will rely on us more. Not as a place where they want to go and spend a lot of time--I don't want to be a destination site. I want to be a guide to where everything is. So when they come to our site they'll go to Sony and they might spend three weeks at Sony, but they're eventually going to come back to Channelseek. We're targeting the users that have been on awhile or the more savvy users that know what they're looking for. They've got the players, they've got the updates, and I think the Internet by and large is becoming smarter and more savvy. Down the road, they will rely on Channelseek more.
Q: I find, since I've got my DSL connection, that I'm looking for a lot
of broadband content, and sites like yours are good for finding that.
A: Exactly. A lot of the people I talk to when they get DSL or cable modem service, that's the first time they come to Channelseek. One of our advisory board member's son, he's really tech savvy and he said "Yeah I came to your site for the first time this week" and his dad has been on our advisory board for three months. What took you so long? "Well I didn't have DSL until this week, why else would I come to Channelseek." And it makes sense. Why would you go to the drag strip and race your Pinto? But if you bought a brand new Mustang with an 8.0 liter engine, now you have a reason to go over and test it out. We look at ourselves as the drag strip, we're providing a place where you can go and test out this DSL service.
I get a lot of flack from competitors and other people in the space that we're only targeting broadband users. Well we're not. We want to target those users because they have the most satisfying experience on our site, but we're also a showcase for what's to come, what they're going to see down the road. Lots of people come in on a dial-up line and see streaming media for the first time and say "Geez, I didn't know all this stuff was out there. I better go buy a DSL line."
Q: And the quality can be very good.
A: Yeah, look at how far we've come. In the last year, a 100K feed was unheard of. Now if you come on with a DSL line and they only have a 100K feed, you go somewhere else. I want to get a 300K feed.
Q: In Mark Cuban's keynote speech at Streaming Media West last month, he
said he was opposed to deep linking by portals. I notice sometimes you
do that and sometimes you just link to a web site. Do you need
permission to link to streams?
A: Right, we always need permission. Always. If we're deep linking, it's because they said go ahead. I think the solution to the problem is not--this is a short term fix. Down the road we're going to have streaming video ads in the stream. That's going to allow people like us to go in and either get direct links to the stream or to the page where the stream resides and bypass all the deep linking controversy.
Q: How so? I'm not sure what you mean.
A: Well if you look at how streaming media companies are making money, we're still stuck in the old world of banner ads. And at $10 CPM they've got to show as many ads as they possibly can to subsidize their bandwidth costs. Especially as people start demanding 100K streams or higher. The only way for them to make money is to start getting a higher CPM and the only way to do that is to put video ads in front of their content. That model is not perfected yet--we're working on some things with other companies to develop something. But 24/7 or NetGravity and all these other ad sales companies, those models won't work anymore moving forward.
Q: Do you think those ad companies will move into the streaming ad
market?
A: Well they're trying to. If you read their press releases you'd think they're already doing it, but they're not. The problem is, the infrastructure wasn't built to accommodate streaming media advertising.
Q: It seems the ones that are doing it are doing it themselves and not
waiting for these ad networks to start.
A: Exactly. There's a couple reason why they're doing it themselves. Number one is that no one else is doing it. And number two, the only way to have quality control and to get log files correctly is to do it on the client side. And 24/7 doesn't have that kind of technology available. So to answer you question, deep linking is a problem with streaming media. It's always been a problem with the net, but it's becoming more of a problem with streaming media because the overhead costs are so much higher. And now that web sites are doing streaming content they're more sensitive to it because they're losing revenues because their bandwidth costs are so high. It's easy to put up an HTML page and get a $10 CPM on a banner ad and cover your butt, but put a streaming media file on that site and start producing it and hosting it and getting your RealNetwork licenses and suddenly this $10 CPM isn't cutting it anymore. I think that's the bigger problem.
Q: It seems like an opportunity for you, where you can add an in-stream
ad for your or your advertisers. Are you looking to do something like
that?
A: Exactly, that's kind of the beginnings of it. We've got about four months of R&D in this project already and we're hoping three or four months, we're going to have an announcement along those lines. We are trying to pioneer something that would enable streaming media providers a way to make money on their streams without having to sell their own space.
Q: So you would split the money with the content owners.
A: Yeah, I can't say a lot about it but ideally that's the scenario. It has to be a win-win for us and for the content provider. And the only way they're going to win is if they're making more money on their content than a $10 CPM banner ad. And we're working on solutions for that.
Q: I guess, as more sites try video ads, you'll see more deep linking?
A: Oh yeah, you'll see direct linking to streams. Because if you look at the models, like Entertainment Bouldevard or CNN, these are models that are the first to let you direct link to their streams. Weatherama is the same way, they'll let you link directly to their streams. But what they’ve done is built either a pop up box that has advertising built into it, or they're putting ads in front of their streams (in the case of CNN). They will freely syndicate those streams to anyone that wanted them. "Want news content for your site? Stick my stuff on your site and I'll let you have a direct link to it." And for somebody like us, that's great, but for someone that has a site they're just trying to add some relevant content is great because they never leave their site. But I think you'll see that model playing out down the road, but right now since we're in a banner world, the deep linking is always going to be a concern.
Q: What other innovations can there be, what else can you do?
A: There's lot of things that we're going to be doing. I look at Channelseek five years from now and I don’t see us--we're not going to be called the TV Guide of the Internet. When you look at convergence and how the technologies are blending together, Channelseek will be more than a streaming media portal site. There's going to be voice over IP, data over IP, movies and all forms of streaming content. And Channelseek will be your guide to those products and services. So for example, what's to stop Channelseek from being the IP phone book of the Internet. Jose, can have an IP address associated with him, and I can get you on your Palm Pilot, webcam, PC, cell phone. Channelseek will be your guide to those types of services. In the short term, what does Channelseek do? We launch our printed guide, which is coming out in a couple of months. And that guide's going to be instrumental for the industry because there's such a need for this. And what we're going to do is indoctrinate people into the streaming media industry and educate them on what's online. For most people we'll be their first introduction to this whole industry.
Q: This guide will go to existing broadband customers, right? Like
bill inserts?
A: It will go to the consumers, which can be broadband customer on the Sprint Network, it can be someone that stops at the CompUSA and sees the point of purchase display at a counter, or someone that walks into Barnes & Noble and sees this free guide. Or as you said, it could be a billing stuffer. We're negotiating all these deals right now. We're hoping by the first issue to have a pretty long laundry list of ISPs and broadband providers that are going to carry this guide. Also we're talking to a lot of hardware manufacturers that are providing cable modems or DSL modems or some kind of convergence device, like a wireless system, LYRA, etc. You'll get this box and inside will be the Channelseek guide. You can get a free 12 month subscription to it by sending your product warranty card.
Q: I saw a prototype at the Streaming Media West 99 show. I'm curious
as to whether they will be live events or on-demand events?
A: Actually, it's not going to be a lot of live stuff at all. Most of the editorial content will be focused on who's doing what in this space. New sites coming up, or some sites that are offering a new show. That's one of the dilemmas we're running into. Given the production deadlines in the old world printing press, no one knows sixty days in advance what they're going to have on their sites. That's a problem for a magazine. It's also an opportunity to highlight what sites are doing, what kind of content they have and really editorialize and become the voice of the industry. And becoming the voice of the industry is something that people can't pay you to tell them to think about. We'll probably write about the better sites, because there's a lot of bad ones out there we don't want to waste our time on.
Q: Will it evolve into a "TV Guide"-like publication, with articles,
news and listings?
A: I would say it's more of a cross between TV Guide and Rolling Stone, where Rolling Stone really editorializes and gives you a third party perspective of what artists are doing. As people start developing more content, five years from now when you're watching TV and then comes on "Channelseek gives our new show, Five Thumbs Up!" So it will be that kind of objective opinion that we've given content. When people come to Channelseek and they're not inundated with a bunch of junk. They say "Listen this is what Channelseek suggests what we see, I'm going to get a good stream when I get there. It's good content. It's reliable. I'm not going to see some guy in his garage with a camcorder with a sheet behind him talking. I'm going to see good stuff." And that's the evolution we're going through right now and what you're going to see happening in the near future. And this guide will be the first consumer-focused extension of our site.
Q: It seems a big push now are the personal broadcasting, like MP3 or
even video sites. Will you look at this amateur stuff or just look at
the big stuff?
A: No, we'll look at this stuff as well. We're starting to negotiate with these sites that do that about getting their stuff in our database. WE can push traffic to them. But I really think that's going to help our industry more than anything. The ability to have Joe Schmoe from Idaho to be a webcaster. Because once it gets into the hands of the consumers, that builds the community. When I can stream my wedding, I can go to POPcast and have it hosted and send people to it, that builds community. In my opinion I've been waiting for the day, when I go to Channelseek and it's 90% amateur site. That's what going to build community in this whole industry and that's what gets consumers buying and that's what we're going to be promoting in our guide, is to start webcasting. It's not that hard folks. You don't need $3 million to get into Internet broadcasting. We're going to start spreading the word on.
Q: How do you get the streams? Do you go out there actively or wait
for them to be submitted? Which percentage are submitted for actual
companies?
A: Well there are three ways to do it. The easy way is we have a harvesting system set up with a content provider so basically as they update their site we're automatically updated. And that's the best of all worlds. Because they have good content or they wouldn't go for what we wouldn’t want to do it. Secondly it makes it bullet proof, so if they add stuff or delete webcasts at the last minute, we're also updated as well. The second easiest way is for someone to submit their content to us. I haven't really done any statistics to know--and I probably should--to know how much of our content in our database is harvested versus submitted versus something we go out and find. But it's a process. The hardest way is we go out and find something and submit it to our database and contact them and say "Hey we just submitted you to our database, here's what we can offer you. Welcome to the family. If you want us to link deeper into your site, we will. We would love to, but we want your permission first."
Q: What about searchable video, it seems to have gotten rather popular
last year. Will you be adding searchable video?
A: Well I don't see searching video in our future, and I'll tell you why. Video on the Internet is entertainment. Let's face it. If I go on Channelseek, I'm looking for something to entertain me. If I'm looking for news or something specific, if I want to see where Clinton said the word "cigar" in his speech, I'll probably go to a FasTV or Mediasite.net site which gives me that searchability function. But Channelseek is not really geared to do that sort of thing. And we don’t want to be that kind of thing. That's what those search engines are meant to do. And I think those searching providers--they have a great thing, it's a great niche that we don’t want to get into. We want to be an entertainment site where you see channels and content and programming. If you're searching for something specifically like doing homework at night from home and looking at what point Clinton said "cigar" don't come to Channelseek. We can send you to sites that do that kind of stuff, but Channelseek's not going to give you that searching functionality.
Q: So right now, is most of your work focused on getting links,
maintaining links, writing descriptions? What are you guys doing there,
basically? [Laughs]
A: Well we drink a lot of coffee. [Laughs] We spend most of our time and most of our focus on content partnerships and that is the epitome of what Channelseek is. We try to work with content producers to send them traffic and give them some value for working with us. And that relationship is imperative because--I can hire 300 people to come in and do nothing but maintain the links but it won't last for long. Because as the Net and webcasting grows, I just have to add more and more people and it becomes cost prohibitive to do this business. But if go out and partner and say "Listen, if you're changing your stuff let me know. And here, I'll give you a free reminder service to get people to come back to your site and give you this Channelseek Guide which gives you the ability to tell people what you do in an off-line version and also give you a channel to give you traffic for your type of content." If you can do those kinds of things, you don't need 500 people to keep up with what's going on because they're going to tell you what they're doing. And they're going to give you the ability to come in and actually be hooked into their network so you know what's happening without having to put people on it.
Q: I think you're the only streaming media portal that has adult
content. How did you come to that decision? Why adult content?
A: We had many nights of coffee trying to decide what to do. We decided to start databasing it because we view ourselves as a guide to streaming media content. We don't host any of this content so we don't have any conflicts of having to worry about, "Do we host porn or not?" We're merely pointing to all the streaming stuff that is out there. So it's not in our business plan to be a censor to all the stuff on the Internet. We have to tell you everything that's going on. Just like a road atlas that leaves off streets that has strip clubs and bordellos on it. Because the minute you do that, somebody else comes out with an atlas that has them and you're out of business.
Just like the phone book, they have escort services and strip clubs and triple x theaters. It's not that the phone company likes those things or they endorse them, but they're job is to tell you where those things are. And that's what Channelseek's job is. I think by next Friday (1/21) part of the customization is "I don't want adult content on MyChannelseek". And what will happen is, the 18+ button will disappear the next time you come back. And if you deactivate, you can't even search and find it on the site. It totally eliminates it from Channelseek so if you're kids are coming in after you leave or you're at the office and you're worried about accidentally finding some porn and your boss looking over your shoulder you can deactivate it. So I think we're being responsible about, probably more responsible than anybody else has been on the web about porn, but on the other hand we have to make that part of that offering or we eliminate ourselves from the marketplace.
Q: Do you accept adult advertising?
A: Yeah you can advertise in that area.
Q: Do you worry that some software might block you because of that
adult content?
A: It is, but lots of things concern me. And things that concern me the most are things that I have control over and I don’t feel that Channelseek, given our model, has control over censoring what we put on our site. If we start censoring, what about Richard Pyror videos? Do you put that on our site? We have a lot of comedy in our adult channel, because of the language. But we're proactive about it. We say, "Hey, this is adult content, when they say the F word twenty times a second, that's adult content." So parents come in and turn that off and you're children won't see that kind of stuff.
Q: Is there a rating system or do you think there should be one? I'm
thinking just in general, for all streaming media content.
A: No, there needs to be a system for it. And that's part of what the International Webcasting Association (IWA) (http://www.webcasters.org) is trying to do: start to put together some standards for the industry. What we do is physically visit every stream link in our database and we watch them and if there's something like frontal nudity or bad language or off color subject matter, we give it an adult rating. And that enable users to deactivate that content. It's a tricky area and we've had a lot of people voice concern over it. Just because broadcast.com said "No we're not going to do it" because they didn’t want to host that kind of stuff, there's a lot of other people that are doing it and people are trying to find them. And that's our role in this, to be a guide to all this.
Q: You think other portals are missing a business opportunity by not
carrying adult content?
A: That's not really for me to say. I hope everybody makes money in this space. I don't think they have to do porn to make money. But I think money's going to be made in streaming media in pay-per-view, subscription model, and also with video stream advertising. I don't think porn is going to have that big of a place in there. If you look at TV models today, you look at digital cable systems, they make money on pay-per-view, but it's not all porn. They have three or four porn channels, but the rest is family-type stuff--although I don't know if you can call South Park family type entertainment. You're kids can surf to it, not me. That becomes a big issue, too. I have four kids. I don't want my kids coming to Channelseek and finding porn because it reflects bad on me. I look at that as my moral standard; how do I keep kids from seeing this stuff and we're being proactive and enabling people to turn it off and that's the best I can do.
Q: Speaking of pay-per-view, Streamsearch.com said they wanted to get
involved in pay-per-view movies. They said something about being the
Blockbuster of the Internet.
A: Yeah, there are a lot of people that want to do that, but the way the Internet is structured does not really facilitate that. And I'll tell you why. If you look at distributed networks and you look at pay-per-view on the Internet, it all comes down to the last mile. And it comes down to, is Joe Schmoe in Idaho willing to pay five dollars to see something streamed or even downloaded to his PC, if he's not guaranteed a high bit rate on his connection speed. Anybody can go out and say, "I want to do a pay-per-view network on the Internet." Just partner with INTERVU, or build my own network, or shoot, even rent space off these head-end system, but you don't own the last mile. And until you can guarantee them the stream rates, they're not going to pay for that. They might pay for that once and get burned but they're not going to come back and do it again. I think that model is going to be there and we have some ideas on how we can do it or how we can be a part of that. But it really comes down to that last mile. I think that's where our partnerships with broadband providers helps us, because I think that's where pay-per-view is going to lie. It's not going to lie on some distributed network somewhere.
Q: So what happens now. You've been private now, are you looking to go
public?
A: I think everyone with a dot com is looking to go public. I look at going public not as our goal. Our goal is to own the space and to be the consumer's guide to the Internet. Being public would help because it gives you cash and gives you a form of currency to go out and acquire things and develop the way you need to develop. But what's next for us, is developing internationally. Developing the guide and partnering with other companies that can help us facilitate some things we're planning that really aren't part of our core, but would help us. For example, pay-per-view, international development. You know, I don't want to go over and start offices all over the world and buy copiers in every country in the world. So you have to find creative ways of doing that without deviating from your core business. Financially, yeah an IPO would be great. That would be wonderful, it would help everyone out, but it's not the end goal, the end goal is a little bit further than that.
