Webcasting Worldwide

Business Models of an Emerging Global Medium

Louisa S. Ha, Richard J. Ganahl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135249779
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Digital Marketing
• Index: Business

Webcasting Worldwide tackles one of the most timely topics in mass communication today—the delivery of audio and video content via the Web, or webcasting—employing a global perspective to explore the subject. It is unique in providing a theoretical framework by which to analyze business models of emerging media, and it also examines the business practices of leading webcasters in the world's most developed broadband markets. With webcasting in its early development, the approaches discussed in this volume set the standards for the webcasting industry.

Representing the major broadband markets in the world, this text is an authoritative and valuable reference for both researchers and practitioners. The chapters relate the business practices of webcasting to the media market environment and established media industries, such as television and radio, as well as government and non-profit organizations. Downloadable resources offer PowerPoint charts for use in training, education, and research, along with tables, graphs, screenshots, and hyperlinks.

Webcasting Worldwide is essential reading for academic researchers and media industry practitioners, and the volume will be a useful text in advanced courses addressing media technology, media management, and international communication.

For updates about the book chapters and latest commentaries on topics related to webcasting business models, please visit the Webcasting Business Models Blog at http://webcastingworldwide.blogspot.com

Winner of The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Picard Award for Media Management and Economics 2007.

PART I

Worldwide Webcast Overview: A Framework for Analyzing Business Models of Emerging Media

CHAPTER 1
Webcasting as an Emerging Global Medium and a Tripartite Framework to Analyze Emerging Media Business Models

Louisa Ha
Bowling Green State University

Richard J. Ganahl
Bloomsburg University

WEBCASTING AS AN EMERGING GLOBAL MEDIUM

Since the emergence of the World Wide Web as a mass medium, many scholars and practitioners have established its great potential as a liberating and possibly highly profitable medium that transcends geographic boundaries. The web can display media content in a variety of formats such as texts, graphics, audio, and video. In the broadest sense, webcasting is simply the delivery of content via the web (e.g, Ha, 2004; Miles, 1998), and is synonymous to online publishing. Nevertheless, if we narrow webcasting as the parallel to broadcasting, which is limited to only the delivery of audio and video content, then webcasting should be defined as the delivery of audio and video content via the web. Webcast contents can be delivered live in real-time or on-demand to the consumers. This book employs the narrow definition of webcasting to focus on the audio and video content delivery on the Web. It explores how webcasting may impact the electronic media industry and examines its close relationship with the broadband internet industry.

Unlike text and graphics sites that offer users information only, webcasts enable users to enjoy a sensory-filled, vivid and complete entertainment experience. There are many different applications of webcasting in both the non-profit and the commercial sector. For informational and instructional applications, webcasts can be used for distance learning, training and conferencing within and between organizations. For marketing applications, webcast can be used to promote the media companies, especially radio, television and movie companies with trailers and program highlights, or non-media companies with commercials and other promotional content. For entertainment applications, webcasts can also be used to substitute or complement the content shown in the offline counterparts of electronic media such as television networks, television stations and radio stations. The web becomes an alternative delivery medium for any organization or individual who wants to build an audio or video presence in cyberspace. No license is required. The potential audience is huge—every internet user of the world, which is estimated to be 960 million (Internet World Statistics, 2005). In an age of consolidation of electronic media distribution, the web is the only free marketplace left that allows media entrepreneurs to create their media and reach audiences with virtually no barrier to entry, except in countries that have legal restrictions in providing webcast services such as China.

This book focuses on the consumer market for webcasting because of the social and economic impacts of consumer webcasting on the society at large and the media industry. Business use of webcasting is an area that deserves another book for discussion.

Unlike television or radio broadcasts that must be displayed on a TV set or a radio receiver, webcasts can be displayed on any device equipped with a media player (the software that decodes the audio and video data on the internet). Some common web receiving devices are computers, cellular phones, personal digital assistants, and even the television set. If one is adventurous enough to explore the various movie, video (including animation) and radio services available on the Web, one will be amazed by how many choices are available. But some types of contents are much more common (such as music videos) than others (such as educational videos). Webcast audiences can range from home-country users, overseas expatriates, and the foreign web visitors.

In analyzing the webcasting industry, one must not forget its developments are shaped by the broadband internet industry and the media industry. The broadband industry provides the foundation for webcasting so that the quality of the video and audio shown on the web is comparable to the regular television and radio broadcasts. The streaming technology and file compression technology advancements make it possible to deliver audio video content in large quantity without distortion by saving the bandwidth needed for mass consumption. The traditional electronic media industry is the main content provider to the webcast industry. The two industries have a symbiotic relationship similar to Hollywood Studios and the television industry, which are mutually dependent on each other.

Despite the common use of the term “emerging media” in the academe, there is no clear definition of what constitutes an emerging medium. We suggest that an emerging medium is a message delivery vehicle that is achieving higher utilization among the general population, but has neither universally accepted technical standards for content transmission and display, nor established operation models such as revenue sources and content strategies. “Emerging media” is a transient status of all successful media technology in their nascent stage.

Webcasting is an emerging medium with these characteristics. Incompatible file formats, varying streaming media technologies such as compression and decompression techniques (codecs), different media players for displaying audio and video files, and the variety of plug-in enhancements when using webcasts all characterize the emerging nature of the medium.

This book uses webcasting as an example of emerging media, and examines the various business models used by webcasters in the world’s most developed broadband markets in their efforts to survive financially. To avoid limiting the study’s application to only one country or culture, it employs a cross-country comparison approach.

The premise of webcasting is to employ the internet as an efficient distribution outlet for audio and video content. The efficiency of the internet as a video delivery platform is advocated by proponents of internet TV (e.g., Noam, Groebel, & Gerbarg, 2004). Digitizing video content capitalizes on the economic properties of media content as a public good. It is becoming easier and demanding much less bandwidth with the advancement of streaming technology (Chang, Lee, & Lee, 2004).

The growth of the webcasting industry is shown in the most recent report released by the Online Publishers Association and comScore Networks. It reveals U.S. consumer spending on entertainment and multimedia sites (excluding game sites) reached $413.5 million in 2004, a 90% increase over the previous year. These sites are now ranked as the second highest online paid content categories, following online dating and relationship services (McGann, 2005). Subscription and stream-based advertising revenue in the United States will reach $864 million in 2005 (Accustream 2004 b).

THE LEADING BROADBAND MARKETS AND BROADBAND CONNECTIVITY ACROSS THE WORLD

Few of us understood in 1992 the communications revolution unleashed by Timothy Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web. Netscape and Yahoo! were still two years from their launch, Jeff Bezos and Pierre Omidyar were still 3 years from launching Amazon and EBay, and Steve Case’s AOL reported only 0.5 million subscribers in 1992.

TABLE 1-1 Leading Countries in Internet Usage

	Top 10 in 1999*		Top 10 in 2005*
Ranking	Countries	I-Users***	Countries	I-Users***
1	USA	110.8	USA	202.888
2	Japan	18.2	China	103.000
3	UK	13.9	Japan	78.050
4	Canada	13.3	Germany	47.127
5	Germany	12.3	India	39.200
6	Australia	6.8	UK	35.807
7	Brazil	6.8	South Korea	31.600
8	China	6.3	Italy	28.610
9	France	5.7	France	25.614
10	South Korea	5.7	Brazil	22.320
Totals		199.8		614.216

*Computer Industry Almanac, ** Internet World Stats. ***Total internet users within country (in millions).

But by 1999, the global popularity of the internet was unmistakable. By then, more than 243 million people worldwide were considered regular internet users. Early on, though, two distinct patterns emerged in the diffusion of internet adop...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Industry Insights
• Preface
• Contributors
• Part I Worldwide Webcasting Overview: A Framework for Analyzing Business Models of Emerging Media
• Part II Webcasting Business Practices and Dynamics Across North America
• Part III Webcasting Business Practices and Dynamics Across Europe
• Part IV Webcasting Business Practices and Dynamics in the Asian Pacific
• Part V Webcasting Business Practices and Dynamics in the Arab Region
• Glossary
• Author Index
• Subject Index