Max Robins, Editor in Chief at Broadcasting & Cable, interviewed Lloyd Braun on the opening day of February's iMedia Brand Summit in Coconut Point, Florida. Read the first third of that conversation here. Here's more:
Max Robins: Backing up for just a second, were there things -- you talked about your experience really at home, and as a father in forming a decision. Were there things over the arc of your experience at ABC that informed your decision as well? I mean, you had a really key hand, right now, in two monster hit shows, breakout hits, drama hits, the likes we haven’t seen in quite awhile. In “Lost,” which was a big gamble, very expensive show to do, the real traditional way when people are saying that that’s kind of on the downward slide, and “Desperate Housewives,” as well. Those were projects you greenlit and were passionate about. Were there things that informed your decision? I mean, here you come out of this experience, you bet on these two shows, “Extreme Makeover Home Edition,” which is integrated marketing and whatnot. In a way, one would think, maybe that would give you more hope for the medium?
Lloyd Braun: More hope for the television medium?
Robins: Yeah.
Braun: Well, it wouldn’t be fair to say that I’m down, or negative about the television medium. I love television, I’ll always love television. However, it’s no secret that the television business faces a lot of challenges ahead. By the way, this business may be seeing the most significant challenge. Television to me has always been a medium designed for this mass audience. And, what’s happened is, the audience has so many choices -- initially in cable -- that appeal to each of our various interests, it’s that much harder to find one show that can galvanize everybody’s interest, especially when everything seems to have been tried fifteen different ways, and there have been forty different types of medical shows, and forty different types of law shows.
So, this whole internet world, now, to me represents a medium that totally taps into the needs and desires of the audience because it’s a medium that can get you what you want, where you want it, how you want it. And, television can’t do that the same way. And, so, now the key for us, of course, is to be able to come up with that unique, signature, compelling content for the internet, the way television has been able to do over the years.
I mean, if you look at the history of television, you could point to sort of two or three shows that really showed what television could be. You know, in the very early days, you had “Milton Berle” that really sort of defined for a generation: This is what television could be. And, “I Love Lucy” sort of defined what a situation comedy could be. I feel “The Sopranos” really helped define what cable could be, what pay cable could be, how you could bust through those boundaries. And, the internet has not yet had those sort of defining, signature, content events. And, it will. I believe we will.
And, when that happens, I believe you are going to see this gain another level, because everybody’s going to all of a sudden really appreciate for the first time, “Oh, my God, so, these pillars that we all hear about, ‘Search,’ ‘Community,’ ‘Personalization,’ ‘Content,’” -- which when I say to friends, or I say to all of you, they sound a little ethereal; in the abstract -- well you take those pillars and you actually integrate them in a hip product, in an event, where it gets in the Zeitgeist and everyone in the country is talking about it and it’s not like anything anyone’s ever seen before and you are using Instant Messenger to share it with your friends and the rest of the community, and it’s personalized just for you. Well, then all of a sudden, everyone’s going to say, “Oh, my god, when did this happen?” And, that is going to happen. We have the ability to do that now, it’s just about applying ourselves now, as programmers, in this medium, and coming up with that unique signature content to be able to apply all these fantastic tools and applications that the Yahoo!s of the world created over the past ten years.
Robins: Are we at a time that maybe is analogous to where cable was fifteen/twenty years ago? I mean, here was a medium that really grew because they understood brand, really -- incredible branding throughout it: HBO, Nickelodeon, MTV, Food Network. I mean, we know it, that’s an immediate hit. We know what those environments are about. Do you think we’re at a point, like if we were at some national cable television association meeting twenty years ago, or fifteen years ago, is it a similar time?
Braun: I think that’s actually a great analogy. It is similar, but yet, I feel there are huge advantages to where this medium is today.
Robins: Talk a little bit about the advantages, the opportunities.
Braun: Well, for one thing, we don’t have to fight the battle for distribution, the way cable always did. And, the issue with cable has always been, not just about gearing up in terms of the content they provide, but how do we get distribution on the same magnitude that the broadcast networks have? Well, Yahoo!, we have distribution everywhere.
Robins: You have even greater distribution, right? You are all over the world.
Braun: Exactly, we’re all over the world. We have 350, I think at last count, 350 million unique users a month using Yahoo!. And, I think (and again by the way, I’ve only been here two months, so there’s going to be holes in my knowledge, and I don’t pretend by any stretch to have all of the answers; I have sort of impressions of where I am today) but, half of these unique users are registered with Yahoo! and half of these users have broadband. So, that’s a huge advantage that cable did not have.
And, whereas in cable you also had companies like Comcast, Time Warner, other cable companies then offer a whole panoply of different channels, each specializing in different arenas. The beauty is, if you think of Yahoo!, it’s sort of one destination site where we can provide all of it. Where we have what I am now referring to today as these Y-channels -- I don’t like the term “site” because it feels very sort of first generation to me, and, these are not sites anymore. These aren’t stagnant pictures of linear content. These are moving, fluid, evolving channels, and they’re only going to get more so as time goes on. So, we can offer all of that with one strategy that goes horizontally across all of it, and take this content and it doesn’t have to just be inside of news, or inside of sports, or inside of health. There will be content and products we have that may transcend a bunch of these different product groups. You don’t have any of that in cable. It’s a very, very siloed, vertical business when you look at those cable channels. That’s not true with us, so there’s an enormous opportunity to leverage what we have. And, then you combine that with distribution, and then you combine that with what Yahoo! can mean in terms of what it provides to advertisers, and the ability to have that kind of reach, and the ability to give the kind of insights as to what the audience is saying, and thinking and doing, and to be targeted the way you can be targeted so specifically when you buy on Yahoo!. There are terrific advantages. So, I look at all that and say, “You know what? The opportunity really is limitless.”
Robins: What about, you talked a little bit before this conference about the exchange nature of it -- how, in a way, you're getting constant feedback from your audience on what works with them and what doesn’t. What sort of thing -- I know you are just sixty days in -- but are you starting to learn that there seems to be a hunger out there? Where’s the opportunity?
Braun: Well, there’s definitely a hunger out there, certainly among the talent community because I’m hearing it and feeling it every single day. You know, the interesting thing right now is, looking for content online is the number one activity on the internet. I was reading recently that 40 percent of people’s time on the internet is looking for content. And, as well as Yahoo!’s doing in that area (and Yahoo! is the leader, I think we’re number one or number two in sort of fifteen of our verticals, which is quite a fact), the truth is, most of this content right now is still first generation. And, as we start to apply some of the principles -- and there are many, many principles and, I think, lessons to be learned, not just from the broadcast business, but from the entertainment business -- you start to realize, what is possible to do that we just haven’t done yet because it hasn’t really been the focus of everybody’s efforts until quite honestly, right about now.
And, so I think right now, we’re going to start seeing an even faster evolution of what is possible. And, the talent community in Los Angeles -- and not just in the studio level and the network level, but the people who have been creating content -- is incredibly hungry to get into this arena. They just have to be shown the way, and they haven’t really had anybody yet to show them the way. My hope is, as I get to learn more and more of this, and understand how all these pieces fit together and with all of us now based in Los Angeles, and all the people that work with me going out and living it morning, noon and night, the way you have to make those relationships that ultimately are what lead to people coming to work with you, that we’re going to start to really tap into that talent pool, and again, come up with our Milton Berles, our I Love Lucies, our “Sopranos,” that meet the audience expectations for what internet content should be.
What I’m not saying is that we’re just going to be doing television shows on Yahoo!, and we’re going to be streaming them, so we’re going to do our version of “Lost,” or our version of “Alias.” That’s not what we’re going to be doing. There’s going to be a big place for video streaming and all of that, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t believe ultimately that the future of internet content is by doing on the PC, or on mobile devices, what you can already get on your living room television set. I mean, how many of us honestly want to watch a show on our PC when you can watch that same show in your big living room TV, sitting on your sofa? You can’t compare that experience. So, when you go to the television, I think you want one kind of experience, and when you go to the computer, you want a different kind of experience. And, ultimately when you are on your handheld device you are going to want a different experience. And, so we have to really get our arms around what those expectations are. What is the audience looking for when they go on the internet? Whatever it is. If it’s weather -- okay, I can either check the paper, or, I can decide to watch it on TV and go to the Weather Channel, or go online … these channels are different than how television has been programmed and the way print has evolved. And, that’s what we’re doing.
Monday: The importance of education, and closing thoughts.
