The Email Wars

Yeah, just a hype title for this panel. But man it was good. I was not expecting Mark Cuban to be the one interviewing Michael Eisner, made it sooo much better than I could have expected.

Eisner and Mark Cuban: The Interview

Eisner comments:
Is this the time for internet delivered stories?
Yes the time is right, make a little money, testing right now to see what works and makes money. In a short time we should find this to be a new distribution stream that will give professionally produced content via this distribution channel.

Remember VHS? I have seen this happen my entire career. “People that watch movie screens will stop watching television…” People always want to say X will kill Y. Just not true. They can coexist.

How are you tracking success?
I would like to say that we have this great strategic group doing all this research, but we don’t. We did a show called prom queen that I got the idea from Sam has 7 friends. I went out and found these guys, called myspace, and got it together. Had another idea? So he called Mark Cuban to do it online as well in HD Net.

They had a tough time finding a way to monetize this as everyone in this process wanted a piece and basically left them with enough to buy “breakfast”. So he went to Chrysler and asked them if they want to be young and hip. Used the Nitro in the show and got some money. Actually the ways they have found to make money is product placement.

But what is that metric? I would like to say that we were going to promise on views, time, impressions, etc, but we can’t yet. We are all trying to figure out to make this work.

Where is this market?
Well nobody knows that to do. All these smart people are still learning everyday. Eisner thinks that players like Youtube, bebo and others are now starting to get a clearer picture. Eisner likes people that tell stories. That is where it is at, storytelling. Not the big studios talking about doing a, b, or c, but those individuals that are passionate about telling a story. When people like this make a movie with small budgets they often times tell the best stories.

In the user generated arena, he is not too impressed with it, sometimes there is a break out, but not often enough. HE thinks that the group that drives some of the best are young ad execs, creatives, and some of the people in this fast growing online app world. 99% of it is awful, but that 1% is amazing.

The problem is the 99% Cuban thinks. How do we get rid of this noise or is this something that has to be done and out there to drive the rest. The intention is not to create crap, but sometimes you do, and often times you can smell it yourself during the process.

Cuban does not think that the pipes are going to be at the home fast enough. But the issue is that the house is hard to hook up inside. We expect everything to change, but he thinks that there needs to be something different. There has to be a shift in the manner.

Eisner thinks that in 5 years, that will happen.

But they really feel that the storytelling process, not matter the device, will always be the most important part. The issue is that the methods that exist for online media are not set up to make money yet.

Eisner’s latest project:
Going to build a 50 day 2 minute movie leading up to a new book launch. Working with all the publishers and distributors (is borders) to drive hype, interest and media with side stories that fold into the book. Test to use online media to drive book sales.

Could shift the medium to being part of the story about the sale of a print story.

In the end it is new thoughts mixed with old ideas that are going to power this forward… in time.