It’s a gusher!
On January 10, 1901, the world changed forever.
Captain Anthony F. Lucas was trying his luck drilling for oil in east Texas. The landscape was hot and dry, dotted with salt domes, the remnant from some long forgotten sea from the Jurassic Age. This was not western Pennsylvania.
Some of Lucas’ partners had been drilling there off and on since 1894, with nothing to show but a mountain of debt and a landscape littered with dry wells.
Lucas was also on the verge of bankruptcy. Then, at 1,139 feet, Lucas struck oil at a place called Spindletop Hill.
Prior to Spindletop, Western Pennsylvania had been producing 50% of all the oil in the world. And the Titusville well was producing 20 barrels a day.
When Spindletop hit, it blew a gusher that spewed out 100,000 barrels of oil a day. That’s 4,200,000 gallons of oil a day.
It took nine days just to get the well under control.
But Spindletop, and the later development of the oil fields surrounding Spindletop, changed the oil business, and the world, forever.
Suddenly a massive source of incredibly cheap oil and vast volumes had been discovered.
In 2000, I opened a video café in New York, on the Lower East Side. The idea was something like an internet café, except instead of people coming in to do their emails, I provided them with final cut pro stations and small video cameras. We had nightly screenings of the films my patrons made.
One day, a very tall guy name Jamie Daves came into my café to talk to me about the world of video. I showed him around. I told him that there was going to be an explosive growth of people making their own content instead of waiting for networks or studios to make it for them.
Then he left.
A few days later, I was in London when the same Jamie Daves called.
He asked if I remembered him. Who could forget him?
He told me that he represented former Vice President Al Gore. Gore had just lost the election. He than asked if I would be able to meet with the Vice President the next time I was in New York.
Are you kidding? I was going to be in New York the following Thursday.
He asked if there were some private place we could meet. I suggested my loft in Soho and gave him the directions.
When I got home on Wednesday night, I told my ever sooner to be ex-wife that Vice President Al Gore was coming over the following morning. She rolled her eyes and said ‘right!’, in that special way that only soon to be ex-wives can.
Sure enough, the following morning, my doorbell rang at 8am, and there, in the little video monitor that passes for security in Soho lofts, was Al Gore.
“Al Gore†he said.
I already knew that.
“Come on upâ€.
Gore came in. He looked just like he looked on TV. He also got right to the point. He and his partner, Joel Hyatt were going to start a new cable TV channel. He was thinking about a history channel or a politics channel.
“Alâ€, I said, “there’s a whole revolution going on now in video technology. For the first time, people can create their own content at homeâ€.
Then Al told me all about how the introduction of new video technology was just like Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press.
I took a beat and looked at him… I had told Jamie Daves the Gutenberg story only a few days before in NY.
OK.
At that moment, there was a sound in the kitchen. It was my soon to be ex, just getting up.
“What’s that?†Al asked.
“My wifeâ€, I said. “Why don’t you go in and say helloâ€.
So he did.
He walked into the kitchen, where she was in her bathrobe, extended his hand and said, “Al Goreâ€.
The expression on her face was worth whatever unpleasantness was to come. And there would be a lot.
The next morning, as I was walking up Houston Street my cell phone rang. It was Gore.
“What are you doing next week?†he asked.
Nothing special.
“Why don’t you come on out to Park City, Utah. My partner Joel Hyatt has a ski house. We can talk about the whole video thing.â€
Well, OK by me.
So that was how I came to spend a week with Al and Tipper and Joel and his wife Susan Metzanbaum, and taught them to shoot and cut video. And they made some pretty good films.
They could quickly see that in fact anyone could do this, and so at the end of the week, Al and Joel asked me if I would join the management team of their new TV channel.
“Who’s on the management team?†I asked.
They pointed at each other. “We areâ€.
“Sign me upâ€
And so it was that we formed what would become Current TV.
Al and Joel sent me on a national speaking tour of college campuses across the country to get the word out that there was a new kind of TV channel that was going to be born – one that would take content from the viewers instead of showing content to them. Publishing, not producing.
Then, we went to San Francisco, where Current TV would be housed, to await the results.
They were not long in coming.
A few weeks after the speaking tour, a large mail truck pulled to the back of the building we had rented on the Embarcadero.
The postman began to unload mailbag after mailbag after mailbag of DVDs and VHS tapes. These were still the days before anyone ever thought of uploading video to the web.
Our small storage room was soon filled from floor to ceiling with bags of tapes.
There was more content in that room than NBC or CBS could have produced in a dozen years. And it was just the first day.
We had struck Spindletop.
Current was founded in the early 2000s, and we tapped into something massive. But if Current was Spindletop, Youtube, which was founded in 2005 was Dammam 7.
That was the well that stuck the first oil in Saudi Arabia.
Today, people upload 24 hours of video to Youtube every minute! If NBC were to try and match Youtube’s video production volume in one year, it would take them approximately 2000 years of constant work to catch up… with one year’s worth.
And we are only at the beginning of what Youtube and what is called User Generated Content will do.
Until now we have been living in a video desert; a content desert. The great reservoir of content – the great engine that is going to produce the content of the future is not at the networks and not at the studios. It is ‘out there’. It is you.
7 Comments
brendon August 17, 2010
Realistically, very few wil l be able to make a decent living producing and shooting as an MMJ or VJ. A few dollars here and there but sending some B-roll or a 1:20 PKG to CNN isnt going to pay my electricity bill. Hell I doubt it will fill my gas tank.
Guys like Nino need not worry. They are well-established in their field and extremely knowlegable about their craft.
But a man like me in his early twenties who is starting out in this industry? Fat chance.
I think a good historical parallel would be the California gold rush. Lots of promise but little reward. Michael, you are the modern day Levi Strauss.
So my dream of turning my hobby into a career wont happen. Oh well.
That’s not a bad thing. 🙂
Michael Rosenblum August 17, 2010
I think the Levi Strauss analogy is exactly right, as is the idea that very few will make a living just producing content. however, better for you to know the reality now than beat your head against the wall for years in frustration. that having been said, the explosion of content and the concurrent explosion of platform are going to create entirely new opportunities.
Kev Wood August 16, 2010
Example: Instead of sending Anderson Cooper to NOLA. CNN buys 100 video reports from locals for $25 each or nothing. Network saves money but does the viewer keep watching.
Example2: Huffpost turns into an online cnn/fox news with wall of video posts.
Example3: We start to see the birth of 1000’s of CNN’s due to low cost
I think i got it. Its more subtle than i thought. Lots of opportunities that will all be consolidated up the chain into big business’s
bill August 16, 2010
I for one enjoy your little history lessons and usually find your analogies apropo. I think you should keep on beating that same drum because you are right about screen world and correct about the content that will provide it. I belong to your NYVS and it is your straight talk and no BS approach that was worth the money to me.
With all the BS in the world it is nice to hit upon the real deal every once in a while.
Kev Wood August 15, 2010
So, Where is this going? I dont get it. Massive amounts of content. Very difficult to monetize. Whats your insight. Where is this train going?
Michael Rosenblum August 15, 2010
We are heading to an era in which video content will be priced (and produced) in the same way that text is produced today. The price range will go from nothing or next to nothing to a select few like JK Rowling who exactly a fortune. But the pricing for video content today is way out of whack with reality. There’s a real business there for those who adjust to the new realities and are there first.
Nino August 16, 2010
Michael, you’re a history buff, do a search under “broken records” your name and visions are most likely on the top of the search. Cross search it under failures too, not yours, you made a bundle, failures are for those who made the financial mistake of believing in your endless visions, like the incredible future of the Travel Channel Academy and the TJ?
How long has it been, eight years now that you played the same tune? Maybe you should try a new songwriter. How many time did you use used JK Rowling as an example and comparison of videos to writers, surely after these many years you should have many video successes that can stand on heir own and not still being compared to writers.