One of the surprising things I learned in business school was the value of ideas. Like a lot of people, I went in thinking that the key to startup fortunes was a good idea and I learned that this was wrong.
Ideas are cheap. Many people have similar ideas. The real key is execution. Very few people have what it takes to execute on a good idea.
Today I read a WSJ article on one of my ideas (at least very similar) which is being executed quite well by others :)
The question I was kicking around was how to capitalize on podcasts. A lot of people are trying to figure out how to monetize podcasts at the moment. My idea revolved around video podcasts as a method of distribution.
My thought was to look for inexpensive/free content that could be distributed by podcasts (almost free distribution), content that had some demand, and content that people would pay for even if it was only a few bucks per transaction.
My thought was to package local theater productions. Every city has a local theater community which does short-run productions that are seen by a handful of people. If one could film these productions, one could create a library of content and then distribute that electronically. Basically taking the local cable access channel and turning it national. Something like a high-quality, topic-specicif YouTube.
You could structure the company as a non-profit or a for-profit with a social mission. You could use a lot of volunteer work to keep costs down and you could offer revenue sharing to help the content creators make some money from their work, in addition to the exposure they would get. And of course, you could try to create a "community" and charge for advertising ala MySpace, etc.
I couldn't interest any of my friends in the idea but I still believe that if someone executed on it, they would have a good chance of making the paper just like this student TV stuff is today.
Live From the Quad, Student TV on the Web
May 22, 2006
Harvard University students have produced a TV soap opera called "Ivory Tower" on and off since 1994, but hardly anyone has ever seen it.
That is because Harvard, like most schools, has no distribution system for the shows its students produce. From time to time, "Ivory Tower" has aired on a local public-access channel, but usually the budding producers have to settle for screenings in common rooms. "It's not a very good situation," says Stevie DeGroff, a junior who is the Harvard-centric soap's marketing director.
Now "Ivory Tower" and student-produced shows across the country may have gotten their big break thanks to a new, Internet-based TV network. The Open Student Television Network launched in April 2005, and it has signed up a wide array of schools in the past few months -- it claims 30 member schools with access at 208 institutions. Shows range from comedies such as "Elected," a five-episode satire on student government from Brown University, to news programs and documentaries such as "Froshlife" from Duke University.
OSTN is part of a burst of TV channels targeting college students, mostly over the Internet. There is also mtvU Uber, a slick, seven-month-old broadband channel from Viacom Inc.'s MTV Networks that boasts a variety of content, from music videos to student-produced short films. Cdigix Inc., a Seattle company run by a former News Corp. executive, aims to deliver music and on-demand movies and TV to students through the Web. So far, the company has signed up 50 schools, including the University of California, Los Angeles, and Yale University.
...
The launch of these broadband channels parallels an explosion of amateur TV and film content on the Web, fueled by the ever-dropping cost of producing a professional-looking product. Popular video-sharing sites such as YouTube.com have also led more students to pull out video cameras and post their work. Students at Boston College this past winter created a Web-based spoof of Fox's teen soap "The O.C." and have drawn an audience of about 400,000 people.
OSTN, a nonprofit linked to Case Western Reserve University, solves a big problem confronting campus television curriculums: Students are making more and more shows, but individual colleges don't have enough programs to build true TV schedules. That makes it hard to develop much of a regular audience even if campuses do have a distribution system.
By aggregating offerings from different schools -- in essence syndicating college shows -- there is more than enough content to fill a network. Says Rich Griffin, vice president of technology for OSTN: "Not every student has the same drive or talent, so maintaining momentum at a campus TV station can be difficult as people graduate. We try to fill that gap."
