Welcome to the video show that never ends

Welcome to the Video Show That Never Ends

My involvement with online video dates back to 1995, where I was promoting ISP-TV out of the (figurative) basement of a large Internet provider. We were working with Adam Curry to distribute his (then exotic) live video shoots from the back stage of the Grammy Awards and producing our own content featuring cyber-muckraker Brock Meeks and "The Beer Show," where the producer would get drunk on local microbrews.  Meanwhile, Mark Cuban was steadily building his broadcast.com empire with a lot less hype than you might expect.

Fast forward to 2008. Broadcast.com is out, YouTube is in, and I've got a large headache trying to track who's doing the big content deal of the week and what the latest rich media tool is. Adam Curry is now "The Podfather" and has built the PodShow Network. Brock Meeks is now a part of the establishment at MSNBC.  And Mark Cuban is best known for his ownership of the Dallas Mavericks and HDNet. The producer of ISP-TV got sober and started up his own video consulting firm.

Still, the basics haven't changed. We have video on demand and live streaming. There's the whole podcast thing for delivery of regularly scheduled content, but that's just RSSing video on demand; very cool and convenient for subscribing to the latest and greatest, don't get me wrong, but not bleeding edge stuff. HD-- whatever people are defining as HD this week--is new, but it's just a matter of providing higher quality content.

HD or not, there's still a last-mile bandwidth squeeze here in the U.S. The vast majority of Internet users don't have a pipe big enough to take down video in an immediate, straight-forward fashion and the crunch will continue until everyone migrates to 100 Mbps, be it landline or (mobile) wireless.

And everyone wants to know how they count audience size and how to monetize their efforts.

No doubt there will be plenty of new found wisdom and overboard pontification next week at the NAB Show in Las Vegas. Be interesting to see what people come up with. - Doug MohneyÂ