Long accused of letting the Internet pass them by, the Hollywood studios showed up at Red Herring's Web Market Hollywood conference to inform the world that indeed they were Net-savvy. And as frosted hair met four-eyed geek, the boisterous LA bigwigs were quick to tell their digital compatriots that they could even do the Web better than anyone had so far - if only they can figure out how to make money doing it.
Web Market Hollywood, a meeting ground for technology companies, Hollywood producers, and the venture capitalists they hope will fund their collaborative projects, kicked off Monday with a talk with Bran Ferren, EVP of Disney Imagineering. His thesis: Entertainment on the Web shouldn't necessarily be a first-person interactive adventure. Instead, it needs "a point of view, which is why you want a Steven Spielberg." As the "storytellers" of the world, Ferren insisted, those at Disney and the other Hollywood content companies are best positioned to create that content.
A panel titled "Studio Showcase: Treasure Island or a Lost World" carried on that sentiment as execs from the digital components DreamWorks, MGM, Warner Bros., Sony, NBC, and Disney (all of which have launched extensive online projects) sang the same tune. Discounting all the online successes of the past three years, they agreed with Disney SVP Richard Wolport's assertion that "there's a dearth of good entertainment on the Web" - an assertion he quickly followed with the fact that Disney Online was rated the Number One entertainment Web site by PC Meter.
And inscrutably, although no two panelists agreed on how exactly they could make money online, all the panelists insisted that their interactive projects would be profitable by 1998.
But despite the handful of cheerleaders intent on proving they had conquered the Web, others pointed out Hollywood reluctance to use the Web as anything more than a glorified, and unproven, ad space. On the advertising panel, Mark Mariani, EVP of CBS SportsLine, lambasted Hollywood for its attitude about the Web, pointing out that "it's a phenomenal medium, and Hollywood sits there and looks at it and doesn't know what to do with it."
But, as was repeated throughout the day, Hollywood isn't going to perk up and throw money online until it's sure it is viable - and for Hollywood, viable equals Xena-like audiences, not just a small but avid community.
"Ultimately the success of the Web will only be achieved when you get a critical mass of eyeballs," noted Ron Frankel, EVP of MGM Interactive. "To date, we're not there, except in niche-oriented ways."
The Hollywood execs insist they could be the ones to bring those audiences to the Web, leveraging their studio names to build online brands. (To which Mariana countered, "The only brand in Hollywood that means anything is Disney ... The Warner Bros. brand never sold a ticket - the film did.") That means channelling traffic from TV to the Web, pushing studio destination sites and networks, and funnelling their already produced properties into online counterparts.
During his speech, Imagineer Ferren used the videocassette industry in the 1970s as an example of Hollywood reaction to new technology. While pornographers heavily used videocassette as a distribution tool, the studios insisted they would never use it. Now that videocassettes are 60 percent to 70 percent of their revenue, the studios insist it was all their idea in the first place. Judging by the Hollywood component of Web Market Hollywood, history may be repeating itself.
