For Broadcast May 17, 2007

If I hear the phrase "content is king" one more time, I think I'll pass out. We all know good programming can win the hearts and minds of audiences and millions of pounds of private equity money (look no further than the Endemol deal) but the TV business is a little more sophisticated these days than "own it and they will come".

If owning content is yesterday's old colour of success; distributing it is the new black. And I mean distribution beyond simply relying on terrestrial broadcasters. Big audience broadcast TV is not dead yet, but it definitely is being whittled away by new audience appetites and new technology. Today, content owners need knowledge of all the platforms and they need it now because the digital age waits for no one.

Just ask Andrew Neil whose World Media Rights (WMR) raised L9m to buy Nugus Martin Productions. It took WMR 18 months to find its first deal and raise the capital required.

As a result, WMR has content and plenty of it. The plan is to take its newly acquired 800 programmes and 3,000 hours of archive footage on niche subjects like warfare and high-profile crimes, and make more of the same. Pre-sales to niche cable and satellite channels would finance part of the cost. So, everything on the content side looks tickety-boo.

But distribution? Well, WMR is looking to sell all its programmes Ð both old and new Ð via a digital strategy. Its first deal is with Amazon Unbox, a pay-per-download service to the PC or the personal video recorder. It all sounds great, yet Neil waited many months for his money, which raises the question of whether the City boys fully comprehend the digital age and are tuned more into content while thinking old-style about sending it out to the masses. Or maybe they just don't like Andrew Neil.

But isn't it the case that you need hit shows to guarantee any kind of sale, irrespective of whether it is via a traditional tele-vision or on the web?. Call me old-fashioned but while Nugus Martin's four-parter Great Romances of the 20th Century may be some people's cup of tea, high-profile hits are easier to finance and sell.

In any case, to make sense as a business model in what WMR sees as a "post-terrestrial TV world" this kind of content has to be fed into a big, sophisticated system and "tagged" or categorised so it can be found. Amazon Unbox can only be a first step.

Findability is particularly important. When iTunes launched its first video downloads it didn't choose the colourised version of World War I (made by Nugus Martin), it chose Desperate Housewives and Lost, brand names with wide appeal. The sale of the Hammer Horror film library to a private equity fund led by Big Brother founder John de Mol made bigger headlines than Nugus Martin Ð and carried a bigger price tag Ð because Hammer films have a brand.

The much-talked-about long-tail business model is all very well (and film rental site Love Film says even its most obscure titles get rented out) but it's about the drip-drip-drip of small revenues. Even the newest media platforms need the big bang of hits to drive them forward. This is true for Bablegum and Jalipo and Joost, the high-profile, new online video site backed by the founders of Skype.

It raised L45m last week, only days after its commercial launch because companies such as CBS, Sony, Turner and Warner Brothers, as well as the National Hockey League and Indy car racing, have all made deals for their content to be on the free-to-view, ad-funded service. It may sound like a good old-fashioned content deal, but call it a post-terrestrial channel play and it's the future.