Our Vision Less than 500 days remain until the year 2000. Whether or not we realize it, as humankind enters this new millennium we are all taking part in a major paradigm shift. We are all products of our environment- but our environment is rapidly changing. The microchip, the personal computer, and now the Internet have all revolutionized our relationship with information. Every day technology is profoundly reshaping our relationship with each other, with information, with media. What we are witnessing is a convergence from traditional forms of media to digital media and the Internet. We are truly becoming “Digital Citizens” The world around us is changing; it’s moving faster. We’ve got pagers, cell phones, laptop computers, Internet access. We’re becoming “digital”, becoming “wired”, becoming “digital citizens”. And information is rapidly becoming our most precious commodity. For a moment, turn back the clock. Imagine the final days of the last century. Imagine electricity in it’s infancy. Imagine the possibilities. From electricity came applications that changed the world. Among these applications: radio, telephone, television, computers. Today the Internet, like electricity before it, is fueling the convergence of conventional media into appliances and applications we have yet to dream of. The Internet is the electricity of the information age Virtually unknown until the early 1990’s, the Internet is vast becoming a commercial necessity. We use the Internet for banking, shopping, communicating, educating. Internet web site addresses bombard us from all directions. In a nutshell, the World Wide Web represents the single largest departure from the past traditions of media, offering: 24/7: An unlimited amount of channels, available around the globe, around the clock Interactivity: Instant two way communication between both creator and consumer of information Accessibility: Low overhead for entry to new information and new channels of information These features are what have made the web tantalizing enough to experience seemingly astronomical growth in the past few years. Despite this, the rapid expansion of the web and the virtual “free-for-all” that has been its guiding principal have led to some problems: For consumers, the sheer number of choices for accessing and navigating the web are overwhelming. Additionally, the shifting relationships between advertisers and content creators is making some users uneasy about trusting web content. For creators of Internet content, maintaining quality websites that are on par with the competition requires continuous support from advertisers who remain reluctant to spend money in an uncertain and immature medium. For advertisers, the lure of the web is tempered by a confusing array of options. Advertisers are in search for a clear, dependable way to spend their dollars effectively. Fueling the growth of the Internet as we know it is the interdependent relationship between consumers, producers, and advertisers. The Internet is still in its infancy, and as with any new medium it will experience growing pains. The challenge for consumers, producers, and advertisers is to move beyond these problems and anticipate how the convergence of traditional broadcast media (radio and television) with Internet-based media will manifest itself. One thing is certain: the emergence of the Internet as the new broadcast medium is inevitable. This principle is paramount to our strategies. The New Media Broadcast Corporation understands how to straddle both the broadcast and the advertising models in both paradigms to successfully merge both broadcast and Internet media. What is a “new media broadcast” company? New media, as it is commonly know, is the digital medium. Many companies have termed themselves “new media” or “digital broadcasters”, without a real understanding of just what it is they are dealing with. The Internet as a medium is a complex, seemingly limitless network of individuals, services, and connectivity. Successfully broadcasting in this domain requires a unique understanding of the relationship between consumers, producers, and advertisers. It requires careful implementation of the promotional, sales, creative and management activities, regardless of whether the broadcast information is text, graphics, video or audio; whether the transmission medium is Internet-based, or a more traditional channel. And successfully broadcasting in this domain requires the vision and skill to understand the new medium itself. We are extending the traditional of the use of the term “broadcast” which should include all forms of information distribution that is transmitted to the population at large. In fact, every company with a web page is already a broadcaster. And if this fact isn’t realized, opportunities are being missed. Preparing for the convergence: the Future Channel Not all current media will survive the convergence intact. This fact has many broadcasters scrambling to repurpose and reorganize their efforts. In many cases, offering conventional programming in a new medium is less than ideal. This solution is simply “a square peg in a round hole”. NMBC’s “Future Channel” strategy is to create entirely new programs specifically designed for this convergence. Our ability to create these new programs comes from our approach, philosophy, and understanding of the new media convergence. NMBC’s Future Channel programming strategy combines innovative programming with custom technology that we are developing in-house. By creating these properties and providing an accompanying distribution framework, NMBC will preside over the final convergence of traditional and Internet media. Our Strategy NMBC’s core strategy is to offer Internet broadcast and advertising solutions by carefully appealing to the needs of Internet consumers, producers, and advertisers. Users: NMBC offers a point of entry to the web with a simple, user-friendly interface clearly showing the division between sponsored and unsponsored content. NMBC’s “portal” to the web offers Internet users a means of accessing a wide range of unique products, services, and broadcast content. NMBC provides live multi-media broadcast content 24 hours a day, 7 days a week available to web users with any level of connection speed. Producers: NMBC is, after all, a broadcast corporation, and as such offers a distribution network on popular “channels” for producers of new media and broadcast content. Additionally, NMBC is developing the tools for producers to develop Future Channel content: web-enhanced content with functionality above and beyond that available to any other broadcast medium. Advertisers: We offer a single focal point for their online efforts. Through NMBC, you can broadcast your message online with text, graphics, audio and video or broadcast it offline using NMBC promotional muscle, including standard print media and promotional events.
NMBC’s product strategy is threefold: Internet properties (including broadcast), Advertising and Marketing services, and Software development. Internet Properties NMBC’s Internet properties include a major Internet “portal” site, the Digital Citizen and Digital Consumer websites, the Future Channel broadcast network, and several other properties that NMBC is in the process of acquiring and/or collaborating with. 1. The NMBC Portal The main focus of our Internet properties is the NMBC portal site, the front-door to NMBC’s many Internet properties and services. The overall goal of this project is to put a friendly face on the web for new users and, in doing so, make in the Internet accessible to the other four-fifths of North American households not yet connected. The portal site offers a revolutionary approach aimed at attracting and keeping newcomers to the Internet- simplicity, and honesty. The philosophy is simple: right now, as new users approaches the web they are immediately confused by the myriad of starting points available to them. There are literally hundreds of sites calling users to “Start Here”, and after choosing a starting path users are bombarded with cluttered pages filled with ads hawking everything from fresh flowers to new cars. We propose another way to start your web experience: with a simple clean, uncluttered interface. After logging on, the user sees only the comforting image of our planet Earth. Click it and be presented with simple, succinct choices that divide the web into logical sections – no ads, no hidden “sells”. In order to gain the trust of the Internet consumer, it is key to assure users that the content at this point is “honest” and not paid for by advertisers. In answer to “What is the best site to buy a car?”, users should be told the best place to buy a car and not the place that wrote the biggest check to the webmaster. 2. Digital Citizen The Digital Citizen site embodies the true philosophy of the Internet: a global village of information, contacts, networks, and services free of boundaries and corporate sponsorship. It is dedicated to provide each citizen the opportunity to communicate easily and effortlessly with others, be it around the globe, the country, the region, the city, or around the neighborhood. In essence, the Digital Citizen property is a guide to the world through the eyes of the Internet offering direct access to government and charity-based content, served up in a logical and friendly manner- all without the hindrance of advertising. 3. Digital Consumer Through Digital Consumer, all of the products and services the wired world has to offer are only a short few mouse clicks away. The thrust of this effort is to aggregate web content for consumers, providing virtually all the services and information the web has to offer. From the Digital Consumer site, users can check the weather, read local and global news, shop online, bank, explore the digital world. Digital Consumer is a full-featured portal site combining dynamic web content with information, services and NMBC’s broadcast programming. From an advertisers point-of-view, Digital Citizen presents a single focal point for marketing and PR efforts by tying together print, mass-mailing, on-air and on-line promotions. The simple fact is that there are literally hundreds of sites competing for advertising dollars. Understanding how to effectively spend advertising dollars in a constantly changing medium is a difficult task at best. By offering Internet consumers a “one-stop-shop” for Internet content, products, and services and by tracking user demographics, NMBC can effectively offer advertisers a solution to the daunting task of marketing to a new and uncertain medium. The Digital Consumer A user-friendly starting point for all web-based products and services A focal point for accurately and effectively marketing to a wired world 4. The Future Channel: programming for the new media NMBC is, above all else, a “new media” broadcast company. And Future Channel is programming for the new media. NMBC’s core strategy with Future Channel involves combining innovative online programming augmented with content specifically designed to take advantage of the Internet as a new medium. Programming on demand The Internet offers broadcasters many advantages over conventional broadcast media. First and foremost is programming on demand: Internet programming can be enjoyed at the convenience of the user audience. Made possible by audio and video “streaming” technologies and advances in storage technologies, web users can enjoy programs as they are broadcast live, or they can choose to enjoy these same programs at a later time. Quality programming “on demand” is paramount to Future Channel, served 24/7: around the globe, around the clock. Augmented New Media content The second major advantage that the Internet allows broadcasters is the ability to offer different forms of digital media all within the same program. That is, text, graphics, audio and video can be broadcast to users all at once, in new and innovative ways. Taking advantage of a digital transport medium allows NMBC to augment standard programming with new media content that is informative and interactive. Imagine a video channel that enhances radio programming. Imagine a secondary video program within a television program to enhance the viewing experience. Imagine interactive computer programming that empowers users to dynamically change and enhance broadcast content to suit their needs. This is at the heart of the Future Channel strategy: content created specifically for the Internet, designed to take advantage of all the possibilities this new medium has to offer. Scalable bandwidth: the Net-Jockey solution Television and radio have a fixed bandwidth. The Internet does not. Unfortunately, at this moment, web content is mostly a yes or no solution. The majority of Internet programming fails to scale to the bandwidth available to users, and fails to offers active media delivered in real time. NMBC’s proprietary Net-Jockey technology will allow the creation of live multimedia programming that can ramp up to the available bandwidth available to web audiences by adapting different content for different users. It’s not rocket science. Bandwidth is analogous to water flowing through a pipe. If you’ve got a “thin” pipe, you can only pump so much water through the pipe. But put in a “fat” pipe and you can enjoy as much water as you can get. The same applies for data sent through the internet. Future Channel’s programming is broadcast with text, images, audio and video. Users with low-bandwidth connections to the Internet see only the basic programming as text. As more bandwidth becomes available, or as the pipe “fattens” up, users will take advantage of images, audio, and video to enhance Future Channel’s broadcast programming, all available through the NMBC portal and the Digital Consumer site. Advertising and Marketing Services The key to successfully appealing to advertisers is simple: understand their needs. To spend valuable advertising dollars in a uncertain and immature medium is a considerable risk, one that advertisers are becoming more leery to take. NMBC offers an alternative to online advertisers that makes sense. This alternative: a single focal point to effectively spend advertising dollars. NMBC’s properties include quality Future Channel broadcast programming, Internet portal sites, product and services web sites, and a host of other high profile web properties. Through NMBC’s media services advertisers can reach a sizable viewing audience with a well-known demographic profile across the digital landscape. However, NMBC can also offer advertisers a more traditional route in addition to online marketing, including print and direct-mail campaigns. This is why advertisers will choose NMBC to spend their advertising budgets. Some of NMBC’s concurrent marketing activities: The direct mail campaign: NMBC will target individuals and the public with strategic direct-marketing campaigns derived from advertising and survey information. Advertisers will be able to appeal to the public through coupon books and promotional material designed to drive the public online, towards advertisers. The Plan-Your-Life workbook: Using the concept of planning for the future, NMBC will release a workbook package complete with CD-ROM in bookstores appealing to the remaining four-fifths of North American households not currently connected to the Internet. The workbook concept is designed to drive consumers online with the concept of planning to understand the new medium. The Future Channel Show: the Future Channel Show represents one of NMBC’s hot broadcast properties: a technology-driven show devoted to covering the evolutionary convergence towards Internet media. In an interview format with key speakers, NMBC can devote time to examples of marketing online including NMBC’s own advertisers. Advertiser Events: To announce and publicize online events, press-releases and events will be held in a public forum. Advertisers and speakers will be invited to provide public exposure towards NMBC’s online properties and advertisers. Print, television, and web-casts of the events will be an essential part of NMBC’s marketing strategies. Note that the first such event is scheduled for September 24, 1998 at SkySpace in Toronto. Software Development The New Media Broadcast Corporation has strong roots in new media technologies. The notion of Internet broadcasting extends far beyond simply sending images and video to the masses. And an integral part of NMBC’s long term plan is the development and deployment of custom software technologies. At the moment, NMBC is developing four main projects. Net-Jockey Net-Jockey is a broadcast technology system for producers of Internet and new media content. Net Jockey’s broadcast encoder allows producers of internet audio and video programs to augment their primary content with a secondary “channel” to provide additional text, images, audio and video. Audiences of Net-Jockey enhanced programming view this additional “channel” through one of the Internet’s most popular broadcast applications, the RealPlayer G2. The RealPlayer application is installed on millions of computers worldwide and comes bundled with Microsoft’s Windows 98 software. The near complete market penetration of RealPlayer ensures that content created with Net-Jockey can be viewed by the majority of Internet users without having to download additional plugins, and ensures that Net-Jockey content will be viewed on every available hardware platform. Conceptually this system offers something that no other broadcast technology has made use of: bandwidth-scalable content. In essence, it allows the creation and delivery of live multimedia programming that can ramp up to the available bandwidth of each individual user. For users with low-bandwidth connects, only basic text programming is viewable. As more bandwidth becomes available, users take advantage of images, audio and video. Net-Jockey technology is key to the creation of content for NMBC’s Future Channel programming. SOMA SOMA (the System for Orchestration of Music and Animation) is NMBC’s core graphics technology. Developed to allow creation of computer-generated animation synchronized to music, SOMA is a system that easily facilitates the creation of computer animation for novices and experts alike. SOMA graphics are created in real-time by the SOMA-Player, a client-side application that knows exactly how to create animation and features libraries of proprietary graphical effects. And unlike traditional animation technologies, SOMA stores only the information needed to create the animation, and not the animation itself. A good parallel can be drawn between SOMA and MIDI, the Musical Instrument Digital Interface, which stores only the information needed to create music (pitch, duration, instrument sound, and so on) and not the music itself. SOMA is like MIDI for animation. SOMA is the ideal Internet animation technology. Small file sizes allow for quick transmission of SOMA “script” files, over even the lowest bandwidth connections. And SOMA script files played back on the SOMA Player can create animation in real-time to audio broadcast over the Internet. Like Net-Jockey, SOMA scales animation content, although SOMA scales animation to suit the available playback hardware. AfterFlash Macromedia’s Flash is rapidly becoming a standard for the creation and playback of low-bandwidth graphics over the Internet. Flash content is used to provide website graphics, interactive presentations, and enhanced advertisements. The Flash creation tool has achieved significant market penetration with users and web-designers alike, and based on this there exists a significant market segment looking to enhance Flash content; to effectively take Flash to the next level. AfterFlash is a editor and player system fully compatible with Macromedia’s Flash software. Using the Flash file system standard, AfterFlash allows users to significantly enhance their Flash animations with a suite of high-powered graphical effects. Using the SOMA effects libraries, users can add a staggering range of high-end commercial graphics to any standard Flash animation, or create AfterFlash animations from scratch. While Flash provides a general graphics framework, AfterFlash’s graphics turn the mundane into the spectacular. Best of all, AfterFlash is fully scalable to suit playback software. Web users who do not have the ability to take advantage of AfterFlash’s high-powered graphics see only the basic Flash content. In this way, content creators need only animate once but play back on a variety of different software configurations. Sherpa Browser NMBC’s customized web Browsers, codename “Sherpa” is the next evolution in web existence. Not only does Sherpa have all the built-in capabilities to run the latest web technologies, including SOMA and AfterFlash, but Sherpa also incorporates advanced planning and scheduling utilities. Sherpa’s planning software allows web users to carefully track, plan, and analyze their day-to-day web existence and plan for the long-term. Sherpa easily collects web content and keeps track of the important details, so users don’t have to. Keep track of email and contact names? That’s second nature to Sherpa. Plan to get concert tickets? Sherpa updates you on your favorite artists. Sherpa even marks your favorite web sites and updates you when new content becomes available. Sherpa provides a simple means for NMBC audiences to keep up-to-date on NMBC affiliate sites and content, and to have the current web-technologies at their fingertips. |