Open Media Network Gearing to Emerge from Beta in Sept.
Open Media Network (OMN) aims to come out of beta in mid-Sept. with its 1.0 version’s release, said OMN and public broadcast officials. The nonprofit online network got a boost when PBS decided to offer its premier programming on OMN as part of a “download to own” project. That move marks a first for both PBS and OMN, said Linda Lawrence, OMN Vp- Content Partnerships. Under the payment system for PBS programs, consumers can watch a program as often as they want for a flat price, much as they could a rental video, she added. PBS also announced a similar tie-in with Google Video.
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PBS sees the deal as marking a shift from DVD sales to online delivery, Lawrence said. More than 20 public TV and radio stations provide OMN programming, Dennis Haarsager said. Haarsager, gen. mgr. of Northwest Public Radio, chairs a U.S. Public Service Publisher (PSP) effort to get public broadcast programming on OMN. Besides the 3 major producing stations -- WNET N.Y., WETA Washington and WGBH Boston -- NASA and independent national producers like Link TV, PoV and the Research Channel, they said.
Lawrence declined to give details on revenue sharing with PBS. But under OMN’s “standard” agreement, content providers will get 78% of revenue, she said: “We believe we can make our operations more efficient over time and return even more of the revenue to content providers.” Haarsager called unfounded the fears of programming tilting toward paid content, since all but a dozen of 70,000 pieces on the site are free. To get major players like PBS and the producing stations to put their premier programs on “you need to be able to provide some payment to them, too. So ironically, you end up with the most visible programming being, really being, paid programing,” he said. That skews perceptions about OMN, he said: “But it’s still going to be oriented for free programming rather than paid programming.”
Some independent producers are using OMN’s recently launched payment system, but the PBS arrangement “marks the first significant announcement,” Lawrence said: “You will see more over the next 2 weeks.” The system could support a subscription system, she said, explaining that it’s a “rental model” in which buyers can download content and the producer or the content provider can restrict its use to a fixed time or number of plays, she said.
The hope had been to get OMN going fully in June, but VeriSign bought Kontiki, provider of the distribution engine, said Haarsager. Both Kontiki and VeriSign planned software upgrades, so “much of the waiting has been to be able to release it (OMN) with the newer versions,” he said. The OMN user interface is being refined, said Lawrence. Features to be incorporated soon include TiVo software, she said. That will let users to send video files to their TVs, Haarsager said. OMN also is working on agreements with other software providers to enable programming downloaded from OMN to be sent to TVs.
Lawrence wouldn’t talk about the number of users. About 20,000 have registered with OMN, but total users are thought to be as many as triple that, Haarsager said. “We have not made yet the big marketing push to bring viewers,” said Lawrence. Right now the focus is on content partnerships and adding features, she said: “So we are just letting viewers find us as they go along.” A marketing campaign may start in the fall with release of the 1.0 version, she said. Haarsager doesn’t foresee an immediate, appreciable uptick in visitors with introduction of PBS programming, he said. The PBS-Google deal also is “exciting,” he said: “I think OMN is a place you have to be, but I don’t think it’s the only place you should be.”