Convergence oracles have been preaching the gospel for the past 2 decades, the era of the tablet has finally made it a reality. Hat tip to David Carr for a nice compact sum-up !

Content has a price tag, which is reassuring, but the old dividing lines between television, radio, Web and print disappear within the four corners of a tablet. That means, for instance, that CNBC and The Wall Street Journal are not in different businesses anymore, and in fact The Journal is adding hours of live video with each passing month. The BBC and Al Jazeera are no longer regional curios, they’re here. Every cable channel with two nickels and more than a few digital enterprises are financing the kind of narrative television that used to be available only at a certain time on a certain network.

clever oh very clever indeed Mr Abrams ! Given the success of Freddy Wong et al, I agree with one of the commenters that we’re days away from a web action flick powered by this app

Director JJ Abrams has always gone above and beyond with viral marketing. We all remember the plane he sabotaged to crash safely in the Bahamas for the last season ofLost, or the actual extraterrestrial contact he arranged for his reboot of Star Trek. Now, Abrams and his company Bad Robot have surpassed even these efforts with Action Movie FX, their first iOS app. The free app comes with two almost frighteningly realistic special effects, “Missile Attack” and “Car Smash” — which do about what you’d expect. Two other packs of effects are available for $0.99 each: Chopper Down / Tornado and Air Strike / Fire Fight.

Viewers were formerly beholden to the whims of a select group of programmers: If they wanted to watch a show, they were forced to be home and tune in at the time it was broadcast. That world has changed, thanks to the broad proliferation of time-shifted viewing options — whether they be DVRs, cable video-on-demand services or online options like Hulu. Just as importantly, viewership doesn’t just happen on the TV anymore; it happens on laptops, on tablets and even on mobile handsets.

In other words, consumers are now in charge of when and how they watch video content. No longer content to be stuck to someone else’s schedule, consumers expect to be able to access their favorite content whenever they want and on a wide range of devices. As a result, the media companies that will win are those that recognize the need to be everywhere.

When it comes to capturing consumers’ attention now, a piece of content is only as good as its distribution. If it’s not available on the device that a user wants to view video on, then they’ll watch something else. Which is why now is such a critical time for traditional media companies. If they don’t have a strategic plan to distribute their content on whichever device the viewer uses to watch content, they risk alienating and eventually losing that audience.

could this example yield copycats ?

In September 2006, São Paulo’s populist mayor, Gilberto Kassab, passed the so-called “Clean City Law,” outlawing the use of all outdoor advertisements, including on billboards, transit, and in front of stores. Before being enacted, the law triggered grave alarm among city businesses and other economic constituents. Critics worried that the advertising ban would entail a revenue loss of $133 million and a net job loss of 20,000. Fears that the city would look worse without the mask of the media alarmed residents. Despite the concerns, the law passed and the 15,000 billboards cluttering the world’s seventh largest city were taken down. Five years later, São Paulo continues to exist without advertisements. But instead of causing economic ruin and deteriorating aesthetics, 70 percent of city residents find the ban beneficial, according to a 2011 survey. Unexpectedly, the removal of logos and slogans exposed previously overlooked architecture, revealing a rich urban beauty that had been long hidden.

for all the naysayers…

During peak hours — after dinner time until around midnight — Netflix already accounts for somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of all US Internet traffic. So what will happen to the Internet if the 14 million Netflix subscribers who send and receive DVDs via the mail suddenly start streaming everything they watch? Well, that traffic will jump by 50 percent, according to Thomas Barnett, Senior Manager of thought leadership marketing at Cisco. Barnett’s team spends their time thinking about the future of the Internet’s traffic, so his guess is as good as anyone’s when it comes to this subject.

Louis CK edits his own stuff on his Mac !

The comedian now joins the alternative rock group Radiohead and DJ mashup artist Girl Talk (both of whom have released “pay what you want” downloads”) as an example of how successful a direct-to-fans approach can be. And Louis CK’s experiment shows that this approach can have the same kind of disruptive effect on television and movies as it has had in music. So what can media companies — or other would-be independents — learn from his example? It pays to be human: Louis CK likely got a lot of support in part because he opened himself up to his fans, via both his blog and the Q & A he did on Reddit, one of the site’s popular “Ask Me Anything” features. His openness on the site about his financial stake in the video no doubt helped encourage that support. Media companies too often focus on their corporate brand, not the human beings who actually create the content. You have to make it easy: As the comedian described, he didn’t want to give his fans something with DVD region-encoding or DRM padlocks or other gimmicks because they are irritating. Instead, he made it as simple as possible for them to get something they could use in any way they want. This is the exact opposite of the approach most media companies take, and it virtually guarantees that their content will be pirated as much as possible. It’s better to be cheap: CK could probably have asked for $20 or even more for his video special — and a TV network or media conglomerate undoubtedly would have. But $5 makes it an easy choice for just about anyone who likes the comedian’s work or is even mildly interested. E-book prices have demonstrated the same thing: if you price it low enough, you can sell orders of magnitude more units than you would if you put a higher price tag on it.

“Louis C.K.: Live at the Beacon Theater,” which has been selling online for $5, has made a profit of around $200,000, according to the comedian.

The special, Louis C.K.: Live at the Beacon Theater, has sold more than 110,000 copies of the special, which became available Saturday for $5, the performer said in a Tuesday night post on louisck.net, according to the Times. More than 50,000 of the sales came in the first 12 hours.

From the gross sales of more than $500,000, Louis C. K. said he subtracted about $170,000 for production costs, about $32,000 for the development of his site and other costs, getting him to a profit of about $200,000, according to the Times.

A few years ago, banks wouldn’t dream of lending against the libraries of indie film companies. Some are still skeptical, but others are starting to appreciate the long-term value of older content thanks to the digital distribution deals inked during the past two years with rising platforms such as Netflix and Hulu. (…)

At this point Miramax is only a library, with no firm plans as yet to return to production. Since investors purchased the company for $663 million a year ago, it has closed $332 million in new agreements, half of which have been digital licensing pacts. According to its initial offering agreement, Miramax is expecting more than $400 million in cash flow from new digital deals over the next decade — a larger number than its estimates for traditional home entertainment.