Drew Turney
Some interesting stats about VOD surfaced early last year from CES, the big electronics confab in Las Vegas. Among them; networking company Cisco predicted that video will account for 90 percent of all internet traffic by 2019. TV viewer numbers peaked in 2009 and millennials’ internet video consumption grows by 25 percent every year.
And it’s all happening thanks to mobile. The 18-34 age group spent 50 percent more time watching video on mobile devices than last year, and their time spent watching TV decreased by 9 percent.
The continued shift towards online video is still something the Hollywood movie and TV industries are very much taking notice of. This year the Emmy Awards has added categories for short form comedy or drama, variety, reality/non-fiction and animation.
And as we’ve been reporting recently, the studios are joining the awards shows in recognising online video in a big way. We’ve been seeing more stars go from new to traditional media, but there’s an example that’s kind of a sideways step, as YouTube star Miranda Sings is now starring in a Netflix show based on her popular channel.
On DVD now or soon, the video game adaptation that didn’t get all the buzz in the wake of Warcraft was “Ratchet & Clank”, about the unlikely heroes who have to save the galaxy as part of an elite fighting unit.
In the vein of “The Theory of Everything” and “The Imitation Game” comes another story of a science prodigy, “The Man Who Knew Infinity,” about a young Indian mathematician (Dev Patel) in the 1910s who finds encouragement and solace against the prejudice around him through his professor (Jeremy Irons).
For music fans comes “It’s So Easy and Other Lies”, a documentary about Duff McKagan, founding member and bass player for Guns N’ Roses, chronicling his rise to fame and his near-fatal struggles with alcohol and drug addiction.
Also out, “Don’t Worry Baby”, a dark comedy in which a struggling photographer and his philandering father realise they each had a one-night stand with the same woman in the same week. Years later, it turns out either of them could be the father of her adorable four-year-old daughter, so they begrudgingly agree to share fatherly duties while awaiting a paternity test.
