Sabo: YouTube CEO - Walter Sabo

BUT HERE39S WHY I SHOULD BE CEOWhy do you look at You Tube The primary reasons are to see cats music videos your kids and WebStars I am perfectly comfortable with these crowd pleasers Why Because they please the crowdAbout 18 months ago YouTube announced a multimillion dollar initiative to pay for premium video content created by quottop producersquot and hollywood stars At the time I explained to my annoyed relatives and friends that this was an insane waste of money and it wouldn39t work It wouldn39t work because it violated a key axiom of show businessEACH MEDIUM CREATES ITS OWN STARSDavid Caruso the star of CSI Miami for years the number 1 show on TV was the star of the first season of NYPD Blue Then he quit NYPD Blue to be a movie star Name a Caruso movieLucille Ball was in B movies for years before she found her medium TelevisionThere are great magazine writers who have been finishing their novel fordecades Brilliant watercolorists who make a mess in oilTalent is rarely transferable from medium to medium The Internet is not a movie or TV SetYOUTUBE has stars They were first identified by me in 2007 WebStars Search them on YouTube their names are Smosh Ray Williams Jr Nalts Naders Venetian Princess and several more They do not have a million life time views they have over A BILLION Yes A BILLION These online stars can move product and eyeballs online Not on TV or in movies or radio but online Webstars know how to build an online constituencyYouTube announced it was quotpulling backquot on most of the spending for channels I would stop all of the quotchannelquot spending now end the silly payperview formula for quotpartnersquot you39re not making hats you39re making magic and treat WebStars like true partners and amp8230stars No matter how much money a company throws at quotHollywoodquot stars they will never be online video stars that deliver predictable resultsI KNOW NOTHING ABOUT COMPUTER SCIENCE Remember the last Yahoo CEO who apparently lied on his job application He said he has a degree in computer science He also had cancer No one cared that the guy needed a job for health insurance because he has a fatal disease my gosh he lied about a degree from 20 years ago What is worrisome about his lie is that a degree in computer science is perceived as being valuable for the Yahoo CEO position The site is already built it works Why would the Board want a computer science majorFor many years I39ve run TV and Radio stations I know they have transmitters I have absolutely have no understanding of the quotsciencequot behind them Yet I am considered an excellent broadcast station operator Interested in 50 free cashflow Call meIf Yahoo YouTube AOL Gurgle Schmurgle and Mocomare going to move into robust profits they must be run by computer idiots like me The successful CEO of ANY business knows what the crowd wants respects the crowd and gets home in time for dinnerFor decades the cable industry was crippled because it was run by technicians who knew how to buy and lay the cable Really Then bankers came in to buy more cable THEN marketers entered the cable offices But the explosion in subs came when SHOWMEN were put in charge to make original proprietary content Anyone can show movies only one network can produce a SOPRANOSBrilliant programmers like Jarl Mohn at Rainbow Cable Ed Hersh the stealth strategist and futuristic showman at AampampE Court TV and now the Military Channel and freakin genius Nancy Dubuc at the History Channel are the reason you watch cablePretend those giant granite blocks in the ruins were cut by aliens and voila you have a whole night of ratings brilliantWeb Portals will revel in revenues and profits when their CEOS passionately share the tastes of their customersCELEBRATE THE WILD WESTYouTube used to be a video platform Single videos were posted and then sorted by many search functions Now it is a Video Channel platform As a result of YouTubes quotChannelquot orientation finding an individual video is difficult Raw discovery is more difficult I39m sure the sales department is to blame although I have no proof certainly this must be the doings of the sales department So much easier to sell a Channel of videos than trying to pull together individual offeringsOrganizing YouTube neatly into Channels makes a great deal of sense in a meeting room Ultimately it will deflate the spirit of adventure age the portal and precipitate the launch of a more quotdangerousquot UGC stageSlick channels neatly organized is a different stage than the one that made the company popular The WebStars who regularly get 10M views utilize poor production values bad cameras murky sound and the result is authenticity credibility and predictable popularityBULLETIN Music Marketers jam request linesAnyone in radio knows that when the request phone lines are endlessly jammed with requests for the same song it39s probably music industry promoters paying kids to make the calls Because I39m in show business the business YouTube should embrace I would instantly be suspicious of a music video getting 100000000 views in an afternoon Sure enough it39s likely that many of the music videos shown online are pulling 100000000 views because of computer programs that click away on a video thousands of times a second I would have spotted that nonsense over soupPLANWhen I39m CEO here are my first five actions1 Get rid of outofcontrol popups prerolls and banners The page looks like a pennysaver in the Midwest Really an ad that says quotyou can close this ad in 5 secondsquot Instead the majority of advertising should be product placement within WebStar videos Seamless elegant fun Yes clients love it My company already motivated companies like CBS FOX Pepsi Timberland and dozens more to place their messages inside WebStar shows2 Establish an attitude of superfriendly to vendors presenters and visitors For example if the meeting is supposed to start at 3 show up at 3 and stay for the scheduled time Offer snacksWe are at the primordial moment of the Internet NO ONE is an expert Stay humble Listen to everyone3 Most videos made by advertisers for their products fail to attract viewers Webstars attract millions of viewers Establish a marketing arm that connects WebStar expertise with brands trying to establish an online presence In fact don39t take a dollar of advertising from clients who refuse to go to our school Did I say quotouramp8230quot4 Keep off the stage Putting quotYouTube Starsquot on TV shows is a mistake because it destroys the unique interactive online environment They are WebStars and they rarely come off well on old fashioned TV Remember not ONE TV show has as many viewers as a WebStar Instead all contestants for quotrealityquot TV shows should do their auditions online and be voted online The networks should pay for that privilege5 Profits this year quotRadio guysquot like me know how to make money I would deliver profits this year Yes this yearThere that felt goodWalter Sabo is the Chairman of Sabo Media a company that offers executiveondemand services He has worked onsite to build out new digital content platforms such as SiriusXM His team was the first to discover the marketing clout of web stars Internet organic video producers They founded OMMA award winning HITVIEWS The company placed brands such as CBS TiVo and Mountain Dew inside UGC In FM broadcasting he is a leader in the profitable sector of FM Talk and held executive positions at NBC and ABC Radio He can be reached at waltersabomediacomRead all Walter39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Sabo StrategiesCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions 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Sabo: YouTube CEO - Walter Sabo

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