Byron Allen has done something most domainers can only dream of.
Marry great .TV domain names with actual on air broadcast television shows.
Some of the domains Mr. Allen’s company owns are Comedy.tv, Pets.TV, Recipe.Tv, Cars.TV and ES.tv.
All but Cars.tv are actual television shows running in syndication on on broadcast television around the country.
Bryon Allen’s company is called Entertainment Studios, Inc. “owns Six 24-Hour HD Networks, CARS.TV, PETS.TV, RECIPE.TV, COMEDY.TV, MYDESTINATION.TV and ES.TV”
“The Television division produces, distributes, and sells advertising for 18 television programs, making it the largest independent producer/distributor of first-run syndicated television programming for broadcast television stations.”
“Chairman and CEO Byron Allen founded the company in 1993. Headquartered in Los Angeles, it has offices in New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Raleigh.”
Now if you over a certain age your probably saying to yourself, Bryon Allen, that name sounds familiar.
According to wikipedia.org, in 1979, he was named one of the hosts of the weekly NBC television series Real People.
After that series was canceled in 1984, he returned to stand-up comedy, and in 1989, became the host of a weekly syndicated late-night interview program in the mold of The Tonight Show called The Byron Allen Show, which ran until 1994.
In 1993, his talk show, Entertainers with Byron Allen, premiered; it continues to the present day.
He currently hosts Comics Unleashed, a comedic talk show.
Interesting that Mr. Allen has seemed to build a broadcasting powerhouse all around .TV domains.
Although his company owns EntertainmentStudios.com, that domain resolves to Es.Tv, and is the company’s main site.
An independent broadcast company built completely around .Tv domain names, pretty impressive.
I’m going to make a very early nomination for Mr. Allen and his company for the “We Get It” TRAFFIC award for next year.
“Interesting that Mr. Allen has seemed to build a broadcasting powerhouse all around .TV domains.”
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Built it and they will come…
By the way, a recent article notes that Univision audiences now exceed ABC, NBC, and CBS combined ?
Broadcast TV with HDTV is growing.
One-Way IP will also likely grow with DLNA, etc.
Domainers have not yet been introduced to ONE-WAY IP (Radio and TV)
…most people just want to watch and/or listen
Great to see this for .tv extension. .TV is really taking off and with Google TV,
Apple TV and Oprah’s Own.tv the branding of .tv is getting stronger and stronger. I get offers daily for my .tv and many are getting over 100 type-ins a day now.
Finally, someone is catching on to the foresight of Entertainment Studios! And the beauty about the .tv name is the cross-branding opportunities of naming a show with the dot tv extension as an alert to and memory aid that the website is the same name! Check my site, linked to above, for a photo of Pets.tv, where the name, Pets.tv appears in the info bar, plus an example of an infomercial which uses .tv! .TV almost makes dot com, with 3 letters, seem archaic! Dot tv makes much more sense for cross-linking the name with the website!
Louise is right… Byron Allen has exhibited great foresight with his low-profile media empire. I think it would be great if someone interviewed him (vs. Allen interviewing celebrities and others) to hear his take on the domain name industry and how he has been able to use the .tv extension for his media properties.
This is a topic I have been giving consideration. I think it possible to start a small network at minimal cost. Monetizing it a little trickier, but doable.
@ Louise
Very funny Louie,ever hear of WEB_TV..
It does seem though that i you had your way the
Government would be running the TV content we watch,
you have constantly posted challenged statements that prove
your insights as a foreseer to be mere less then worthless.
When Attorney Howard Neu Headlined his post on
the Howard Neu BLOG recently about “The Domain Blocking Bill”
sponsored by Senator Patrick Leahy and Orin Hatch …
Attorney Neu stated that this “Pending Bill” would be in violation of …
FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS, you were quick to insinuate
that it would be OK for government to have control over Internet content WITHOUT DUE PROCESS, in fact your tone implied you welcomed it.
DANNY PRYOR followed your post and said that he was shocked
that you “POSTED a un-american appalling STATEMENT”..
Danny Pryor…
@Louise, I find your statement appalling …
HERE IS THE REST, FOR ALL TO SEE !
Link Below)
http://howardneu.com/blog/social/ENTERTAINMENT-INDUSTRY-IS-PUSHING-HARD-FOR-PASSAGE-OF-LEAHY-BILL.php?post_id=90&pgtitle=ENTERTAINMENT%20INDUSTRY%20IS%20PUSHING%20HARD%20FOR%20PASSAGE%20OF%20LEAHY%20BILL&category=social
Cool to see, but lets not get ahead of ourselves… His use of TV domains is probably 0.05% of his total strategy, which is content, content, content. To domainers, the domain itself seems like a gigantic-big-huge deal right at the forefront of tippy-top most important relevance. Relative to what he’s doing, his domain names are a tiny little piece of marketing kit in a much larger puzzle that itself has nothing to do with domain names.
If business is a car, domainers view this as the engine, but I’d bet all takers at 5-1 that he views it as a cup holder. If Tuvalu were to take his .tv domains away, he wouldn’t miss a beat, he wouldn’t lose a dime… so, yes, cool to see some .tv domains put into action in a way that is synergistic with the letters to the right of the dot, but about as relevant to Byron Allens business as finding out if Warren Buffett uses a Mac or a PC.
Some domainers or brand developers may claim that Byron Allens has not established any strong brands, despite many generic .TV domains.
What are Brands worth ? [without any TLD]
YouTube
NetFlix
NFL
MLB
Anon “gets it”.
If you are interested in being the supplier of content, domaining is not the topic to be reading about. I’ll bet there are more than a few people reading this blog who have dreams of wonderful content and millions of users hitting their site everyday.
Domaining (the original concept) was never about supplying content. Although some people think they can generate content on the fly based on what they see as “demand”.
Domaining about what people actually type when they’re “looking for something”.
That’s why some compare it to a search engine. The original Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos, Google, etc. were not about supplying content. They were about being a gateway to it. And, to make money, placing ads along that pathway.
Domaining is not about supplying “content”.
“Domaining” has many dimensions.
“TLD Domaining” is simply a License to Print Money
The incumbents are not likely to allow just-anyone to play in their TLD game
IP Address Space Leasing is also a License to Print Money – Many domainers seem to be unaware that domains underpin that system. 32.IN-ADDR.ARPA is worth Billions. Again, the incumbents will not likely allow just-anyone to get their hands on those gold mines.
Brand development via Domaining may allow one to build wealth via an asset.
Content can help. Example: The [Harry Potter] brand without content is just
a name.
“TLD Domaining” is simply a License to Print Money. Some claim that is going
to open up, soon, real soon. You likely have about the same chance of being
handed a free casino license for your town. Operating a TLD should be easier
than operating a casino, but the incumbents have made that much harder
with high barriers to entry. Many domainers are simply customers of the
insiders.
@ Landon White, what is it the point you are making about Web_TV? I Googled it, and a link comes up for WebTV.com, which is a dead link. Then I tried, MSNTV.com, also not resolving. Did it at one time host video content? I guess it was ahead of its time. The point I made is, the dot tv extension is more graceful and easy to remember than these variations:
Doodle.com/TV
DoodleTV.com
The above are very confusing!
Doodle.tv <== this is the easiest, to-the-point logo. It's a logo in a name!
I agree J.F. But. Those licenses are only valuable if there is a large pool of licensees. For example, anyone can set up in-addr.arpa zones. And what’s to stop this? Are there any compelling reasons why people all turn to this or that provider, other than 1. they don’t understand how to set it up these services themselves 2. convenience or 3. it’s what everybody else does. The weight of reason #3 should not be underestimated. These are not the world’s most sophisticated licensees. The demands on the licensors are relatively small. If the services provided are “free”, is this any surprise?
If these services are worth billions, which I don’t doubt if they are in the hands of the right people, then it’s also true there’s little that is protecting them from being offered by “competitors”. The sufficient equipment is not prohibitively expensive. And the sufficient technology and know-how is publicly documented. Much of the perceived complexity is merely covering up the true simplicity of it all. The continued “monopoly” status of “services” like providing IP numbers or reverse DNS lookups rests on the currently free choice of users being exercised in a very consistent way. And indeed it is.
I guess time has shown it is possible to rely on patterns of behaviour that just keep repeating, especially with the way people interact with personal computers and internet. After a while it could seem “automatic”. Users will always do the same things, they will always follow the same patterns. And then someone proclaims there is a resulting “printing press for currency” for whomever exploits such and such pattern.
Some internet services that began as centralised and have remained highly centralised do not necessarily have to remain as such to offer the same or better functionality. The reason they are highly centralised is because the same pattern of user behaviour just keeps repeating, and compounding.
Louise,
while I agree strongly with your formula, the .TV domain does lend itself very nicely to creating logos, offers terrific branding possibilities and is easy to remember, it does not seem to rank very high in the search engines. I can’t ever recall searching for a term and seeing a .TV result? That may be subject to change, at least categorically as Google TV gains traction, but for now it does not seem to be happening. So I guess it’s a trade off *of sorts and depends in what capacity you are going to be using that extension.
*The other drawbacks for me are, higher registration fees, the volatility of any extension from another country and inevitably there will be trademark issues down the road.
STOP THE DOMAIN BLOCKING BILL!
Creeping socialism/fascism is TRYING to …
infiltrate every walk of American society via legislation.
Incredible: That a small group of self-serving media marketers
(the Entertainment Industry) could bribe there way to introduce a BILL that would directly attempt to circumvent the FIRST AMENDMENT.
(freedom of Speech / expression)
BELOW IS A LINK THAT WILL GIVE YOU AN IDEA
HOW THE GOVERNMENT OF …………
“C H I N A” …
“EMPLOYS THIS VERY SAME BLOCKING”
http://trueslant.com/emilyrauhala/2010/01/13/the-great-google-america-china-showdown-of-2010/
Getting back to the original topic of this thread, whereas one of the biggest hurdles (in my opinion) for any producer used to be distribution, that hurdle has now been partially overcome by the accessibility to a large audience via Youtube and the internet. I think that might grow exponentially as iTV (interactive/internet television) becomes more mainstream.
No doubt there is some kid in his garage with a video camera right now that will tomorrows mega star. Democracy is not completely dead yet (at least for the time being).
For some, the fatal flaw with .TV and .CO is the fact that there is no guarantee that the annual cost will not inflate or track the true value of the domain.
Some advocate domain name systems that are a % of the annual revenue stream, similar to mall retail space agreements.
When the U.S. Department of .COMmerce steps back in and re-bids the .COM contract to sub-Dollar pricing (the true cost), then .COM becomes the only stable economic system. New .TV domains can be built on the .COM base with software tricks.
It was the U.S. Department of .COMmerce that set the “below $10” pricing. Verisign wrote $9 on a sheet of paper and placed it on the table. Some clever U.S. official read it upside down from the other side of the table and said, “$6 sounds good.” Now, people see it should have been sub-Dollar, the true cost.
The U.S. Congress can demand a re-bid of the .COM contract and specify that sub-Dollar is expected. Many companies can easily do that since they currently have much larger name spaces for FREE.
I’m surprised they didn’t write “9.99”.
The cost of production is zero.
One could compare selling domain names as similar to selling vanity phone numbers. But there are some obvious differences. It’s not the same company that is selling you access to the network (i.e. internetwork). And the company selling access of course does not own the internetwork.
If names never caught on, and if users typed 66.102.11.44 instead of google.com, do you think we could sell IP numbers?
Would anyone ever ask about who “owns” the numbers, if no one owns the network?
What companies should do is just ask users to set their browsers to the company’s nameservers. Then they could surf around the company’s namespace in a 100% safe, branded, commercial environment. When they’re done, they just switch nameservers back to their ISP and return to internet.
[I’m surprised they didn’t write “9.99″.]
Small correction, at the time it was likely Network Solutions suggesting the $9 not Verisign.
At some point $20+ Billion dollars put Network Solutions under Verisign. SAIC was one of the parties involved.
[The cost of production is zero.]
Actually, a detailed analysis would likely show that 99.9% of the cost of a domain is the infrastructure needed to collect that money. Imagine a church where 99.9% of what goes on is the passing of the collection plates and dividing the take.
There is no doubt, at this stage of the game the U.S. Department of .COMmerce could certainly host .COM for ZERO cost per year. That may become an election issue in 2012. It may also become moot soon, because the new Microsoft DNS is FREE and will likely continue to evolve to entice upgrades to Windows ∞.
Yeah I was wondering why you wrote Verisign.
Can you tell us how much SAIC made from their deal, when they let NetSol take over the NIC?
I’d guess it was not an insubstantial amount.
Also, did it start at under $10? I remember it went up to $50 at one point. Maybe it was even $70 or $100. Domain names were not cheap in the 90’s. There was no parking revenue, just stickmen with shovels.
History is so easily ignored or forgotten.
I think to own a good .TV domain 🙂
“History is so easily ignored or forgotten.”
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For .COM .NET .ORG a good starting point is the THREE-company structure set up by the U.S. National Science Foundation. That was prior to the U.S. Department of .COMmerce taking over.
The 3-company structure was IS, RS, DS. It helped to prevent capture.
IS was mostly a California company called General Atomics.
RS was Network Solutions – A Reston CIA-ville company.
DS was AT&T – Clueless at the time about “The Internet”
The U.S. NSF in their academic “wisdom” was attempting to cross-breed
various mind-sets from sectors into a resilient working structure with
some checks and balances. In-fighting is what they got. Eventually the
mess was tossed to other agencies. The structure was interesting and
never was given a chance. If it had survived, there would likely be FREE
domains at this stage, with gold-plated infrastructure.
Dean
Google “justin”
“Also, did it start at under $10? I remember it went up to $50 at one point. ”
=====
It started at FREE. $0
It went to $50 during the in-fighting days, as RS(Network Solutions) pushed IS(General Atomics) out of the picture, as DS(AT&T) watched [clueless].
$15 of the $50 was ear-marked for the U.S. National Science Foundation, thus the claim it was really $35. (You don’t want to try to track where all those $15 fees went.)
Many people entered the scene at $35 and that is when $10 was “suggested” as closer to reality. The U.S. Department of .COMmerce then rolled out their pre-conceived Registry (Wholesale) Registrar (Retail) model with a vision of a $10 and $35 split. The $10 became $6. Some Registrars stuck with the $35.
A lot of noise was made about the new structure lowering the cost. The cost
started as FREE. The true costs can not easily be measured when you factor
in Registrar drop/recovery fees, etc.
Returning .COM .NET .ORG to FREE would cost very little in 2010 technology.
Jim Fleming is right on all accounts. I was there.
@ Dean,
Ditto, @ MHB!
Also, Google:
greenly
Scottish news
body rock
MHB,
“justin” as in Justin Bieber or Justin.tv 🙂 The justin.tv concept is an interesting one.
I was just reading an article on Techcrunch where this guy who is an angel investor in an independent channel project describes seeing the video of “Paparazzi” by Youtube phenomenon Greyson Chance for the first time:
“I immediately shoot an email to my friend, Guy Oseary, the superstar manager to Madonna and many more top stars. The title of the email said, “You must sign him today!!! He’s a superstar!!” Sixty seconds later my iPhone rings and it’s Guy. “I just met with him!”, Guy said. Guy was already on top of it and meeting with him and his mother all day. Meanwhile, over 40 other competing agents were trying to get to them. But when you could have Guy Oseary as your manager why would go anywhere else? The video quickly to over 4 million views in one day, after Ellen then featured it, and has now crossed 20 million views. The next day he performed on Ellen live! (Note: Guy and Greyson just announced that they have officially joined forces!)”
I viewed the aforementioned video and it’s a grainy video of this kid in a high school gym singing a Lady GaGa song. Yes, he has a phenomenal voice, but otherwise could have been a high school recital anywhere. But apparently this kid is on his way to stardom!
the stuff i’ve read suggests that the people who are making the most money from “streaming” video are the criminal underworld (so they say) who are behind numerous professionally coded and designed sites offering “pirated” (i.e. unlicensed) content. interestingly, many of these sites accept credit card payments.
we’re lucky google gives us youtube free (of both cost and legal entanglements).
and i think the guys who sold youtube are lucky they sold it when they did.
online video may be experiencing fast growth, but that doesn’t mean all sites providing it are experiencing similarly fast growth in revenue. some might be.
youtube, the king of all video sites, is an asset, no doubt, but an expensive one. no one is punching in there credit card number on youtube. and it takes more than few “energy credits” to finance the memory and cpu cycles to serve up all that video (with people demanding high definition, it only gets worse).
the “pirate” sites do not have to jump through the hoops that the other sites do. and apparently they are not shy about asking for payment. i read some of them are even stealing the bandwidth of “legit” video sites by using their media servers to host and serve their files when “no one is looking”.
that’s content for ya. when it’s digital and you put it online, anyone can copy it and send it round the world in less time than it takes to fill out a dmca notice.
We’re experimenting with some youtube theme compilation sites that use human eye vetting for content quality. No servers, no nothing… Just an app and some SEO. So far, they’ve been very, very successful from an eyeball perspective (both viral and in the engines), but we haven’t cycled into monetization yet, so we shall see… Also, there’s always the possibility that youtube pulls the plug on all feed-throughs, which would mean game-over.
Been using .coms so far, but may dabble into some .tv’s and see if the viral end is stronger or weaker when employing the ‘creative’ TLD.
@ Will, BTW, thanx for saying I’m right! That is rare and appreciated!
Couple days ago I spotted another .tv name for a website/tv show, combined, and snapped a photo! Check it on my blog, here is the website:
Eco-Company.tv <== #1 on Google
L 🙂