It's Not the Asking That Is Difficult, But the Finding

In my previous entry I discussed the long tail of media and the importance of niches. In this entry I want to briefly touch on the importance of external relationships when trying to direct customers to long-tail media.

And to do this, I'm just going to describe an example of how you will navigate the future digital TV Guide. Wait. Let me make that statement more correct. I'm going to describe an example of how the future digital TV Guide will navigate you.

Let's say that you're watching the TV show "Apple Pie" on TVShortiesVOD. (The show is airing on TVShortiesVOD because it's a TV Shorty. A short-lived TV series. ABC aired only two of eight "Apple Pie" episodes in September 1978 and then banished it from the airwaves.) After you watch the final ep, you hit the 'Suggest TV' button on your remote. What happens?

Here's one scenario.

The system finds the name, Steve Tesich, because he was the playwright for "Nourish the Beast," from which "Apple Pie" was adapted. The system then follows his link to GoogleLives which automatically finds everything that Tesich has done in the past from GoogleWords, GooglePics, GoogleVideo, GooglePlays, GoogleRadio and GoogleMusic.

But the system thinks you have refined taste and cross-references these findings with GoogleAwards so it only considers award-winning media. The system finds the movie, "Breaking Away," because Tesich won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Since you just watched a TV adaptation, the system then recommends that you next watch the TV series, "Breaking Away."

With a single button push, the TV Guide does the grunt work so that you can watch another TV show adapted from the words of Steve Tesich.