wessman
October 16th, 2002, 05:05 PM
Interview with SONICblue's CEO
from the don't-envy-this-guy dept.
posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday October 15, @10:51 (tech)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/15/1351226
An anonymous reader writes "itvt.com has [0] an interview with the current CEO of SONICblue Greg Ballard where he fields questions on subjects including: the future of the DVR, the current litigation with Hollywood and how he sees ReplayTV PVR stacking up against Tivo this upcoming holiday season."
Links:
0. http://www.itvt.com/gballard02.html
Google News Search:
http://news.google.com/news?q=sonicblue
Feature: [itvt] Interview with Greg Ballard
DVR manufacturer, SONICblue, October 7, 2002 named Greg Ballard CEO. Ballard served as interim CEO since SONICblue's board of directors fired Ken Potashner last August. October 9th, Ballard spoke to [itvt] about the direction SONICblue will take going forward under his leadership, about Ken Potashner, about the company's ongoing legal dispute with Hollywood, about the controversial loans it made to its board of directors, and more.
[itvt]: Could you tell us how you think all of your prior experience will work to benefit SONICblue? How are you going to lead this company? What is your philosophy going forward?
Ballard: If I look back on my career, the one phrase that I try to live by is trying to put my career "at the intersection of technology and entertainment." That was true when I first came out of law school and worked at the FCC, in cable and satellite TV. It was true at Turner Broadcasting where I did a lot of technology stuff. It was true at startups I worked at, such as Personics. I think this is what has always interested me and given me a background to understand the larger trends that affect this company. At the end of the day, where I'm going to lead it is right to the edge of innovation and entertainment. Over the next 20 years, innovations that will be used to deliver entertainment to people will occur on an almost daily basis. We want to be the company that's defining these.
[itvt]: How will SONICblue evolve the DVR platform? ReplayTV has been very innovative. Because of this, you have experienced a lot of heat from the studios, which resulted in the lawsuits. Can you talk about how SONICblue will maintain that innovative edge and avoid being shut down by the studios?
Ballard: I can't promise that we won't be sued--that sometimes happens when you innovate. There is nothing in any of the lawsuits that would shut us down, even the big ones. The ReplayTV lawsuit is designed to have us remove some of the features--not to go back to the dark ages before there were DVR's. We pay close attention to the law and we try not to go too far in breaking new ground. We're not reckless. Never have been, never will be. But we do have to go where our business tells us our consumers want us to go. Right now, we believe that is in moving video and audio files easily around the house and in portable devices so they can take them with them. There are all sorts of copyright issues involved in that. We try to understand those laws. We have some of the brightest lawyers in the world advising us. At the end of the day, we have to continue to push on those areas, because those are areas that consumers are going to benefit greatly from. They vote with their dollars.
[itvt]: How are customers using the controversial Send Show network technology you've given them? How do you see them utilizing that technology in the future?
Ballard: Right now, not a lot of people are using the technology to send shows outside of the home. In contrast, there are a lot of people who are using the technology to send shows within the home. A lot of people will record a show in their TV room, watch part of it there, and then want to watch the rest of it in their bedroom. The same technology that allows you to send shows outside of the home allows you to send shows within the home. That's being used rather extensively. We project that this will be a big part of the entertainment video market going forward.
[itvt]: Presumably they can still send content to another networked ReplayTV box outside the home?
Ballard: Right now they can. They can send a movie to up to 15 friends, who can't then send it to anyone else. Those friends have to have a Replay Box. In fact, not many people do it because it takes a lot of bandwidth and time.
[itvt]: Bandwidth, however, will certainly increase going forward.
Ballard: I think it will, and that's the issue that worries the copyright holders. Over time, everybody will learn a lot more about how to control that function [i.e. the ability to copy and distribute digital content] so that there's not widespread distribution of copyrighted material between unrelated people. That's never been our intention.
[itvt]: The studios are exploring digital watermarking and other types of digital rights management (DRM) technologies. Do you think that this technology will be integrated into your platform?
Ballard: We have a different type of technology that we use in our closed system that allows us to do a different DRM than other people might use. We've consistently told people in Hollywood that we'll use whatever DRM system they ultimately certify as being the most secure. We want to make sure that whatever we do is something that they find acceptable from a DRM perspective. In terms of the business rules that guide the DRM (i.e. what we'll do or not do within the confines of that system), this is something that we disagree with them about considerably.
[itvt]: I imagine that the ability to send video clips will eventually give rise to a series of applications that will allow consumers to create their own video presentations--maybe taking bits of broadcast video and editing it together with their own video footage. Are you working on those kinds of apps or am I thinking too far ahead?
Ballard: You're not thinking too far ahead. Other companies are doing exactly that. Pinnacle Systems is focused on those sorts of things. We would love to enable that.
[itvt]: A while back, SONICblue announced that it was implementing a 25% reduction in its workforce. Should we expect more layoffs/restructuring in the near future?
Ballard: I always say "never promise never." We don't have anything planned. We said when we announced the original layoffs that these were layoffs that were planned for the next quarter. So we're still seeing people leave on a weekly basis who were informed at the beginning that they were being transitioned out of the company. From an operations perspective, we wanted to bring in a new VP who will make that decision. That person has not been hired. There will be some changes in the operations group, but beyond that I don't anticipate any more changes.
[itvt]: In recent months, SONICblue has seen the departures of both [former CTO] Andy Wolfe and [former CEO] Ken Potashner. Both were very outspoken. How will the company change, now that they are gone?
Ballard: I do have a different style than either Ken or Andy, for sure. I'm seeking less controversy in the things I say. I'm much more focused, I think, on the day-to-day operations of the business than Ken was. Ken was a big-picture CEO who put together a lot of the elements for the strategy we have right now, but wasn't as interested in making it a cohesive day-to-day entity. That wasn't his strength, and it wasn't something he was particularly interested in himself. The difference is that I will be much more hands-on. I will probably be more low-key in how I talk about Hollywood and others. Beyond that, I don't think there will be, from the outside world's perspective, that big of a difference.
[itvt]: Ken Potashner got embroiled in a dispute with SONICblue's board of directors over favorably termed loans the company made to certain current and former boardmembers. What's the status of that issue today?
Ballard: It's still under review. By the way, that's not the reason why we asked Ken to leave the company. What we did say at the time was that those loans are not due until early June next year anyway. We have plenty of time to assess what the law requires, and what other companies in similar situations are doing, and what essentially is the "right thing to do." The Board has done exactly what it said it would do and has been looking at this issue. No conclusions yet. We don't feel we need to rush to a conclusion. The amount of money was not huge. What we did was fully disclosed to the investment community. There's nothing that was done here that was wrong.
[itvt]: What do you think about the current state of the DVR business, and about how you're positioned in comparison to your competitor, TiVo?
Ballard: We actually feel really good where we're positioned right now. We have a piece of tech that is stronger in its technical appeal as related to broadband users and how it moves content around your house and outside of your house. We've announced that, next year, there will be a portable device so you can watch all "The Sopranos" you missed in the previous weeks. Those things don't exist in our competitor's model. It is a cul-de-sac technology: once you buy that box, that's it.
[itvt]: Will you be able to plug your portable device into the ReplayTV 4500 and record from there?
Ballard: It's unclear if it will be for the 4500 or for future devices. It's all still up for debate.
[itvt]: How are sales of the 4500 going?
Ballard: Sales are going very well. We feel very good about how we're positioned for the holiday season. The other thing that TiVo doesn't have is Commercial Advance. The ability to skip commercials, as opposed to fast-forward through them, is an enormous advantage of our device over theirs. So, between those 2 differences, we think we can hold our own this holiday season. Again, we're coming from a position of having almost no marketshare last year. We don't expect to beat TiVo, but if we can be a 30-40% player in the marketplace, we'll consider that to be a significant victory.
[itvt]: Are you working with the advertising community to help address the effects of ad-skipping technologies? TiVo, for example, is working with the sponsored content model.
Ballard: We're having the same sort of discussions that TiVo is having. We're not as public about it. We're not investing as much time in it. Frankly, our numbers--as are TiVo's numbers--are so small that it's not economically a particularly attractive proposition for the advertisers or for us. If we have any spare time left over, we'd rather invent new devices to hang off of our Replay, or figure out how to get our Rio devices to plug into Replay. This doesn't mean that it won't happen eventually, but we think we have the time to explore that at our leisure.
[itvt]: Are you planning to market the Commercial Advance technology more aggressively? It's obviously something people would want.
Ballard: You're right. Though we haven't been marketing it aggressively to date. One of the reasons why is that we were afraid that it would become an intractable issue in our dispute with Hollywood. My conclusion is that it has become intractable anyway, and that we might as well get the benefit of that feature. You will see Commercial Advance at the centerpiece of a lot of our marketing this holiday season.
[itvt]: Do you think that the Commercial Advance technology may be killed off, if you lose the lawsuit with the studios?
Ballard: There's always a risk, whenever you're engaged in litigation, that you're going to lose the litigation. It's the nature of the beast. Nobody wants to get sued because you may lose. Having said that, we feel very comfortable with our case, very confident of the merits. We believe that the more likely outcome is that we'll get validation on Commercial Advance.
[itvt]: Speaking of lawsuits, can you comment on the news that the studios are seeking a court order in the Newmark case [in which a group of ReplayTV owners, represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, are suing the studios, in order to establish their right to use DVR technology to record copyrighted content in their homes] that would declare the Electronic Frontier Foundation a "competitor"--and would therefore prevent it from reviewing most of the relevant documents in the case?
Ballard: That's not surprising. The studios have been very aggressive on this whole thing. The EFF is coming down on the same side that we are, making the same argument that the consumers have a stake in this whole dispute. We are delighted to see them join and help in making this argument.
[itvt]: Do you see SONICblue developing a relationship with an ITV music service--a company like Music Choice or Signatures Network-- to do your own audio-on-demand or music-video service to the box?
Ballard: That sounds like the exact direction we want to go in. One of the things we're going to be emphasizing as a company is the connection between our hardware as a platform and various services. A music service would be a classic example of that.
[itvt]: Can you talk about any other new services: VOD, any kind of interactive...?
Ballard: Your instincts are exactly right. We're looking at all of those things, but it's way early in terms of making any announcement.
[itvt]: I'm curious about your thoughts on the ITV industry in general. What do you think is its overall importance? The culture is embracing the technology little by little; could SONICblue help drive that adoption?
Ballard: I have been interested in the industry for some time. In general, it always seems to move slower than we all think it's going to. We get it. Most of America still does not. I think that most of the interactivity we will see will be at the level of people interacting with a DVR box to record shows and timeshift. It's still going to be a while before people call up separate sidebands to find out more about what they're watching on TV, or click on the pizza icon and order one at home. Some of the visions we've had for 2 years are still a ways off. Slowly but surely, people are expecting more of their television, and more of their home entertainment in general.
[itvt]: Last question: What did you study in college? What did you want to be?
Ballard: I went to law school, so that probably is what I thought I was going to be. What I wanted to be was in politics. All through college and law school, I wanted to be the Chief of Staff of the White House. Isn't that bizarre? You've probably never met anyone whose ambition was to be the Chief of Staff of the White House.
Copyright 1998 - 2002 [itvt] | Swedlow. All rights reserved :sw
from the don't-envy-this-guy dept.
posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday October 15, @10:51 (tech)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/15/1351226
An anonymous reader writes "itvt.com has [0] an interview with the current CEO of SONICblue Greg Ballard where he fields questions on subjects including: the future of the DVR, the current litigation with Hollywood and how he sees ReplayTV PVR stacking up against Tivo this upcoming holiday season."
Links:
0. http://www.itvt.com/gballard02.html
Google News Search:
http://news.google.com/news?q=sonicblue
Feature: [itvt] Interview with Greg Ballard
DVR manufacturer, SONICblue, October 7, 2002 named Greg Ballard CEO. Ballard served as interim CEO since SONICblue's board of directors fired Ken Potashner last August. October 9th, Ballard spoke to [itvt] about the direction SONICblue will take going forward under his leadership, about Ken Potashner, about the company's ongoing legal dispute with Hollywood, about the controversial loans it made to its board of directors, and more.
[itvt]: Could you tell us how you think all of your prior experience will work to benefit SONICblue? How are you going to lead this company? What is your philosophy going forward?
Ballard: If I look back on my career, the one phrase that I try to live by is trying to put my career "at the intersection of technology and entertainment." That was true when I first came out of law school and worked at the FCC, in cable and satellite TV. It was true at Turner Broadcasting where I did a lot of technology stuff. It was true at startups I worked at, such as Personics. I think this is what has always interested me and given me a background to understand the larger trends that affect this company. At the end of the day, where I'm going to lead it is right to the edge of innovation and entertainment. Over the next 20 years, innovations that will be used to deliver entertainment to people will occur on an almost daily basis. We want to be the company that's defining these.
[itvt]: How will SONICblue evolve the DVR platform? ReplayTV has been very innovative. Because of this, you have experienced a lot of heat from the studios, which resulted in the lawsuits. Can you talk about how SONICblue will maintain that innovative edge and avoid being shut down by the studios?
Ballard: I can't promise that we won't be sued--that sometimes happens when you innovate. There is nothing in any of the lawsuits that would shut us down, even the big ones. The ReplayTV lawsuit is designed to have us remove some of the features--not to go back to the dark ages before there were DVR's. We pay close attention to the law and we try not to go too far in breaking new ground. We're not reckless. Never have been, never will be. But we do have to go where our business tells us our consumers want us to go. Right now, we believe that is in moving video and audio files easily around the house and in portable devices so they can take them with them. There are all sorts of copyright issues involved in that. We try to understand those laws. We have some of the brightest lawyers in the world advising us. At the end of the day, we have to continue to push on those areas, because those are areas that consumers are going to benefit greatly from. They vote with their dollars.
[itvt]: How are customers using the controversial Send Show network technology you've given them? How do you see them utilizing that technology in the future?
Ballard: Right now, not a lot of people are using the technology to send shows outside of the home. In contrast, there are a lot of people who are using the technology to send shows within the home. A lot of people will record a show in their TV room, watch part of it there, and then want to watch the rest of it in their bedroom. The same technology that allows you to send shows outside of the home allows you to send shows within the home. That's being used rather extensively. We project that this will be a big part of the entertainment video market going forward.
[itvt]: Presumably they can still send content to another networked ReplayTV box outside the home?
Ballard: Right now they can. They can send a movie to up to 15 friends, who can't then send it to anyone else. Those friends have to have a Replay Box. In fact, not many people do it because it takes a lot of bandwidth and time.
[itvt]: Bandwidth, however, will certainly increase going forward.
Ballard: I think it will, and that's the issue that worries the copyright holders. Over time, everybody will learn a lot more about how to control that function [i.e. the ability to copy and distribute digital content] so that there's not widespread distribution of copyrighted material between unrelated people. That's never been our intention.
[itvt]: The studios are exploring digital watermarking and other types of digital rights management (DRM) technologies. Do you think that this technology will be integrated into your platform?
Ballard: We have a different type of technology that we use in our closed system that allows us to do a different DRM than other people might use. We've consistently told people in Hollywood that we'll use whatever DRM system they ultimately certify as being the most secure. We want to make sure that whatever we do is something that they find acceptable from a DRM perspective. In terms of the business rules that guide the DRM (i.e. what we'll do or not do within the confines of that system), this is something that we disagree with them about considerably.
[itvt]: I imagine that the ability to send video clips will eventually give rise to a series of applications that will allow consumers to create their own video presentations--maybe taking bits of broadcast video and editing it together with their own video footage. Are you working on those kinds of apps or am I thinking too far ahead?
Ballard: You're not thinking too far ahead. Other companies are doing exactly that. Pinnacle Systems is focused on those sorts of things. We would love to enable that.
[itvt]: A while back, SONICblue announced that it was implementing a 25% reduction in its workforce. Should we expect more layoffs/restructuring in the near future?
Ballard: I always say "never promise never." We don't have anything planned. We said when we announced the original layoffs that these were layoffs that were planned for the next quarter. So we're still seeing people leave on a weekly basis who were informed at the beginning that they were being transitioned out of the company. From an operations perspective, we wanted to bring in a new VP who will make that decision. That person has not been hired. There will be some changes in the operations group, but beyond that I don't anticipate any more changes.
[itvt]: In recent months, SONICblue has seen the departures of both [former CTO] Andy Wolfe and [former CEO] Ken Potashner. Both were very outspoken. How will the company change, now that they are gone?
Ballard: I do have a different style than either Ken or Andy, for sure. I'm seeking less controversy in the things I say. I'm much more focused, I think, on the day-to-day operations of the business than Ken was. Ken was a big-picture CEO who put together a lot of the elements for the strategy we have right now, but wasn't as interested in making it a cohesive day-to-day entity. That wasn't his strength, and it wasn't something he was particularly interested in himself. The difference is that I will be much more hands-on. I will probably be more low-key in how I talk about Hollywood and others. Beyond that, I don't think there will be, from the outside world's perspective, that big of a difference.
[itvt]: Ken Potashner got embroiled in a dispute with SONICblue's board of directors over favorably termed loans the company made to certain current and former boardmembers. What's the status of that issue today?
Ballard: It's still under review. By the way, that's not the reason why we asked Ken to leave the company. What we did say at the time was that those loans are not due until early June next year anyway. We have plenty of time to assess what the law requires, and what other companies in similar situations are doing, and what essentially is the "right thing to do." The Board has done exactly what it said it would do and has been looking at this issue. No conclusions yet. We don't feel we need to rush to a conclusion. The amount of money was not huge. What we did was fully disclosed to the investment community. There's nothing that was done here that was wrong.
[itvt]: What do you think about the current state of the DVR business, and about how you're positioned in comparison to your competitor, TiVo?
Ballard: We actually feel really good where we're positioned right now. We have a piece of tech that is stronger in its technical appeal as related to broadband users and how it moves content around your house and outside of your house. We've announced that, next year, there will be a portable device so you can watch all "The Sopranos" you missed in the previous weeks. Those things don't exist in our competitor's model. It is a cul-de-sac technology: once you buy that box, that's it.
[itvt]: Will you be able to plug your portable device into the ReplayTV 4500 and record from there?
Ballard: It's unclear if it will be for the 4500 or for future devices. It's all still up for debate.
[itvt]: How are sales of the 4500 going?
Ballard: Sales are going very well. We feel very good about how we're positioned for the holiday season. The other thing that TiVo doesn't have is Commercial Advance. The ability to skip commercials, as opposed to fast-forward through them, is an enormous advantage of our device over theirs. So, between those 2 differences, we think we can hold our own this holiday season. Again, we're coming from a position of having almost no marketshare last year. We don't expect to beat TiVo, but if we can be a 30-40% player in the marketplace, we'll consider that to be a significant victory.
[itvt]: Are you working with the advertising community to help address the effects of ad-skipping technologies? TiVo, for example, is working with the sponsored content model.
Ballard: We're having the same sort of discussions that TiVo is having. We're not as public about it. We're not investing as much time in it. Frankly, our numbers--as are TiVo's numbers--are so small that it's not economically a particularly attractive proposition for the advertisers or for us. If we have any spare time left over, we'd rather invent new devices to hang off of our Replay, or figure out how to get our Rio devices to plug into Replay. This doesn't mean that it won't happen eventually, but we think we have the time to explore that at our leisure.
[itvt]: Are you planning to market the Commercial Advance technology more aggressively? It's obviously something people would want.
Ballard: You're right. Though we haven't been marketing it aggressively to date. One of the reasons why is that we were afraid that it would become an intractable issue in our dispute with Hollywood. My conclusion is that it has become intractable anyway, and that we might as well get the benefit of that feature. You will see Commercial Advance at the centerpiece of a lot of our marketing this holiday season.
[itvt]: Do you think that the Commercial Advance technology may be killed off, if you lose the lawsuit with the studios?
Ballard: There's always a risk, whenever you're engaged in litigation, that you're going to lose the litigation. It's the nature of the beast. Nobody wants to get sued because you may lose. Having said that, we feel very comfortable with our case, very confident of the merits. We believe that the more likely outcome is that we'll get validation on Commercial Advance.
[itvt]: Speaking of lawsuits, can you comment on the news that the studios are seeking a court order in the Newmark case [in which a group of ReplayTV owners, represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, are suing the studios, in order to establish their right to use DVR technology to record copyrighted content in their homes] that would declare the Electronic Frontier Foundation a "competitor"--and would therefore prevent it from reviewing most of the relevant documents in the case?
Ballard: That's not surprising. The studios have been very aggressive on this whole thing. The EFF is coming down on the same side that we are, making the same argument that the consumers have a stake in this whole dispute. We are delighted to see them join and help in making this argument.
[itvt]: Do you see SONICblue developing a relationship with an ITV music service--a company like Music Choice or Signatures Network-- to do your own audio-on-demand or music-video service to the box?
Ballard: That sounds like the exact direction we want to go in. One of the things we're going to be emphasizing as a company is the connection between our hardware as a platform and various services. A music service would be a classic example of that.
[itvt]: Can you talk about any other new services: VOD, any kind of interactive...?
Ballard: Your instincts are exactly right. We're looking at all of those things, but it's way early in terms of making any announcement.
[itvt]: I'm curious about your thoughts on the ITV industry in general. What do you think is its overall importance? The culture is embracing the technology little by little; could SONICblue help drive that adoption?
Ballard: I have been interested in the industry for some time. In general, it always seems to move slower than we all think it's going to. We get it. Most of America still does not. I think that most of the interactivity we will see will be at the level of people interacting with a DVR box to record shows and timeshift. It's still going to be a while before people call up separate sidebands to find out more about what they're watching on TV, or click on the pizza icon and order one at home. Some of the visions we've had for 2 years are still a ways off. Slowly but surely, people are expecting more of their television, and more of their home entertainment in general.
[itvt]: Last question: What did you study in college? What did you want to be?
Ballard: I went to law school, so that probably is what I thought I was going to be. What I wanted to be was in politics. All through college and law school, I wanted to be the Chief of Staff of the White House. Isn't that bizarre? You've probably never met anyone whose ambition was to be the Chief of Staff of the White House.
Copyright 1998 - 2002 [itvt] | Swedlow. All rights reserved :sw