Keep Your Eyes Peeled for the Future of Television

LONDON, June 11, 2009 — -- The video revolution is definitely being televised.

"Home," a documentary film about the environment produced by Luc Besson, the acclaimed director of "La Femme Nikita" and the Bruce Willis hit "The Fifth Element," was released in theaters on Earth Day this year. And in a first, it was also broadcast live on YouTube the same day.

Was it a pirated copy? Not in this case. Besson arranged with YouTube to offer the film free to Web users.

The documentary, about the future of Earths fragile environment, was bank-rolled in part by the French company PPR, the maker of Gucci handbags and Puma shoes. It was not intended as a commercial moneymaker like the movies that made Besson rich and famous.

But Besson's decision to use the Internet to help bring in the widest possible audience for the project is another sign of the revolution in online video that is radically changing the way we watch video content.

Everyone has seen the proliferation of online versions of TV programs such as "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and "Good Morning America" on ABC and "Saturday Night Live" on NBC. However, industry watchers say the future of video distribution lies elsewhere: in interactivity.

"The Internet is not the same as television" explains Luca Ascani, president of Goadv, an online media company, in an interview with ABC News. "It has an interactive nature and has features that traditional television cannot supply."

To develop this potential, content providers are producing more high-quality online content to replace the amateur-looking material that circulated on the Web during the early years of the Internet, and they are developing ways to make it more interactive.

"What do you want to do as Web user? You see a video and you want to share it with your friends, to give your opinion and leave your comments," Ascani said. "These are the needs online content providers are looking to satisfy."

Babelgum, an online site designed to showcase made-for-Internet video content that is owned by Italian telecom magnate Silvio Scaglia, is at the forefront of the Internet video revolution. Babelgum CEO Valerio Zingarelli told ABC News, "We believe there is a high international demand for intelligent entertainment tailored for a new audience which surfs on the Web and watches videos on mobile phones. This form of entertainment is designed to tap into the so far unfulfilled potential of the Internet."

British director Sally Potter directed "Rage," starring Jude Law, Judi Dench and Steve Buscemi, a which is planned for release on Babelgum. In an interview with ABC, she explained how she sees her new target.

"For a filmmaker used to an anonymous audience in cinemas in cities we may never visit, the Internet is a curiously intimate alternative way of showing our work. We know that our films are reaching people via a one-to-one relationship with their laptops, a place that has become accepted as a site of intense and prolonged private activity," she said. "Interactive sites also allow us to meet the strangers we work for when they post messages on forums, or if we make ourselves accessible online."