Cameron Reilly was born in Bundaberg, QLD. Escaped 1987 after high school, did a bunch of odd jobs for ten years, finally landed at Microsoft in 1998 as an internet evangelist. Did six years hard time with Uncle Bill, then left in 2004. Started Australia’s first podcast (G’DAY WORLD) in November 2004 with Mick Stanic and we went on to launch the world’s first podcasting business in Feb 2005.

mo:life
What is the podcasting network, and what does it aim to do?

Cameron Reilly
TPN is a podcast publishing business. We contract people from around the globe to produce podcasts for us on a wide range of eclectic topics. Our goal is to build the world’s first 21st century citizen media business.

mo:life
How do you see podcasting merging with mobile phones? what is an ideal scenario for you?

Cameron Reilly
Within a couple of years, most mobile phones will be portable media players, with several GB of storage and wireless capabilities. They will integrate into car audio systems. We plan to be a major provider of independent content for these devices.

mo:life
Do you think vidcasting will be a killer mobile app?

Cameron Reilly
I think vidcasting is exciting but also more challenging than audio. Listening to audio when you are driving a car or walking down the street is a no-brainer - watching a video is a slightly more dangerous proposition. However, vidcasting will also be about video for the living room, as more homes invest in digital media players (such as the XBOX 360) in coming years. We are certainly investing a lot into planning video productions for 2006.

mo:life
Is embedded advertising the primary business model for the podcasting business? If so, how do you present value to advertisers if your market is fractured across many discreet niches, each of which has a pretty small audience?

Cameron Reilly
Advertising and sponsorship are our primary revenue models for the forseeable future. First of all, we believe that our audience numbers will continue to experience strong growth over the next few years as more people have portable digital media players and podcast subscription tools become built in to the major operating systems and media players.

Advertisers, such as Motorola, are already starting to realize that although the audience numbers we can get them in front of might currently be an order of magnitude smaller than the numbers they are used to thinking about, they are the primary market they WANT to reach.

For example, if you advertise on a peak commercial radio show in Melbourne, you might reach 500,000 listeners, but you know that only 1 - 3% of that audience are relevant to your product or service. If you advertise on our Tablet PC podcast, you know that 100% of that audience is interested in Tablet PCs. They are also passionate enough about the subject to download a podcast and listen to it.

So we believe that niche programming offers advertisers an opportunity to get far higher return on their advertising dollar that traditional broadcast media campaigns.

mo:life
At the recent film Victoria International Financing Summit you spoke in fatal terms about the future of broadcast television, and of the demise of film as we know it. Can you give us a five point diagnosis as to why that is the case?

Cameron Reilly
1. It’s all about economics.

2. Television has, for 50 years, enjoyed a relatively competition-free marketplace. Up until the last decade in Australia, there were only 5 television stations you could watch. Today we have cable, but even that is majority owned by the other TV networks.

3. Over the rest of this decade, we are going to see an explosion in audio and video programming, produced by professionals and amateurs, using pro-sumer tools and distributed over the internet at no cost.

4. As more people start to spend more of their media consumption time watching and listening to these new shows, the net result is that they will spend less time watching the expensive, network shows.

5. A smaller audience for expensive network TV means smaller advertising revenues which ultimately means smaller budgets and tighter economic circumstances for large media companies and the talent who work for them.

mo:life
As a follow-on from the previous question - how can feature-length cinema remain a valid entertainment choice in a world of finite personal entertainment time, and infinite media choices?

Cameron Reilly
Big screens and watching films with an audience are an experience which continue to hold an attraction for many people. That said, cinema ticket sales have been dropping for years as people have more in-home entertainment options and this is just going to increase in coming years.

mo:life
You also suggested (like Mark Pesce at the recent xmedia lab) that video production values will not be a major concern to communities of users - can you expand a little on that comment? And also, in your view, does that resolve some of the issues concerning mobile video and quality/screen size?

Cameron Reilly
I think the television industry should be seriously concerned about the quality of pro-sumer video production tools. In addition, I’ve noticed that many people in the younger generations are happy to watch programming that is pixelated or produced on a limited budget, as long as the content is interesting or compelling. Small screens also help.

mo:life
How will you know when the PCN is a success or failure? Surely, if only 50 people are downloading a program - then the energy gone in to producing and maintaining that program is hardly worth it, right?

Cameron Reilly
TPN will be a success when everyone I meet is listening to at least one show on our network.

Numbers of listeners isn’t necessarily the only metric to measure the success of a show by. For example - let’s say I was doing a show on the challenges of running a publicly listed company in Australia and only had 50 listeners - but those 50 listeners were the 50 CEOs of Australia’s top companies. Do you think that show could attract advertisers and be an on-going concern?

mo:life
What’s the strategy to keeping your contributors - ie. content makers - loyal to you? Are they contractually bound or can they move away if a better offer is made?

Cameron Reilly
Our hosts are not contractually bound to TPN at present. We just try to provide them with the most compelling offer in the podcasting business. That’s going to get harder as the marketplace matures, so we’ll have to stay on our toes. We think of our hosts as our business partners - they provide the content, we provide the business and technology infrastructure, plus a fairly well known brand.