Over at Advertising Age, Keith Richmond is writing about the importance of distribution in the next decade. His piece is called Is Content King? Then Distribution is Crown Prince, subtitled Great Content Does Not Mean It Will Find an Audience:

In the next decade, we will see significant changes to the way that content is created, monetized and experienced. During the next few years, existing media players will begin to increasingly face the realities and challenges that those of us online have always dealt with -- an audience with a short attention span and a whole slew of viewing options.

Sumner Redstone famously called content "king." Rupert Murdoch recently upgraded that to "Emperor." While there is certainly some truth to that when looking at online content -- see Hulu's rapid growth as an example -- there are far more cases where great content does not seem to matter at all. At the very least, I think it is fair to say that even if content is king online, then distribution and marketing are the "crown princes." Good content or not, understanding and embracing digital distribution and marketing will prove critical to everyone in the entertainment industry.

These days, when I'm thinking about creating content, I'm thinking about distribution and marketing right from concept. How can I build elements into the narrative that will help it spread?

There are the mysteries of SEO to unravel -- an art or science that seems ripe with charlatans. Beyond search, there is the social web, a brilliant way of spreading content, but by no means a slam dunk. You have to know what you're doing and really work at it. You can't just sign up for a twitter account and figure everything's suddenly going to go viral.

Viral! I hate that word because of the ease it implies. Nothing goes viral without a brilliant strategy, plenty of effort and a certain amount of money.

Money. Indeed, an ad buy is important. Especially if you aren't an SEO ninja or a social media star with a zillion followers.

The new kid on the block is social recommendation. People consume things they see their friend's consuming on Facebook and click on the links on Twitter. You have to make your content shareable, embeddable and wigitizeable. You have to give your audience a Creative Commons license that gives them the right to goof with your content because that's another way to make it popular.

Because content may be king and distribution may be the crowned prince, but the audience? God.

People used to create their own entertainment. After dinner, they’d gather around the piano and sing. They’d make up stories to tell their children. They’d play sports and cards and board games. They’d knit and sew and crochet.

Then along came radio, television and film turning entertainment into a one-way street. Professionals entertained you and you sat back on the sofa with a bowl of chips and paid attention (or fell asleep, as the case may be).

Media that require passivity on the part of the audience aren’t new. Many are great art forms in the hands of great artists. You’re supposed to sit quietly in a theatre, at a concert, while reading a book. The experience of sitting back to be entertained can be wonderfully delicious. There’s nothing quite like gaining access to a rich story world and having its wonders play out for your pleasure.

People want more, at least some people do. I see this very clearly. People want to create and participate. Not everyone, but lots of people. Go to a knitting event. You’ll see hundreds of women buying yarn in order to explore colour and texture and make unique and beautiful things with their own hands. Look at YouTube and all the videos people have made. Look at how many zillions of blogs there are.

Yarn and needles are cheap easy ways to create. Computers and the web give us tools that allow anyone to be a creator/producer/publisher.

TV has dominated North American life for about 50 years. Maybe all this creating and participating is a kind of backlash to media telling people to sit quietly and listen for so many years. Maybe it’s just human nature.

I find the idea of telling stories in a medium that allows me to interact with my audience very exciting, but daunting as hell at the same time.

Yes, I want to know what my audience is thinking and how they’re responding to the story. But the next step after listening to them, is finding a way to invite them into the creative process. That is a scary thought.

Working on a television series you learn how difficult it is to create a story world when a committee is involved. In TV, the committee members include not just the writing team, but also the network, producers and directors. The actors often have something to say as well. It works best if one person has a strong vision and can get everyone else to buy into it. That’s the showrunner’s job; getting the entire team to visualize the same world and built it together.

Only the best and most experienced showrunners do it really well. And they are working with a team of experienced professionals.

Suddenly we have the possibility of audience co-creation. How the hell is that supposed to work? How do you allow an audience hungry to be creative and participatory into the creative process without destroying your end product?

My knee-jerk reaction is to say, you don’t. They can’t. I’m a pro. You’re not. Sit and watch. I’ll tell the story. But then I’m back to the TV experience.

The guys creating Purefold have an interesting model that maybe could work. It certainly takes you a step closer to involving the audience in creation. They are creating a story set in the future. The venture is branded entertainment. Advertisers are paying and their products are part of the story. You can learn more about Purefold in a variety of places around the web.

Their idea for involving audience in creation works like this. They are sharing the research that the writing team are using with the audience through FriendFeed groups. As an audience member, you have access to the same articles, videos and so on that the writers are reading to inform their story telling.

You can participate by commenting and rating articles. The content that most interests the audience will rise to the top and that informs what the writers write.

This is all still theoretical as far as I can tell. There are no Purefold episodes kicking around yet and there doesn’t seem to be a community rating articles yet either. Although I have found a couple of FriendFeed groups with Purefold in the title: Purefold Discussion, Ten Pilot and Directory of Synopses . None of these seem to have much activity in the way of commenting, rating or contributing content.

The Purefold method doesn’t let audiences in on the actual process that goes on in story rooms – the breaking of stories and creation of character – the really fun stuff. But it does allow their choices and interests to inform the direction the story takes, which means its more closely tailored to their interests. If you're in the employ of ad agencies, brands or networks this would probably give them a sense of comfort. It's like advance focus testing.

But in the real world of creating entertainment, will it help create entertaining product? We'll see as Purefold emerges. One thing I can say about this is that when people become fans of projects they are always hungry for more and this gives them more. Plus, the writers are still free to do what they want. They can create their stories however they think they're best created, taking the audiences' whims into account or ignoring them, which I think, is the environment a creator wants to be in.

Another thing it does is give audiences some of the tools that the creators have. Maybe they’ll use it to build onto the story world the creators are making. Maybe they’ll make their own episodes or create characters of their own.

One of the things I like best about the Purefold plan is that they are doing everything under a Creative Commons license which means that you -- no matter who you are -- can take the content they create and build on it, play with it, reshape it, mashup it. You can use it in anyway you choose to fuel your own creative endeavours and not only that, you can profit from doing so. That's very inclusive and foreward thinking.

This is an emerging art form. I find it fascinating.

A guest post by Illia Svirsky

If a tree falls in the woods, does anyone hear? The same can be said about a writer without a production deal. Sadly, in this business, many spend lives stranded out in the woods. But it’s only now, in our epoch of savvy, that we’re stranded in the woods with a smartphone.

Everyone has a voice – but unfortunately, for it to reach even a single pair of ears, the voice needs to get a sponsor – a benevolent benefactor committed to delivering it into the living rooms of the adoring public. The problem begins when we realize that Mr. Sponsor is not at all benevolent, but actually a malevolent little man operating on his own agenda. As it all plays out, unless the voice effectively and comprehensively delivers the sponsor’s agenda into the living rooms of the adoring public – it gets sent back into the woods.

Throughout all of history there have only been two brief periods of time when artists and entertainers had received the rare opportunity to bypass the sponsor.

The first period was in the 20’s, at the dawn of radio, when for an instance there, every bozo with a transmitter enjoyed a window into 25 million living rooms. It took five years for the sponsors to get annoyed with this and the White House was summoned. The result - the Radio Act of 1927 a.k.a the Communications Act of 1996; formation of the FRC a.k.a the FCC and with it, 19 out of 20 thousand voices exiled into the woods, leaving only a couple around to deliver the sponsor’s agenda.

The second instance, paradoxically, is here and now... For a brief moment in history the gods of technology have blessed us with the gift to let our voices be heard. Who knows how long it will last? Rumor has it that in 2012 good old Internet providers conspire to redefine the way we use the internet. Maybe. Maybe not. But between here and two years from now opens a plain of infinite possibilities.

So don’t get stranded out in the woods – put your voice out there... and may the world decide if it wants to hear, and not the sponsor.

This from the ShareThis blog:

• Sharing can make up 5-10% of your overall traffic.
• Sharing can make up 15-30% of your search traffic.
• Sharing drives 25-50% more engagement (page views/unique) than search.

Not enough to convince you how important it is to give your audiences opportunities to share your content? Then consider this:

ShareThis network saw a 200% increase in “shares per page view” in 2009

ShareThis, which provides handy sharing widgets to integrate into your sites and blogs like the ones on this page, is currently beta testing an analytics feature which I imagine will open up to the public soon.

The audience may not be your number one distributer YET, but their importance in spreading your content is on the rise. As the new year dawns, we should all be thinking about that relationship a little more deeply. As with any distributor, providing great content won't be enough to maintain the relationship. Old school distributors take a cut, as we know. Making sharing easy by providing buttons, widgets and shareable assets is only the first step. As this distribution mode grows and matures we will have to think of other ways to encourage users to share and share often.

There are two pieces worth checking out on the growth of online video viewing to balance out the previous post on how revenues may shrink.

The first is ComScore's press release showing that YouTube drew 5 billion US online views in the month of July 2008, with a total of 11.4 billion views.

The second is a New TeeVee piece on ABI Research showing that 63 percent of U.S. online households watch video in their browsers, up from 32 percent a year ago.

The audience for online entertainment will only continue to grow. But we still need to find a stable financial model.