Caveat Emptor
I had a friend return from Phoenix yesterday very upset with her investor and his total disregard for their partnership agreement. In fact, she’d tried to get him to sign the agreement before production commenced on her video podcast. But the lure of private jet travel to an exotic location to film several episodes of her new show got in the way of finalizing her deal.
It seems she’d found someone to bankroll her podcast and before she could complete production on all of her shows, he pulled the plug. Beyond having an understanding of how they would monetize said content in the digital domain, they had a huge disagreement on the rights and who owned them in this new digital domain. (He might even continue the show - her idea - with another host for all she knows.) Moreover, to make her deal even more complex her show was going to be marketed and potentially sold in television syndication, too. So perhaps that should have been a separate deal altogether, or should it have been?
That raises another interesting question. Who ultimately owns the rights to your show if a Network or Cable outfit wants to migrate your content from the Web to television? (As my partner Richard wrote about in his posting below, it may all be moot once Apple TV converges all content to one programming module.) But it is absolutely essential that if you have partners, that ownership is very clear from the get-go. It’s easy to understand the migration from TV or film to podcasting, but even then I’m sure we’ll start to see messy lawsuits once podcasts become more and more monetized by sponsors and/or ad sales.
