Today, thanks to BuisnessofVideo.com I attended the eMERGING MEDIA FORUM, a day-long conference presented by BMO Capital Markets and featuring talks from CEOs of such internet media and tech companies as BitGravity, BitTorrent, TiVo, GridNetworks, and MLB.com. Though I anticipated Doug Walker from BitTorrent would be the most interesting to indie filmmakers, as it turned out, it was Tom Rogers from TiVo who really stole the show (and not just because he began his talk with a five minute Simpsons clip).

Most of the presenters had the same basic message- give the consumers what they want, and what we think they want is media on demand, across any platform, in high quality, quickly, easily, and then somehow make money off it. TiVo seems to have one of the better plans to achieve this end- they are partnered with a cable company, Comcast, so they can get to the existing consumer base. They are putting R&D into the concept of being “the Google of TV”- i.e. through their infrastructure, you would be able to look both at television programs that are available and find available video on the web- they are already partnering with a bunch of online video sites including YouTube.

TiVo also is working on another key customer desire- universality. One set-top box, one remote- no “partial solutions”. Rogers argues that the television is still second only to the car as a major household purchase for Americans, and with new HD models getting bigger, flatter, and cheaper this will only continue.

Naturally the most fascinating thing about TiVo is that much of its appeal to consumers is its ability to enable “commercial avoidance.” Television was basically invented to frame commercials- it’s a little strange to think people can continue to be entertained in quite same effective way without them. TiVo offers companies “solutions” based on the metrics they have discovered by studying people using their product to fast forward ads.

For indie filmmakers, the issue of advertising is not quite the same, but the mechanism for getting films to viewers matters- and TiVo is not a bad bet.

Also: thanks to Steve Freitas at BMO for the hook-up.