Video metadata, however, has to support the constant, rapid technological innovation. It can feel overwhelming at times, but it certainly forced me to learn quickly. It’s possible that new formats and channels might push book publishers to engage in more frequent technological innovation. The growth of voice-assisted technology and audiobook sales could signal such a shift.
Another key difference between industries is the lack of metadata centralization in video. Unlike most book industry organizations, HBO does not have a single source of truth – a centralized database. Every time it attempts to create one, rapid innovation outpaces it and another system has to be set up. Because of the pace of the business, it’s hard to take the necessary time to synchronize the flow of data to create a definitive repository. I spent most of my time creating mappings between databases, and creating standard vocabularies that could be pulled into systems on the fly.
A factor in the centralization issue is the lack of a universally adopted identifier. The book industry was far, far ahead of its time in standardizing around the ISBN. Having that identifier as the backbone for databases results in more organized, cleaner metadata overall. This is the flip side of more frequent innovation: if it comes to book publishing, it’s critical to keep things like universal identifiers, or managing metadata will grow more expensive and less reliable.
While some video companies have adopted ISAN (International Standard Audiovisual Number) and others have adopted EIDR (Entertainment ID Registry DOIs), there’s no industry-wide agreement on this issue. It shows up most directly in the lack of system uniformity. Believe it or not, that’s one area where the book business has the upper hand over other entertainment and education industries.
Finally, there’s the level of investment. In the video business, money gets spent on projects that never see the light of day, at all levels – the business has that luxury. For every show that makes it to air, there are dozens stuck in “development hell” – optioned, but never filmed. This is true even though the cost of developing a video asset almost always dwarfs the cost of bringing a new book to market.
Post-broadcast methods of recouping that money are vast and varied – traveling costume exhibitions for Game of Thrones or Downton Abbey, licensed Funko-Pop dolls, and ComiCon souvenirs are all examples. For years, HBO even had its own retail shop, in the base of its headquarters. For product sales and give-aways, all of that metadata needs to be catalogued and tracked as well. The Archives department does a booming business in preserving information about bygone props and materials, for example.
In all, my experience moving from the book industry to video entertainment has been enlightening in a lot of ways. I have felt rather like Cousin Greg from HBO’s show Succession: goggle-eyed at the goings-on. It’s been a real education.
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