So the year is really off and running. It’s only mid January but the WebsEdge team has already been on the ground in Boston and Chicago producing Historians TV as well as covering the Joint Mathematics Meeting – the world’s largest gathering of mathematicians. And next week we have a team in Washington DC for the National Council on Science and the Environment.

This is our first year producing JMM TV but our fourth with Historians TV. And as always there was a really interesting mix of pre-made films and coverage of the event itself. All put together into a television programme shown at the conference venue and in the delegate hotel rooms. And as always a lot of positive feedback – which is always good. Just don’t test me on my algebra!

Whilst we’re always tuning the model the basics of that programme formation and distribution haven’t really changed over the last few years. But this year there was one major difference – the use of video via social media. B2B media – be it video, magazines or even events – isn’t always the first place you find innovation in social media. And whilst Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been ever present among consumers for quite a while now they have been slower to take hold with events.

But all that is beginning to change. We saw two trends emerging last week.  First, more and more people are joining in the twitter conversation using the conference hashtag. But what’s interesting is that whilst many of these are at the conference a sizeable proportion isn’t. Enabling folks not at the event to actually take part in the conversation.

Second, people are embedding the videos we made at the conference into tweets using YouTube. I think that’s a really interesting development for two reasons.  It allows people to have a conversation around the videos rather than just watching them. But even more interesting is the effect this has on mobile media. Because YouTube videos can play on most devices the video clips of that days conference can now be carried around with you in a form anyone can access on any device. And for business to business media that’s really a first.

I think one of the key words for 2009 is momentum. And it applies to everything doesn’t it. Barack Obama’s election win is a good example but it applies right across the board. In fact two English Premiership football managers lost their jobs yesterday because their sides lack momentum. Big or small, if you haven’t got it you’re in trouble.

And television has it in droves right now. I was looking at an incredible set of figures that just seem to break record after record. It appears that this year’s Super Bowl had 100 million viewers making it the most watched sporting event in US TV history. And the figures for on-line video are even more staggering. By my calculation there have been some 500 million requests to view from the websites of British broadcasters over the last year or so. With the BBC’s iPlayer alone accounting for some 300 million of those.

So it seems that we’re watching more television than ever across an almost bewildering array of formats. Our own work with the EdgePlayer, which allows companies and other organisations to host video on their sites without any of the traditional technical issues has thrown up some interesting results with literally hundreds of thousands of people watching content in this way.

So the revolution is well and truly with us across all platforms. But if the revolution is with us we still haven’t figured out how to pay for it. The same terrestrial broadcasters with record numbers of viewers are making cuts in programme budgets and even the greatest on-line video phenomena of them all – YouTube – is a long way off covering its costs, let alone making money.

So where’s this all going to end? I’m afraid we’ve already started to see broadcasting casualties in this recession and we will see many more. Because we live in the real world and revolutions in the 21st century have to be backed by a good business plan.

December 2007 was a landmark month for the Queen. Exactly fifty years after her first-ever televised Christmas broadcast in 1957, The Queen appeared on YouTube to host her first IPTV-based seasonal greeting. This video is a segment in the launch of “The Royal Channel”, the Monarchy’s YouTube video portal which is being used to connect to a “younger people and those in other countries ”.

Other world leaders have similarly found a place on YouTube: this year marked the first time the Japanese PM used the site to address his nation for a New Year’s greeting as well as Australia’s outgoing PM addressing voters through YouTube .

It’s great that we are starting to see IPTV mature into a more functional utility of communication than just a portal of viral entertainment. As the year progresses and the general public accepts the growing popularity of professionally-generated content emerging online, we’re going to see more and more government officials taking their messages to the web.

IPTV is on its way to reaching its full potential, though The Queen’s Christmas broadcast and the Japanese PM’s New Year’s Greeting combined have less than half the views of the backwards singing guy …