Beware, publishers! Live will not necessarily keep you alive.

You already knew the race-for-Scale; please meet the race-to-Live.

Not a day goes by without a story or an interview of a publisher reporting it is joining the Live party. Like social, shareable short-form videos were described a few years ago, Live videos are now introduced as the next big thing or the new strategic priority every professional content creator or news organization should focus on. Allow me to pause for a moment and think about wether it should actually be the case.

True: new tools and technology have significantly decreased the cost of producing Live content for publishers. A few years after Justin.tv, Meerkat had a moment of glory at SXSW last year. They fade into oblivion since then, quickly surpassed by Periscope and Facebook Live, boosted by competitive advantage that represented the massive scale and audience of their parent companies. Undeniably, everybody can now broadcast Live content in a very easy manner. Undeniably, this represents some progress towards the democratization of Live production: live APIs (like the one Facebook introduced at F8 last week) are way less expensive that the old live trucks infrastructure.

Also true is the fact that big social platforms like the above-mentioned Facebook, Twitter and (to some extent) YouTube seem to be willing to favor Live in their respective algorithms. Theoretically, this also decreases the distribution costs for publishers. In practice it is a little bit more complex as the battle for eyeballs engages a new kind of costs.

So, production and distribution costs are going down… In spite of that I can’t help but think that this new Live frenzy is a little bit of an over promise, not to say it is a bubble that will soon explode when it hurts the wall of reality. Here are a few reasons why.

Do users actually want more Live? I haven’t seen strong data points that would definitely prove this. On the contrary, I would argue that on-demand/catch-up viewership has been the key growth pattern we’ve seen among TV and digital video viewers over the last decade. On-demand was fueled by DVR since more than a decade ago, and then by YouTube and other OTT services like Netflix or Hulu (just to quote a few) in the most recent years. Even traditional broadcast publishers have been accelerating their efforts to repackage their Live content into segments/snippets to leverage the long-tail of the demand viewership. When it comes to going Live, the reality is that individuals are still broadcasting a curated version of their lives and are being very cautious with raw live footage. If you think about it, Snapchat is a great example of a video-editing tool and curated video-distribution platform for the masses.

Will too much Live content dilute the value of Live content? Similar to what happened with text, visual or standard video content during the first wave of the digital revolution, publishers will soon be confronted to a tsunami of Live content to compete which, on all screens and platforms. There is only 24 hours in a day and viewers might soon get bored by the quantity of sub-par Live content out there, especially as the personalization algorithms will have trouble detecting what’s good quality and what’s not as the livestreams start. It’s not only that, but it will also be incredibly difficult for publishers to make quality stand out in that chaotic Live content environment, making it even more difficult for them to keep it economically sustainable.

By the way, what’s the real economic model behind Live? Not all live events are SuperBowl games, A-lists concerts or newsworthy events that have the power of gathering millions in front of a screen, triggering exponential conversations or user responses, therefore becoming the right context for advertisers to tune in. The inherent uncertainty around a Live broadcast might scare some advertisers away. In other words, not all video content is suited to be Live and the right monetization format against Live opportunities is not proven yet.

These are only a few questions, among others — including the difficult decision publishers will have to make about how to organize and dedicate staff to Live video experiments. As always in this fast-changing media landscape, publishers should think twice before blindly rushing to the Live race. More than ever before, covering news live must come with a careful evaluation of the premium value it brings to your audience. Why am I going Live? Does it bring additional journalistic value for my audience? Does it help me differentiate? Is that the right way to tell my story and engage viewership for the long-run? Is that the right use of my staff’s time?

Assessing the value of Live video in the content-decision making process is not optional; it is critical. The value of going Live with quality and consistence must offset all the hidden costs that broadcasting quality Live events entails. Live must remain what it is: a means to engage your viewers in a value exchange proposition, a premium format to tell or report on stories. Don’t mistake Live for what it is not. If Live can make you feel good while it lasts, it is not necessarily what will keep you alive for good.