Time Warner Cable’s Last Hope (oh, and Comcast et. al.)

There is no denying that cable companies are facing some big challenges to their business model.  Until very recently, the only reliable way to view the vast majority of programming made for TV was to pay a hefty monthly fee to a cable company for the privilege.

Over-the-air, while free, limits selection to the few networks that still offer signals and cable “black boxes” are relatively rare.

Then along came that evil internet to muck it all up for the cable companies. Since the only tangible service provided by the cable company is access, the internet is one big wrench in the works.  See, the internet provides access, too.  Until now, nearly all of that access, whether legal or pirated, was  free.  Suddenly, some people began to wonder just what they were paying all that money to the cable company for.

Well, the cable companies are wondering the same thing.  Instead of looking for a way to offer even more to their customers for a lower price, or some other direct response to the online proliferation of TV on the web, they’ve decided to do what they do best: throw up walls.

Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable operator in the country, is working with customers here to test a subscriber model for online TV viewing. Residents who pay for HBO can watch “Big Love,” “Entourage” and other programs on their computers, using special software and a personal log-in. People who are not HBO subscribers are barred from the service.

Anyone else see the problem with these approach?

For starters, Time Warner isn’t actually offering anything that great to its paying subscribers since there are plenty of ways to view the same content online for free.  The more paywalls they erect, the more likely it is for piracy to expand in response.

The same would be true if only cable subscribers could access, say, Hulu or TV.com.  While there might be some logic in this approach with a pay-cable network like HBO the argument collapses when applied to network TV shows that are chock full of branded content and ads.

It may well be true that the evolution of technology makes things like cable companies obsolete but that doesn’t mean we should support these kinds of schemes to save them.  If there is no economic reason for cable companies to exist they should cease to exist.

(link)

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If a TV Station Goes Online-Only is it Still TV?

Cory Bergman over  on Lost Remote makes an interesting proposition:

What if a TV station did the same? After all, many in the industry now concede that some markets can only sustain two or three TV stations in the near future. For those who can’t survive, what if they shut down the station and re-emerge as a lean-and-mean local media company with a focus on non-linear video? Clips would be published to the web, mobile and cable/satellite VOD.

This got me thinking about what makes a TV station what it is and how it would be changed moving to an online-only distribution model.  For starters, there is the whole question of streaming live and simple providing programming on demand.  When one looks at local TV networks the main draw is the local news.  This program still holds value in today’s marketplace because NBC Nightly News can’t cover the whole world and your neighborhood.  This leaves a real opening for the local networks.  However, it is still news watched mostly by an older generation less likely to follow the format online.

The big question is, aside from the news, what could an online-only local “TV” network truly offer?  As anyone who has been involved with running or maintaining a video-content driven site will tell you, it is extremely difficult to maintain a high enough traffic rate without a constant flow of new material.  The bread-and-butter of most local networks is the shows they syndicate, but that will not be of much option  online where most of those shows are already available.

There are clearly massive opportunities online for original video content but I am not sure porting the local TV network is going to be the way to go.

(via)

Ask.com TV Ad Crawls… What Took So Long

AdAge is reporting on a new advertising effort from search engine also-ran Ask.com:

In an effort certain to raise eyebrows, search engine Ask.com just started an ad campaign that relies mostly on “crawls” that show up in the lower part of the screen during selected cable programs. While the marketer will still run traditional commercials, it also hopes to capture attention by posing questions to viewers at the bottom of the screen about the very subject matter they are watching at the moment. To get the answer, those watching will need to surf to the company’s search site.

Considering that two of the more popular TV networks, ESPN and CNN, have had crawls forever, I am surprised that we haven’t seen much more of this type of advertising.  In the face of ad-skipping technology it makes perfect sense to embed the ad right into the programming.  The question will be whether or not it turns off viewers but I am willing to bet that it will not.  Viewers intrinsically get that someone has to pay for the programming and if it isn’t going to be them via subscription then it has to be advertisers and if we’re going to skip over traditional ads we will have to put up with an alternative.

Truth is, these ads don’t seem to be all that intrusive and no more distracting than a news or sports crawl.

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Cable Companies Try to Get Some Online Pie

There are plans brewing for cable companies like the atrocious Time Warner Cable to begin offering “exclusive” online streaming access for subscribers to programming currently not being offered via sites like Hulu.

Top cable-television providers and TV networks are exploring a sweeping solution to the threat of online video: putting large numbers of cable shows online, but accessible only to cable subscribers. (via)

Let’s take a quick look at why this is destined to fail.

1) They consider online video a “threat” that they can somehow defeat when it seems pretty clear that online video is here to stay.

2) Cable companies think they are going to be able to make content accessible only to cable subscribers. Our short internet history has shown pretty clearly that these “gated communities” are easily and quickly circumvented by those unwilling or unable to gain access “legally.”

3) By attempting to lock up content behind over-priced and inflexible walls pirates will simply be more motivated to  offer consumers a superiour alternative.

4) Right now I can find and view just about any TV program online without subscribing or paying via any number of legal, quasi-legal and illegal streaming sites not  to mention the myriad p2p solutions.  Cable is not likely to be competitive with this offer.

5) Attempting to build a business model on the concept of “scarcity” when your product is a digital video file that easily copied and distributed and then trying to charge for this artificial scarcity is just plain absurd.

3)

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Free Anti-Piracy Advice to NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX et. al.

According to a post on NewTeeVee:

Regardless of how many ads were shown, 90 percent of ABC.com viewers continued to say they’d rather get the show for free than pay to get it without ads.

Why aren’t the TV networks releasing copies of their shows to pirate sites complete with the ads built in?  While I do love my ad-free TV torrents, I tend to watch on Boxee even with the ads since there is simply no wait.  However, I miss being able to download and watch the show on other devices or outside of a wifi hotspot.

I think most people would be perfectly ok with downloading a show with the ads built in.  Sure, one could fast-forward past them but most people don’t bother, especially if the ads are short and varied.

Not only would the networks actually get to show advertisers an ever larger pool of eyeballs but they would be putting the pirates right out of business.

Just thinking aloud…

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Webseries on TV – Breakthrough or Backdoor Ripoff?

Full disclosure: I produced the webseries MY BEST FRIEND IS MY PENIS for Comedy Central’s Atom.com.

This original series was produced for the web and Comedy Central paid pretty much what was industry standard for an original webseries (read: not much).  It was known at the time that Comedy Central might air one or all of the episodes on their TV network as well, as part of what they call AtomTV.

On one hand it is nice for a webseries to get that sort of TV exposure.  At the same time, it is going to increasingly become difficult for all of us to distinguish what is a “web” series and what is a “TV” series.  The main difference of importance at the moment is that TV producers are paid a fair amount of money to make shows for TV while web producers make much less.  This is mostly due to the relative revunue each can theoretically generate but when a “web” show is used on a TV series and ads are sold around it the web producer does not get any monetary benefit.

Let’s not even talk about the issues relating to SAG/AFTRA and how union actors can do a small webseries under non-union conditions (for now) but shouldn’t be doing the same if it is going to be on TV, right?

As the notion of what is “online” and what is “on TV” blurs it will be interesting to see what happens to the once standard models used to budget and finance original programming.

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How Many Video Portals Does It Take To Screw In A Lightbulb?

Image by The Rocketeer via Flickr

The NYT has a good look at the ever-growing number of sites on the web offering you, the viewer, the chance to watch high-quality programming and wonders if they are all just a flash in the pan, much like the portals of yore:

“Now it feels like the same thing is happening with Internet video. As good television programming has become more available to online providers over the last year or two, new video sites have been popping up faster than “Law and Order” reruns. And as with the portals, big companies as well as start-ups are trying to get into the game.”

As I mentioned yesterday when I begged for an invite to Boxee (got one, too! thanks Boxee!), there is a big question as to whether or not any of these efforts will be around this time next year.

The biggest problem they all face is that they all offer the same basic content.  Now that the TV networks have decided to set a vast majority of their shows free via syndication, embedding and the like, it no longer takes a genius to find last weeks “Grey’s Anatomy” online.

Basically, everyone is just a rebroadcaster of some sort and none of them own the core product – the shows.

I think that the idea of everything on demand and on one screen is where we are headed, it’s just a question of time.

HowCast iPhone App – Video Done Right

The HowCast App, now available at the AppStore, lets you have every video from the HowCast site available on your iPhone.

This is what every video website should be doing.  Not to mention every TV network.  I’m actually surprised how few entities have taken advantage of the exposure that is possible providing a clean iPhone app version of their site.

Since there is still no way to watch the videos within the browser, this is the only way that these sites can reach the fastest growing headset market in the world…

We Love TV on the Web, Why Not Originals?

A much commented upon study has come out that shows quite a big jump in online viewership of episodic network television shows:

“With over 12 billion videos watched online in the U.S. during the month of May, its hard to argue against the ubiquity of the PC as the king of media. To further this claim, market research company, Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI), has released a study that claims that almost 20 percent of primetime “episodic” television shows are watched online.” (via)

So, the argument that people only watch short clips online no longer rings true.  However, it would be tough to argue that there have been any legitimate orginal online “hits.” (ok, some will argue LonelyGirl15 but even at it’s height it has never been widely viewed)

The question is why.  The most obvious reason is that there haven’t been any great online originals yet.  Sure, there have been some mildly entertaining bits out there (Wainy Days?  The Guild? We Need Girlfriends?) but nothing that has been strong enough and consistant enough to build a solid audience.

The second reason is that nobody knows what’s online.  There is no advertising or marketing.  Relying on the “viral” nature of the internet might work for a one-off but it will never build the kind of audience that could some day be self-sufficient.

With the networks and bigger-name creatives placing more time and money into online originals things might change but for the time being the best way to be a hit online is to be a hit on TV.

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I Call Shenanigans on Viral Video

My first guest post ever is up on Tilzy.tv!

It is a look at what is being called “viral” video and why that is a wild misnomer.  Here’s a little excerpt:

“Viral video.  Sounds good, doesn’t it?  Those sexy “v” sounds and the sense of something unstoppable, un-killable.  No wonder the term has become so popular.  It has also become a sort of Holy Grail for content producers, ad execs and brand managers across the world.

And, like the Holy Grail, viral video is at best an ancient legend and at worst a pipe dream.  Thousands will seek it only to go down in flames, confused and lost. 

Over the past week or so I have been bookmarking posts on the various advertising and new media blogs that have had something to say about “viral” video and I’m left a wondering just who is blowing all this smoke up who’s ass and why it’s continuing with no end in sight.”

Head over to Tilzy to read the whole thing.