AOL Could Be King on Online “Magazines”

There is a very smart, clear, article in TBI that looks at one of the cornerstones of AOL’s plans now that they’ve been spun back off of Time Warner:

The model goes something like this: Find a vertical with an audience attractive to advertisers, brand it (Daily Finance, Asylum, Lemondrop, Politics Daily), hire five to seven people to run it and plug in AOL’s traffic fire hose. Repeat.

It’s not like isn’t being done by others. Nick Denton’s mini-empire has a very similar model and, guess what, it remains profitable while the traditional dead-tree magazines are dropping like so many flies.  The main reason to think AOL might succeed here is that they are building a digital-age system from the ground up, not trying to shoehorn an old business model into a new universe.

They’re the antithesis of the kind of quality standards Time Inc. and Condé Nast tout, relying largely on aggregation, blogging and traffic-goosing tricks such as provocative slide shows. But unlike the print publications trying to port their cost structure to the web, these publications can be cash-positive from the start. In fact, one could argue these sites cropping up represent today’s version of the magazine launch — after the old, splashy kind died with Portfolio.

And, as TBI finally points out:

Then you’ve got an economic environment tailor-made to building this business. Traditional magazines are in disarray, talent is cheap, and audiences are splintering and accepting of new brands. AOL has more than 300 people producing these sites in New York and has contracts with about the same number of freelancers. In the past six months, AOL has hired more than 50 journalists from places such as the Associated Press, Washington Post and USA Today.

If you are looking for the future of news, you might get a good idea by paying some attention to that old internet warhorse, AOL.

Let’s just hope they don’t starting sending out those damn CD-ROM’s again.

The Myth of Cable’s “TV Everywhere” Plan

A bunch of news about Time Warner and Comcast beginning to roll out a service being called “TV Everywhere.”

TV Everywhere aims to put full-length cable programming online, but require viewers to prove that they have a cable subscription before they’re able to watch. Currently most full-length episodes from cable networks aren’t available on the web.    LINK

Of course, by everywhere, they mean on this one firewalled site.  Forget about downloading an episode and watching in your iPhone or saving it for offline viewing.

While it’s nice to see the cable companies trying to get more programming online, I’m not sure this is the solution that will save them from obsolesence in the coming years.

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Time Warner Cable Bandwidth Caps Cause Concern

There are lots of reports today about Time Warner Cable’s testing of a new bandwidth-usage caps that would basically charge you more if you transferred more data online.  This is not limited to strictly downloading but includes streaming, an increasingly popular use of bandwidth.

SAI breaks it down:

What does this mean for you? If you watch about 7 hours a week of standard-def video, or 2.5 hours a week of hi-def Web video, you could easily pass even the 40 GB cap. After that, each iTunes movie rental — or Netflix (NFLX) stream, or whatever — could cost $1 to $4 more. Or Hulu episodes could cost $0.30 to $0.50. That doesn’t even include your other Web usage, such as downloading music, using the Web, etc.

On one hand, there is some logic in a plan that charges heavy users more than light users but it doesn’t seem an especially wise or sustainable plan by TWC.

First, as long as there are other bandwidth providers out there offering unlimited usage, TWC will have time keeping customers signed up.  Second, the rate at which our usage of bandwidth is increasing, often just from month to month, is amazing.  What might seem like reasonable usage today, watching lower-res videos, climbs quickly when one discovers HD streams and the like.

If TWC is your only option for highspeed service, you might be screwed but this kind of action will open up a lot of reasons for competitors to step in with a better offer.

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How Much is Cable TV Worth Online?

Time Warner is announcing plans of its own to offer broadband streaming access to their channel offerings, for a price.  Right now it sounds like they will include access in existing bundles and may have an option for broadband only access in the future. (more here)

This raises a few questions:

1) If the majority of the content is streaming only, does that mean all programming will be available on-demand at any time or only when it is “aired” on TV? There isn’t a lot of value-added if all one gets is to watch what would be on TV, but on your computer.

2) Considering almost everything on TV is already available online what will Time Warner offer that I can’t already get, often for free?

3) What’s really in it for the broadcasters?  Why should NBC let Time Warner distribute their content online when they seem to be having plenty of luck doing it themselves via Hulu?

4) It seems highly unlikely the Time Warner offering will include the ability to download content meaning that there will still be plenty of reasons to pirate.

To say that I am skeptical of these plans is not over-stating things.  The whole notion of a centralized distributor like TWC that actually doesn’t provide a legitmate service feels dated and increasingly obsolete.

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Free Advice for Whole Foods

I was at Whole Foods today, the incredibly crowded one in the Time Warner Center, and noticed that there were ads running on the screen next to the display of the items I purchased.

For just a moment, it looked like the ads were actually related to what I was buying.  I quickly noticed this was not the case but that there were just five or six ads in rotation.

Strikes me as a huge missed opportunity.  There they are scanning every item I am buying so how hard would it be to have that information cross-referenced with the available ads and run ads that actually related to what I was buying.

Sure, I am done shopping for today but what a perfect time to plant an idea in my head for next time.

So, Whole Foods, link that scanner to the ad-delivery program and you might increase those sales in these tough times for no additional cost.

As Screens Converge Will We Become Platform Agnostic?

There is word in the NYT (ok, I’m sure it’s elsewhere too but I just don’t have the energy to dig up the links) that Time Warner Cable (my monopoly-tastic super-over-priced NYC cable company) is planning to bring the internet onto the television.  So says Chief Executive Glenn Brit:

“Within a relatively short time … it’s going to be very easy to get Internet TV on your big screen TV,” he said, estimating it would take between one to two years to popularize such technology already sold by the likes of Apple Inc.

I’m not totally clear on the difference between having the internet on my TV and “Internet TV.”  Sounds like some sort of proprietary browser with limited access will be in play… still, for everyone claiming cable is going to lose to the internet might want to reconsider.  Instead of a winner and a loser we’re just going to have more media in one place.