[opendtv] Re: News: The death of Cable TV

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2010 07:52:09 -0400

At 7:24 PM -0500 10/25/10, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
"Revenue per viewer-minute is much less online vs. broadcast. This could change as more ads appear on the web distribution and they become more targeted and interactive."

I am doubtful about the success of interactivity in TV ads (specifically in TV ads), but time will tell. I think these Internet TV ads will become ever more similar to TV ads now.

Interactivity is not a prerequisite for targeted ads. The issue is getting your ad in front of someone who is actually interested in what you are selling. Broadcast TV does a terrible job with this. Revenue-per-viewer minute is much higher on broadcast because it is WAY overpriced, but there are few alternatives...by design. This phenomenon has peaked, and is likely to crash soon as advertisers learn how to target viewers using new media.


Cable ought to have a better chance of reinventing itself than the DBS systems have, I think. There is not a lot of choice for wired broadband services, aside from cable or telco, and hard to believe that wireless broadband will be able to compete in speed, in the long term.

My thinking continues to be that the owners of the most desirable content are still willing to transmit FOTA, are *helping* (emphasize helping, and not the only cause) to price MVPDs out of existence, and are obviously not comfortable with all the new Internet sites that want to provide their programming. As of today, looks like the most futureproof option is unfettered Internet access plus OTA.

One minor problem here Bert. Their best content is moving to the MVPDs while they fill the OTA pipes with crap. Other than sports there is very little left on OTA worth watching, and much of the most desirable sports has already moved to ESPN and the like.


And if enough people do drop their TV-over-cable packages, watch the content migrate to the Internet or OTA media.

Clearly it will move to the Internet because of the ability to target viewers. Broadcasters simply cannot afford to pay what it will cost for the content people want to watch.

You just posted a story about the new FCC rules related to auctioning broadcast spectrum. I would suggest that we watch this very closely and see how many of the rats abandon their sinking ship.

Regards
Craig




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