[opendtv] What's HBO Go's Problem?
- From: Monty Solomon <monty@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 15 May 2012 11:50:36 -0400
What's HBO Go's Problem?
By Megan McArdle
The Atlantic
MAY 9 2012
There is no word for "cord cutter" in Dothraki
Gabriel Rossman -- Sociologist at UCLA. His work applies economic
sociology to media industries. He blogs at Code and Culture and is
the author of Climbing the Charts.
A famous Oatmeal cartoon showed the cartoonist making a good faith
effort to buy Game of Thrones. He finds that the show is not
available on iTunes, Netflix, Amazon, or Hulu. He tries to buy HBO
Go, but it's only available as an add-on to a cable package. Finally,
the cartoonist gives up trying to pay for the show and pirates it
through Bit Torrent. This cartoon is probably the best ever
expression of the "piracy is a customer service issue" thesis.
In a way, this doesn't make any sense for HBO, which makes its money
off subscriptions and would ostensibly welcome an opportunity to sell
subscriptions to another market segment. HBO claims that (a) people
aren't interested in a la carte HBO Go and (b) the transaction costs
are too high to do their own billing, etc. The technical term for
these explanations is "bullshit." Cord cutters are a relatively small
market segment but a fast growing one and I think it unlikely that
cable subscriptions will fully rebound when the recession ends since
the issue isn't just price but convenience. Moreover, I see no reason
why HBO can't handle billing and other logistical issues when the
Metropolitan Opera and the NFL, not to mention Netflix, don't seem to
have any trouble running their own separately billed streaming video
services. Of course there are transaction costs associated with
billing, but it can't possibly be anywhere close to the cost of a
basic cable package.
...
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/whats-hbo-gos-problem/256919/
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