[opendtv] Re: Another Canard: Competing with "Cable"
- From: "John Willkie" <johnwillkie@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2004 09:07:40 -0700
First: I meant to also say that broadcasters need to provide NEW services
to compete in the future. Not just the legacy services that got them to
this point. Not necessarily video/audio services.
NOTHING makes me think that "TV" is going to look anything like the days
when there were thirty channels. Indeed, I'm planning on deploying quite
new, very innovative services in coming months and years that are DTV but
are not TV, and I've only begun ...
As for the rest. Alas, it's state of 1950's legacy thinking. If only we
had more channels ...
More channels aren't necessarily the answer. Look what happened when
Discovery moved all their health programs to Discovery Health. Discovery
lost it's niche and became almost a generic, so we ended up with two
channels doing the job of one. And, the last thing we need is another
generic cable channel. The same could be applied to TLC spinning of Wings
and Animal planet. To get what you used to see all on basic cable, you now
have to upgrade to digital. Three channels doing the job of one. (And,
it's only coincidence that I seem to be picking on Discovery Communications,
Inc. today.)
John Willkie
-----Original Message-----
From: Craig Birkmaier [mailto:craig@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 6:46 AM
To: JohnWillkie@xxxxxxxxxx; openDTV@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [OpenDTV] Another Canard: Competing with "Cable"
At 3:40 PM -0700 5/31/04, John Willkie wrote:
>What? You mean that broadcasters can in the future provide services that
>will compete with cable circa 1987?
What makes you think that TV is going to look anything like the days
when there were thirty cable channels? Now it is you missing the
forest for the trees.
Consider the difference between surfing the web, and surfing a
multi-channel cable system.
In the 30 channel universe (you can make it 200 if you want), you use
a remote to scroll up/down through the channel numbers, or if you are
familiar with the mapping of content to the channel numbers, you
might enter a number directly.
With the advent of the EPG it is now possible to do more than watch a
scrolling channel/program guide, then enter the channel number when
you find a program. You can scroll through channels or time, and when
you find an interesting program you can tune to it (current time) or
mark it to watch at a future time (or for recording). You can also
group channels by common content sports, movies, news etc). As a
result, surfing the TV is becoming more intelligent
With Tivo, the whole process becomes more intelligent, and more
important, the notion of real-time becomes less important. You can
break out of the old rut of watching TV in real-time, and begin to
watch what you want, when you want to see it. The only thing that
really matters in terms of real-time are live events and perhaps
breaking news.
Now compare this to the way we surf the net. It is impossible to
scroll through the millions of choices that exist on Web servers. You
can just start somewhere, and start chasing the hyperlinks, but this
is not very productive. So we use two important mechanisms.
Bookmarking and search engines.
Once we have found a source of content that we like, we bookmark it
to make it easy to return to...this is not unlike the "favorite
channels" features found in EPGs and in some TV receivers. In the
future it is likely that people will bookmark their favorite TV
shows. If they are not there to watch them in real time, then the
program will be cached so that it can be watched at ANY time in the
future. In essence, people are beginning to build relationship[s to
specific content, rather than a generic distribution channel.
And we use search engines to find specific content/information that
we want. The same is likely to happen (is already happening) with
Tivo and other advanced EPGs. John should understand this more than
most, since he is trying to build PSIP tools that ostensibly will
drive this in the future. The problem is, that too many broadcasters
are looking at PSIP as a continuation of the existing time & channel
business model, rather than a directory that will guide people to the
programs they will deliver 24/7 in the future.
Ultimately, John is correct. The pipe becomes a commodity
business...boring, uninteresting. But most important, Content is
further decoupled from the pipe. You may be able to access it via
several pipes. We will be less likely to simply stumble upon
interesting programming, because it will be far easier to link to
interesting programming via the intelligent searching mechanisms that
will exist.
>
>Cable is not just TV, and cable isn't profitable with what they offer
today.
>Oftimes, they don't have positive cash-flow. To try to really make money,
>cable has invested in digital two-way infrastructures, and are
"desperately"
>finding ways to compete with everybody BUT broadcasters.
You are just wrong about the lack of profitability. But there is no
point arguing with you about this. Clearly, cable is in the midst of
a major rebuild that will allow them to compete in several additional
businesses. There is no guarantee of success here. But they do have
some competitive advantages to exploit.
Wired telephony is becoming boring. People are tired ot tethered
phones. Broadband is very interesting, especially when you can assume
that it exists in parallel with a broadcast service - but once again,
there will be many broadband pipes, and being un-tethered will be
perceived as important for many digital media appliances. Personally,
I do not see a rosy picture for cable in the long term, in part
because they will be competing in multiple arenas and may loose focus
on one or all of them. The biggest problem they have is greed and the
desire to control the subscriber.
>Broadcasters -- content providers, mainly, but not all stations actually
>generate content on their own -- can't compete with a distribution system.
>It's like asking "Shrek 2" to compete with a pipeline company.
Not true. They have plenty of bandwidth to compete. But they will
need a different business model. I agree that trying to compete with
the 1980 cable business model will not cut it. Producing content
will be more important in the future, since gatekeeping will
gradually become unimportant to viewers, who will form bods to
content, not distribution networks.
Regards
Craig
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