[opendtv] Re: B&C: Fox Seeing Big Gains In Non-Linear Advertising Sales
- From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 08:26:04 -0400
On Aug 11, 2017, at 10:11 PM, Manfredi, Albert E
<albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Because I do. There's more than I can watch, in fact.
Duh.
Anyone can binge on broadcast TV Bert. That does not mean they everyone is
watching the broadcast networks, which have lost 2/3's of their audience since
the '80s.
All it takes is one exception to disprove your assertion, Craig. If
old-fashioned TV bundles were the best value for people, we wouldn't be
seeing a steady cord cutting phenomenon. Obvious, right?
Nope. Cord cutting is happening because there are now viable alternatives.
And a very large percentage of the "cord cutters" are actually just cord
switchers.
Yesterday I went out scalloping with a retired Dean of the U.F. Vet school.
Nice boat. He can easily afford whatever TV he wants.
He put up an antenna, connected to his TiVo, which is connected to his
"monitor;" he no longer thinks of it as a TV. He subscribes to Sling TV,
Netflix, and Amazon Prime.
We talked about the Cox data caps.He exceed them once when he downloaded a
library of content to his TiVo from the cloud. He also noted that his wife
streams all kinds of stuff as "background noise."
What we are seeing is a modicum of competition, but mostly just a bunch of new
stores.
Brings to mind your misguided "produce" analogy. Some TV content is
"perishable;" sports, news and political analysis programs only last a few
hours or days.. The higher value content is NOT perishable - it is part of the
content food chain. "Fresh" content demands a big premium over reruns,
syndication, and binge sites.
A far better analog is a library or book store. The shelves are filled with all
kinds of content. In a book store, the 'fresh" stuff is in the front of the
store. people even pay a premium when it is fresh, versus waiting for the
paperback, or the price of the e-book to come down. The classics live for
decades, if not centuries. And other books migrate from hard cover, to
paperback, to used book stores.
In the TV business "fresh" content is the big attraction. If Netflix and Amazon
Prime survive, it will be based on the content they are investing in and
control. The legacy content they have been able to get from the content
congloms is drying up, now that the congloms realize they can make more money
using this stuff to complement the limited amount of fresh content they create.
In the end, it takes a bit of both. Fresh content gets the customer in the
door; used content fills out the bundles.
But the alternative, as pointed out by Disney and others is buying
MULTIPLE smaller bundles that could cost more
The alternative could also be that people pay only for what they want, and
pay less.
To a VERY limited extent this is starting to happen. It is NOT possible today
to buy everything ala carte. If you are willing to wait until the fresh stuff
is starting to look a bit wilted, you can access it in many ways, but not on
the cheap.
Some people buy a lot of content - almost every home has a shelf full of
videotapes and/or DVDs. Now you just download it to a device for offline
consumption, or stream it from your bookshelf in the cloud.
After years of waiting, I can now access a VMVPD service that offers the
networks I want; but I am still paying for dozens that I don't watch. And yes,
I am paying a bit less.
I don't buy "multiple" bundles, so already this new assertion of yours is
disproved.
Earth to Bert.
The content owners do not give a sh*t about YOU. They give you the crumbs for
free.
But more than half of U.S. homes subscribe to a (V)MVPD bundle AND Netflix.
Not many people are subscribing to the single conglom bundles like CBS All
Access. They are a lousy deal.
The one thing that is changing is that when an OTT service gets your credit
card, they are now willing to let you opt in and out without a long contract.
So CBS All Access picks up a bunch of subscribers during March Madness, who
then cancel when the NCAA tournament is over.
You can very nicely get by with only one SVOD site, depending on your tastes.
And the more options emerge, the more true this will be.
We subscribed to Netflix for about a year. We watched a few original series
until they lost their way, as is the case for most serialized TV programing.
Obviously we have not developed "a taste" for the stuff you watch. And that's
OK. To each their own. But please stop telling us that you can get anything you
want without paying.
It's how these sites compete, when you don't have local monopolies making
decisions for you.
That is such OLD NEWS, not to mention FAKE NEWS as well. The congloms are the
monopoly Bert, and they got Congress to give them the tools they needed to take
over the MVPD business. And they are now taking control of the OTT distribution
of content.
A few companies like Netflix and Amazon are building premium bundles based on
FRESH content, as HBO and Showtime did with the old MVPD model. And folks in
Hollywood are laughing all the way to the bank, as this is driving up the cost
to buy talent and create FRESH content, from Hollywood.
Regards
Craig
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