[opendtv] Re: Netflix Is 6% of TV Business, 43% of Ratings Decline — Nathanson | Re/code

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 00:59:55 +0000

Craig Birkmaier wrote:

And for an MVPD subscriber, there was only one source for those
shows: the MVPD link.

Really? What about the antenna in your fireplace?

Read what I wrote, Craig. I'm not an MVPD subscriber, and you couldn't use an
antenna if your life depended on it! In practice, the vast majority of MVPD
subscribers, ante-Internet, had that one cable or DBS link as their sole source
of TV content. Including syndicated shows.

Cable and DBS subscribers insisted on getting local OTA channels from the MVPD
pipe, just to drive that point home.

No, thank you for repeating what I said. You get more channels
today than in the NTSC era, but they have all been filled with
syndicated programming for many decades.

Syndicated and other programming. Don’t forget, also 24 hour weather and 24
hour news channels, and 24 hour movie channels. And 24 hour shopping channels.
And BBC shows. It's not JUST syndicated shows. Which is also what made cable
attractive to begin with, and which is also what evidently makes Netflix
attractive too.

You can't have it both ways, Craig, try as you might. OTA DTV makes OTA TV more
similar to cable TV than it was in the NTSC era. Cord cutters seem to want this
as an adjunct to their SVOD options (SVOD options deliberately limited by the
typical Roku and Apple TV boxes). So, this much expanded choice, available OTA,
is a Good Thing for consumers, and definitely a must-have for OTA TV to attract
more viewership, as it has been. With the spectrum auctions looming, reducing
spectral efficiency for OTA would not be good. As long as broadcasters actually
broadcast, they need that spectral efficiency.

These second tier channels did not cause people to move to
cable and DBS;

Again, you can't argue from both sides and sound credible, Craig. First, we're
not talking just syndicated shows. Secondly, we have read that syndicated shows
are one huge attraction for Netflix, and that the congloms are rethinking their
strategy now. So all the extra choice, and plenty of channel surfing
opportunities, were no doubt a draw to cable, back in the NTSC era, and at
least some of this extra choice is a draw to OTA TV today.

Bert



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