What a disconnect!
Much of the success of Netflix lies in the fact that there are no ads - people
are paying to avoid them. But the lifeblood of ad supported television is
ratings; what advertisers will pay, hoping that viewers do not go to the effort
to avoid the ads.
A high school friend and his wife stopped by last week. He was the
quintessential broadcast engineer - his senior thesis in college was why
broadcast stations should receive compensation for their signals from cable
systems. This was in 1970...
By the way, my senior thesis was a documentary entitled "Oh Say Can You Sing?,"
which looked at the history of our national anthem, based on the melody of an
old British drinking song...
This retired couple now has three DVRs that move from their home to their fifth
wheel trailer as they travel around North America. The DVRs have become
essential to their consumption of entertainment...to skip the commercials that
paid his salary for decades...
As the other article Monty posted today points out, Netflix knows exactly who
is watching what - but ratings have little to do with connecting audiences to
programs. And as this article points out, they can afford to create niche
programming that only appeals to limited audiences.
The driving force behind Netflix is to keep you paying that monthly subscriber
fee. They don't need to play the ratings game...
Regards
Craig
On Jan 23, 2016, at 11:52 AM, Monty Solomon <monty@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/18/business/media/disruption-by-netflix-irks-tv-foes.html
Netflix’s refusal to disclose ratings has led to mounting frustration from
traditional television industry executives.
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