[opendtv] Re: Popularity of network content
- From: Tom Barry <trbarry@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 09:33:30 -0500
Wow! I don't watch Law & Order but just looked up in epguides.com how
many episodes there really are. If you count all the various franchises
it looks like there are probably over a thousand. And by the boxed set
price on Amazon it looks like you could buy them all (a lifetime
supply) for $1-2 per episode.
But I really don't think there are fewer good dramas on TV these days.
Instead I think it just reflects the technology based changes in the
cost of content creation vs distribution. Distribution costs per bit
keep going down but the cost of creating content seems to go up.
So not all that many more new shows are created. Instead new channels
are created cheaply but the existing supply of content is spread around
all of them them. This may make it seem there is much more choice but
the choice is between channel numbers, not good things to watch. The
amount of good content on any given channel is very sparse, or
non-existent.
Even the networks seem to make little effort to program anything other
than a 2-3 hours of week night prime time anymore. NBC can almost fill
that much just with L&O shows.
On the good side, the amount of archived content suitable for repeats
grows monotonically each year. So as long as there are good backups we
will eventually approach an almost infinite amount of old content
available to dump on new channels. ;-)
- Tom
John Shutt wrote:
> What percentage of MVPD prime time viewing is syndicated reruns of
> network programs?
>
> I know my wife can't get enough Law and Order on TNT, for example.
> Without the networks, the source of a lot of cable programming will
> dry up, and there is no way that those individual channels can afford
> to replace them all with their own productions.
>
> A cable channel is lucky to be able to afford one or two scripted
> dramas per season, let alone 5 nights' of prime time worth.
>
> John
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Craig Birkmaier" <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
>
>
>> At 7:37 PM -0600 1/10/10, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
>>> Craig, didn't you say recently that network content amounts to 40
>>> percent of MVPD prime time viewing? How did that suddenly decrease
>>> to 30 percent?
>>>
>>> Using 40 percent and your other numbers, that's 45.6M households.
>>
>> If I did, my bad.
>>
>> A few years ago it was 40%. It as since dropped to 30%
>>
>> Regards
>> Craig
>
>
>
>
>
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