[opendtv] Re: "The TV model is broken," says ISP that stopped offering pay-TV

From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2014 22:58:00 +0000

Craig Birkmaier wrote:

> The article does not show the way ahead. It simply shows that small
> MVPD players will either get out of the business or they will be
> acquired.

The article does show the way ahead, Craig. The solution is for the 
distribution media to stop carrying the MVPD broadcast bundles. After that is 
done, by an increasing number of ISPs, and/or by the subscribers themselves who 
are fed up with the ever rising rates, the rest falls in place automatically. 
One thing you can be certain of is that the congloms will not go out of 
business over any of this. They will make sure that their stuff is made 
available to all potential customers, using whatever means those customers will 
accept.

> It is worth noting that it is entirely feasible that facilities based
> MVPDs could all go away, with Internet MVPDs taking over the TV customers.

Craig, you keep missing it, as an MVPD marketer would do. Why did this one 
MVPD/ISP drop out of the MVPD model to begin with? Was it something to do with 
their physical infrastructure? No. Was it the transmission protocol? No again. 
With TVE already in place, the physical infrastructure and technical details of 
transmission are demonstrably not the issue. So what you're suggesting makes no 
sense. Attempting to duplicate the MVPD model as is, over the Internet, will 
only guarantee that the stubborn hopeless who try this will fail.

Think about it, Craig. You don't fix the problem by recreating the same 
problem. Instead, new formats of Internet-distributed TV portals will emerge, 
as some already have. Including "direct to consumer."

Let's not forget how unwalled TV content distribution models work. The market 
distortions were created in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when in search for 
a greater capacity medium than what OTA could offer at the time, walled garden 
local monopoly pipes were built.

With the neutral Internet, those distortions disappear. Now it's back to the 
unwalled distribution model, only with way more choice available than even the 
MVPD net broadcast streams could hope to provide. The bundling was only 
enforceable **by the necessity of this walled garden distribution pipe**. 
Bundling will become entirely optional. If consumers want it, they can find a 
portal that does this. If consumers don't like it, they will find other portals 
that don't do this. Viacom will certainly not insist that their stuff must be 
bundled with Disney content, Craig. Not over the Internet. And if a TV portal 
insists it must be, that portal will have to compete against other portals that 
aren't so self-destructive.

And content creators themselves can choose to do business with the congloms, or 
not. With the neutral Internet pipe, there is no gatekeeper to allow only 
certain content owners over the pipe, as there was with the walled garden 
model. There's more opportunity for small operations to get their stuff out 
too, e.g. over YouTube.

>> Amazing how anyone can pretend that so-called "TV Everywhere" is
>> an interesting model, for the consumer. What this article describes
>> is infinitely more interesting, especially because it has started
>> happening.
>
> It IS an interesting model for consumers that pay for the bundle
> Bert.

Yes, Craig. You are premising everything on the perpetuation of the status quo. 
Which is why it's NOT INTERESTING. This article, and a ton of others, are 
describing how the status quo DOESN'T WORK anymore. Which should be obvious. 
When a past technical constraint no longer applies, business models move on. 
That's always been the case.

Bert

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Follow-Ups:
- [opendtv] Re: "The TV model is broken," says ISP that stopped offering pay-TV
  - From: Craig Birkmaier

[opendtv] Re: "The TV model is broken," says ISP that stopped offering pay-TV

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