[opendtv] Re: Video on Demand: It's Actually Not Television's Enemy
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2014 21:50:43 +0000
Monty Solomon posted:
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Video on Demand: It's Actually Not Television's Enemy
By Bilge Ebiri
April 07, 2014
Businessweek
To some, video on demand may still feel like a new, revolutionary
technology that's going to change the future of TV and movies. But a
new study shows something surprising: VOD viewership may be slowing
down. When it comes to content, what's old is new again.
In its annual State of VOD report, released on Tuesday, the metrics
company Rentrak - which provides real-time data on box office,
home video, digital video, and VOD to the entertainment
industry-reveals that in 2013 viewers spent an average of 8.7 hours
with VOD content per month, up only a modest 12 minutes from a year
earlier. Transactional revenue for the year was $1.5 billion, down
about 6 percent from in 2012. Content categories that were once
drivers of VOD growth, such as kids programming, movies, and music,
were all down.
...
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-07/video-on-demand-actually-not-televisions-enemy
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Perhaps what's down is pay-TV? But Monty didn't post some significant finding:
"But there was one interesting growth area: broadcast TV content. The report
shows that the total time spent viewing on-demand broadcast prime-time content
grew to a billion transactions, up 23 percent from 2012. 'Remember,
fast-forwarding is disabled on broadcast prime-time shows on demand,' says
Rentrak Chief Executive Officer Bill Livek. 'So, to discover something on the
VOD platform, someone who actually wants to watch a show has to sit through the
commercials-and this shows that they are willing to make that trade-off for the
convenience.'"
Nothing to sneeze at, 23 percent gain, eh?
As one who has been doing this regularly for several years, I can say that now,
when I watch real-time broadcast prime time shows, the ad breaks are
excrutiatingly long. This should be a hint, in case it isn't drop-dead obvious,
that you get dimishing returns with excrutatingly long ad breaks.
I wish that such obvious effects were not lost on the TV execs, as they seem to
be. It should be drop-dead obvious that subjecting viewers to multiple minutes
of ad breaks will simply make these viewers either record the show and
fast-forward the ads, or quit watching. Why is this hard to understand?
Online TV prime time shows, with ~2 minute ad breaks, are tolerable. Start
overloading those ads, and you'll see viewers taking action.
Bert
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