[opendtv] Wire: The Future of TV Is Cable Bundles on the Internet
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2014 23:52:59 +0000
Don’t get excited by the subject line, Craig. This article is (a) over one year
old and (b) comes to a conclusion you probably didn't predict.
Instead, this article says it like it is, for MVPD copycats. And it goes
without saying, the same applies to TVE. There is no significant difference,
from a customer's point of view, between TVE and Internet OTT sites that merely
emulate MVPDs.
New aspiring OTT services have to go this route only if they go begging to the
congloms (or go begging to MVPDs, as Apple did). So clearly, this ain't the
model to think about for the future. The future is what customers motivate the
content owners to do.
Bert
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http://news.yahoo.com/future-tv-cable-bundles-internet-211907002.html
The Future of TV Is Cable Bundles on the Internet
The Atlantic
By Rebecca Greenfield
July 16, 2013 5:19 PM
Google is the latest company to look into the streaming television business,
but, just like other tech companies attempting to move into the future of TV,
it will have to do so on the terms of the cable operators. Google would like to
license channels directly from cable companies for a streaming television
service, sources tell The Wall Street Journal's Christopher S. Stewart and
Shalini Ramachandran. But, don't get your hopes up: This isn't a cord cutter's
dream, it's just a different cord. "To get decent rates for the service now
being contemplated, Google and other companies will almost certainly have to
accept the standard programming bundles that cable and satellite operators pay
for—packages that include highly popular and less popular channels," write
Stewart and Ramachandran. Meaning: If this ever happens, Google will sell cable
packages through the Internet. The only innovation there is the lack of the
traditional cable box.
That seems to be the direction all these tech companies are going in, forced by
the hands of the cable companies, which fear the debundling of their services.
Intel's rumored TV of the future is the same idea; Apple's likely involves some
sort of actual device, but the content part sounds a lot like the Google
set-up. Even if these companies dream of a more à la carte,
pay-for-what-you-actually-watch situation, the cable companies have shown
complete resistance to this idea. Apple, in fact, has struggled with
negotiations because of this, sources tell the Journal. Sony, once rumored to
have a "cable-killing" streaming service, has stalled its plans because of the
cable companies. Seeing a pattern yet?
When people cut the cord, however, they do so because cable bundles with all of
those empty channels aren't worth the average $73.44 a month they cost. Why,
then, would people ditch Time Warner Cable for Time Warner Cable served by
Google? "One answer, backers say, is that the technology companies can develop
far better interfaces to watch television than the clunky programming guides
pay TV operators offer now," writes Stewart and Ramachandran. That sounds
incredibly unexciting to someone of the cord-cutting persuasion. The shiny
motion-controlled interface of the mythical Apple TV can only distract from the
content it serves for so long.
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