Re: Why TV Lost

ben21 — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:38:57 -0000

I also disagree, a $70 Billion television advertising market in the U.S alone means that what is valuable content will be licensed for exclusive distribution, and the licensor will continue to set the agenda. Sure TV is shifting to IP delivery, but that doesn't mean that the networks will get left out, it may cost a substantial amount of money for them to adapt, but the networks have plenty to spend, viewers have a vested interest in continuing to watch quality content in exchange for ads, and TV networks willl figure out a way to stay relevant.

And on piracy - you have to fight it, the technology will get good enough to fight it effectively, I would argue it already works relatively effectively, to download content illegally online is a lot larger hassle than scheduling it to record on my DVR.

And a personal aside, I used to go to a farm stand where they had an honor system, maybe they had a few folks who didn't honor it, but the stand ran effectively for years - no one would risk having their neighbor show up and see that they were stealing from a neighbor, you just need the right incentive.

Re: My Sponsored Breakfast

ben21 — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:19:44 -0000

Those always kind of seemed like a waste of money to me, sure it saves money for the street vendors, but for the marketer how do you measure that type of impression?

Maybe branded wrapped street carts are next...they wrap advertising around everything else these days.

Re: Dembot - 8 Reasons Why The TV Studios Will Die

ben21 — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:51:31 -0000

You make some good points, but I completely disagree.

A couple counterpoints:

Audience exodus - There's still a TV in just about every living room and viewers aren't throwing them away, they'll be back as soon as the shows are back on, and content on TV is still with a few exceptions way better than it is on the web.

Expendable middle person - TV exists to sell ads and it remains the most reliable way to deliver a message to a large captive audience, true the web can do this better in many ways, it's certainly more targetable and can drive more engagement, that's why growth has been so high, but the model hasn't been developed to efficiently target the same number of users in one shot as TV does. By the time it is, TV will play a major role in that kind of advertising as well because they still will control the most desirable content and have the scale to most efficiently reach the greatest number of viewers wherever they watch.

Dependent on exclusivity - Maybe, maybe not. The studios are tied to the programming, they provide the up-front costs for big budget production and promotion. Maybe without a Studio a company would throw money into financing something as risky as a TV show, but without the distribution in place I'd suspect it's way too risky a proposition to make worthwhile.

By the time online distribution is capable of effectively reaching as many people as TV, the studios will be the ones running that. Economies of scale are a huge advantage and the smart companies with big enough dollars (Microsoft & Google) are partnering with those studios to lead into that transition.

Inneffectual - Private equity has come in, but it's still a business reliant on distribution and the jury is still out on whether the closed system that is Hollywood will have the advantage over those outsiders. It's not easy to create a hit, and even more difficult if you're an outsider trying to fund a major budget film or TV program with no distribution mechanism ahead of time.

More likely, the successful programming financed by these ventures will reach agreements with studios for distribution. They certainly won't make money by self-distributing on the internet for a very long while.

Luddites - I'm pretty sure that if you were offered distribution that came with quality of experience and scale to par with ABC's Move Networks powered player or Hulu most content producers would take it in a heartbeat, not just because it offers a better viewing experience and an opportunity to reach a larger audience but because it will offer the most lucrative advertising deal out there.

Very few companies have come up with comparable lean-back online viewing experiences to the studios. While they may have been late to the game they brought their checkbooks and when successful independent programming is compelling enough to acquire a large enough audience they will get studio distribution deals as well.

In any event, it makes you think...

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