As Media Evolves, Will The Consumer be Left Behind?

Can Netflix Make a series of their Own?

Will AT&T Buy T-Mobile?

Did Showtime Shoot its Foot Off?,, Definitely Yes..

Is the IPad2 a Hit Definitely Yes...

Lots of things have been happening in the world this last week, Netflix ; AT&T ; and Showtime,shoots itself in the foot.
One of the top news stories everyone talking about is Netflix picking up the first run option on a show that's not even made yet. Having now had the pleasure of enjoying streaming content from them on my computer and on the Wii, I can see where they would be interested in doing a deal of this type. They know their bread and butter is the catalogue of material going back to the 1920’s on a very few cases and being to let a consumer explore either old shows they watched and loved in younger days, or just find new and interesting stuff to watch and discover treasures they missed before.
So, For Netflix to spend 100Million dollars to get the first run rights to “House a Cards” seems out of character, however... Looking at it from their side, If they do this and if works, and they wind up bring in more subscribers on top of the 20 million or so they have now, and the publicly is good for the show itself, interest in the show and Netflix will increase along with its stock price.
On the content creators side,developing a project for the like of Netflix where one knows theirs a instant 20 million+ viewer audience is a big plus, and the publicity that goes with it is priceless. Netflix only has first run rights, which means it then be resold and of course that means more revenue streams coming in down the road.

Showtime on the other hand shoots itself in the foot. At least to my way of seeing things. Showtime is renegotiating the deal which ends later this spring and starts in the summer. The end result is that they are pulling new content from Netflix, like Dexter, and Califorination . One will only able to stream them if one is a subscriber and and log into their official site. I was under the impression that one of the great things about site and venues like Hulu.com was the eyes it got in front of a show. If you can get more people interested in watching a show, particularly one that on the likes of showtime, the chances are they will subscribe to the network to see the new shows, Taking off the older episodes and forcing those who really want to see the content to go to bit-torrents and the like or say “the heck with it” and don’t bother even trying to watch them if they can’t get them, is defeating the propose of publicly which when it come right down to it Netflix is a great publicly machine for a huge world of content that's been long forgotten about.

AT&T has put in a bid to buy T-Mobile for 39Million dollars. There a a lot of questions that arise from deals like this. Such as, a big one will the FCC and/or FTC let it go through? The advantages to AT&T are they get more network to expand their 4G layer, They have a reputation for very bad coverage in cities where they are not a primary provider., so they need the T_Mobile towers and coverage. What doses T_Mobile need? They need the IPhone, which they can’t get right now, I’m also thinking it would give them some better android phones. AT&T will be able to provide T-Moble with other support services that that probably lack.
Will this be good for consumers. I’m not sure sure. On the face of it it looks like its reducing the numbers a main cell phone carries from 4, Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile to 3.
I think that will only tell half of the story. The rest of the story is how they change rates planes and most importantly, customer service. AT&T customer service is notoriously bad, I suspect that T-Mobile’s is all that great either. In any case a complete overhaul of customer service is probably in order.

I would be completely remiss if I didn't talk about the IPad2 which just recently came out.
On March 2rd Steve Jobs surprised the crowd by just showing up on stage. Steve Jobs had stepped down from day to day operations of Apple earlier this year citing health issues. So his being there to present today was a huge surprise to those in attendants.

The bigger questions emerge: Do we need a new version of the IPad, for some the new capabilities will fit right into what they are doing now, and allow them to do more with one device.

Why they announced the IPad this early is easy: Competition.

Apple has the knack for staying ahead of the curve, even when they invented it.. As I said in my last article, there were 18 new tablets announced in CES in early January.

At this point there seems to be a number of contenders for the “Tablet King” Now Title: Motorola Xoom, HP TouchPad, Blackberry Playbook, Samsung Galay, . I am already finding comparisons about which one has best stats. To my way of thinking the stats of any device don’t tell the whole story. The real test is how a device is used by the end consumers. In the IPads case the consumers have overwhelming said that the Ipad is the right device at the right time and it dose what they want/need it to do, will the IPad2 do as well?, its a pretty safe bet..

Apple has done a number of things right, the reduced the price of the 1st generation units, and they kept the pricing the same for the 2nd generation the same as they were for the originals. a very smart move.

The improvements in the IPad2 will force the competition to up their game, and continually evolve their products to make them more more appealing to consumers. No matter nice they look, if they don’t preform, and do what the consumers expect them to do, they will be dumped for the next big thing to come along.

While I have not have the pleasure yet of experiencing any of the tablets. The ideal way to test a unit is to take it for a week and see what it will and won’t do, and how you like it. However not many folks have the option of “Borrowing” a unit for a week to see if they like it. So we must rely on reviews and what we feel when we see at the store..

There are many more things yet to discuss, hopefully I can continue to offer my humble opinion in a more timely matter as the summer progresses..

Ken Lawson

A Brave New World

Lately I've been watching a lot of "TV" on the computer; ie, netcast, or podcast as the traditional term for audio, and now audio and video broadcast over the internet, either streamed live as they happened or played off a site or downloaded and saved to and played on a portable mp3 player, both without video and more and more with video.
What I'm mostly watching is TWIT.TV, TWIT stands for; "This Week In Technology".

It started out a a audio taping of a informal conversation about tech by Leo Leporte, and several of his old Tech TV friends.

It was later put up on a site and, eventually broadcast and downloaded. Long story short;
Leo Leporte has over the last several years built TWIT into a small station. They now do about 30 hours of netcast a week, besides streaming the feed live during the taping of the shows. and running repeats of the latest shows when now one is there.. They now have sponsors and so there are a limited number of comericals , which are all of products they they use .Theses "comericals" harken back to the days of old when the announcer would go into a ad for a particular product and then righ back to the show at hand. This is what they do on TWIT tv. When its time for the few, usually 2-3 ads that they need to run, Leo, or whoever is hosting the show, will say that its now time to mention a word from our sponsor, and do a speil about the particular product or service, there is no fancy music or other gimmick, just Leo hawking the product for that day.Orgininaly they only put out audio versions of their netcast, which are available to download from I-tunes and a number of other venues. Recently within the last couple of weeks Leo Leporte, founder and owner of TWIT TV anaunced that he had just signed a deal with a company called Media Fly which is a web media, ie podcast aggeriator. They collect and put out software and products to bring media off the web to other platforms, everything from traditional auduo/video mp3 players, to smartphones, and many other devices, so essentially you an either stream it directly fom the web or or download it to you portable device of choice and take it with you, includes both regular audio only podcast, and the a/v podcast. The importance of deals like this are many:

For starters they give the whole podcast industry a creditability they haven't had before. Suddenly they are no longer just those strange things that the geeks search out and listen to. On a equally important note, it also brings the podcast to a whole new market that would never take the time to look for them, then figure out how to download and play them. Suddenly they are almost as easy to play as turning on your tv. Actually Leo Leporte explained this whole ease of use and the whole though process that went into the making of TWIT tv and why podcasting hasn't taken off like it should in this speech he did in early October. The Second link is to the speech at Blogworld, where he announced the deal with Roku and Media Fly.

The two links below explain what I have been trying to explain here much better then I can.

http://www.businessinsider.com/leo-laporte-is-raking-in-15-million-a-year-for-his-podc-2009-10

http://player.theplatform.com/ps/player/pds/BNWNBgJyOy?pid=mcm5sKEK3pLSNsOXmgnDt_Hv_g8Q5bys

Also, earlier this month he in connection with the media Fly deal , he announced that the entre TWIT program would beput on the set-top box called a Roku. You may ask what a Roku box is, it is a small black box the you hook up to your tv and then it connnects to your network either wireless or by wire and allows you to stream content over it to your tv. Right now they have 3 main sourses of content. Amazon, which has both rent and buy options for their movies and tv series. If you don't rent or buy anything it don't cost you anything. The other is Neflix, which uses a subscription model, one flat rate starting around 10.00 a months allows you to rent one movie at a time, ie, physical dvd, they send to you, the big thing however is, with this box you can stream as much content as you want off their library, which is quite extensive. The last provider is MLB, major league baseball. again a subscription model, which I know nothing about exept you have to pay for it. Its there, which is cool for thoses who want. Now they are adding the Media Fly content to the box. Further research shows there are content provider coming on board over the next probably couple of months. At least that is my hope.

What platforms like Media Fly and and anything lets lets one take content from locked in device and play the same content on any device, be it a tv, natively, or through a box like Roku, or Boxee, or even Apple tv, and then take the same media and play it on a portable device and take it with you give adertisiers a whole new market to sell ads to. By the podcasting doing short content related ads the support the content maker and allow him to afford to make his product and keep it free to give away, and the adviritsers get a captive audience , which is also a niche market, which is more likely to be interest in a product related to what they're watching or listening to. And probably more likely to respond to the ad. On top of that, they will be able to track how their ads preforms, and get better demographics about the audience. Its a win-win, for everyone, the podcaster gets to pay for his show, the advertisers get to sell to a niche market that is interested in their products, and the listener hears ads he's probably more interested in.

Any way that it comes out in the end, ie,over the next few years,; things are going to change drasticly. A lot of how this will play out will depend on how the FCC and to a large extent they large telecos and content providers react to the shift. In theory, the consumers should be the ultimate winners. But How do you define winner;

Yes you will be able to stream almost anything you want whenever, wherever, you want, but your account is being tracked and advertisers, are keeping track of what you watch, so they can show you ads related to the content your watching, and possiblity based on where your watching it, and on what device your watching it on.

So in the end, the consumers have to decide if this is a fair trade, what and when they want for constant tracking of their viewing habits, and possibility even more sinister uses of the data..

Yes its a brave new world....

Ken Lawson

To DTV Now or Never? Or Later? (Now is Better)

The On and Off Again Digital Transition has many people shaking their collective heads wondering whether they're going to "SH**T or get of the pot", so to speak.

I've listened to a number of folks who claim they know what they're talking about and even what they're doing, and I have reached several  conculions  on my own.

One of my main thoughts is: It NEVER should have been set in February in the FIRST PLACE. This begs to question, What idiot looked at a calender and stabbed it and said, February looks good,? November through  March or in some places are darn near impossible to work outside, and make service call, Much less putting up  antenna and the like.

     So we're going to have millions of people, mostly elderly or in some way handicapped in one way or another, calling the 800 numbers or their local tv stations when they're tv won't work, and many times talking them through doing stuff like hooking stuff up ins darn near impossible, so your going have to send someone to physically go the the site and see if the can get it to work. In the Middle of February....LOL. I'm glad I'm not one of them...!!!

  For the last three years we've been drilling into the nations collective   consciousness this was, A.  good for us, and B, going to happen, and to suddenly now back off is going to cause mass problems all around.  Thats not even counting the money spent, and what will need to be spent if they move it at the last minute. I would say at this point, less then 3 weeks away, things are as ready as they're going to be, Just Do It.!   You've made your collective beds,as to doing it int the first place, and doing it now, NOW Lie in IT!!!

    As I said before it never should have been set for now, but it is, its your mess, now fix it, and moving it isn't going to fix anything, just prolong the pain.

The coupon, while a good idea, was probably mis managed, and run wrong from the start. Now of course it out of money. Its simple, extend the deadline on all unused coupons, and extend  the time on all newly issued coupons, to give folks a chance to get their boxes when they come back into stock.

Television broadcasters have weighted in say thats it going to cost substantial sums to keep the analogue towers going until June. that future money they could be putting into the new channels or programing or other niche services.

    One of the many things that has come to light lately, (I suspect they at some of the tech guys knew it before), Is the issue of the way digital signals travel. Apparently, they travel in more of a straight line and don't tend to get into valleys and cross high hills and mountains real well.  The point being there are going to many rural folks who barely got their relatively local, local stations now, who very possibly won't get anything, even if they do everything right.   What are they supposed to do? Those are the folks who probably barely get a slow dial-up connection, and pay too much for that, and can only get it through their phone company. 

In recent years the tv has become more then the the "Boob Tube" to sit in front  and while away the hours. It has become a more integral part of the home entertainment system, including surround sound system, music servers, move servers, and both DVD and Blu-ray, High definition disc players.  Essentially becoming the monitor for a entire media hub for the house, with all the players including games and now even pcs hooked to it, You can stream media off both your local hard drive, and even directly off the web. So, needly to say the selection of the new tv has become more complicated. One must fist consider, where its going, how big to get, and finely very importantly what connection do you need to hook up to it. Actually, in one way its easy, More is better,  because of the changing nature of television and the media in general, you will be asking it to do more and more in the future, so having as many connection, both legacy, and new is best in the long run.

  In the end it comes down to, this; While it was stupid to set the date in a month like February, its was, and its here,  quit bitching and just do it already.

             

                                             You'll have the rest of the year to clean up the mess...