Consumers Embrace Media Choice, Industry Fears It

     The tale of woe continues for the broadcast industry . This last week’s light reading included articles about  cable rating drop offs. 11 of the  15 top cable networks have lost audience this year. The article could give no clear reasons why the sudden loss of audience. There are a number of factors at work here. The first in my opinion  being price.  The price has continued to go up for all involved with the industry. from content producers, to distributors  and finally vendors, such as Netflix and Amazon who are constantly being asked for more money every year. In the broadcast world retransmission rights are the big deal breakers, along with sports  franchise,  brokering deals worth billions of dollars that will eventually have to be paid for by both the sports fans, and the non sports fan alike. in the final analysis  the one paying for all of the “deals”  and retransmission fees that are being charged back and forth between the local and national broadcaster such as Dish Network, and other cable companies will be passed to the consumer either directly in the form of higher bills, or add-on charges for services.


On the other side is the changing habits of viewers.  No longer are they tied to the couch for 3-4 hours every evening guided by a set schedule. With the advent of the VCR and now the DVR  consumers can now timeshift whatever they want and watch it whenever they want. and skip cominicals.  Networks and content produces have just begun to learn how to embrace timeshifting, and figured out metrics to count what watched on the DVR in the total rating game. Now they have to contend with many new forms of competition for viewers eyes. With the advent of game systems that get online and allow consumers to stream content, granted a very limited amount of content, and just plain hooking a computer to the tv, which is ridiculously easy theses days. the  whole world of internet content is suddenly available to the big screen in the living room.  Now there  is a wide range of ways to bring content into the tv, though various set-top boxes ranging from Blue-ray players, to the PS3, Xbox360, and the Roku, and Boxee, and, and other lesser know OTT boxes the open up a limited amount of content from the web to be streamed directly to the tv at the consumer’s convenience. Now there is no more “must See” tv. Its now   I’ll see it when I get around to it” On whatever platform is handy. It's also possible to switch platforms  mid viewing, going from one platform say the big tv, in the living room, and finishing watching the content on the Ipad, or other mobile device, thus freeing up the consumer to take their content as they like it.

A very recent article was just released with some very interesting statistic about the change in the numbers of households with connected tv, and the devices that connected to the tvs and what makes a tv a connected tv.
It can be read here;
http://www.leichtmanresearch.com/press/040912release.html
On the broad stroke, 38% of all households have at least one tv  hooked  to the internet via a video game system, Roku, or other OTT device, up from  30% last Year and 24% 2 years ago.  The are a host of other very interesting statics in the article.  The bottom line, to me, consumer are embracing OTT platforms and the offering they have. I don’t think traditional tv is anywhere near dead, and has many more years to go., If it is to continue to  evolve and be open-minded about that way it handles its content deals. Retransmission deals and sports deals need to regulated preferably by the industry itself  If they can’t keep the numbers down to reasonable rates, then the FCC and possibly the FTC needs to step in and set up new guidelines if not rules about the amounts that can be charges in theses deals.

    One of many questions is what are media distributors, and content producers going to do about the changes in the ways that consumers are using their media.
Some are already embracing the shifts in available venues. Such as HBO, they are continuing to open up their “HBO to Go” Concept to work with more devices.
Comcast has been slowly opening it walled garden to allow more networks to be viewed on more devices.  All of theses players need to compete with Netflix, amazon, and other OTT players who have been reaching to other means to get content in the face of rising bill for traditional  cable/sat venues. Particularly if one does not need sports, or 10 channels of news and shopping . If one is  not paying for the extra movie packages, ala, HBO, Showtime, etc, then the OTT venues start looking better and better.

   Last Week, Netflix posted Q1 numbers.  They showed  that they are back to growth, although much slower.  You can read the whole article herehttp://www.videonuze.com/article/netflix-q1-results-back-to-growth-albeit-much-slower
 The main point which I commented on is that  they did make some mistakes last summer which they’re paying for. The Achilles heel of all of this,  is the content owners who have  routinely demanded more and more in licence fees, Thus leaving Netflix and its fellow  players between a rock and a hard place in keeping prices down for consumers and still paying licenses and operation expenses.

    The consumer is demanding more choices about what content is available, and on what platforms. One may wonder if content producers and distributors actually watch the content they produce or distribute.  If they used the many options available today they would be embracing ways to make deals work for all parties. Instead of making its almost impossible for for places like Netflix and Amazon to do a decent deal that's fair to both. In the end it's the consumer that pays the price in one way or another.

On Casablanca, Netflix, and Apple, Three Sides of the Same Coin

On March 21,2012 My wife and I took my youngest one to see the TCM 70th Anniversary showing of Casablanca . Casablanca, a long time favorite film of mine, starring Humphrey  Bogart  Ingrid Bergman, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet.
The film was one of many made in the time before tv, when they were all done in a almost factory like production, and churned out and released one after another. No one thought much of it at the time, other the myriad of problems they had making it mainly being the lack of script and daily rewrites, and no real ending. Somehow it got made. While it did get generally favorable reviews and a good reception from the public . Time have proven to be its best friend.  The lasting impression of this movies and a few movies like it are what every movie made strives for. 99.9% don’t even come close. Casablanca was one of those rare cases of the right script actors, and directors and the the right moment in time. When you watch Casablanca, particularly like I had the pleasure of last week, you forget where you are and for a while you believe there is a Rick’s Cafe’ Americana . Bogart become Rick, and seems to embody the character. In  watching it last week I recall seeing scenes that I don’t remember seeing before, when I’ve watched the movie, and I’ve seen the movie more times than I can count. Everything seemed sharper and and more defined , I know it was on a big screen, and had been remastered to be as near perfect as they could get,   It seemed almost surreal  .  
Of course of bigger moral questions still abound on either  screen, At what point does one put aside one's feeling and do what needs to be done for the greater good of country, or in this case possibility even the world. Rick by, making it possible
for  Victor Laszlo  and Isa Lund, his wife to leave and continue Victors work. In spite of his feelings for Ilsa.  In doing so, Rick set himself up to finely  become a more than a spectator of WWII .
Every movie should be seen the it was intended on the big screen, with a audience and the whole experience. For thoses of you you are  not a Casablanca fan heres a link to the wikipedia article on it;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casablanca_(film)



The last 2 months or so have been eventful. One of the more significant  events was the introduction of Apple's next Generation IPad, Officially known as “The New Ipad” The rest of us call it the Ipad3. While it did seem to make several advances from the Ipad2  I got the impression from what I saw and heard that many tech reporters/ pundits etc, they were less than blown away by it other then its new screen, the retina display, which claims to pack more pixels then a HD screen into a small screen. Adding more connectivity  options including models that will use the new LTE as it become available  is a definite plus, However I’ve already read articles says that most of the use they get is on Wi-Fi, even that those that have 3g build into them don’t use it that much or even at all. If most the the use the 3g and potentially LTE units are getting is on Wifi, then one wonders if is it really  that big of a selling point.The question then becomes to upgrade or not. If you don’t have one at all, the the new one is a no brainer. Also if you still have one the originals, it's pretty obvious that the Ipad 3 is a huge upgrade from the original. However, if you the the Ipad2, The question is more interesting. What do you do with it? How often do you use it and what apps  that you use will like benefit from the new display and  other advances under the hood.  If you're happy with the Ipad2 and it does what you need it to do, and you feel like its working for you long term, then wait.

    Other big news I’ve been reading about is the huge upswing in streaming of the last year, q11.  Netflix has been reporting record numbers in over 2 million hours of content streamed, globally primary us The point of this and other streaming venues is that for the first time streaming is projected to beat out physical media .
http://www.videonuze.com/article/it-s-hard-to-see-how-streaming-movies-will-surpass-dvd-blu-ray-in-2012
The question becomes how much will the public let themselves  depend on streaming media? They allready depend to a large degree on cable and satellite for their media intake, with the help of DVRS they can time-shift their content to watch when they want. It took a few years but content owners have embraced the DVR and are now including DVR viewing in the rating.   And have realized that even time shifted eyes are better then no eyes seeing their content, and thus their ads.
The advent of streaming media over the last few years have forced content owners, providers to rethink their game plan, as to how they package their content and sell their content.   Being able to pull netflix up on almost device from my Ipod Touch to a Ipad, or android tablet and any number of tv/internet connected devices,ie,  Roku, Boxee, Xbox360, etc, open a whole new world for content owners. They now have a much wider audience to graze their offering, and putting content that was not useable on other venues  suddenly give older underused content a new life.
As much as I like streaming and use my Roku box, have found content that I didn’t even know existed on the various channels of the Roku. My feeling is that there will will always be a place for physical media. There are collectors and folks who don’t believe in have media be it music or movies/tv that they bought and paid for in a cloud, be it Apples or Google’s or Amazon’s. And would rather have a copy in their own hands to use as they please. Thats not even counting have ones own copy of classic movies or tv series that they particularly love.

    Yes streaming is good, in fact it can be very good, There is no substitute  for owning ones own media and content. Content owners and distributors need to understand several things; They can’t put all their egg in one basket, Streaming and DVD are here to stay, however, They are still missing a huge market in not bringing older classic content to the big screen on a regular basis.  There are a number of ways that that programs could be set up to draw in older moviegoers who don’t care to see the newest hit of the week, but would love to see their favorite classic movie they way they first saw it on the big screen.
To me streaming and movies are opposites sides of the same coin, and can definitely complement each other if done right.