[opendtv] Re: Apple TV: Eddy Cue on streaming video and TV channels - Nov. 6, 2015

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 09 Nov 2015 08:12:25 -0500

On Nov 8, 2015, at 9:44 PM, Manfredi, Albert E <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


I very much doubt that the congloms believe their Internet streams are only
being used for catch-up service, Craig. The congloms are not blind to the
statistics about how people watch TV. And proof positive of this is how the
ad quantity has been increasing in their FOTI streams. I've received several
questionnaires from these congloms, while watching a show. They are smart
enough to ask exactly that question. Is this how you always watch? Or are you
just playing catch-up?

Adapting a popular phrase: What difference does it make when you watch a show
that was broadcast FOTA? They want everyone to watch, whether live, catch-up or
time shifted. I will concede that this was not always the case.

We've been over this. Delaying until after midnight is hardly a long delay,
for anyone interested in on-demand. And all the congloms have to do is say
so, and their content can be made available immediately online. You simply
cannot pretend that there's some insurmountable obstacle for conglom content
to be made available online without a delay.

Yes Bert, the content owner "could" decide to make their programs available on
demand, without delay, even without commercials. They own the content and can
do whatever is in their best interests. It appears that they now find it
economically interesting to make some current season shows available via the
Internet with minimal delays to try and recapture some of the audience they
have lost to the paid services.

But they are not doing this for the content they have been selling via the
MVPDs, other than a few premium services like HBO Now, which were always an
expensive add on to MVPD service. Likewise, Netflix, Amazon and others are
creating high value content to attract viewers to their paid bundles.

What has NOT happened is the ability to watch a huge portion of the
most popular content currently behind pay walls, for free over the
Internet.

Why this old canard again, Craig? What are you even arguing here?

That the content owner are trying to figure out how to maximize the revenues
they can generate from ALL forms of distribution, and that they are making MORE
money by selling content to OTT services. They have no intention of giving more
content away when they can make people pay to watch, and the Internet gives
them new tools to do this.

What is changing is that there are new players with deep pockets who want to
improve on the old, bloated walled gardens. Thus the content owners are talking
about how to do this without losing the second revenue stream from subscriber
fees. They know that the old bloated bundles are dying, that audience behavior
is changing, and that they have the opportunity to make even more money if they
can control the shift from MVPD bundles to new Internet bundles.

The trend is whatever the consumer is willing to buy. The trend is away from
legacy MVPD schemes, and to a mix of FOTA, FOTI, and pay Internet.

Yes they are trying to figure out what the consumer is willing to buy.

But the trend is NOT away from paid bundles of content. They pushed the legacy
MVPD model to its limits, but it is not dead. It will adapt to competition from
new Virtual MVPDs as the content owners allow. That was the whole point of the
interview with Cue.

And, as has always been the case, they will continue to offer some ad supported
services that are not behind the pay walls. This is critical to promotion and
discovery. It's how they do business.

Some useless repetition...
http://www.tvtechnology.com/news/0002/new-star-trek-television-series-coming-in-2017/277338

"The new series will blast off ...

So, in the US only, the first-run episodes will only be available on CBS All
Access, but this does not say that all episodes will only ever be made
available that way.

You are incorrigible. It is exactly as I said for the U.S. market. How it will
be made available outside the U.S. remains to be seen. All programming with
"shelf life" makes its way into syndication; most ultimately winds up on "free"
services after the early value has been exhausted; that is how the TV content
ecosystem works. Some broadcaster in Singapore may decide to pay a high price
for the new Star Trek to boost ratings. A pay service may pick it up and charge
to watch like CBS.

The best stuff can still demand a significant premium. HBO does not make its
content available to free services. They have done deals with cable networks,
and now Amazon. Most of the shows licensed to Amazon are more than three years
old. Games of Thrones is now filming season six, and it is still exclusive to
HBO. My son just subscribed to HBO Now to see the newer shows that HBO is not
licensing.

And I refuse to hit my head against a wall and then complain that it hurts,
which you insist on doing.

I may complain about paying too much, but it obviously does not hurt, or more
than 80 million homes would not be doing it.

More repetition...
http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/06/media/apple-tv-future-eddy-cue-interview/index.html

"These parts are sold together, but companies like Apple, Google and Roku are
starting to break them apart. Compared with the clunkiness of the set top
box, Cue calls Apple TV is a 'much better experience for consuming content.'"

It sounds to me like "Apple, Google, and Roku" are instrumental in breaking
things apart, even though the congloms have been making their content
available over the Internet for over a decade, well before any of these
limited boxes even existed.

You missed it entirely. Not to mention how long meaningful OTT streaming has
been possible; Hulu started in 2007. Before that the market was primarily paid
downloads from iTunes and Amazon.

Yes, the MVPD experience has tied content, hardware, and lousy customer service
together for decades. That has been the source of huge monopoly profits. But
this has NOTHING to do with the boxes you are continuously deriding, or the
deals that companies like Roku and Apple are doing in an attempt to compete
with the MVPD oligopoly.

Yes, Apple, Google and Amazon are trying to break up that oligopoly. That's a
good thing, offering at least the hope of real competition. Yet for some odd
reason you deride these attempts to compete, claiming that all we need to do is
hook a PC up to our TVs.

Sorry Bert, but Microsoft spent a small fortune trying to get a foothold in
this space. They destroyed the efforts to get a decent DTV standard with their
late intrusion into the standards process and the DTV team. They funded a war
to kill the DVD market, and succeeded. They tried for years to promote Windows
Media Center and multimedia PCs, and failed.

As a result, they missed the real transition to mobile platforms and failed to
achieve what Apple, Google, Amazon and Roku are trying to do today - breaking
up a monopoly.

As much as you like going around in circles, examples like CBS All Access,
HBO Now, Sling TV, and before long ESPN online direct, have been and will be
participating in this "breaking apart," without depending on any one
limited-use box. The article didn't even bother to mention that.

Who ever said there would be one box to replace the last monopoly box?

Obviously there will be multiple boxes with the ability to subscribe to
multiple content Apps. Sling got ESPN, Sony has been unwilling to pay the
price...yet.

In the end, however, there will be no reason to use more than one box with a
TV. In time the market will move to the Internet and the new pricing models
will replace the old MVPD bundles. We can all hope that the new model will make
it possible to pay only for the content we want...

But I would not hold my breath!

"But more and more programming is available outside the cable bundle, like
HBO, which now offers standalone subscriptions via the Internet. The end goal
for Apple, Cue said, is to remove any need for a traditional set top box at
all."

So I think you have missed a lot of what this article is saying. It is making
these limited-use boxes the centerpiece, even though the content owners are
hardly doing that.

Obviously the goal is to eliminate the need for the MVPD oligopoly. I am very
hopeful that I will be able to do so next year, and right now I believe Apple
has the best shot at enabling this.

But you have it exactly backwards. It is the MVPD boxes that are of limited
use; they live only inside the providers garden and do a lousy job of
navigation and discovery. The new Apple TV goes well beyond these boxes; with
the ability to support Apps it will allow ANY content owner to offer content to
those in the Apple ecosystem - as Cue pointed out, CBS All Access and HBO Now
are there today.

But this limited-use box also supports casual gaming, Apple Music, Apple Home
Kit for the Internet Of Things, and air-play, to move content from iOS devices
to the big screen. That personal content includes photos, videos, and other
data.

No doubt you will tell us I can do all of this with the PC connected to your
TV. Fine...its just another limited-use box.

Regards
Craig


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