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The Napsterization of TV
Lefty writes "This article in today's Boston Globe talks about the napsterization of TV shows and how the PC as a media server is going to make it happen. Burning TV shows to CD/DVD, e-mailing your friends TV shows, streaming TV over the Internet -- all things the dedicated set-top boxes can't do... The article talks about Snapstream, a PVR competitor to Moxi and ReplayTV, that runs on the PC and has media server capabilities. from the article: "Already you can find a great deal of pirated video material online. If SnapStream gets installed on millions of PCs, there'll be plenty more. And the TV moguls will find themselves knee deep in the digital acid bath.""
This week's issue of Business Week has build-your-own-PVR instructions.
When a meme leaps from the pages of Popular Mechanics and Wired to the pages of Business Week and the Boston Globe, it's probably time for the networks and studios to pay attention and figure out how they're going to deal with this technology.
The main damage the television networks suffer from the 'Napsterization of TV' is the commercial time. Most of the TV shows you find on programs like Morpheus have the commercials edited out. I can only speculate on the reasoning, but my guess is that they are edited out to make the download time shorter.
How could Television networks fight this? It's simple: Provide streaming content from their website. Let's say that UPN provided a streaming version of Enterprise, for example. They could release it 24 hours after the show is initially aired. (This way, the original broadcast still has commercial/timeslot value) The requirement is that I have to fill out information about myself so they can target ads to me. Then, what they do, is when the server streams down the show, it inserts in ads targeted to my demographic at the same time that the original broadcast aird commercials.
This provides an interesting new twist to the Ad model. Not only is the demographic more far reaching, but it's no longer tied to a time-slot. If somebody discovers Enterprise 2 years into the show's run, they'll likely go back and watch the first episodes to get up to speed. This means that those commercials get aired again.
Current streaming technologies require several seconds of buffering, so it isn't worth trying to skip past them. And since I can start watching immediately, I have no need or desire to get them on a file sharing program.
With this model, not only could the networks minimize 'damage' done by these programs, but they'd also provide a potentially profitable service that works even better.
Heck, if they wanted to make even more money off it, they could charge a $2 fee to see an even higher quality stream of the video, or something like that. I wouldn't care about that for the Drew Carrey show, but I'd likely pay that to see a higher quality version of Enterprise since the sets and effects are so much more interesting to look at.
"Derp de derp."
LOL.
Here's a true story:
It's Christmas, so I decide to buy myself a Christmas gift -- since I buy the best gifts for myself. They usually involve a lot of money and computer equipment.
Okay, so this Christmas -- couple months ago -- I take the plunge and buy a miniDV camera. I also realize I need editing software. So I get Vegas Video. And what the heck: sound on DV cameras sucks, so I buy myself a couple microphones (a stereo mic, a shotgun mic, and -- because I can -- an XLR mic with a little XLR box that sits between my miniDV cam and the mic.)
Okay, so I've got my whole setup ready to go. I decide I'm gonna shoot some documentaries of my friends, my family, and my dog, Brewster. I spend a couple weeks shooting funny shit -- little movies, a couple of documentaries, and a 15 minute long video of family photographs set to Benny Goodman music. Sorta like what Woody Allen does at the beginning of his movies.
Anyway, the photographs were family photos -- old ones, black and white and color, and the finished video -- complete with zooms into and pans across the old photographs -- was very cool. Like Ken Burns. That sort of thing.
I get the bright idea: hey, I oughta *show* this to someone. So I do. I mail the video to my parents. Now, okay, it's pretty small -- around 5 megs or so -- but I forget my parents are still on a modem. So I get this angry call from my dad: "What the hell did you send us! The modem's been nonstop for an hour!"
A photograph video, I told him.
"Cripes, I couldn't figure out what it was! I thought it was a virus! I had to restart it five times before I finally gave up."
It dawned on me that, heck, I coulda just put the video on a web page. But I didn't think of that. I just took the edited video and emailed it off to the folks.
Okay, so three days later. I get another call. It's the old man: "Hey we finally downloaded the video! Fantastic! I mailed it off to your aunt!"
Um, I said. I could just put a web page up and she could download the video.
"Too late!" says the old man. "Make more! We love those videos!"
Couple more days pass, and I get this angry call from my aunt: "What the hell is the video you've been sending around? It took me hours to download it! I had to call my ISP! They thought it was a virus."
I pointed out that I didn't send it. I made it, but I didn't send it. "Blame your brother," I told my aunt.
"Cripes!" she says. "Don't ever send me another video. You don't know the headaches I went through to download that thing."
Did you watch it?
"Watch it? I had my ISP zap it off my email account. I was getting account errors, quota errors, you name it!"
But it didn't end there. My dad kept sending this five meg video around. More calls ensued. Angry emails came in from my cousins, uncles, aunts. The gist: don't ever send us a video again.
I'm thinking: cripes, my family is cracked. It's just a five meg video, for chrissake!
But who knows.
Anyway, moral of the story. Normal people do not send videos. Morons (like me) start the ball rolling and actually email videos. But, no, no one sends videos. It's just marketing bullshit.
There's still ill-will about the videos. I didn't think it was a big deal. And I apologized all around. But the damage has been done.
By the time you get done editing the commercials out of a 2 hour TV show -- you will finally feel like you are getting your money's worth out of that new Athlon :) In other words: It takes a steady hand and a little patience and alot of spare time to make these edits. (and then more time to Archive to CD) Some people may get off on this kind of stuff -- but after about 5 episodes of the Simpsons and another handful of Seinfield and Threes Company -- I was burned out -- and my fingers hurt...)
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
They can rely on good-will tipping from their fans (see
Just MHO.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Questions:
1. Are you or have you ever been a PHB?
2. Do you feel an inexplicable urge to use PowerPoint?
3. Does your home web page use any Flash?
4. Does your home web page have a "front door" page which contains nothing but a Flash animation?
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, seek help from your local BOFH immediately!
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
>But, the same thing can happen to TV now if it all goes free
I seem to recall a strange time... I think they called it the "60's" "70's" or "early 80's", I can't remember which. At that time all TV was free to anyone.
I don't recall this being seen as a serious impediment to making money, however. I'm sure there were different economic forces at play then. Like giving the people what they want and then they'll watch the ads. You know, like ads that aren't so loud you wear out the mute button, or so long you can make a pizza while you wait for them to end, or so obnoxious you turn to another station each time they advertise the latest in feminine hygiene problems? And programs that are popular, action packed, and varied, like A-Team, Airwolf, Mission Impossible, and MacGyver; in contrast to being nothing more than offensive standard grade pablum, like AllyMcBeal or [insert latest crappy sitcom ripoff where some lame ass actor comes out of the closet here] or [insert stupid show where everyone risks their life for a crappy prize] or [insert latest "real life" TV show]? I seem to recall that at this time music video station showed (gasp!) music videos! And that 2 hour movies weren't cut to 1 hour!
>Hey, who needs cable? You can just get stuff off the 'net.
Who needs cable indeed? My BUD dish picks up all sorts of commercial free wildfeeds (makes Enterprise worth watching!) 100% legally. My 40 ft. offair antenna picks up the other 50% of programming worth watching. And you legally can watch DirecTV for free in Canada, for the 1 or 2 stations that you just can't get (period -- they aren't on Canadian satellite, or Canadian satellite only offers an inferior version -- thanks CRTC!).
I haven't paid for programming in months, and I've been doing it legally. I even get the same selection of programming that most in North America enjoy, probably more (I get the Nasa channel...). Not that it matters much, because I won't be watching a big name network TV show at all this week (they put the SuperBowl on instead... I guess that is actually popular, though, so I can't complain too much about that). Maybe I'm just living in a time bubble where TV doesn't suck?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC