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Network TV Downloadable Via iTunes
IconBasedIdea writes "Dallas Mavericks owner
and opinionated media entrepreneur Mark
Cuban blogs
about Walt Disney cheese Robert
Iger, and his recent deal with iTunes to allow TV episodes to become available for purchase and download. Granted, it was only a matter of
time, but someone had to go first, and it is apparently ABC. Could this help
niche shows stay alive longer? Will it kill traditional TV ads, long
on the downswing of effectiveness? Will we end up eventually paying
(or stealing) all of our future programming?"
I believe this to be a major milestone in the way we view entertainment - more significant then even the mainstream growth of PVRs. This is the first step in a whole new direction for the industry as a whole, 5-7 years down the road I strongly believe that the average American will pay for what they watch, not for a given channel. This will also have a major effect on television advertising - where do ads fit into this new model?
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People seem to want to own copies of programming and are willing to pay to do so. Look at the large market in DVDs of television programs, some of which are heavily syndicated and aired frequently (like Seinfeld and Friends -- they never seem to be off-air). A downloadable version of programs is the next logical step. When the video iPods were released I forsaw this exact scenario. The use of iTunes will help this along, since there is brand recognition and folks will 'trust' the source and be willing to download it.
This could eventually spell disaster for marketing in the traditional sense but not for a while. I don't expect consumers will tolerate downloads thatr have ads embedded since they are paying a proce for that content. However, there will still be a demand for live-to-air programming for a long time. I can't imagine downloading the SuperBowl and watching it after the fact. Things like this will preserve television in its current form (or thereabouts) for the foreseeable future, I think.
However, I have to say, being able to download Lost and watch it at my convenience is a very tempting propect.
PVRs are poised to change TV quicker than podcasting. Per the article blurb above advertising on TV will have to change as PVRs allow users to skip over commercials easily. mythtv has changed the way a lot of people view TV. Personally I rarely watch "live" TV anymore, I much prefer to record a show, commercial flag it, and watch it when I want to watch it with the added benefit of not having to watch any commercials.
What I find particularly funny is that the ads on TV have started to mirror the spam in email, they all seem to be pushing viagra and variants. The PVR will allow users to reclaim thier TVs just like spamassassin allowed us to reclaim our email systems.
As to selling shows over the Internet, it may have a niche market, realizing you only need a small percentage of Internet users to make a reasonable profit. But to appeal to the widest possible audience such distribution of shows will need to be bundled with the cost of Internet access in some way as part of the $40/month this most cable services charge for access.
The problem is one of perceived value. Desparate Housewives, Season 1 costs $38 on DVD on Amazon. It's enhanced for widescreen which means it is encoded at 720x480 (some of which may not be used due to matting). The same content available from the Apple Music store is $35 for a 320x240 cropped version. The DVDs also come with a 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound. Unless you desparately, need to watch the show right now, it's a much, much better deal to just order the DVDs.
If you wanted, there are ways to rip said DVDs into a format playable on the iPod.
Even better, you could record the magnificent 1920x1080 interlaced MPEG-2 widescreen broadcast every Sunday going forward, it'll take up 10GBs of space which at today's hard drive prices is around $2.50 of space, and if you buy your tuner card before the broadcast flag gets rammed through there will be zero DRM encumbrances.
The value you are getting is: it's already pre-ripped and encoded for your video iPod. You can get yesterday's show for a semi-reasonable price. So this is good for people who just want to catch up with their stories and don't want to wait for the DVD. I'd be happy to get Curb Your Enthusiasm this way so I could cancel my HBO subscription. It'd save me a ton of money over the course of a year. (Don't tell HBO).
If it were a movie, I would feel differently. Movies have real cinematographers/DPs, are shot on 35mm, etc. TV is, well, TV.
YMMV, etc.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
The loss of traditional TV ads might mean they have to actually focus on the quality of the programming... Of course, instead I will end up with commercials on my iPod.
In a way, advertisers have already coped with this. It's call "product placement ads" and it's been around since TV started. These days, you'll have strategically placed computers (noticed that most laptops tend to be shot so they're easily recognizable? They didn't take the shot of the computer screen with the Dell logo on the side as part of bad camera angles - they did it to get the logo in specifically for the shot. Same goes for PowerBooks (though, since they're really quite distinct, they're easy to take from any angle), MP3 players (Oakley thumps, anyone?), soda (main actor reaches for the distinctly red Coke can), cellphones, etc). Rather than try to advertise during the commercial break, they advertise in the show itself.
Of course, on a tiny iPod screen, it just means made-for-iPod TV filming just got more creative with camera angles and closeups.
The big deal with iTMS was that they got so many major record labels to sell music online. They convinced the labels that their DRM was good enough (far from perfect, but good enough that it's easier to post the rip from a CD) and so the iTMS catalog is enormous, with major-label content.
Now they've got a deal with one of the networks to sell TV shows. I wonder if they're planning to go from there to the rest of the networks. And then to a set-top box hooked into the Internet. It would be like a combination of a TiVo and video on demand: you don't have to set it in advance but it plays regular broadcast TV rather than movies.
Slashdotters will probably swear up and down that it's overpriced and they'd never pay that much for DRM content. $2 a pop is kind of pricey, given that you're used to getting it for free with your cable/satellite bill. If you're the sort of person who watches the TV every night from 8 until 11 then you're going to spend a lot this way.
But I wonder if such a thing might just work. It's like the ultimate a la carte. I got rid of cable because I was too busy to watch TV, but there are a few shows I miss and I'd happily watch $10 or even $20 a month worth of TV to have it come in commercial-free and on my own schedule.
This gets really complicated. As with music, there are many independent content producers who would love to use this to bypass the networks entirely. When 24 came out on DVD it was said that this was what they were really selling, and that the TV broadcasts were just advertisements for those DVDs. I wouldn't go that far, but it really does bring up a whole new avenue for artists to produce content (in this case, short-format video), get it to audiences, and pay for it.
I'm getting way ahead of myself. Apple's next step would be to secure agreements with the other networks (and to get the rest of ABC's programming.) But if Apple starts sending out mysterious postcards again some time next year it wouldn't surprise me to discover that they're hinting at a new iPod that you leave at home.
The iPod does have an advantage, though, over those pocket TVs. I can download the episodes I want, and watch them anywhere and at any time, without worrying about reception. It's like having a pocket-sized TiVo built into your miniTV with a video out to watch it on a normal TV if you like.
This is not about portable TV, this is about legitimate, for pay, TV downloads. I downloaded the season premiere of Lost this morning, it's playback quality was perfectly acceptable, full-screen on my 19" monitor. For the life of me I don't understand why Apple is marketting this as Video IPod only. It works great on a PC with I-Tunes. I too think the video IPod will be a market failure, but for-Pay TV downloads have a great future. Screw the cable companies. I only want to pay for the shows I watch, and I want to watch them on my own schedule.
Apple, when are you going to get the Sci-Fi channel on board? I want BSG downloads.
Fine, as long as the maximum damages sought for copyright infringement by the MPAA is set at $2.00 for every 45 minutes of video copied.
After all, that's what it's "worth" now, right?
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
It's only five shows
It's been announced/available for 2 days now. It's a revolution in how we'll get TV delivered. All the other networks will look on, see that they're missing out, and clamour to get onboard, but this takes more than 2 days...
Give it time - rome wasn't built in a day, or even 2.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Compare:
... to ...
... Company A is providing you with a service. You *don't* have to pay for it, but then they're not obliged to give you that service either. Grow up.
"Excuse me, but why do i have to pay to watch something that i already paid to have broadcast to my house?"
"Excuse me, but why do I have to pay for this taxi cab when I have a fully-working car at my house ?"
"Excuse me, but why do I have to pay to buy this book, when I have another copy sitting in my house ?"
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Lost, Season 1 is going for $38 on Amazon.com. That's for 24 episodes, so right about $1.50 per episode. And that's for 720x480, nice packaging, and discs that will probably last longer than any media on which you back up another file. As of now, for $2, you get a single-serving episode at 320x240. You get no packaging, and you can't just pop it in your DVD player to watch it. The only real benefit is that you get to watch it /now/ if you either can't get ABC (our OTA signal is really snowy) or happen to miss the show, you can get it on-demand.
To me, this is a ripoff. Particularly for shows like Lost and Housewives, where the stories are serial and build on previous episodes. I don't mind listening to music out of order or even only listening to one track from a CD, but you'll never hear someone say, "Hey, that 5th episode of Lost was really outstanding, I think I'd like to have a permanent copy of that on my computer." This is all the more relevant as TV shows make it to DVD just a few months after the end of a season.
You're paying more for less just so you can get it now. If you are serious about TV, you'll have a PVR to time-shift TV and you'll buy DVDs for archiving. If you aren't serious about TV, you'll certainly never buy the episodes online.
I think that everyone here is overlooking the most important aspect of this. Content. Right now, if a TV show does something that "some" people don't like, they can get it pulled off the air by calling the advertisers or FCC. With this system, companies/people/anyone could produce a show HBO style and not care if you see Janet Jackson's boob for 1/10 of a second. You could see TV the way creators want, not the government, advertisers or people who want to push their views of right and wrong on you want.
It's like having a pocket-sized TiVo
Actually, given that Tivo's main advantage is its ability to *record*, I think that the Archos PVPs, with their simple analog video-in jack, are a closer match. So as well as all the digital options for content, if you want to just grab some damn video, all you need is to plug the Archos into a video feed and hit "record". Low-tech, but acceptable, and I believe still protected by Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios.
And further, given Tivo's reluctance to enable free movement of content off the devices, I think a closer analogy for Archos is not Tivo but ReplayTV, with its DRM-free show sharing and ease of moving content between devices and over networks.
The video ipod is classic Apple: as much as possible a one-way street from Content Owners through Apple to Consumers, with the ipod remaining as tethered as possible to a Mac/iTunes for operation. Making it harder than it should be for ipod owners to create and share their own content.
For myself, I prefer more autonomy.
Da Blog
You're free to use your Tivo/MythTV/crappy old VCR/whatever. Or you're free to pay Apple $2 to package the show neatly for you. Or you're free to throw your TV out the window.
What exactly are you whining about?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
You're not the first person to make this mistake. Our legal system does not work this way because there must be a deterrent. If the penalty is fixed at the value of what's taken (or "infringed upon," for the pedants), then copyright violation, theft, embezzlement, and so on are zero sum games.
If you're not sure what I mean, imagine what would happen if the law were changed so that if you robbed $100K from a bank or stole $100K from your employer, your only risk is that you'd have to pay the $100K back if you were caught.
The wikipedia article on damages probably explains it better than I can. Scroll down to the "Punitive or exemplary damages" section if you don't have time to read the whole thing. I hope this helps.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.