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ABC Affiliates Grapple With TV-Show Downloads
Carl Bialik writes "By making an episode of 'Lost' available for download last week just half a day after it aired, for a $1.99 charge, 'Apple may have helped open a Pandora's box for the media business,' the Wall Street Journal reports. The president of the association representing ABC's affiliate stations sent a letter to the president of ABC, reading in part, 'It is both disappointing and unsettling that ABC would embark on a new -- and competitive -- network program distribution partnership without the fundamental courtesy of consultation' with its affiliates. While the extent of Apple's TV downloads is limited, the Journal parses the potential impact: 'if downloading episodes over the Internet proves popular, analysts believe Apple will get permission to offer shows with better-fidelity pictures. Any success Apple has won't go unnoticed by other online media powerhouses with expanding video initiatives like Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., which could all help extend TV downloading to more viewers.'"
Thank you Apple! Once again this company (along with ABC this time) has the stones to step up and offer a service that is a market primed to explode. The iTMS has proven to be a good long tail business model for the distribution of music, offering popular and otherwise out of print or hard to find (Indie) tracks that are simply unavailable in the large retail outlets. I have not watched much TV in the past while, but having the iTMS model of distribution for TV shows that are out of syndication or are otherwise hard to obtain would be a tremendous boon. And if Ted Turner would get on the ball, all sorts of older movies could also be made available via this model, that would increase revenues over what they are making by the current limited access to the media. Documentaries, "foreign" (to the US) films, and indie films could make it truly big by talking to Apple. Sundance Channel and TCM, you are the big guys in this market......So, are you paying attention? And for you TIVOheads out there, in essence, if this propagates to the rest of the industry, this will be a centralized TIVO allowing you to pick and choose without having to take the time to program, and like the article said, this could make the ala carte system moot. Who knows, this could even open up the option of letting us pay for content that is without commercials or get it for "free" if we agree to watch the commercials. It's could simply be our choice.
P.S., Ted, thanks for the buffalo ranching, but there is more money to be made still in media. Don't give up.
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Exactly how is this bad for the affiliate stations? For a nano second I can't imagine this didn't help these affiliates. How much you wanna bet the viewership was up for the episode of Lost following the announcement of the video iPod? Peoples' normal reactions would be along the lines of:
I don't think any of the above are off-the-scale guesses of peoples' reactions and I think the viewership because of the video iPod could actually increase!
But, let's assume the death star, end-of-the-universe scenario the affiliates and others see this as. They see this as a threat rather than an extension. So, if it is true, boo-hoo!
Thank goodness the lobbyists and power brokers circling the wagons today for the hapless industry wasn't present in the late 19th and early 20th century to protect the horse and buggy industry in the same way... We'd have no cars today (since that would have threatened the established travel industry).
(So, for the record, does anyone know what the comparison was for Lost pre- vs. post-video iPod announcement? I don't really care, but it'd be interesting to know.)
Business models change over time. Companies can either attempt to adjust their business models to take advantage of those changes or try to fight those changes (RIAA). If the TV companies were smart and downloading shows of the internet proves to be the "wave of the future" they need to find a way to take advantage of that instead of trying to stop it.
They can stop crying and start getting ready for it. If they don't fill the demand, someone will. As soon as I can have a high speed internet connection without the help of either the local cable company or telephone company then I'll be free of both.
At that point, any content I can't get online, I simply will do without. Sell me entertainment online, or sell me nothing. It makes no difference to me. There's plenty of free and legal clips of amusement here and there at least as worthwhile as the junk they air on TV anyway.
Besides, I find reading books and doing technical reading online is a better use of my time than watching television in the first place.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
" I could still just download it via bittorrent for free..... "
Once upon a time when bittorent was new I'd agree with you. I the Bablyon 5 Pilot Movie in 15 minutes back then. Today it would probably take me 20 hours to download. What Apple is attempting could still fill a niche because I'm not waiting a 20 hours to watch something I want to see on a whim.
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it's incredable these people haven't be investigated for anti competitive behaviour yet.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
People love Tivos. But if you look at why, it's simply because it takes a broadcast show and turns it into real digital media that you can do the normal things digital media allows, like scnaning or random access.
It makes no sense any longer for people to do ANYTHING but download shows and access the contents as they please, when they please. That's what Apple is opening up to the mass market for current TV, and what people will most naturally except. Fighting this migration is a loosing battle.
I really feel like as cool as Tivo is, it's trapped between a rock and a hard place. The rock are media companies that are unsure about people being able to record anything. The hard place is when people discover they like random media so much, they'd rather just download everything and use it that way. Apple is taking over the space Tivo could have if they'd started looking at a downloadable TV market.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It looks like slowly but surely, we are getting to see the future of entertainment in this country... no more being forced to sit through annoying commercials, but just being able to watch what we really want... It would be worth it to me, to pay a small price each month, to not have to see commercials ever, and just watch the content only... Not to mention, if we could just click and choose what we wanted to watch, that would be far better, then being stuck with the static content we have now... Imagine the possibilities... I can not wait :)
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With enough money paid to the right powerful people, big rich corporations like ClearChannel will pay someone to solve the issue of closing this supposedly "uncloseable" Pandora's box.
Why pay $1.99 per episode when you can just take the video you saved using Mythtv and download it to your ipod. You could even take out the commercials if you like.
I could see Tivo making out well if they made it easy for ipod video users to sync to their PVR.
Yes, Thank you Apple! Finnally someone has done what the consumers have been screaming for for years! So many nay-sayers look at the iPod Video and say it is some gimmick, but what they dont realise is exactly this pandoras box being opened!
The day when I can download my latest episodes of SG1 or my girlfriends O.C for $1.99 rather than wait 6-9months for it to come on TV in the UK is the day that I stop using eMule!
Thank you Apple you found the only way to stop priacy.
That particular episode of Lost is irrelevant in the big picture. The issue is whether the network is going to undercut its affiliates by building an alternate distribution model.
Networks are freaking out over this because it has the possibility of messing with the status-quo.
The business model is that shows are only available as a television broadcast or DVD purchase. Sure, you have Tivo, but that's still television.
Now, you're taking the content of television and putting it onto a new medium: the digital medium. Networks are going to throw up rad flags, thinking "WE'RE GOING TO LOSE MONEY! FUCK!"
Then again, digital content is a hot-topic issue (see: illegal use of P2P apps). This is a natural extension of that paranoia.
Quote: If downloading episodes over the Internet proves popular...
Uh, what do they mean if? It's already exceedingly popular on BitTorrent and the like, just not sanctioned by the media companies until now (OK, the BBC is doing it but not many others). The genie is already out of this bottle and yet another industry wants to bury it's head in the sand. They have to realize that people, including myself, are willing to pay money to see shows we've missed or cannot get in our area. Where's a capitalist when you need one? Steve Jobs yet again has pulled off a marvelous coup and now the affliates, Hollywood, SAG and anyone else who didn't have the forsight to start this on there own want a piece.
The affiliates should be scared, because today's TV mechanism is silly and out of date. The very idea of a "channel" is meaningless. And the advertisers are paying approx. $1/per hour to the stations for my time. $1 per hour! At that rate I will gladly outbid the advertisers to reclaim my time. And unlike bittorrent and unrestricted PVR's, legal downloads probably won't have the law working against them. Be afraid, affiliates, be very afraid.
Question: What is the point of Broadcast TV?
Answer: To show quality shows that everyone can enjoy.
errrrrr
WRONG
An affiliate broadcast TV station has one goal: To create revenue for the stockholders. This is done through advertising. Lost/Cosby show/Nighstalker/Full house whatever the show is has one purpose: Attract viewers so they can watch more advertising.
To think that consumers can get content from broadcast TV without commercials and advertising will for sure cause a stirr when the reason affiliates exist is to make money.
But will the downloads have commercials? I won't pay to download commercials. Not when I can record the shows I like on my PC based DVR (Sage) and watch when I get around to them. And skip the commercials with one button.
Cable costs 60 to 100 per month. Channels I'd like to watch out of 120 end up hovering at around 3.
Where in the world are you buying your cable TV from? Or is this one of those classic Slashdot price exaggerations like "CD's cost $20" when they really cost $12 from any large retailer? (Even the grossly overpriced music stores in the mall charge $18 or so for a CD)
I've never seen basic cable cost over $40 per month, and digital satellite companies have plans starting at $30 per month. I'm all for "sticking it to the man", but exaggerating prices at every opportunity doesn't make us sound like a reasonable group.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
What's happening here is that the affiliates are seeing the writing on the wall. Downloads of shows aren't going to make a dent for a while but they could. If a significant amount of the viewership starts watching their TV shows via Apple's downloads then that is that many less people watching it on the air and seeing ads. TV stations know this as do the advertisers. Advertisers will not be willing to pay as much for those ad slots because there's less on-air viewership for that show at that time on that station.
The networks are going to make money either way as they are playing both ends against the middle. They make money from the affiliate licenses as well as from downloads from Apple. TV stations are just going to have to cope. This isn't going to go away. They'll have to find another way to keep their local viewership up.
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what do you do to allow people to discover new programs? I think many popular shows start off in bad time slots and are either upgraded or dropped but are given a chanse. I know many shows I loved I stumbled on and would not do so at $2 a pop. Do execs offer some new shows for free until the catch on and then tack on the extra cost onto future episodes? As there is no garuntee of advertising time sales for the inital run of some new shows, which get some viewers out of the novelty, will we see less risks being taken with the 12th season of what sells today or would a show like Firefly be more popular as its profitability could be directly estimated (all the /. Nielson families please stand up)?
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ABC has chosen to act as an independent agent in a free market, rather than subjecting its decisions to cartel politics.
Don't for a moment think that affiliate demands on the network are all one-sided. Maintaining affiliate status means a station has to comply with all kinds of rules set by the network too.
ABC is not simply acting as an independent agent, they are, in some sense, unilaterally re-writing their contracts with their affiliates. I would be damn pissed too if one of my clients decided that they could get away with rewriting our contract, in their favor, with no negotiation.
I agree that the net has changed things and it is high-fucking-time the television industry started to catch up, but don't go thinking ABC or even Apple is the white hat in this episode of the drama - its a lot more complex than that.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
...you're going to tell me how Apple is going to cram a 35 inch screen inside your iPod case.
OK, so you can take your episode of Lost with you, and watch it on your pocket TV. Pocket TVs have been around for...what, more than a decade? How many people do you know stopped buying 25, 32, 50 inch TVs for their house, and multi-thousand dollar sound systems to plug those TVs into, because, well golly gee, now they can put their TV in their pocket.
iPod TV downloads and TiVo solve different problems related to TV viewing. The new iPod service lets you take portable TV shows with you. TiVo lets you time shift, search and archive, and if you have the personal motivation to set up TivoToGo and upgrade your PocketPC handheld with the right WMP software, take portable TV shows with you.
So really, the only thing the new iPod/ABC service does is remove the requirement that your TiVo be available at the time the show comes on the TV. Of course, it's not like you actually have to do anything to make your TiVo record...just set up the season pass, and they'll be there, assuming the show aired in the first place.
All the iPod/ABC service does is remove the requirement for the show to have aired at its original time. And it still has the shortcoming of only being watchable on a screen that, at it's best, is less than a quarter the size of the smallest laptop I've used in the last 5 years.
I wouldn't start the funeral dirge for PVRs and PVR services yet. Not unless that's a TV in your pocket, and not just that you're happy to see me.
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Yes... and how often do you watch a show? Once, maybe twice? Now, looking at my "Most Frequent Listens" playlist in iTunes, most songs get listened to about 30 times that much over the span of a few months. Overpriced? Not exactly.
I've never understood this... how can you call yourself a music fan if you're not willing to support the artist that you're listening to? I bought a piece of vinyl (Wolf Parade) and a cd (Metric) this weekend, coming to a total of $40. I will continue to do this for as long as possible, because I have respect for the artists that put so much into their work... In this day and age, a good record is about the best value you can find.
May they be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
While I seriously doubt that we will ever completly be rid of TV with commercials, I do suspect that at some point, that the TV viewing audience will be limited to the following:
1) Viewing Live Events
2) Viewing low quality shows
3) Those destitute enough to not afford to download favorite shows.
If viewers can pay to download a TV show they want to see, and keep it as long as they want, it will lead to several consequences. The first is that as noted in the article, the downloaded version of the show may be available in a higher definition. The second is that since its not broadcast, you wont have to worry about the FCC censoring naughty words or naughty images. The third is that the shows will no longer be forced to allow commercial breaks, and can run longer or shorter as needed by the story of that episode.
This in turn could create the possibility that the version of the show that gets broadcast will be the inferior version of the show. And if your a true fan of the show, why settle for the crappy version?
On top of that, once yoru no longer beholden to the schedule of the broadcaster, why be limted to watching only what they want to show you? If your a hard core sci-fi fan, why waste time with sitcoms? You could just download shows like every episode Star Trek, Battle Star Galactica, X-Files, Babylon 5, Firefly, and whatever else you actually want to watch. I am sure that the content providers will have no objections to selling to you from their back catalog.
When (not if) downloading a selected version of a TV show becomes viable choice, TV Advertisers will be largely screwed.
Welcome to the Revolution!
END COMMUNICATION
Seriously, people might not be thrilled about donating their upstream bandwidth to help defray's Apple's bandwidth costs... and I guarantee you that some people will frame it that way.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
You mean like the rest of us got used to the idea of having our jobs outsourced to east Crapistan? I don't remember any consultation for that, do you guys?
So what's stopping you from forming a local group and developing your own content? Maybe that idea would occur to you if you weren't so busy whining about the world moving on.
This is what capitalism is all about. New technolgies arise and induce change. The market adapts and either business adapts or goes the way of RCA. You can either keep whining to the parent network, hoping they'll throw you a bone to get you to shut up. Or you can start understanding the new environment and content creation and get off your big, fat rolling in cash TV ass and learn to operate in the new reality.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
And then there is the completely ignored realm of Usenet. Newsgroups carry most popular (or cult popularity) shows. Really popular shows like Lost are usually ripped from HDTV sources and encoded to DIVX or XVID at a high bit rate (say 700MB for a 40 minute show).
Now content is dependant on your ISP's retention, but downloads are usually extremely fast. Alternately you can use a pay Usenet service like EasyNews or Giganews which have crazy retention periods.
How do you know what's up there and which group to access to find it? The handy dandy site newzBin is a searchable index of binary files available on Usenet.
I have Tivo and use it for a lot of stuff, but I started just grabbing HDTV rips of Battlestar Galactica off Usenet because the quality was so good.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Yay! If this works, then not only can Apple offer higher quality and no commercials, but they're not limited to any particular format. For decades only two media formats have really been used:
/x/ minutes, that's fine, too. Content producers, rejoice! Finally, freedom from being squeezed into those little squares you see in the TV schedule!
- movie (usually 1.5-2.5 hours, but sometimes shorter or longer; one-time event, possibly followed by sequels after a couple years)
- TV show (30 or 60 minutes, minus commercials; weekly, with a yearly break to cut it up into "seasons")
HBO (among others) has had success doing a "mini-series", which is basically "an hour or two now and then, for some number of weeks". And countless film directors have tried to get around this by making a 2.5 hour movie, then releasing the "director's cut" (a 3-4 hour super-movie) when the DVD is released.
But if downloading becomes a primary way to get media, we're no longer limited to any particular format. If you want to make a 8-hour movie, go for it. If you want to split it up at natural breaks, instead of forcing every section to be exactly the same length, that's fine. If your shots don't lend to commercial breaks every
Also, the pool of content *producers* is no longer limited. It takes a lot of money to put something on broadcast TV. Any Tom, Dick, or Harry with a $1000 DV camera and Final Cut Pro can make a movie, and now he can distribute it. That is, assuming they eventually let independent artists use the new system, too, but (judging from the iTMS) I can't see why they wouldn't.
Apple brought desktop publishing to the masses in the 80's with Macintosh + Laserwriter. They brought music to the masses with iTunes + iTunes Music Store + GarageBand. I can see this, in a couple years, doing the same for video.
And if the local ABC station goes out of business, well, I'm not going to lose any sleep over that -- just as I wouldn't cry if the local paper went out of business because some guy bought a Laserwriter. If you don't produce something people want better than the other guys, you go out of business. Welcome to the free market.
It's so nice to finally see this happening, I mean I download TV (simpsons, family guy, CSI, etc). Millions of people are doing the same, it really will be interesting to see how long it takes hollywood to figure out that they don't need to print nearly so many DVDs, warehouse and ship them etc...
:D and have it zipped over to your PC, which is connected to your plasma TV... ooo the future looks fun!
Consumers are ready, there are more and more video capable players kicking around, and if enough big players follow suite, I can see the day when you'll be able to watch a simpsons on TV, and order it right away on your cell-phone (for $2
Perhaps we could even see shows that could download in advance, and "unlock" once they actually air, or offer real fans of the show the option to see the show a half hour early online... Wow, the marketing possibilities are making my head spin...
GO APPLE
Now, if we can only convince Sony to follow suite, and open up their entertainment properties to legal downloading, perhaps they could help stem the tide of red ink... and Microsoft and Intel will DRM everything, but hey, none of that matters, because we'll finally be able to legally bring our favorite shows with us...
I wonder if they will still have commercials....
"incredibly disproportionate" in what regard? Is the music too expensive or is the show?!
Music is generally pretty cheap to make. Nowadays you don't need expensive studios or musicians, nearly everything is done with pro-track. And let's face it; the artists rarely ever get paid unless they can stretch a career out for several years. That's why I think a dollar is too much. I'd probably pay 10 cents a song if it was in a lossless format.
However, TVs shows have executive producers, producers, directors, gaffers, camera people, HIGHLY paid actors, writers, etc. All who are unionized and all who get paid a damn lot. Hit shows are incredibly expensive to make. Even a successful shows like Friends never made a profit in primetime, NBC will make its profit in reruns and DVD sales. Considering all that I consider two bucks a barging, but not at the ridiculously low resolution Apple is selling them for.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The complaint didn't come from an ABC competitor, it came from an ABC affiliate. As in, one of the local stations that takes a part of the pie generated by the public's eyeballs. What ABC has done is completely circumvented its own affiliates without even so much as a heads up, which is quite a rude thing to do to your distribution channel. If iTunes TV distribution takes viewers away from the affiliates, Apple will win at their expense.
This is a far more subtle relationship than your "business models change, you have to adapt or die" dismissal warrants.
Sturgeon's Law says this will never happen. However, the ITMS will give you the ability to cherrypick only the things you want to watch instead of paying for a full cable subscription.
You cannot "solve" creativity by throwing more resources at it; advancing technology will never change that fact.
(Care to give us an example of what you will deign to watch, so we can understand why you pooh-pooh one of the best shows on TV right now?)
and that's assuming ABC gets all of that $1.99.
"Why, what Apple is doing is being done today! Anyone who has cable - well that is digital cable - well that is digital cable with VOD - can do the same thing today. Although if they want to keep it I guess they have to figure out how to hook up a compute rto the cable box."
Apple has never been about doing things that are totally new. They just take things people would like to do and make them inviting for everyone to actually partake of.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple will delay releasing new episodes until one week after they're broadcast. Therefore, people will flock to the affiliates to see it a week earlier. Sounds like a win.