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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.'"
Advertising, in my opinion, is a huge reason behind the controversy. The traditional distribution model allows media outlets to force consumers to have interrupted commercial sessions. With a single point of exit media outlets can statistically figure out how much viewership they have and set appropriate advertising rates. Now that ABC has broken the mold its causes much concern among affiliates on the future of advertising rates and whether they can still drive as much revenue. Of course I'm just speculating.
Most of national advertising rates fluctuate as they are based off of current Nielsen ratings which samples viewing habits year round. However local advertising rates are set for a yearly basis based off the TV audience during a specific period 4 times a year(Sweeps Week). With a smaller audience watching TV through this traditional method local affiliates lose a huge chunk of ad revenue.
When I originally read about this, I wondered what the quality would be like. A brief googling suggests that the files are about 150-200MB, which seems like the quality should be better than I was expecting.
Does anyone have any first hand experience with the downloaded episodes? How is the quality on a pc or tv screen?
Network affiliates are the roadkill of the information superhighway.
Once broadband reaches 25mbps there is no reason for a separate tv connection.
The tv networks will become what UPN has already a dumping ground for
tv viewers who are Old and poor.
The networks however have a saving grace, they can still outcompete
itunes. People will happily accept commercials in their tv programs
if they get the programs for FREE...history has already proven this.
There is no technical reason people cant simply download their favorite
programs and watch them with commericals for free or commerical free
for an additional fee.
This would actually free up networks ro produce programs audiences wanted
instead of programs affiliates wanted...programs that could be targeted
to niche audiences rather than lowest common denominator.
This is slightly more technical, but I've been wondering about if they are going to offer up a torrent style iTunes client. This could be a tremendeous boon for for instance podcasts, and video podcasts in general. Maybe only for free content but still.
Sure, many wouldn't be able to figure out how to open up their firewall, but enough people would, that it would make a tremendous difference for some poor podcaster. It will likely let them cut their provider bill in half. Or they could reach 10 times as many people for the same cost. They could even make sure that all their friends have seeds before they release the podcast, that way they don't even really need a server provider (not of the type where you need to know how many GB per month you are allowed).
This would also be a tremendous benefit for Apple since being on iTunes definitely would be the shiznat for all the podcasters because now it also has a very direct benefit for them.
Also, if they did the torrent thing then they would get some serious Google type respect from geeks. Apple would be credited for making decentralized file sharing mainstream.
I can't even think of a down side. Can someone slap me out of this?
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
As for Apple's part of this deal, I downloaded Lost and my first impression was that iTunes is a terrible video player, at least on Windows. Not merely bad, but terrible. It crashes, it freezes for a second or more every time you click on something (including the seek bar, which makes it practically unusable), its user interface is completely unsuited for video, it glitches when it's not the top window, it seems to choose random brightness/contrast settings for each video (or perhaps that's just bad encoding), when downloading and watching videos at the same time it randomly pauses and skips for periods of 5 seconds or more (invariably at an important moment in the dialogue), I could go on and on. And of course you can't use any other video player because of the DRM (which AFAIK hasn't been cracked yet), unless you have a video iPod (I don't). I downloaded a BitTorrent copy to compare and the quality was *far* better, not to mention that it was in its native widescreen format (showing more of the action), and I could use a video player that didn't suck.
I still plan to buy Lost as it comes out to support legal TV downloads and because I have faith that Apple will soon fix iTunes, but when I want to actually watch those episodes I'm going to use BitTorrent.
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