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No Business Case for HDTV?
Lev13than writes "The head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation argues that there is no business model for HDTV. Speaking at a regulatory hearing being held by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), CBC president Robert Rabinovitch noted that 'There's no evidence either in Canada or the United States that we have found for advertisers willing to pay a premium for a program that's in HD.' In order to cope with infrastructure and programming costs that are roughly 25 per cent higher, Rabinovitch proposes that the CBC start charging cable and satellite companies to carry their signal, and to limit over-the-air transmission. HDTV — good for Best Buy, bad for broadcasters?"
Good gosh, HDTV would fly by itself if the industry practiced a little common sense about the rollout. I remember in 1998 a sales guy trying to talk me into buying a sexy looking HDTV on demo on the floor. Yeah, I was drooling.
This unit came sans tuner, and the universe as we know it was still pretty much standard definition tv, i.e., if you could find any HD content, it was for eye candy only, nobody was broadcasting HD anywhere on anything remotely regular.
I told him I'd wait for the prices to come down, and the for some content to show up -- he shook his finger at me, "These prices [$10,000 for the unit I was looking at] won't come down and might go up! And, there's more and more new HD content available every day"
Prices went way down (though still way too high) and content eventually showed up. The problem? Way too many ways to set up for HD with way too many ways to find out your setup isn't correct after spending big bucks.
The minefield that is setting up for HD is too confusing, too expensive, and yeah, if I were an advertiser I'd find it a tough sell to pay any extra for an uncertain market.
It's too bad, I eventually settled on a Samsung 50" DLP a 2 years ago, absolutely LOVE it, but no thanks to any help I got from anyone anywhere! Freak, even the Comcast HD cable box is still a piece of garbage that regularly freezes, never behaves, and offers a very limited range of HD (not entirely their fault, come on networks!).
Toss in the confusing choices and still uncertain future of HD on DVD, sheesh, it's a wonder the market is as penetrated as it is.
Hey, and toss in the $50 HDMI cable lots of people have to buy, they didn't even know about it until "after". Yeah, and what about the almost non-existent HD On Demand (another unfulfilled promise... aside from incredibly poor selection, Comcast's On Demand movies have only a few HD, and all of them (HD and standard) are so compressed, it hurts to watch on a good TV). Oh, and don't forget, or don't forget to plan for, DRM. Don't assume what's true today will still be true by the time you set up your system, but assume if it's not the same it's going to be more restrictive.
Shit, the more I prattle, the less I like about HD. I'm in as deep as I want for what the market has offered so far, but am not chomping at the byte for any more investment until the industry sorts itself out.
Having decomissioned my TV a number of years ago in favor of a computer running emule, and now having the free upgrade to BitTorrent that allows me to get my american TV shows add-free 2 weeks ahead of the Australian commercial-infected air-date rather than 1 week ahead.. TV Execs should be asking themselves Is there actually a business case for traditional TV?
:) I recon' I'd even pay to see that...
Now, as for HD-TV...
I just witnessed a 277-run ashes victory against in full SD Digital TV, and the step up from shadowed fuzzy PAL broadcast was unbelievable.
I can't wait to see us beat the Poms in 1080p full color
I wonder how long it'll take the sports ground owners to start sueing broadcasters for loss of revinue because you get a better view of the game at home than you do with 10x binoculars from front-row seats?
HD is happening, and the adoption rate both for consumers, content creators, and broadcasters is accelerating. I have seen MUCH acceleration in 2006, and I think 2007 will be the year HD really takes command of the market. Let me put it this way -- perhaps the SUITS at broadcast organizations can't find a case for HD. But I will tell you this -- the engineers, editors, etc. are VERY MUCH ready for HD, and know it is happening, and there's no looking back. This isn't really up for debate, it's the fact of the matter.
What I find a little strange about this guy's comments is that he's basically trying to justify keeping a 50-year-old broadcast standard, well into the 21st century. Let's think about that for a moment -- what would have happened if the computer industry had decided to stay with, say, the standards that were in place for computing in the 1950s, through today. Yeeeaaaah... As bizarre as this scenario sounds, this is the reality that the broadcast market has perpetuated for the last 50 years or so. I would think that consumers would be demanding a much quicker adoption of HD! Oh, so you need to buy a new TeeVee set? Me cry you a river. That's like saying I should be forced to use a building-sized supercomputer that runs on punchcards to handle basic arithmetic problems, just because you don't feel you should need to upgrade your computer. But it's even more ridiculous than that, because we tolerate "needing" to buy a new computer every 5 years or so, but sheesh, needing to upgrade your TV once per fifty years? IT'S A TRAVESTY!
And on another note -- if those idiots can't command higher ad rates for HD advertisements, well, please fire them and hire me to do your HD advertising sales, because your current ad sales team SUCKS and is not worth what you're paying them. I am pretty certain I could do a better job myself. And I'm not just throwing that out there -- again, I make my living largely "selling" video content producers on HD.
Finally, another interesting debate/issue concerns the video/post/broadcast world's move to tapeless workflows, where you are essentially recording video _files_ right onto flash RAM/hard drives/optical discs/SANs/etc. And video tapes go the way of the dodo. This is another HUGE shift in the broadcast market, which is only recently incorporating "IT technologies" into the systems that drive broadcast facilities. A lot of broadcasters are going to go for "two for the price of one" -- let's go tapeless, and let's make sure our upgrades are HD-capable at least.
OK OK, one laaast point -- anyone who doesn't feel HD is a worthwhile upgrade SERIOUSLY needs to get their eyes checked. I recommend doing an A/B comparison between SD and HD, of the same content. HD is only truly profound when you _go back_ to SD, and you ask yourself, how the hell did I deal with this shit for so long? BRING ON MORE HD!!!
A few stations and big networks tried that with Comcast. They instantly dropped the channels COUNTRY WIDE with a channel in place with text that said "**CHANNELNAME** is trying to charge you to watch their content and their commercials. call X-XXX-XXX-XXXX and let them know how you feel.
it lasted one day. Several local channels tried it 5 years ago and bent over instantly when they had their plug pulled with a warning message on the channel. Discovery tried it to comcast 3 years ago as well and gave up 2 days later.
CBC has no chance, if they start charging, they get dropped and then they wither away. Boo hoo that the studios have to upgrade their technology from 20 year old hardware and that the customers think they shouldn't pay more for it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Take the source into consideration: CBC is the publically-funded national broadcast network of Canada, and its ratings are the pits across the board. Its one cash cow (and only real HDTV-showoff program), Hockey Night in Canada, is rumoured to be headed to private networks CTV and TSN next season. Conservatives are in power federally, and consider the CBC an adversary. Add it all up, and the CBC is staring at a cash crunch in the near future. They won't have the money to upgrade much of their programming to HDTV, so they blow smoke to the regulator that there's no business case for it.
>It's not an early adopter device any more, but it hasn't even come close to reaching critical mass in the general populace yet.
There's a marketing book that's worth reading, and it's about this exact situation. Products do not move smoothly from early adopters to early majority. There's a pit in between the two that many products fall into.
The book, "Crossing the Chasm", explains that you have to make the transition to your new product as smooth and slick as teflon on teflon, or normal people will never generate good word of mouth. An example of a brilliant success at this is the Toyota Prius, which spends a significant amount of software simulating the artifacts of a 20th-century car, just to allow buyers to slide right into it without an adjustment.
If the HD industry were poised for success you'd see plug-and-play installations that didn't require setup by a consultant, no obstructive DRM, and standardized cabling.