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Cable Exec Suggests Changing Consumer Behavior, Not Business Model
Techdirt has pointed out yet another cable exec that just doesn't quite get it. Comcast's COO, Steve Burke, recently urged the TV industry to find ways to "get consumers to change" rather than figure out better methods to cater to demand. "'An entire generation is growing up, if we don't figure out how to change that behavior so it respects copyright and subscription revenue on the part of distributors, we're going to wake up and see cord cutting.' How many consumers, in any market, are focused on 'respecting' vendors' revenue streams? How, exactly, does he propose to effect this sea change? And why not just develop products that consumers will willingly pay for, rather than trying to change consumer behavior in such a fundamental way?"
If I was making 2.2 million dollars a year salary I would probably say exactly what my bosses wanted to hear, too.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
I'm sorry it is your business model that needs to change, not US.
There were many fine works when copyright didn't even exist; hell, if copyright existed, we wouldn't have had Shakespeare's.
Well, if they expect to live off the same franchises over and over in perpetuity, and not really work, I can see where their problem is.
After all, it's all men in suits who would kill themselves just for money.
And make your money on touring.
On one hand, yes, media companies (and indies, etc) should develop things that people are willing to pay for, instead of putting out remakes and rehashes on a regular basis (i.e. Fark's "In yet another sign that Hollywood has truly run out of new ideas...")
On the other hand, there's no real ethical or legal excuse for pirating something, simply because you don't like the price of it. If you don't like the quality of the offering at the price it is offered, then don't buy it. It's quite simple.
I now expect 4 dozen posts, making car analogies, expounding on the "false" argument of lost sales, and pointing out that I'm likely an astroturfing RIAA/MPAA shill.
Have fun!
Ask any IT professional what's the hardest thing to change?
User behavior.
Technology is supposed to make out lives easier, not the other way around.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Changing customers' behavior is exactly what advertising and marketing are meant to accomplish. It's just usually aimed at getting people to buy your product. Here, instead of "Buy our $FOO now!" the message is "Don't download our $FOO!". I don't see why I should be angrier about this than about advertising in general.
Might I be the first to give a gigantic "Whoosh!" in Comcast's general direction. I cut that cord a few years ago and with the help of MythTV, Boxee, Hauppage, Turtle Beach, Netflix, and Xbox Live have never looked back for a second.
My Babylon
If nothing changes, producers will stop producing when they realize they'll never make back their $250 millon in production costs. The cable companies won't be able to keep subscribers if all they're showing are Gilligan's Island reruns. They'll be poorer and we'll be richer as a result. Is there still a problem?
John
We should all change to meet his business goals. You all need to stop being so self centered.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
The sense of entitlement is sickening. No business has a right to make profit, and I certainly don't have to "recpect" their revenue stream. This generation grew up wanting certain things, the dinosaurs in the content industries refused to adapt and now people are used to getting music, movies, and games they want for free. There are now millions of people who will go their entire lives without purchasing much content, and they were created by the greed and incompetence of the RIAA/MPAA and friends.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
On the other hand, there's no real ethical or legal excuse for pirating something, simply because you don't like the price of it.
Because...it was there.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
Microsoft proves it can be done with every release of Windows.
I hereby declare that I'm willing to do exactly this for half that price!
Any takers?
Hello?!
It's a bit too late, you missed our generation, and it has already spread to our parents (who are pissed that their TVs now require several boxes and don't just 'work') and our children certainly aren't going to 'rebel' by embracing the corporate message.
The only way to earn respect is by showing respect. And, last I checked, my television/vidcard/cablebox/musicplayer/gameconsole all don't seem to want to trust me or each other. I'll continue to go with the more convenient, fully compatible, more functional, product.
When my iPhone decides it won't try to automatically erase itself after I reinstall my OS,
When my cable box outputs an unencrypted signal... hell, when I don't need to rent cable boxes just to access channels my TV can technically display,
When I can install a new hard disk in my game console without thrashing the firmware...
Start with that, and then I'll listen again. At that point, then we can discuss some of the other built in annoyances you have contrived.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
When you go to the supermarket to buy a particular product... Let's say KETCHUP... You'll usually find you have several different brands available to you. The more expensive name brands are usually placed right at eye level, whereas the least expensive store brands are usually on the bottom shelf, where you're only likely to notice them if you're really looking for a deal. This is called SEGMENTED MARKETING. The name brand is targeted to the people who have the high-stress, well-paying jobs and don't have the time or energy to try to find the best deals. But the best deals are still available for those who need them.
I'm yet to see cable companies and "content providers" doing anything equivalent. But they really ought to. The vast majority of people who spend time and energy on piracy are students and low-income people who couldn't buy the content legitimately. People who have active, stressful lives and who make enough money will frequently fork over the money for legitimate copies of the content they're interested in just because it's less of a hassle to do so.
What cable companies and content providers ought to be doing is trying to come up with that deal saving "store brand" version of their content. The content that could still appeal even to the starving college students and minimum wage slaves that they'd consider shelling out a few bucks on it here and there.
... I say maybe I'll start to worry about what is fair to you a little bit when you start to worry about the level of service given to ME.
The corporations of the U.S. are not monarchy (yet) so it's not our job to make sure you live high on the hog. Maybe if you treated me like a customer I would feel some loyalty.
And why not just develop products that consumers will willingly pay for, rather than trying to change consumer behavior in such a fundamental way?"
Because he feels the same way you do. You don't seem at all eager to adapt your behavior to the terms on which products are being marketed. You instead want to force the providers to change.
So, you don't want to change, you just want to do things your way and force others to change. The provider also doesn't want to change. They want to do things their way and force you to change.
Both parties want to give little and receive much. Consumers want to pay little and get lots of high quality content. Providers want to expend few resources in content provision and receive lots of money.
I'd say the two groups are more alike than different. One just has more members than the other.
Well forgive me if I got this all wrong here, but... does he not simply mean that customers should pay for what they get, instead of just illegally and freely leaching it off the Internet ?
I was all ready to pop out a funny, pithy comment like "Cable Consumer Suggests Changing Cable Exec", but decided to RTFA (yeah, stupid me, here, let me turn in my geek card ...), when I realized that it's just a bunch of manufactured hype. The Techdirt article that the Slashdot article is based on is based on is a piece of crap. Here's a link to the original article rather than the Techdirt regurgitation.
I get the feeling this guy is being quoted somewhat out of context. Techdirt goes on a rant about how the cable companies need to develop new business models, not just beat up consumers. From a quick glance at the www.broadcastingcable.com article, it appears that he's saying that if cable doesn't evolve their business models, they'll bet run over by internet-based content providers. The original article discussed targeted ad content and better-than-Nielsen viewing measurement as future directions cable could move in to improve their business model. So, yeah, the Techdirt guy has his head up his ass.
Now, with that being said, I'm sure that whatever "new" business models the cable companies dream up will largely consist of overcharging consumers, providing crappy service, and extending DRM tentacles into everything they touch, and hence won't really be seen as a win here on Slashdot, and certainly won't be all that different from their current customer abuse.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
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will render you extinct.
Cable TV free and proud, two years running.
Improve your life. Cancel your subscription.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
... if we don't figure out how to change that behavior so it respects copyright and subscription revenue on the part of distributors ...
"Respecting copyright" is not really the same thing as "respecting subscription revenue". There are a significant number of people that do respect copyright, even if the typical Slashdot discussion doesn't seem to support that statement. But even if every music and movie "pirate" stopped downloading illegal copies as of today, it wouldn't fix the broken revenue model the music and movie industries still want to cling to - the technology available today has irreparably destroyed their old-school business plan.
#DeleteChrome
Comcast's COO should be focused on giving people what they want at a price that will make money for Comcast.
And for all we know, this is exactly how he intends to go about getting those behavioral changes he is advocating. Though, I suspect he'd advocate instilling some sense of value in these customers first.
If people want downloadable media and the existing corporations refuse to provide it legitimately, it is clear that people will simply take it illegitimately.
That is clear, you're correct. What is unclear is whether there is a middle ground. It is entirely possible that even with penny DVD's people will still take it illegitimately. It doesn't take a huge imagination to see where that would wind up leading.
If instead the large content providers had simply created distribution mechanisms where digital media could be obtained easily at a reasonable price with reasonable usage terms then people would have had much less incentive to search out pirated media.
Again, absolutely true. There would be less incentive. Whether 1% or 100% less, is unclear.
I for one don't find fault in the content providers for having their own point of view, even when it doesn't match my own.
I lived in a house for a year with six other 18-25 year olds.
We had no TV.
Well, we did have a TV, but you couldn't watch TV on it. It was rigged up to a PS3, Xbox, Wii, and when neccessary, laptops. We played games, watched downloaded films and TV shows, the odd youtube video, in fact on occasion and actual webpage. We'd get a hanking for a show, say Heroes, we'd download the whole thing in one slurp at watch it all. Come Halloween, it was Friday 13th marathon(Do not watch 4). The TV was not even rigged up to terrestrial channels. If I'd been so inclined, I would have set up a central server we could have all thrown our movies, etc onto. Bit of a missed opportunity now that I think of it.
I can actually remember sitting down to watch TV for a fews hours, or waiting for a good show to come on that evening, and I swear its like I'm remembering a past life. The idea to me now, of sitting down to watch TV for more than a half hour, sitting through all those ads, actually making my leisure time fit someones else schedule; this idea is by now a completely foreign notion. I cannot imagine doing it anymore, and I don't.
It's going to be very difficult to explain to the generation currently growing up exactly how we managed to waste so much time in front of the TV. If they see what we had to put up with, they're just never going to believe it. When the time comes, and they are asked to stump up $50 a month for such garbage, they are literally going to laugh in the face of the likes of Comcast. The notion of TV itself will be absurd to them, let alone paying for it. It will be as absurd to them as those old 1950's informational shorts are to us now.
This business model has perhaps, 20 years before the bottom falls out, and this article shows that the know it.
May the Maths Be with you!
I wish him good luck in trying to convince people with arguable morality to just look away from the cheaper solution.
Now, when he decides to target the rest of the people, it could be more profitable to change the message from:
"It's illegal to make any copy or to broadcast this media on your own."
into
"It's ok to record and repeat it to yourself, family and friends for no profit. If you plan to broadcast it to a larger audience, contact our Customer Service for ideas on how everyone can profit from that. We understand that we can't keep growing our profit by strangling our customers. With a little compromise, everyone will be happy."
My suggestions for the aforementioned ideas:
- If the broadcast will take place on a commerce, we only ask for a feeble 1% from the sales during the broadcast.
- If the broadcast will take place on a public area, tell us where and we'll bring the catering, to which the profit will be entirely to us or shared with the government responsible for the area.
- If you plan to distribute the media online, allow us to insert some ad service.
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
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Umm, no.
What customers want is the programs they want to watch.
What the cable companies are selling is bundles of hundreds of channels.
That's why he used the words "subscription revenue". What really scares the cable company is that Internet people understand that there is no technical reason why they can't be sold just the channels they want; and on the Internet, there's no reason why they can't be sold just the shows they want. Yet the content providers won't allow a la carte, so the cable companies can't give customers what they want.
If I could have subscribed to just the channels I actually watched, I'd have kept my satellite subscription. As it was, I was forced to pay for sports, news and movie channels which I literally never watched--and channels like ESPN are the most expensive part of your cable or satellite bill. So I made the rational decision--I cut the cord, and now I buy shows from iTunes or the PlayStation store. If the shows aren't available there, I go wherever I have to go to get them, whether it's hulu or BitTorrent. I'm willing to pay, but I'm not willing to pay for bundles of crap I don't want.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
the arrogance of the tech community at slashdot it quite astounding.. what makes you think you can really do whatever he does at half the price... I am not saying that this guy is great shakes but being the COO of a multi-billion dollar company is not an easy job at all and takes very different skills from being a tech whiz. Have you carried any revenue targets ever in your life ? This post has been marked funny but it is time that slashdotters understand that running a business is tough.
Some of us have done what he does, for 5-10% of his price. Beyond a certain point in the size of a business your actual roll, responsibilities and work load no longer increase, you delegate. Since he doesn't actually assume more responsibility by working at a larger company, then yes, some of us are capable.
It may be different if he was somehow going to be held to a higher standard, but he isn't, its just the opposite actually. If he fails, he will get treated no differently than I would. Actually thats not true, he has a golden parachute and someone else would be more than happy to hire him elsewhere, ignoring his failure, because he 'knows people'.
Being the COO of a multi-billion dollar company is no different than being the COO from a multi-million dollar company, contrary to what you would expect.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Easier, even. With a multi-million-dollar company, it's small enough that if you screw up, you might bankrupt the company. That means that you have to be at least moderately familiar with what's going on in the company. With a multi-billion-dollar company, you have a dozen divisions that are each multi-million-dollar companies, each run by someone who has to think the same way.
Up a tier, however, the management of each division is left to the VP for the division. Half the time, the CEO doesn't even know what the company makes. It really doesn't matter at that level. They just have to know enough to understand what the VP means when they ask the VP why the division is losing money and when they expect to get back on track, or at least enough to know if they're getting a snow job from their underlings....
Tell you what, put me in charge of such a cable company at 10% of this clown's salary. I'll show you how it's done. The right fix for cable companies is to tear down about ten layers of management between the top brass and the people who know what's going on, spend money on building out data infrastructure further, and finding new services to offer that make your offerings more attractive. I have many ideas for new services that I'd roll out if I were running a cable company, any one of which would make a huge difference in users' lives and would significantly cut down on piracy by doing so. Of course, the notion of piracy when you have a cable signal coming in at a flat rate is absurd anyway, and always has been....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
before the internet, you were a necessary evil. someone had to distribute the media, and you needed to be respected in order to provide that service. that portion of copyright law that provided for your protections was valid... then
you have been replace, by the internet
authors, musicians, directors: they distribute their media for free. it serves only as advertising for their real source of revenue: ancillary streams like advertising, promotion, concerts, the cinema house, pulp copies, specialized content, speaking engagements, movie adaptation deals, etc.
you are no longer necessary, and the laws that protect you are defunct. the laws that protect you are not pronouncements from god that say the economic model that allowed for your existence is a permanent state of being
direct artist-consumer links, that is the internet. books, video, music, anything of value that is consumed digitally: its all free. revenue sources are all ancillary streams. ONLY FOR THE ARTIST. NO DISTRIBUTOR NEEDED, SO NO REVENUE FOR YOU
YOU ARE EXTINCT AND YOUR LAWS ARE DEFUNCT. DEAL WITH IT. FUCK OFF AND DIE ALREADY
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What people really want it on-demand television. No more channels, just menus of shows to pick from. Haven't DVRs proven that. The only people that seem to get that are the fine folks at Apple, that are working on a subscription service for the TV portion of the iTunes Music Store.
Heck, Hulu was awesome for that. And it took off. Now they want to charge for it. Entertainment execs still don't get it.
As you raise prices and gouge consumers, people starting downloading illegally. When you make things more reasonable, like Amazon and Apple did with music, then people come flocking and making money.
Any belief that people are ignoring copyright now, when they didn't before is folly. If people could have copied LPs back in the 50s, they would have done so. Technology has finally caught up with desire. That's all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast (yeah, yeah, wiki, but it copy/pastes nicely)
Comcast fiscal data:
Revenue US$ 30.895 Billion (2007)
Operating income US$ 5.578 Billion (2007)
Net income US$ 2.587 Billion (2007)
Total assets US$ 113.417 Billion (2007)
Total equity US$ 41.340 Billion (2007)
I'd say Comcast is a textbook definition of a multi-billion dollar company.
The arrogance of the business community is far worse. How can anyone honestly believe someones skills could be worth 2.2 million per year? Are his skills really that rare? Or maybe it's because big business leadership is an exclusive club where friends reward friends with huge sums of money?
...but it is time that slashdotters understand that running a business into the ground by failing to adapt is tough.
FTFY
Your cable company will sell you a DVR, but it doesn't want you to have a copy of anything?
An entire generation of CEOs has grown up believing utter nonsense about the relative values of money and freedom.
Apparently, several trillion dollars in collapsed economy hasn't improved their common sense.
I already cut the cord. And no downloading (legal or otherwise) was responsible. Why? I realized that every show I watched was on the broadcast channels. So why pay $50/month (up to $60 now) for the broadcast channels (available over the air), plus a load of cable channels with nothing I watched on them. There's some good shows on the premium channels, but those few I can get later on a (rented) DVD, at far lower cost.
The consumer will start caring about the corporation when the corporation starts respecting the consumer. Right now the corporation will screw the consumer over to get every last dollar out of them and the consumer will try to get everything possible for free. There will never be respect unless the war is ended.
I am sure that the horse buggy whip manufacturers, ice block distribution kings, and whale oil lamp cartel had similar plans to change consumer behavior as well. Problem is that the copyright cartel has done little or nothing to change with the times. They have brought this on themselves. It is humorous (annoying?) to see them operate as if they should be allowed to not change simply because they don't want to. Why do they think they are different than every other corporation on the planet? Times change. Technology changes. Adapt or die. It is a fundamental pillar of capitalism (and biology as well, but that is different slashdot thread). You have love their arrogance though.
How about I try it out for a year? If it doesn't work out, I'll take my $10 million golden parachute and jump out. Sounds fair to me.
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
Also stop broadcasting the shows. Best just to keep them in a vault somewhere, where no one can see them. Perhaps as a compromise some sort of peep show type interface could be used, with armed guards and strip searches to make sure no one brings a camera or microphone near the viewer.
I'm going to assume that you're trying to play the clown in the dunk tank.
Suits are all Dog Pack mentality. Whether they come up the ranks as salesmen on a commission or as the boss's son or as a ringer, golf partner, they typically are glorified accountants who maintain the status quo. The average slashdotter probably isn't too good at risk assessment but with the current state of the economy, I'm willing to give them a crack at it and sack the entire lot of ex-jock good-ol-boys.
I assure you I could run a multi-billion dollar company at least as well as some CEOs have in the past few years (I could manage to put it into a steep decline, not a precipitous one), and I'd charge less.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Shakani,
In china, there are 1,200 equally qualified people to the executive in question. With such a gross oversupply of talent, the only reason we are paying these bozo's extra is that the current shareholder laws have removed all shareholder power to do anything about it.
Likewise, with regard to the article, there is an *ENORMOUS* amount of entertainment. This presents two problems for the potential consumer.
a) Most of us are able to spend, maybe, $200 to $400 a month on entertainment. Filling an Ipod would take $10,000. Do the math. Consumers are not going to cripple their life to fill an ipod. They will find a way around that price point. Once they *lose* the songs on the ipod and are asked to lay down ANOTHER $10,000 for the same songs- they get really pissy. yet this is the primary goal of the entertainment industry- rental payments anytime you use any entertainment until "forever-- less one day".
b) On the flip side, the sheer amount of entertainment is exploding. I spent 3 hours the other night just watching homemade stuff for free on Youtube. And there were a couple hours spent watching Star Wreck. There are cable stations with real programs, there are multiple real programs, which I'll never see. I ruthlessly trade down to less expensive entertainment and, in many cases, simply wait 6 to 8 months and get the same entertainment for pennies legally. The price of entertainment is not supportable-- too many people want our entertainment dollar.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
That's why you go to Harvard or Princeton or Yale. It's not for the education. It's for the contacts.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Slashdot thinks in terms of right or wrong. Businesses thinks in terms of priorities.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga