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Tension Escalates Between Netflix and Its TV Foes (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Viewership numbers are vital within the TV industry. For years, the networks have relied upon ratings to make money — higher numbers mean higher ad revenue. The most important part of the ratings system is that individual networks can't just claim whatever viewership they want; third-party companies like Nielsen control the stats. But Netflix doesn't operate by the same rulebook, and this is frustrating the networks. Execs from Netflix and various networks have started arguing about it, both at an industry event this weekend, and in media interviews. NBC had hired a firm to estimate Netflix's viewership numbers, because Netflix won't release them. Netflix says the estimate is laughably wrong, but has also suggested shows fare better on their platform than on cable or broadcast television. If true, it gives them leverage to recruit more and better talent to produce such shows. But it's impossible to refute without numbers, and the networks are increasingly annoyed they can't do that. NBC thinks the media tends to give Netflix a pass on these statements. FX chief John Landgraf said, "[Netflix's Ted Sarandos] shouldn't say something is successful in quantitative terms unless you're willing to provide data and a methodology behind those statements. You can't have it both ways."
My pirating escalates as well. I don't NEED either of you, so if you're going to raise the price and/or give me less to watch, I'm going to take it for free and own it indefinitely. Your choice.
The Nielsen ratings have never rally been without major sampling error, methodology and fallacy. If they really want the traffic numbers, they can get them from Comcast and other cable networks. And after reading the article, it's actually more just a complaint and response to a complaint than "escalation". Move along, nothing to see here.
Gently reply
ABC? CBS? NBC?
Dinosaur media that's already mostly extinct except for the few bird-brains that have managed to survive.
So far.
I agree that you can't have it both ways. That is like saying a movie is making a lot of money and at the same time claiming it is losing money.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I'm loving the fact that voting with your wallet has become very powerful in this field right now. I just cut the cord on my basic cable package and moved to Zattoo.com (in Europe), which is a web-based TV provider. I get pretty much the same thing as before for either free (but in SD with a few more adverts) or I get more than I'd have got before (a generous cloud-based DVR and replay of anything in the last week) for half the money I used to pay the cable provider for its crappy set top box. This plus Netflix is great for me.
soylentnews.org
Mr. Wurtzel provided data from a firm named Symphony Advanced Media, which uses audio content recognition installed on phones to recognize what is being watched and when.
I'm willing to bet most of these users didn't even realize that fun game asking for microphone permissions was doing this.
Last year, I got one of those Nielsen diaries to track my household's television viewing, and they had a methodology for tracking Netflix as well as DVR, but only for shows watched on a television. Netflix on a desktop computer or tablet were not tracked...
We, the viewers, hate you. You are sliding down a slight but increasingly steep slope into the deep dark hole of irrelevance and you don't even know it. It shows that you don't know it, because you increasingly devote time on your networks to advertising, at the expense of quality content. You continue with a business model of stretching out fairly mediocre and predictable stories over two or three hours, spread across two or three arbitrary 'ratings' weeks in order to inflate your own numbers, while admonishing Netflix for being dishonest.
You fought tooth and nail against VCRs. You fought against DVRs. You now fight against online streaming. All of these technologies actually make experiencing your content better, yet you still fight them. We see through your bullshit, and we've found a content delivery paradigm we like better: all-you-can-stream for a low monthly charge. No advertising at all. All episodes of a season, and past seasons, available RIGHT NOW.
As soon as someone cracks the hegemony largely preventing the streaming of live sports without having a cable or satellite subscription, you're done. And you still continue on like it's 1983. And what you don't realize, is that we can't wait to fire you for being completely inept in your own business and refusing to innovate in even the slightest ways.
Stop clutching at the past, and embrace the future, before the future holds a pillow over your head and we all rejoice.
Warm regards,
Everyone
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Why do viewer numbers matter for Netflix? They don't show ads, so they don't have to put a value on their equivalent of airtime. The ratings are only relevant to them internally when deciding which content will gain/lose the most subscribers.
They don't make money off of advertising. They make many from the number of subscribers. It's their business how many people watch, and how much money they think they'll make off of a show... nobody elses.
Netflix doesn't show ads, so i don't see how it's a problem that they don't have verified viewership numbers. If they give numbers in their quarterly statements, maybe the FEC would care, but i don't see how the numbers themselves are hurting competition. Unless it's the traditional networks saying that they can get a producer more viewers, so they don't have to pay the producer as much as netflix.
NetFlix does not have the same success criteria. The networks need people to watch shows at a certain time, not dvr them fast forward etc, because they depend on the ad revenues.
That means the only measure of success is viewership at original air time for the most part and that the target demographic that the advertisers want tuned in.
Netflix on the other hand is all about obtaining and retaining subscribers. It does not matter to them when people watch their series or really even if they watch! They need their subscribers to feel they are getting value. That means for instance if Netflix produces a show that mostly appeals to 4 year olds, that is fine. Mom and Dad think $9 a month is a cheap way to keep the kids occupied while they make dinner. Advertisers would hate that though because kids that age don't spend money.
So at the end of the day if Netflix has the money to invest in content production and keep their bottom line in the black they are succeeding. So far all indications are that they do. Financial statements etc. The proof is out there.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I am a Netflix user. I could give a crap about what CBS/NBC/ABC have to offer...Netflix will have it eventually. Maybe Netflix is acting like a peacock and extending it's tail, but reality says that it will win in the end.
Four years ago, the Starz network tried to destroy Netflix by yanking its content over demands for much higher licensing fees. It was a body blow to Netflix, and many people wondered if the Netflix streaming service could survive the loss of content. Fortunately, Netflix did survive, and now they're successful enough to call their own shots.
Any information that Netflix provides to its competitors will just be used to try to destroy them, just as Aereo was destroyed. You don't do your enemies favors in this business. All that matters to Netflix is that they get enough viewers for their original content to justify their production costs. They are under no obligation to reveal their viewership numbers to their competition. If I were in their shoes, I'd be telling the major networks to take a flying leap, too.
...NBC had hired a firm to estimate Netflix's viewership numbers, because Netflix won't release them....
Back when it appeared as if Comcast (owner of NBC) was slowing Netflix traffic via intentionally overloaded border routers, one of the proposed solutions I read about was for Netflix to place some content distribution servers in Comcast's data centers. To do so would have required Netflix to share it's usage data with Comcast, and Netflix didn't want any part of that.
.
Now I understand better why Netflix didn't want to do that.
Broadcast TV is DEAD! Cable TV is dying a slow death. Streaming video services like Netflix that have no ads are the future. Services like Netflix don't depend on ads to make money, so why should they release information that their competitors want? More and more people are cutting the cord, getting totally away from insanely overpriced, commercial infested cable TV.
Advertising and marketing have have become evil, something that people are not willing to pay for any more! More people than the cable TV companies think remember their promises when cable TV was first rolled out. They promised for a monthly fee we could have commercial-free TV without the reception problems of broadcast TV. That promise was quickly broken!
In addition, the number of quality programs available on cable TV has declined greatly in the last 5-7 years. Cable TV is like the song. "57 channels and nothing on". At least nothing worth watching! And Hollyweed is still trying to create an artificial scarcity of programming to keep license fees for their content artificially high. They also force cable TV providers to accept packages of channels that include lots of crappy channels like home shopping , etc...to get the few good channels that people really want! The sooner streaming video providers kill the whole cable TV rippoff, the better!
Viewership numbers are vital within the TV industry. For years, the networks have relied upon ratings to make money — higher numbers mean higher ad revenue. The most important part of the ratings system is that individual networks can't just claim whatever viewership they want; third-party companies like Nielsen control the stats.
So they built a business model based on ad revenue which presumes everyone else is using the same business model. Now someone else has a business that isn't dependent on ad revenue and is eating their lunch. Cry me a river. The networks provide crappy programming through a distribution model that nobody likes and then are shocked that customers are looking for alternatives. Good grief, what a bunch of tools...
Either Netflix will make money on their products or they won't. The advertisers are the ones that will hold their feet to the fire regarding the credibility of the data Netflix provides regarding viewership. If the ad networks are fine with it, then why on earth would I care?
Years ago, a company called NCSoft shuttered a game called City of Heroes because they didn't find it profitable enough. Never mind that it had steady numbers after 8 years of operation and was pulling in over ten million dollars a year, even with an F2P setup that'd been recently implemented.
A group that was trying to buy the property off NCSoft in lieu of shuttering it looked at those numbers and went "We can live with that!"
Another company, Catalyst Game Labs, is in business today, keeping several game lines (BattleTech and Shadowrun) in print and growing. Yes, their fanbase is smaller than it was back in 1990, when they were created/owned/run by The FASA Corporation. This, combined with better production values (due to the market demands) as well as greater general competition for people's entertainment dollars means that the profit margins aren't what they were years ago either. Yet Catalyst is still chugging away and still considers itself a successful company.
It's all about how you define success.
Netflix is evidently happy with what their numbers are telling them. And they've got the cash available to bankroll these ambitious projects. Also, their bean counters and shareholders aren't bitching either publicly or loudly. Does one REALLY need to argue any further?
And, who's to say that even if the networks GOT the data they wanted, that it'd be in any way meaningful to them in their business model?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Netflix needs to learn from the RIAA rulebook. Just fucking invent the numbers.
You seriously think the RIAA numbers about piracy and lost revenue are real ? Of course not, it's just that everybody pretends they're real so they're real. Learn the art Netflix, learn it and you'll have the broadcast industry by the balls.
> FX chief John Landgraf said, "[Netflix's Ted Sarandos] shouldn't say something is successful in quantitative terms unless you're willing to provide data and a methodology behind those statements. You can't have it both ways."
Netflix is not selling ads. They can see exactly how many viewers each show gets. They are paying for their content directly. They know how much money they make from their subscriptions.
Why exactly should Netflix care if other networks can't refute their numbers? Netflix doesn't have to share them with anyone to boost ad sells or justify spending money on a new show.
The only way I will tolerate commercials is if they are placed at the beginning or the end of the programming.
Providers can accommodate the letter of your request by redefining "the programming" as a single act of the play (or screenplay or teleplay), or what would become a single chapter of the DVD, or the like, and then deeming a whole movie to become a playlist of several such "programmings". Would that satisfy you?
Thing is, people are fleeing a system controlled by 6 corporations in favor of a new system controlled by only 1.
With apologies to Grand Moff Tarkin, I think you overestimate their chances. Netflix getting a distribution monopoly is a highly improbable outcome. They don't own the copyrights to most of what you can watch through them and that matters a lot. Could they undermine the business model of traditional networks? We can only hope... I think Netflix can succeed without being the gatekeeper for all video content which is good because it isn't likely to happen.
Apple will be the gatekeeper for music, and Netflix for video.
I think Google, Amazon and more than a few others may have something to say about that. I've had a Netflix subscription twice now and both times I dropped it because the cost outweighed the value. Netflix had a large catalog of movies I've either already seen or don't care about and searching for new stuff was painful to say the least. There were movies I wanted to see that routinely were not available through Netflix. I don't really care about their original programming and I'm hardly the only one. Honestly I've found Amazon Prime to be a better value.
The big fight here is over new content. Netflix is creating their own, and it's being extremely well received.
Being well received does not equal a monopoly nor does it necessarily equal profits.
Cable has shit the bed by maximizing cable profits to the detriment of the viewing experience (too many ads, extra fees for HD, too many bullshit channels) and now they complain that Netflix doesn't measure eyeballs the same way they do? Viewership ratings only matter to broadcasters that rely on advertising, Why should membership based Netflix be held to same metric? Who would that even benefit? I think a more interesting question is whats happening on Hulu, which is having its cake (subscribers) and eating it too (shows ads).
Trade your cable bill for a monthly media budget and you can in relatively short order have more stuff than you can handle.
Unless your roommate is unwilling to give up Peyton Manning and LeBron James. Those are the two exact names that my roommate mentioned when I mentioned switching from cable to Netflix to save money. Or unless your ISP provider severely jacks up rates on Internet customers who don't also subscribe to the ISP's pay-TV service.
they depend on the ad revenues
And yet once upon a time they did not. TV programming was profitable without ads. Then after ads started, they slowly started encroaching more and more on the timeslots that used to be actual programming. Then they got louder. Annoying ads also seem to be a thing because, hey, at least people notice them.
Beyond the ads, reality TV became a big thing because it's a lot cheaper to pay some realtor a few bucks extra to drag a camera crew along - or some redneck yokel - than it is to bother with real, skilled actors.
Now, they need this crap more and more in order to show increasing profitability and pay the big bonuses, but that comes at the cost of quality, which - now that there's competition - is costing them customers. They've sacrificed long-term business in exchange for short-term profits, and it's finally biting them in the ass.
Ratings of subscription television answer the following questions: Which programs bring in the most subscription revenue? Which programs would make end users more likely to cancel subscriptions if they were canceled?
If you can't innovate, legislate. Time to make it illegal for there to be any competition. Perhaps they can use the "too many choices" argument.
But how can Comcast peek into a TLS connection, other than that I happen to be accessing some URL whose hostname is a member of Netflix's CDN?
> Mr. Wurtzel said the data showed that when streaming-service shows debut, viewership is strong and then peters out after a few weeks before viewers return to watching cable or network television.
No, I and my partner pretty much stay glued to Netflix except for news. Being able to watch complete series of a show over a few nights or a weekend is a big win over cable/network TV. In the time before new shows, we simply reload older ones we like.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
if Netflix produces a show that mostly appeals to 4 year olds, that is fine. Mom and Dad think $9 a month is a cheap way to keep the kids occupied while they make dinner. Advertisers would hate that though because kids that age don't spend money.
Serving an audience too young to buy things is also why OTA TV has an E/I requirement. Broadcasters are willing to pay extra for shows that fulfill their requirements under the Children's Television Act.
Who cares Netflix is still going strong and will continue to do so regardless of what's on cable.
one of the proposed solutions I read about was for Netflix to place some content distribution servers in Comcast's data centers. To do so would have required Netflix to share it's usage data with Comcast, and Netflix didn't want any part of that.
That's not what I remember being the problem with installing an OpenConnect Appliance at Comcast. It was that Comcast didn't want to give away colo space without charge.
If all popular shows are mirrored on all CDN nodes, how is that going to help?
Just because you're roommates doesn't mean you need to split everything, right? He can pay for the cable bill, and you don't touch the cable and just use whatever services you prefer.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
One day it will all be ads on Netflix, just as it is on "TV".
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Given that this is Slashdot, I am surprised not to see any notable discussion of an important issue: If this turns in to an actual legal battle, one possible outcome would be the compulsory disclosure of analytics data.
That would be A Bad Thing. I'm certain that Netflix does provide detailed, segmented, specific data to the people that provide and create the content they serve. This is as it should be. To be compelled to provide such data to their competitors is anti-capitalist at best (and I am writing as an avowed Socialist).
As an operator of several commercial websites (micro scale compared to Netflix, of course), I would absolutely balk at having to provide anything from raw server logs to analytics data to anyone much less my direct competitors.
I'm trying to recall how many years it's been since I've watched broadcast or cable TV - or how much longer it was for more than an hour a month.
Ratings based TV is dead to me. To misquote a certain virtual muppet:
competition shows such as sports and "reality"
I don't care about either of those
Even if you don't, does somebody else living with you "care about either of those"?
Mostly centered on avoiding taxes while still relying on civilized society and infrastructure to continue on... somehow.
Take their gross revenues and divide by $10. ( about 8 bucks for 2 screen streaming up to a small number at $52 for high bandwidth high disk plans that are probably 1%'ers).
Their gross revenues in 2015 were 1.5 billion.
So about 150 million viewers.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
You need a roommate who isn't a mouth-breathing sports-tard.
This is corporations. This is about profit. Traditional shows have to worry about viewership because they use the viewership numbers to generate the prices for the advertising.
The ideal traditional TV viewer is one that watches a lot.
The ideal netflix customer is one who subscribes but watches nothing.
Netflix does not care about viewership. Netflix cares about subscriptions. If they can keep the subscriptions with a few high quality shows that keep the customers hooked then that is good. Netflix is not interested in the viership of a program but the number of customer lockins it gets from the shows it has.
The Netflix marker it different.
There is nothing about Nielson ratings that wouldn't work equally well--or poorly--compared to traditional TV or cable. Broadcast TV doesn't share viewer numbers at all, because they can't. So the fact that Netflix doesn't share numbers doesn't hinder Nielson at all, compared to broadcast TV. If they want those numbers, pay Nielson for them!
I don't watch broadcast or Netflix. I pay for a subscription to Netflix and also to a cable TV provider (my wife is stubborn and won't cut the damn cord... even though she watches everything from PVR).
Netflix offers all the shows a person needs to watch on a single platform with a single price without the commercials (I think... I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any). I think there are online sports streaming networks as well, though I don't understand why that can't just be recorded and played back as well.
NBC plays commercials and on the rare occasions I am willing to turn on a TV when I'm in the states, it seems NBC does very little to make this tolerable. They sell airtime to anyone who is willing to pay. I know damn well I don't want to feel like by watching a given program, I'm an optimal candidate to advertise gambling websites to... it makes me feel as if I'm some sleazy loser who pisses money away on powerball tickets. I regularly ask my wife "Do you feel comfortable with being targeted as being a member of a demographic that would buy something or use a service because they jacked up the volume and tried to sucker you into thinking that you have a chance of actually winning when it's absolutely obvious the advertised wouldn't exist if they didn't win more money than they lost?".
NBC often has good shows (I think so at least, I don't really remember) but I can't imagine wanting to watch something that has commercials. If their content is good enough, I'd prefer to pay a few bucks a month and not see them.
âoeIf Ted doesnâ(TM)t give ratings, he shouldnâ(TM)t then be saying, âThis is the biggest hit in the history of blah blah blah.â(TM) He shouldnâ(TM)t say something is successful in quantitative terms unless youâ(TM)re willing to provide data and a methodology behind those statements. You canâ(TM)t have it both ways.â
What a fucking self-important dickwad. This is why I despise TV networks. Guess what, shitknob? He can say and do whatever he wants because TELEVISION DOESN'T MATTER!
Hey asshole, Im just about the worst sports fan out there, but even I can recognize the need to be social once in a while. Maybe you should get out of your moms basement once in a while, scratch your shriviling balls and drink a beer once in a whilr.
Or the ISP could try not upgrading its network, instead directing subscribers to a traditional multichannel pay TV service that gives $200 million per year in revenue.
I'm not convinced [QAM] is a great solution when it requires O(n) bandwidth for n available channels. The current system only requires O(1) bandwidth for n available channels. Obviously multiple viewing devices changes it slightly, but the proportions remain similar.
Now scale "multiple viewing devices" up to all the viewing devices in a whole neighborhood, which I define as the area served by one CMTS. Then video on demand ends up with O(m) bandwidth for m viewers, which can be greater than the number of available channels depending on how big a neighborhood is.
My daughter worked this out for her unilingual friends. You have to change an overall language setting IIRC, it is not per film.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
When reading a general statement about a technology such as caching, it is up to you to consider all of the reasonably applicable implementations.
Likewise, when writing a general statement about a technology such as caching, it is up to you to suggest one or more implementations that you might consider reasonably applicable.
That is on you.
When you make a claim that "add[ing] a cache" will solve the bandwidth problem of unicast video on demand and then show unwillingness to complete your claim by specifying where in the path from cable HQ to the end user's display this cache would be located, you are shifting the burden of proof. Your use of "consider all of the reasonably applicable implementations" sounds like you're asking me to enumerate all places a cache could be and disprove each. That resembles another fallacious debating technique, the Gish Gallop. But I will do so anyway, as a favor to you:
By trichotomy, if the CMTS is between the cable company and the viewer, a cache is either before the CMTS, in the CMTS, or after the CMTS.
Before the CMTS A cache before the CMTS requires the program to be sent through the CMTS separately for each viewer whose position in the program differs. In the CMTS A cache in the CMTS requires the program to be sent by the CMTS separately for each viewer whose position in the program differs. After the CMTS A cache after the CMTS would be on customer premises, making it a "digital video recorder" in a broad sense. A customer premises cache could receive the whole program in-order, like a traditional DVR, or snoop on pieces of the program that other viewers happen to be requesting, like a BitTorrent client. But given how the studios don't let Netflix pre-cache an entire film in advance on the user's device before the user begins to watch it, I doubt that the studios would be willing to license programs to cable companies that implement BitTorrent-style VOD.Of all these possibilities, which do you "consider [...] reasonably applicable"? Or what specific possibility that I failed to imagine do you "consider [...] reasonably applicable"?