Why TV Everywhere Will Fail: Because It's Based On Taking Away Value, Not Adding It
from the not-how-things-work,-folks dept
We've been pretty skeptical of the plans by the big cable companies to create "TV Everywhere," a system to try to reduce churn by offering users the ability to access TV shows online that match their cable subscriptions. The problem, of course, is that the cable companies aren't looking at this as a way to embrace the future, but more as a way to make the internet act more like cable. This is a recipe for failure. Mark Glaser, over at PBS MediaShift, digs in to explain the many reasons why TV Everywhere is likely to fail, and they're all focused around a simple issue: the whole concept is based on limiting consumer options, rather than increasing them. The TV Everywhere supporters shoot back that they are increasing options by giving people access to their TV channels online, but that's only under very restrictive conditions that are more designed to keep you from cutting the cord from the cable company -- a relationship many customers are fed up with and would love to ditch. It's a simple message that so many companies have trouble understanding these days: you don't succeed by limiting customers and taking away value.
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Filed Under: cable, lock-in, tv everywhere
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Agreed
People have to understand WHERE there money is going.
Cutting services that charge to much is the First solution.
Cable/sat at $40-50 per month=About $600 per year you can use for beer/food/something else.
WE have to FORCE these people to give us something FOR our money.
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Re: Agreed
I'm not saying people are getting value for their money, but in the scheme of things, it's a minor expense.
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We've had this for years...
http://dish.slingbox.com/
I love it - it even works on phones now.
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It is not about....
Regarding that station in AU: Don't be surprised that in the future they offer ten or fifteen shows for free, but charge a 'viewing fee' for each episode of any other show.
That is what this is about: Big Media will take all our rights away from us, give us little things for 'free' and charge for the rest. See "Free digital copy" from Warner Bros. That is a right that we already have, but they are trying to make us thing that we don't have that right and will eventually sell those rights back to us piecemeal. If the anti-circumvention portion of the DMCA were taken out, they would not have a leg to stand on....at all.
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Considering how much I pay and how I'm treated in return, I certainly don't feel bad about downloading TV shows anymore. Would happily pay a good internet start up monthly for VoD so long as the service had tons of content and the price was reasonable. Can't see it happening within my lifetime though, what with the monopoly execs out there having their collective heads up their asses. If I didn't channel surf as much as I do (I'm home bound due to illness), I'd ditch my cable service and just rely on bittorrent for everything.
So sad, it's just like the music and software problem. I have the money and I'm willing to spend it, but not when it is overpriced, lacks quality, is full of DRM, and isn't in the form I truly want it in. This is why I won't shed a tear when the content industry collapses and look forward to all the newer, better business that arise from the ashes, hopefully having learned a valuable lesson. One can dream, right?
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It sounds like your $100 cable bill include cable AND Internet. Is that correct?
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So because little mikee says so
In a market going in the opposite direction, shouldn't you be raving about them actually making progress in allowing you to watch what you want when you want WITHOUT having to break laws (oh wait infringe on copyrights)?
I'd say having 4 shows I can watch without fear of a DCMA is better than having to risk having my internet shut off or wait a year for the DVDs just to watch what I want to watch is better than nothing.
So little mikee even if there is a fee for watching them, I figure someone has to pay the cost of the bandwidth for streaming the shows over the internet.
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Re: So because little mikee says so
In a market going in the opposite direction, shouldn't you be raving about them actually making progress in allowing you to watch what you want when you want WITHOUT having to break laws (oh wait infringe on copyrights)?
I'd say having 4 shows I can watch without fear of a DCMA is better than having to risk having my internet shut off or wait a year for the DVDs just to watch what I want to watch is better than nothing.
So little mikee even if there is a fee for watching them, I figure someone has to pay the cost of the bandwidth for streaming the shows over the internet
And I can continue to buy $2.00 DVD's at the pawn shop - pay for neither and worry about nothing.
Or just go to the library and check out whatever.
No, they can keep the 4 shows, there's millions of hours of free video on the 'net anyway. Doesn't have to be something produced by 'big media' to be entertaining - YouTube's a good example.
And I'm patient, there is lots made in the 70's, 80's, and 90's I haven't seen just yet, so maybe by the time I catch up, I'll worry about it.
Oh no, wait I won't - just because of the prices and the huge piles of BS, I watch very little TV anymore - maybe, maybe... 4 hours a week, max.
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Re: Re: Re: So because little mikee says so
> the winter olympics this year, about a total of 4 hours
> spread into probably two weeks
This is the perfect thing for an antenna, a $30 HD tuner and an otherwise mundane modern PC.
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Re: So because little mikee says so
Have you tried the PBS channel?
NOVA is there, Wired Science too.
Try the weboriginal channel on youtube and see if there is only 4 series LoL
But youtube is not alone, there is blip.tv also that have attracted some webseries that are viral like "red vs blue", comedy have moved to the internet in a big way, if you like to laugh you don't go to the TV anymore.
Those old companies are moving at glacial speeds while others are moving very fast and are making money on the way.
Right now as a customer I'm being vicious and am not screening all licenses I see on the web, if it is not CC Commons SA NC at minimum that is something I'm going to miss.
So little Tammy what you call improvement I see as a failing of an industry to adapt. This is a changing time and it will be painful, the industry may not survive but society will have to live with all that asnine thinking of these days for a long time.
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Re: So because little mikee says so
I watch what I want when I want and there is nothing that Hollywood can do, little tiny michiall.
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Maybe I missed something...
So just why should I pay a cable company more for what Im already getting with their broadband service?
I think the Cable Companies missed the boat just like the music industry did. They didn't think people would "discover" the internet at the rate they did, just like they didn't think people would find a use for those broadband pipes that they supply.
You have to laugh at the irony of a company that supplies you a service with no idea of how you might choose to use it. I remember all the Comcast ads that would tell you you could surf the web a blazing speeds. Seems they had no idea that we would use those blazing speeds to watch streaming online content. I wonder what all those execs in the cable companies thought we consumers would do with blazing fast internet speeds? One big game of WoW????
Newsflash: It's not going to get better. Focus on a FUTURE business model.
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I recently moved to a new internet company from Canada's Rogers Cable highspeed internet. This new company charges me $40/month for 100GB of unthrottled bandwidth. When I called up Rogers to cancel, they did the whole huge song and dance trying to keep me. They eventually asked me what they could do to make me stay, I said offer me 100GB for $35/month and they said that wasn't possible.
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Games up
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Simple thought ....
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Well and American Idol live when we think about it, otherwise just torrent that too.
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But it *is* adding value
"The TV Everywhere supporters shoot back that they are increasing options by giving people access to their TV channels online, but that's only under very restrictive conditions that are more designed to keep you from cutting the cord from the cable company"
In the above quote, you make a statement followed by a "but" which implies that the second statement will contradict the first somehow, but...it doesn't. The whole point of your post (based on the headline) is that the big cable companies are not adding value. But you state yourself quite clearly that they are in fact adding value by allowing people to view the shows in their tier on platforms other than a TV.
Do I agree that their underlying motives are to tether the customer as much as possible to cable and that they should do more to embrace the options made possible by technology? Sure I do! I don't think I'd be a regular reader of TechDirt if I didn't. But making this kind of non sequiter argument does more to feed into the fears of your opponents than to support your arguments.
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Teaching the kids.
I was looking at cartoons on the web and one would be amazed to what you can find.
Thousands of kid stories for free. with millions of views and even communities dedicated to translate them, probably the parents of kids nagging them to do so, so they can see them.
Those kids are future viewers so where do those companies think future adults with money will be shopping?
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Teaching the kids.
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TV won't fail.
Companies just need to understand that building the value of their service is much more important than trying to block everything else that exists.
"If you learn to embrace technology you can make it work for you."
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Ignoring illegal downloads as competition
It's only increasing options if one presumes that TV channels aren't already available online.
Maybe they're not, but pretty damn close.
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TV everywhere is valued by me
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