Comcast Corp.'s chief operating officer, Steve Burke, issued a warning to those content providers who sit by idly and complain about online viewing without doing something to change the TV business model. "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."
He said the current OnDemand Online trial - offering viewers access to cable channel shows in exchange for identifying themselves as subscribers - was not an effort to "change the advertising model or get a minute back from content providers," rather it is a way to "get in front of the biggest social movement I've ever seen. Online video consumption is off the charts."
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"I've yet to meet a content provider who doesn't worry about cord cutting and doesn't see the wisdom of trying to get ahead of that. Stop talking about how hard it is and start figuring it out," he said.
Comcast's COO Steve Burke tells TV biz to quit complaining and stop cord cutting
Categories: Internet TV
It’s easy to say that they need to figure out how to get the next generation to “respect copyright and subscription revenue on the part of distributors”, but it’s a lot harder to do it. Frankly, I don’t think his OnDemand Online program is going to do it.
With television, movies, and music being so easy to obtain illegally (and legally, sometimes) for free over the internet, there is a large percentage of today’s youth who feel they shouldn’t have to pay for these kinds of things at all. (This is me speaking as a 20-year-old college student who knows tons of people who illegally download everything you can think of.)
Until they can find a way to change – or make money off of – that attitude, it’s going to be an uphill battle for the entire media industry.
coming from a household that has one income, our tvs have never had a cable satellite subscription ever. we choose to have a bigger phone bill to have access to the fastest dsl speed to be able to d/l the tvs we want to see. we know they are out there but as grace put it why pay for it when we can search and find it on our computer for either free or pay by episode? the way we see it we arent paying for channels we never watch. and our cable/satellite rates never go up. people are shocked that we dont have cable. when did cable become one of 3 basic needs? food/shelter/clothing/cable? we as a household dont believe we live in the stone age because we have the likes of the internet. but im a far cry from a “20 something” or someone thats growning up as comcast put it. my kids are off and gone and were raising grand babies now. so who are they trying to get at?
There’s a reason Comcast is the biggest cable company in the USA you know. Betcha they’ll come up with a plan to make money off the NBC shows online if they purchase the network.
Will it work? I don’t know. But the rest of the TV business would be foolish to root against any attempt to change the broadcast business model.
What they are trying to change is not what’s illegal but, rather, things that have always been legal. That is the big problem. It has long been established that once a network broadcasts a show for free over the airwaves (and cablewaves) it is fair game. You could videotape it and share it to your hearts content so long as you did not charge for it. That’s been the law ever since the VCR was introduced.
Now, thanks to the internet making modern “tape sharing” so easy and widespread, they want all sharing to be made illegal. The government and the courts have been happy to aide in that process, but that does not change the fact that what you are really trying to do is retroactively change the laws that consumers have been operating by for forever and a day.
So this isn’t just about kids being raised on illegal practices. This is about everyone being asked to accept that what has long been legal is now supposed to be illegal and supposedly immoral.
Basically, this is them saying, “We have a right to profit from new technologies that we didn’t invent (DVDs, the internet, file sharing), but you do not have the right to use them even in a non-profit manner,” which simply goes against centuries of copyright law and decades of legal practices.
If someone is pirating stuff before it airs, hammer them. If someone is selling copies, then hammer them. But as a 40 year old guy steeped in the legal practice of analog file sharing for decades now, I’m never going to buy in to this practice of trying to clamp down on a sharing practice that the courts long ago ruled was fair use.
What’s crazy is that this is about pennies. Television DVD sales are through the roof while overall DVD sales are down. The most common area of video file sharing has not had a negative effect on DVD sales. It’s the only area of DVD sales that have not been impacted by modern tech. In fact, some studies have shown that file sharing actually PROMOTES DVD sales by exposing a wider group of people to the product than the nets could ever do on their own.
They have a right to sell these shows after they air them for free, but they have no right to tell us we MUST buy them in order to watch something they already gave us over the air in exchange for the commercial time our viewing allowed them to sell. No moral right, anyway.
As for TV going down the tubes thanks to this, that is garbage. TV is going down the tubes thanks to poor business decisions and extreme proliferation. They are losing money to other networks, not to file sharing. Massive bucks that used to go to NBC, ABC, etc., are now going to TNT, USA, Lifetime, etc., and they want to make up for that by taking away something that has always been legal so they can eek out some extra nickels from it.
People have been saying new shows cannot be launched anymore, but everything puts the lie to that. Cable shows are launching and succeeding every day, and now they are inching closer and closer towards actual broadcast net ratings territory. Cable nets have no problem launching quality shows without spending HUGE sums of money, yet we should feel sorry for broadcast? And even broadcast has no trouble launching new shows if they are quality (Glee, for example, or NCIS LA, or Flashforward, or BBT, etc.).
What the nets want is to be able to go back to the day when any old piece of crap they put out could make them LOTS of money, and the only real trick was finding a great show that could make them OBSCENE amounts of money. Now we live in an age where choice expansion means that any old piece of crap can’t just make money by default, and nets are freaking out because they are being asked to work efficiently for the first time in history.
If SyFy can make money from mediocre ratings off an expensive show such as Battlestar (one of the most heavily file-shared shows in history), then the broadcast nets have no one to blame but themselves for being unable to do the same. And if USA can make heaping gobs of cash off cheaper shows that work because they are entertaining (Burn Notice, Royal Pains), then broadcast nets should have no problem doing the same.
They simply want the laws changed in order to try and recreate a scenario that is never coming back: being able to make money off of failure.
Tough chit, guys. Adapt or die.
I hope something better becomes available.
I live on my own, and already pay a ton for high speed internet. I do not download anything. I don’t have cable, because for a single person already paying 60$/month on internet, and 1k on rent, I can’t afford the $40 or more to pay for the few shows that I watch that aren’t on broadcast.
I wish that my internet provider, which is also a satellite tv provider could make a mixed internet/tv subscription package that is workable for a single person. I know I don’t use as much of the internet as a family, or roommates with multiple computers on the same internet line might use. I pay for a more expensive internet package because of online gaming requires a certain speed, but I don’t even use the internet for that many hours a week. I know that i’m not getting my money’s worth. So I wish they could portion a part of that 60 that I pay per month into a certain amount of hours of tv viewing (non broadcast shows) that I could access through their website. The number of hours could be based on my previous months overall internet usage compared to some sort of average benchmark. If I used a lot less than what I paid for, that could translate to a certain number of hours access to pay tv shows.
Just an idea. I think a lot of people who do watch online want to do it in a way that is legal and profitable to the provider, but is affordable and fair to single or low consumption users. Right now if I were to get cable, my low viewing (5 hours per week) would be subsidizing those families with multiple tvs and dvrs and many more hours of viewing who pay the same amount.
Imagine a digital package that says “$5 a month – every tv show you want to see.” Then out of that $5 it is allocated to whichever distributor or network or production companies you choose to watch. So lets say you watch 4 episodes of Burn Notice and four hours of SpongeBob, and a two hour movie that is from TNT but through this kind of service. The fees would be split by percentage as $2 for USA, 2$ for Nickelodeon, and $1 for TNT – much higher for USA and only pennies less than the usual fee for TNT.
Even for someone who watches across 10 or 20 networks, only a tiny handful of the biggest nets would be affected by this. Check out the network compensation and see how profits would GROW, not SHRINK per network, especially the tiny ones, if this kind of on-demand model were used.
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2008/12/31/cost-per-cable-channels-as-a-function-of-ratings/10102
This would allow the niches to get very interesting very fast with lots of new content, and the big ones might take only the tiniest of hits while still being important.
Major sports would be problematic with ESPN’s high subscriber cost (maybe a different cost tier is in order) but this would reduce costs for nearly all customers while simultaneously increasing profit for most networks.
I did some quick math. Not only did TNT still make more money in my exmaple, but even if you add up viewership of EVERY SINGLE CHANNEL it comes to $15.79 in a spreadsheet. Not that I’ve used OpenOffice.org long enough to know whether added it right, but that’s a good eyeball estimate. Some channels would be ignored and unloved by this plan, but even is someone watches half of those channels (and who actually watches half?) almost ALL would still have increased profits over what they would have gotten just by asking for their regular subscription fee. It might be tough to get the biggest nets on board, but this plan actually works out.
Schmoker, I don’t think the media companies are trying to make sharing episodes from TV shows that already aired illegal. They’re trying to educate young people that sharing albums, movies and DVDrip TV shows is illegal.