Cable's Bad Web Habits
Rainbow Chief Sapan Sounds Warning Against Free Online Streaming
by R. Thomas Umstead -- Multichannel News, 3/30/2009 2:00:00 AM
In this story:
TV ISN'T DEAD
AUTHENTICATING SUBS
The theme of this week's The Cable Show is “Cable Takes Me There,” a nod to cable's ability to reach consumers across numerous platforms.
But some cable programmers are questioning whether networks should be taking their high-profile content to the Web for free, potentially leading consumers away from the traditional linear cable channels.
While a steady increase of Web-streamed, full-length episodes from such popular and critically acclaimed shows as Burn Notice, The Closer and The Beast have not hurt cable viewership, some cable-network executives fear that the industry is creating bad consumer viewing habits — particularly among younger viewers — that will eventually lead to the “Napsterization” of cable and destroy the economic model necessary to create such shows.
“What we think is that younger people don't distinguish between TV screens and computer screens the way older people do,” said Rainbow Media Holdings CEO Josh Sapan. “If everyone engages in putting cable TV shows on the Web shortly after they air on cable television, they're doing nothing other than creating what I would call very bad habits. They're bad for the health of the industry.”
Much like the broadcasters, most cable networks offer some free, long-form, episodic content on the Web. Sapan said consumers won't see episodes of AMC's Emmy Award-winning drama Mad Men or shows from other Rainbow-owned cable networks online, however. That's because he said such actions will eventually undercut the healthy advertiser/affiliate-fee dual revenue stream that networks enjoy and use to make the programming that he says has ushered in a new “golden era” of television over the past decade.
And Sapan believes that time will happen sooner rather than later — possibly within the next year or two, as more consumers watch video on the Web. He pointed to the rapid decline of the newspaper business, which has recently seen such iconic publications as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer cease their print product to focus on the Web as more and more consumers get their news and information from the Internet.
TV ISN'T DEAD
While other programmers are concerned with possible conflicts with affiliates over streaming video, few believe that such a doomsday scenario will occur anytime soon.
“It's a concern,” said A&E Television Networks president and CEO Abbe Raven. “I don't know if it's the No. 1 issue for programmers.”
NBC Universal streams only select episodes of such top shows as USA Network's In Plain Sight via Hulu.com as an effort to expose such shows to younger viewers who are actively on the Web, and to provide consumers a chance to catch a show they've missed.
NBCU president of TV Networks Distribution Bridget Baker said such offerings have not had an adverse affect on the network's ratings. In fact, NBCU's cable networks — USA, Sci Fi Channel, Oxygen and Bravo — all generated record viewership and ratings performances in 2008.
In addition, TV shows online are generating advertising revenue, according to Baker, although it's a drop in the bucket compared to ad revenue on linear cable channels.
Still, Baker admits the operators have expressed concerns about the amount of free content on the Web, but said networks have to also serve the growing audience watching online video.
“We're in the business of supporting the dual-stream model — it's the business that funds our business,” she said. “The answer is to try to address the customer's desire to get the content where they want it when they want it, while protecting the value of the product on the TV screen.”
AUTHENTICATING SUBS
Sapan believes one way of doing that is to “authenticate” cable subscribers through their local cable systems' broadband portal to allow them to consume television programs in multiple locations.
Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications are already attempting to secure distribution agreements from programmers to provide an expanded collection of video content online, whether through a free authentication format or a potential pay tier of broadband-based video content.
A&E's Raven said she was “intrigued” by the MSO authentication model, although she would not reveal specific details on MSO discussions. “Conceptually, it's an interesting conversation,” she said.
But not everyone is in favor of consumer authentication for online content. Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said during the McGraw-Hill Media Summit conference earlier this month that he's concerned about such plans. Viacom's stable of networks offer on the web content ranging from Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants to Comedy Central's The Daily Show With John Stewart.
“We want to make sure that it's a good consumer experience,” he said. “I don't think it would be very effective if you wanted to watch The Daily Show on your computer [and] you had to type in a PIN number. It has to be seamless from a consumer standpoint.”
Yet without any major change in consumer behavior, Sapan believes the industry in headed toward a “Napsterization” of its programming business, referring to the devastating effect then free music downloading online service Napster had record sales in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“Our view is that it's inevitable, and that we're in the middle of a trend,” he said. “Sometimes, when you're in the middle of a trend, you don't necessarily see the end, or the consequences or the collateral damage.”
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"Sapan believes the industry in headed toward a “Napsterization†of its programming business, referring to the devastating effect then free music downloading online service Napster had record sales in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
"
Sapan is an fool, the reason so called "Napster had record sales in the late 1990s and early 2000s" is simple , they gave people something new that the people actually WANTED , nothing more...
sure we get it, you want more cash and think you know better than us what we want, news flash, YOU DONT.
for instance as one single example,Hulu content providers could be makeing vast amount more money if they didnt restrict the shows people all around the world want see on the page but cant stream to their HDTV hooked up PCs as they are not in the US for instance....
you want to charge me a micro payment per group view because im not in the US.
perhaps im in the UK or were ever, fine give me a local country premium phone No. to call and give me a live activation No. i can enter on the generic web page, BUT YOU BETTER MAKE SURE YOUR Encoding and streaming the highest quality widescreen AVC/H.264 SD/HD for the price im willig to pay, non of this antiquated wastful Mpeg2 rubbish you US guys like so much.
of course if you really wanted to do it right, you would go right back the the begining when there was REAL innivation around and take your lead from the old MBONE multicast network protocol thats in every single world ISPs routers and related kit, and force them to turn ot back on and stop filtering it off to the end users paying the real bills and use that....
its real simple, to save vast amounts of world bandwidth, use the existing Multicast protocol inside a generic tunnel if you must and cant get the world ISPs to turn it back on.... and give the worlds end users a free installable generic tunnel app to bypass these world ISPs to stupid to use what they already have...
webpage Muticast now and next announcementsuser multicast tunnel selectionlocally buffering if needed
/wanted for later
stuffed contentmulticast tunnelend user tunnelgeneric VLC app player etc.
ttp://www.cdt.luth.se/~peppar/progs/mTunnel/
"...The mTunnel is an application that tunnels multicast packets over an unicast UDP channel. Several multicast streams can be sent over the same tunnel while the tunnel will still only use one port.
This is useful if tunneling through a firewall.
The applications primary goal is to allow for easy tunneling of multicast over for instance a modem and/or an ISDN connection.
..."
ttp://bamboo-dht.org/tutorial.html
"...Marcel has also written a report about his experiences building a multicast protocol on top of Bamboo. It may also be useful for tutorial purposes....."
incase you dont get it, heres a java based multicast tunnel, and a multicast DHT java based codebase that you could pay a 3rd party AZ/VUSE java tuorrent dev to retrofit into todays wastful unicast torrent apps and add your most basic free and OPEN middeware protocol control then release it to all the world to start using and testing real life Multicast tunneled P2p to save vasy amounts of bandwidth and real cash, for a very small outlay to pay these devs.
Multicast (tunnels) - 3/30/2009 10:34:19 PM EDT -
Hello bit torrent.
The only way "authentication" would work is if the internet TV option was on par with regular TV. That means all shows available online at their original air date and time, and in acceptable quality. If they continue to offer the same service, but require people to pay a cable subscription in a round-a-bout way, we'll just continue to pirate content. Once they learn that we are ultimately in control, they will be successful. It's just an ego game.
Allen Stanwyk - 3/29/2009 6:55:30 PM EDT
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