Jimmy Schaeffler's blog

Geoff Mason: The Premier ABC/Disney/ESPN Storyteller

By: Apr 25 2011 - 2:44am

I always considered Fate to have been pretty good to me, especially when the first “TV” person I met - and worked for — was ABC Sports’ 1972 coordinating summer Olympics producer, Geoff Mason.

The date was August 7, 1972, I was 20 years old, and the place was Munich, West Germany, in a large, warehouse-like facility north of downtown called Barnathan’s Bunglaow, adjacent to the Athletes’ Village in the park called the Olympiade Gelande. I began painting doors across the street in the broadcast center.

Geoffrey MasonThis past weekend was a perfect one to pay tribute to Mason, my first real “boss” in my 40-year telecom experience: Many of Geoff Mason’s shows are about to be aired on ESPN Classic starting Monday, April 25, 2011, as part of a 50-year tribute to the men and women of the show so many of us grew up watching, almost religiously, late on Saturday afternoons across America, appropriately titled ABC’s Wide World of Sports.

Geoff and his wife, Chris, now reside full time in Bonita Springs, Florida, while his son, Geoff, Jr., serves as a producer for the NBC News Affiliate Service/NBC Newschannel in Charlotte, NC. At 70 years, Geoff Mason continues to accept projects from his original employer, only his roles and the kind of company ABC is now, have both changed a bit in four plus decades. Today, in his spare time, Mason is also is the webmaster for the ABC Sports Alumni Association website, which he patiently and consistently nurtures on behalf of we scores of web- and technically-challenged website users.

Great Coaching

From a professional point of view, indeed, as his ESPN Hall of Fame bio concludes, he was always just really good at slowing down to walk a newcomer through a new project, or a new production, or a new just about anything. And Mason nearly always did that with some grace and dignity toward those he taught.

My late father, Willy Schaeffler, who also worked often for ABC Sports, used to say, “The difference between a good coach and a great coach is the ability to tell whether to pat the athlete on the back, or to kick him in the butt. The problem being, the two places are so close together.” Using my dad’s metaphor, Geoff was almost always just a real good, perhaps even a great, coach.

Furthermore, perhaps what has endeared me unusually so to Geoff Mason is his ability to openly acknowledge a struggle with addiction, head on, and to use that to help others. I, too, come from a family where a multi-decade addiction did its damage, and that empathy makes me that much closer to Geoff Mason. Again, a great coach takes his life experience and uses that to specially relate to students who will listen.

Saving Storytelling

But I think the thing I like professionally the most about Geoff (revived after a recent update conversation), is his emphasis on storytelling as the key part of what made our old ABC Sports shows - including the many Olympics we worked on together - such great classics of a great American - indeed a great human — culture. Put another way, with so many of those old sports shows, it didn’t matter what country or religion or gender or ethnic background the viewer claimed, even if you needed a translator to get the full set of words, the story always shined through.

For many telecasts today, Geoff Mason believes that sports production teams’ storytelling abilities have waned. In its place, young producers and directors often glued to their laptops instead rely all too heavily, he believes, on the technology, gadgets, and production wiz-bang. Geoff Mason laments that the emphasis on a first rate story and a first rate communication between the production truck and the talent announce booth, and between the production team and the viewer, is the exception to the rule during many modern-day sports productions.

Sums up Mason: “The biggest problem in sports TV today is young producers and directors who can’t develop and can’t work with their on-air talent, because they’re too beset with the [production] bells and whistles. The talent just gets left on its own, and the viewer — and the story — suffers.”

Looking back on Geoff Mason’s TV career, it appears most fitting that there is a direct link between events needing special storytelling skills and those Geoff Mason rates among his favorites, i.e., the 1972 Olympics, the 1989 Earthquake World Series, and the quadrennial America’s Cup sailing races. After all, he is a born and bred East coast Massachusetts sailor, by nature, and the other two events involve such extraordinary acts of men and Nature, to have not told the stories well would have meant a generation would never have properly understood them. That would have added tragedy onto tragedy. More importantly, sometimes as humans, and as storytellers, we just can’t leave that to mere Fate. Nor has Geoff.

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO of Carmel-by-the-Sea-based consultancy The Carmel Group (www.carmelgroup.com).

Photos and the U.S. Supreme Court: Nice Job, Judge Kennedy

By: May 27 2011 - 3:54am

Recently I read with much interest articles about broadcasting to mobile devices, and how it — as a trend — has been around for many decades. They just will not go away. After all, they help us all communicate better.

I’m in stark agreement.

Like that trend, another trend I like and see continuing is that of using everything you can — within reason — to better tell, and better communicate, your story.

Which brings me to California-born and -bred Justice Anthony Kennedy (who also happens — during law school in northern California - to have been my greatly admired constitutional law professor), and his recent move to include (for the first time ever, by God!), PICTURES!!!! in a formal United States Supreme Court decision. And even though they are not seen until page 52 of Justice Kennedy’s 52-page Brown vs. Plata majority decision, these three simple photos have a exceedingly powerful effect (almost by themselves substantially dismissing the much weaker arguments of the court’s four dissenters, justices Alito, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas).

The decision in point, perhaps appropriately and perhaps also ironically so, involved prisoners suing the State of California (once more) for cruel and unusual punishment tied to extreme overcrowding in prisons.

What I am just so taken by is the ability of this court, and of this justice, to buck the tide and thus tell a better - and thus more convincing - story. After all, in essence, that’s all that a court decision really is: it represents a story of two or more sides of an issue or dispute, and someone’s decision as to how it will be decided (and often ended).

By deciding to and by implementing the idea of adding a photo, Judge Kennedy simply tells a better story. Thus, by showing a photo of the actual overcrowding, Judge Kennedy more effectively convinces a greater sum of his audience that his decision is the right one.

What is also worth noting is that no matter how eloquent his written passages, Judge Kennedy was willing to submerge his pride and his ego in exchange for the best message…and if a photo is that tool, then he is willing to leave it at that.

Judge Kennedy is not the first to take this kind of an action. The Wall Street Journal broke from its decades-old tradition of only showing graphics that were black and white, and which were an artist-like depiction, rather than an actual photo. But along the way, the wiser minds at The WSJ recognized that, as storytellers, they really could do a better and more convincing job of it by showing an actual photo.

Well, the U.S. Supreme Court’s storytelling is really not that different, and thus it must be heartily lauded for having stepped away from a rather mindless tradition, in order to better and more convincingly tell the best, most relevant, and most helpful story to all that would listen (or watch)…no matter whether that audience consists of a first year law student, a layperson, or the president of the United States.

Nice job, Justice Kennedy. Mixed Signals is proud to say, job well done.

Communication just got better for all of us. Now to add videos as a communications tool !?!
Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO of Carmel-by-the-Sea-based consultancy The Carmel Group (www.carmelgroup.com).

NCTA's The Park: New Ideas For New Telecom

By: Jun 6 2011 - 7:44pm

Like a typical for-profit business, most non-profit industry trade groups must adapt to changing realities if they are to survive. That doesn’t just apply to general lobbying and related activities, it also applies to an annual trade show.

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association is certainly no different, and 2011 will offer up some fascinating new communication forms as NCTA tries to enhance its draw power and the responses of its typical 12,000 show attendees.

NCTA’s creation of an exhibition- floor stage, this year involving nine different sessions in a “Hyde Park, London”-like setting, is one of the better 2011 examples offered by this cable association representing the largest and most lucrative of the thousands of U.S. cable companies and their constituents.

“The Park” is a stage setting, with room for several dozen seats, located on the east side of the McCormick Center NCTA Cable Show 2011 Exhibition floor in Chicago. The first session in “The Park” commences Tuesday, June 14, at 12:30 p.m-1:30 p.m (CT), and, as an example of a typical session, will feature the author moderating a group of four speakers, entitled “Socially Acceptable: Community Engagement In A Socially-Driven Interactive World.”

Following introductions, in most cases, each speaker will deliver about 10 minutes’ worth of on-camera and Internet-streamed dialogue, followed by a moderator wrap-up. For those in distant places wishing to join and view via the Internet, the link is live.thecableshow.com

Other sessions will focus on topics including, in order, Tuesday, 1:30 p.m.-2:30 p.m., “Unplugged: The Mobile Extension of Cable’s Value Proposition”; Wednesday, June 15, 11 a.m.-noon “Ideas In Action: Partnerships That Drive Broadband Adoption in America”; noon-1 p.m., “Consumer Voices: Digital Natives - Habits and Habitats of the Next Generation”; 1 p.m-2 p.m., “Cable Bridge: You Can Get There from Here”; 2:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m., “TV Everywhere - “The Latest in Cable’s Anytime, Anywhere App-focused Attitude”; and Thursday, June 16, noon-1 p.m., “Consumer Voices: New Advertising Strategies and What Consumers Will Find Helpful (Or Not)”; 1 p.m.-2 p.m., “Network Nirvana: Achieving Harmony In Cable’s Connected Home”; and 2 p.m.-3 p.m., “Problem Solvers: Innovating For The Greater Good.”

The NCTA has installed some ideas to make the presentations particularly worth attending, including some “fun” audience engagement, and some innovative ways to welcome more traffic into “The Park.” One example is to have two moderators for one session, one on-stage, and one on the show floor beside a booth of one of the session participants.

The NCTA Cable Show 2011 opens the morning of Tuesday, June 14, and ends the afternoon of Thursday, June 16. All sessions and exhibitions are held this year at the Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center, south of downtown on the lake. More information - including housing — is available by going to the NCTA website at www.thecableshow.com.

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO of Carmel-by-the-Sea-based consultancy The Carmel Group (www.carmelgroup.com).

Unresolved Issues: Finding That 8-Day Work Week

By: Jun 13 2011 - 8:27pm

My friend and telecom colleague, iSuppli senior analyst Steve Mather, is a busy guy.

He visits clients, he writes and researches, he coaches his sons’ athletic teams. Yet, like me, he sometimes bemoans the lack of time and opportunity to really study and understand today’s complex business issues. “Indeed, all executives and analysts alike are experiencing information overload… we all see the ‘what’, and yet we want someone to quickly explain the ‘so what’. The challenge and opportunity today is in taking the time to figure out the ‘so what’,” Mather professes. iSuppli is a market intelligence provider with 100+ analysts covering the electronics industry.

Another telecom friend and colleague whose advice I respect a good deal, Space Systems/Loral senior vice president Arnold Friedman, sees it similarly, noting that he has sought expert peer advice on things such as finding tools to enhance productivity and organization. “It’s a good question, because I think that the point is, Can you carve out time to think and strategize?” Friedman’s company, Space Systems/Loral, provides satellites that help people communicate (and watch pay TV), even in remote locations around the world.

Yet another respected friend and colleague, Technicolor senior vice president Greg Gudorf, notes, “You need to get good at sorting and at delegating.” Greg has a team of about one hundred under him as the key executive in charge of developing Technicolor’s new electronic program guide called MediaNavi.

One of the methods Friedman has discovered is to typically start all meetings five minutes past the hour or half hour [and end prior meetings exactly on the hour or half hour], thus gaining himself precious additional time to control emails, make a quick additional call, or do whatever. He and Mather are also focused on constantly trying to cut clutter. Adds Freidman, “20-25 years ago there was a dearth of information, today it is just the opposite.”

All three find the need to quickly sort out all the information because, Friedman observes, “People today want answers quickly.” With emails and tweets and calls to smartphones, it’s tough for anyone these days to have a real excuse for not quickly responding to a request for response (even when on vacation).

Gudorf also emphasizes how difficult it can be to manage the office and personal sides of life, including, at his level, trying to keep employees content and motivated. He jokes: “The Huffington Post tried once to find the perfect way to make life better for today’s employees. They concluded the best way to do that: bring sleeping cots into the office.”

Tongue in cheek aside, Gudorf likes to delegate, and spend less and less time micromanaging, as that delegation process succeeds. He adds that a good manager lets those employees “do their things,” which is especially tough for type A personalities, like himself.

Steve Mather wraps the subject by observing, “Even world class thought leaders need time to think and synthesize.” Mather goes on to note that today’s information overload is creating new opportunities for those practicing the old art of taking a moment to do research the right way. Fast and loud stock trading are fun, but strategic decision-making often can benefit from quietly connecting the dots. Mather concludes, “In essence, executives and analysts need more time, not to observe the news, but to think about its implications”. The downside Mather observes is that “By the time you do that final edit and by the time it’s finished, that study is already out of date.”

Indeed, and if only there were more to that “8 Day’s A Week” thing, than a ’60s rock and roll group’s plea for more lovin’ and more romance…?

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO of Carmel-by-the-Sea-based consultancy The Carmel Group (www.carmelgroup.com).

Recent Pay TV Projections: Survey Says...Maybe Not, Probably Not

By: Nov 30 2010 - 8:15pm

An essential way — and one of the best ways — “Mixed Signals” has ever seen to understand a business is to survey and understand its participants.

Thus, if one were to analyze the auto industry, one might spend a lot of time with either or both of its users and/or its executives (the latter of whom themselves are responsible to analyze and interpret the demands of their users).

In a similar context, I recently viewed an article within Multichannel News, entitled “10-Year Forecast: Cable Subs Down, Revenue Up,” written by Mike Farrell, that recounted some recent pay TV subscriber growth estimates from a firm’s presenter that stated that cable will decline to 56.8 million; satellite will increase to 34.6 million in 2014, and then decrease to its current number of 33+ million.; and telco TV will increase to 17.2 million, in the next 10 years.

I take issue with this data for at least four important reasons.

Point 1: There was no basis for the estimates. What are they based on? Single-person or two-person “group” guesses? Straight-line projection growth or decline? Consumer interviews? Executive interviews? Other interviews? Views of staff writers for trade journals? Views of other trade analysts? Just what?

Point 2:  The second reason I was troubled by these numbers is that they are not logical (see below).

Point 3: The third reason I object is because if ever there were a time to adjust the length of one’s projections, because of industry unknowns, it is now. Thus, for any company to project ten years into the future of pay TV it will have this number of pay TV subs is, well, very arguably silly. I can’t see anyone being comfortable with pay TV projections that go any further forward than 7 or 8 years, and probably no more than 5.

Point 4: And the fourth — and most important — reason I was shaken by these future growth projections is because they make no sense relative to a recent survey I and my company did of 50+ U.S. Pay TV and related services executives. To a person, every single industry executive I interviewed about this very question saw DBS declining, probably percentage-wise as much as cable, especially in light of the perceived growth of telco TV.

Not a single one echoed the growth projections of the article and the presenter relative to DBS or telco. Otherwise, how will Internet/OTT and telco grow as much as the presenter suggests? The logic — and the numbers — just aren’t there. And there are many other reasons.

This fourth point alone points to why my first and second reasons noted above are so important.

In addition, 17 million telco TV subs would mean about 36% penetration of currently planned homes passed. That’s an awfully ambitious assumption, unless the forecaster is expecting a big expansion of the telco TV footprint. But, that, too, is probably overly ambitious, since Verizon appears to have thrown in the towel and AT&T isn’t exactly racing to expand beyond its original projections. It is also not something my interviewees supported — even remotely.

Farrell, showing his own research and analysis, further states — which is probably true — that the presenter’s “…predictions seem to jibe with most other analysts who follow the sector.”

Well, actually, this analyst challenges the presenter’s basis and conclusions, as well as the common sense on which they are apparently based. He also challenges those projections, based upon the unanimous opinions of 50 of the very top pay TV and Internet/OTT executives today that are making these determinations within their own companies today (and, until I hear otherwise, the apparent lack of similar executive and/or user analysis and research on the part of the presenter).

In short, I’d love to witness the DBS growth the presenter claims. However, I have to base my growth projections on something other than my hopes and guess work, especially in the current environment of maximum pay TV change, and the carefully developed opinions of so many experts other than myself.

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO of Carmel-by-the-Sea-based consultancy The Carmel Group (www.carmelgroup.com).

Pay TV Pandemonium: Cable, Satellite and Telco Get Shotgunned

By: Dec 15 2010 - 5:43pm

To borrow a line from a recent client study conducted by The Carmel Group, “If the prior video industry changes described above were sorted, they would each be no more than mere silver bullets, whereas the current TV revolution is comparable to a shotgun blast, in that huge numbers and hugely powerful sets of stakeholders are being directly and significantly affected at every turn during this crisis of change.”

What we were writing about was a comparison of prior video industry transitions, seven in particular: 1) radio, to B & W TV, to 2) color TV, to 3) cable TV, to 4) satellite TV, to 5) an analog-to-digital transition, to 6) bundled services, and to 7) telco subscription TV.

And to be clear, the current transition or set of changes we talked about there, and that we talk about here in the form of “pandemonium” is none other than the Internet and Over-The-Top distributors and their ability to slowly or quickly replace the world of pay TV video distribution that we take for granted today. And it will.

Because, as noted in a prior “Mixed Signals” column from four weeks ago entitled “New Plays For Old Stakeholders,” huge tectonic plates are in the process of shifting the video world as we once knew it. Indeed, the Genie is out of the bottle, in the form of consumers being introduced to and demanding that all-important driver-trend, choice.

Yet, when we think about the shotgun analogy, it’s important to note that the content owners and the pay TV operators are not facing hundreds of tiny pellets approaching their corporate bodies at hundreds of miles per hour. And even if they were, those corpus corporata have such deep pockets and so much to lose, that you can bet the really smart folks who run those places are going to proceed with great caution and prudence to keep that serious damage from ever happening. Indeed, witness some of Jeff Bewkes’ recent comments on behalf of one of the biggest Pay TV and content duos, Time Warner.

But what I question is how much real control they can ultimately exert over that ultimate change.

Which is to say there are now so many video choices, both from the programming production and the programming distribution sides, that unless the traditionalists take risks to completely alter their business models in light of this change, they may have no choice but to go the way of the bow and arrow themselves.

Noted one well-known and experienced and really smart executive among the 50 recently interviewed for this and other articles, “Five to ten years from now, the players making the most money will be different from those of today.”

And that is the most interesting balancing act. Put another way, how do you shore up and hang onto the great deal you have, while also looking ahead toward — and trying to control — the future that you also may not have? It’s almost as scary (and pandemonium producing) as facing a real shotgun, and not knowing whether it’s loaded (or not), or who’s pulling the trigger (or not).

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO of Carmel-by-the-Sea-based consultancy The Carmel Group.

Boyz Toyz: Sports Video To Mobile Devices Saves Pay TV?

By: Dec 30 2010 - 10:08pm

Rare is it when a particularly strong niche audience, together with an astoundingly strong programming niche, and an equally strong hardware device type combine to produce a “killer app.” Yet, live sports programming delivered to mobile devices for viewing mostly by young males seems certainly to have captured that rare marketing trifecta.

But what is truly interesting is that a recent study shows this triad of factors may well be what saves pay TV as we know it today. Live sports to boys’ mobile devices - and tied to their pay TV subscriptions - may be one of the few things that abates so-called “cord cutting.”

That is because live sports involving top-level events is the one piece of programming that appears to be farthest away from making its way on to Internet/over-the-top TV (unless it is tied to a pay TV subscription). The reason for that is that its creators and owners - entities such as the International Olympic Committee, the National Football League, and the various college sports leagues - don’t want their programming to transition exclusively to the Internet/OTT genre.

Currently, just the pay TV advertising dollars alone, to say nothing of the monthly subscription dollars, are huge. ESPN alone receives over $4 per month from the subscription payments of most U.S. pay TV customers. These sports rights owners and controllers are perfectly content reaping the dollars and the prestige and other benefits that accompany pay TV and over-the-air mass audience exposure.

Indeed, these sports programming power brokers participate at various levels with the so-called “TV Everywhere” movement - whereby that live sports programming content can also be delivered to mobile devices - only very cautiously, and only if it is still tied to the umbilical cord that is the core pay TV monthly subscription.

And live sports TV, especially the regional sports channels, are the one thing that these young males cannot access regularly and affordably using the Internet all by itself. An example is the “free” streaming of the 64 “March Madness” basketball games CBS Sports allowed pay TV subscribers as part of last season’s NCAA Division I basketball championships.

Another example is that young male in Denver who wants to watch his Pac 10 football in the fall of 2011, and local pay TV, i.e., cable, telco, and/or satellite TV packages, is the one source that is going to get it to him. But it will get it to him, and others across the U.S. like him, only in the form of that core pay TV subscription they are required to pay for.

The point is: there are lots of young males who cherish their sports programming and are willing to pay for it, meaning they sign up for and maintain their pay TV subscriptions, and the rest of the programmers on those packages benefit as a result. In fact, many would argue that the rest of the programmers are merely drafting on the success of live sports pay TV programming.

Also worth noting is the fact that most video that is not tied to a pay TV subscription and is offered on Internet/OTT is delayed, not live. Indeed, unless one has a broadcast TV receiver built into his mobile device, he is not going to see any live sports telecasts, including via Internet/OTT.

But what is truly interesting is the idea that one of these big leagues or one of these big sports rights holders may break the mold and actually get an offer from a Hulu or an AppleTV that they cannot refuse. And if that programming arrangement can offer each party - the viewer, the distributor, the rights holder - essentially what they had when they saw it on pay TV, then tectonic plates begin to shift and PAY TV, WATCH OUT!

As noted in the prior “Mixed Signals” column dated Dec. 15, 2010, strategic implications like these are what makes modern-day TV so fascinating, but also so fraught with dilemma for the existing stakeholders, and so fraught with opportunities for new players coming up with new ideas for this crazy business of ours.

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO of Carmel-by-the-Sea-based consultancy The Carmel Group (www.carmelgroup.com).

New Plays For Old Stakeholders: Application and Other Opportunities

By: Nov 20 2010 - 4:12am

A tremendous amount of money and power in the hands of a very small number of content, operator, and other players is at real risk, as several other pay TV stakeholders position their futures to challenge these incumbents.

The new challengers include those in sectors such as consumer electronics (CE), wholesalers and retailers, and others in the TV chain who are seeing these new opportunities.

Looking at the present day U.S. pay TV ecosystem, no less than a total of seven large companies control the nearly 90% of the subscribers within the pay TV operator side of the business. These include, in order of subscriber holdings, Comcast, (CMCSA), DirecTV (DTV), Dish Network (DISH), Time Warner Cable (TWC), Cox (privately held), Charter (CHTR), and Cablevision (CVC).

Looking at their programming partners, seven companies control almost 90% of the commercial video viewed today, i.e., in order of video share, Time Warner (TW), Disney/ABC (DIS), Comcast (CMCSA), News Corp./Fox (NWS), NBCU (GE), CBS (CBS) and Viacom (VIA).

And, according to iSuppli, seven more Internet Service Providers control three-quarters of the global market for that service. These include, in order of ISP subscriber holdings, again (recognize some common companies and symbols here?), Comcast (CMCSA), AT&T (T), Time Warner Cable (TWC), Verizon (VZ), Charter (CHTR), Cox (privately held), and Quest (Q).

Put another way, there’s a lot of power concentrated at the top among a very small handful of players in the U.S. and global video distribution marketplaces. And although those players are being careful not to jeopardize the models and relationships that currently fund their coffers, things are happening in the marketplace today that will cause transitions never before thought of. Things are happenings that they may not be able to control.

For example, big CE manufacturers are looking at the dumb viewing monitors they once made and noticing that there’s an opportunity for those to become smart (and more profitable, perhaps in the form of millions or more of monthly recurring revenues). Together with the inevitable pressure to eliminate set-top boxes altogether, the TV monitor of tomorrow is expected to replace the STB and to have not only traditional broadcast and pay TV inputs, but Internet and Over-The-Top access, as well.

With that comes a plethora of application opportunities. Take that one step further toward applications that users pay the Samsungs and the Panasonics and the Sonys of the world monthly to receive, and all of a sudden all the eggs are not residing exclusively in the baskets of the traditional few.

For another example, a Sears or a WalMart selling TV monitors might also want to get into the game with an application that they could somehow control, and thus make a hefty monthly profit from. Walmart’s purchase of and relationship with Vudu might described as an example of this kind of a relationship.

What I am saying is that there is an awful lot of change in the wind, and that not only means a lot of worries for the traditionalists, but also a lot of opportunities for new businesses, and for old businesses that can think differently.

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO of Carmel-by-the-Sea-based consultancy The Carmel Group.

3DTV: Challenges and Opportunities In Q4 2010

By: Nov 6 2010 - 6:13am

Recent investigations of this new TV opportunity, 3 dimensional television, suggest it will create a path to eventual success that will be quite different from its predecessors, such as high-definition TV.

On the good side, we must always remember: we see in 3D. Thus, the idea of morphing video to that level has to eventually be attractive. Anything in video that replicates lifelike activity has instant promise.

And on the good side are the revenues that many in the video distribution chain will accrue.

Plus, if consumers like it better, they are the beneficiaries, as well.

On the other hand, part of the problem for 3DTV is the fact that the technology is far more complex than its format cousin, HDTV.

For one, there is complexity in wearing mandatory glasses. 3DTV currently requires that glasses be worn almost universally, be it in theatres or at home in the living room. There is movement toward what is termed auto-stereoscopic display 3DTV, which would eliminate the need for the glasses. However, most believe that in order to rise to that level and sophistication, the costs will remain high on the sets, and the timing to do it really well, is still years away.

Which leads to the next impediment: high costs.

Taking a look back at major platform transitions, e.g., from radio to TV, and from black and white to color, and even in the past 10 years, from standard definition to HDTV, each succeeding development could count on a broad deployment and a rather quick timeframe, meaning consequentially and quickly lower costs. But not many are predicting that just so quickly for 3DTV.

Indeed, recent surveys conducted by The Carmel Group suggest that most in today’s TV business believe that no more than 10% of video viewing in North America will come via a 3DTV format five years hence. In fact, most are quite skeptical of its future growth and the speed thereof.

Another impediment to 3DTV is the loss of social mobility and contact when donning 3DTV glasses. Worst among these examples would be people getting sick or injured. Indeed, the idea of not being able to see a critical part of someone’s face, i.e., their eyes, and all that tells us about what the other person is seeing and thinking, makes the idea of ditching the glasses even more attractive.

Plus, the cost of the glasses has ranged into the hundreds of dollars, which raises the specter of true sacrifice when it comes to losing or breaking the glasses between the cushions in one’s living room couch.

But to put the costs into perspective, one recent interviewee notes that somewhere between 5% and 10% gets added in Europe to the standard cost of an HDTV monitor when you add 3DTV capability. Thus, for perhaps 50-100 Euros more in Europe today, a buyer can possibly assure that his new HDTV set avoids becoming antiquated for 15 years, rather than seven to10 years, by adding that 3DTV capability for a relatively small additional sum. (That is part of the reason some European-based companies are being particularly aggressive when it comes to this new 3DTV technology.)

And what’s beyond 3DTV? Some are already talking about what is loosely termed “holographic TV.” Whether glasses, or helmets, or full-body suits are required for this and other future TV formats is another layer of complexity that most TV viewers today have yet to deal with.

Yet, don’t put it past some incredible imagineers who are looking to meld the best technology with a set of consumer electronics equipment that can make everyone on that side a lot of money. After all, isn’t that (a big part of) the name of the game?

Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO of Carmel-by-the-Sea-based consultancy The Carmel Group.  

The State of TV Piracy In North America, Circa Q4, 2010

By: Oct 22 2010 - 4:58am

Recent research and investigations involving The Carmel Group suggest that more than $100 million in annual revenues are subject to being stolen by video thieves.

This is especially pertinent as it relates to program purveyors of premium (e.g., HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, and Starz) and adult programming, as well as every kind of cable network.

The theft is occurring primarily in the U.S. within Dish Network, and in Canada within Bell ExpressVu, because of their Nagra-3 conditional access card’s lack of a fix for card sharing, as well as the programmers’ frequent lack of sophistication, and certainly their lack of action.

Card sharing means that a legitimate set-top box access smart card is replicated, or cloned, by a signal thief, who is also known as a “pirate” or a “hacker.” Because of the limits of physics, typically today no more than 100 additional cards can be cloned off of the single master card. More precisely, when more than 100 people go on to the server at the same time and try to access the programs using the existing clone cards, the server gets clogged and cannot respond. The delay means the channel acquisition time becomes so long that the so-called customers, or hackers/pirates, would have to wait too long between channel changes. On the other hand, the clone cards work well for the pirates because they are hard to shut down via electronic means.

Through the years, The Carmel Group has advised many pay TV providers to employ a more sophisticated card solution to help remedy their conditional access problems. Yet, for Dish and ExpressVu, they and their conditional access partner, Swiss-based NagraStar, determined long ago to activate a much cheaper, “off-the-shelf” card, one that lacked the sophistication of a specialized card, such as that used today by the U.S. satellite leader, DirecTV.

The El Segundo, Calif.-based DirecTV has deployed its own specialized, custom card since the first half of 2004. That well-designed card has remained hack-free well beyond its expected time, which in its own version of Moore’s Law, would have been no more than 24 months.

In the case of the DirecTV card now in place, it has remained uncompromised for going on 66 months (or five-plus  years). That, in itself, is remarkable, and perhaps additional testament to the advice given these pay TV providers many years ago. (In other words, if the specialized card worked for DirecTV for more than five years now, perhaps it is clearly the better solution for Dish and ExpressVu today.)

Today, we estimate there are roughly 200,000 pirates receiving their Dish Network, Bell ExpresVu, and other programming via Free-To-Air (FTA) card sharing. At a modest $50 per month, that amounts to $120 million lost by Dish and ExpressVu annually to those pirates, and good chunks of that amount lost monthly by premium and adult programming and by cable network business people who are not getting paid because Dish and ExpressVu are not getting paid. The Carmel Group and its affiliates gather information, in part at least, about pirates and their effectiveness, using methods gleaned from years of tracking, some of it tied to the Internet and its resources.

Looking down the road, we still expect a full assault upon Dish and ExpressVu systems to occur in the form of a further deterioration of the Nagra-3 card’s capabilities, meaning that within the next year, millions of Dish’s and ExpressVu’s viewers will be paying nothing or a fraction of the of value of what they watch.

A recent example of the FTA pirate scourge is the arrest and conviction of southern California-based FTA manufacturer and distributor, Jung Kwak. He recently pleaded guilty to federal charges of paying $250,000 to the person who could prove and deliver to him the capability of hacking into the Dish/ExpressVu/Nagra-3 smart card.

For Dish and ExpressVu, their hands are tied. The best they can do at this time is to begin getting another card ready for future deployment and change out. This new design, or Nagra-4 card, is advised to include a feature that will deal with the element of card sharing (which the Nagra-3 card did not).

As further evidence of the gravity of the threat, card sharing is a huge problem today among Europe’s TV viewers. The amount of revenues lost at program negotiation time, and the sums that law abiding legal subscribers and viewers end up subsidizing daily because of the hackers are huge.

And what is truly amazing is that many programmers and operators have actually no real clue that this whole ecosystem exists. That, or, they turn a blind eye. They also don’t appreciate its impact on their annual revenues. Further, they do not appreciate how much at contract renewal time learning and knowing about how much of their signal revenue has been or will be hacked in the future, and the impact that can have on those program negotiations.

Make no mistake: the most revenues are lost by the adult programming sector. But even the off-air networks lose from card sharing and signal theft in that retransmission-consent agreements cannot include payments for subscribers who do not exist on the pay TV provider’s rolls.



Jimmy Schaeffler is chairman and CSO of Carmel-by-the-Sea-based consultancy The Carmel Group.

Syndicate content