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Archive for September 2009

Net Neutrality: A Chance for Video to Shine
Thursday, September 24th, 2009 by Edgar Villalpando – SVP Marketing

It’s possible that net neutrality is an oxymoron. Certainly no one is neutral about the subject and certainly both sides of the issue have very good points that they’re making in support of their positions.

The service providers have invested truckloads of their own money building powerful networks that they use as competitive selling points to a public that now believes it’s entitled to broadband everywhere. That’s the kind of entitlement that, when it’s not sated, leads to regulation. Broadband, like electricity and telephone service, is now a requirement, not a luxury, in the eyes of many.

Then there are the content providers who have made billions on the backs of these networks without investing nearly as much as the service providers. (See: Twitter Appears Set to Raise $100 Million, Valuing It at $1 Billion) Their business models are built on feeding the content frenzy and using the broadband networks to do it. Are they freeloaders or are they what the public wants when it demands broadband?
Perhaps because my livelihood depends on television, my view of the whole net neutrality issue is skewed. What I see is an inevitable change in the way broadband is provided and it doesn’t look like anybody, with the possible exception of the end users, is going to be happy about it. If, as might happen, regulators step in, I can’t even be sure that end users will be happy.

On the other hand, I sometimes think we’ve become too enamored of the whole content-over-broadband concept. It could be that much of the content is a fad, something new and something to show people you can do. Certainly people will watch TV on a computer monitor and, for shorter periods, a cell phone. But when it comes down to it, people want to watch and interact with television on a 50-inch HDTV. Delivering HDTV and interactive content to a television, to me, is the true power of broadband.

Don’t get me wrong about this. The increased flow of content and the ability to interact with it via computers and other broadband network-enabled devices is not a fad; it’s here today and it will be here tomorrow and it’s the primary reason why no one is neutral about net neutrality.

On the other hand, there is a very tangible opportunity now for the cable industry to rethink and reinvent its television broadcast strength as an interactive viewing experience that it can control. Sure, putting access to the Internet on a TV will allow other non-cable-controlled content to slip through, but there’s no one better at delivering television than the cable industry; no one better at developing content for the television than the cable industry; and no one more entrepreneurial when attacking opportunities in the television space than the cable industry.

There is no way to avoid the harsh reality that net neutrality, no matter how it breaks down, is going to cause headaches for the cable industry. Perhaps the best pain medicine, then, is to stop focusing so hard on the PC side of the equation and turn full attention to the TV opportunity. It’s not a win-win but unlike net neutrality, it’s not a lose-lose either.

Posted in Distribution, Ecosystem | Comment »

A New Digital Season Dawns for Broadcasters
Thursday, September 17th, 2009 by Edgar Villalpando – SVP Marketing

Perhaps you’ve seen the commercials; it’s a new TV season, full of hope, cops, doctors, so-called reality and dumb husbands. OK, maybe it’s not so new.

This marks the first television season where everyone is digital and that, more than almost anything in television history, levels the playing field and presents a tremendous opportunity for the broadcaster who steps off that field.

The first big step in the right direction will happen when a broadcaster realizes that video is not video and that TV doesn’t have to be TV. It’s a lesson that the online community has long ago learned and one that the smart broadcasters will learn now: digital video is data, it’s ones and zeroes (and if you’ve seen some of those fall premiers you have to believe broadcasters understand zeroes) and it can be manipulated the same as any data from a spreadsheet to photograph. Once broadcasters understand that, it becomes easy to treat that data as metadata and begin to embed it with tags and hyperlinks to provide more information about what’s happening during the program on the screen.

The biggest problem is that broadcasters have been behind the innovation curve for so long they probably don’t have the impetus to step off the playing field and leave their network brethren behind. They’re also a prideful bunch who don’t believe that they should change a model that’s been in effect for 60 years.

Rather than realize the potential of metadata to take their beloved and lifesaving product placements and carry them to a whole new level of consumer awareness, broadcasters are content with force-feeding the public ridiculous images of Cisco capabilities during 24. If you want to push a product and please an advertiser, it can be done both more subtly and to better effect with metadata.

Imagine Mike the plumber on Desperate Housewives reaching for a wrench under the sink. Embedded in the broadcast data is metadata from Craftsman. The interested—and perhaps even targeted viewer—could dive into this data and learn more about that wrench. The program—and the broadcast world—stops momentarily while the viewer gets information for a future hardware purchase. And how much more might that be worth to Sears than just a quick cut to a Craftsman logo on the wrench?

Broadcasters are guilty of many sins, not the least of which is an overdose of misplaced pride. In this instance, though, it’s not necessarily the broadcasters’ fault. They haven’t thought this way because the people who aggregate their signals don’t offer the technology that would let them to do this. On the other hand, broadcasters are often responsible for the breakdown in relationships with cable, satellite and telephone providers who already understand the power of interactivity and who are making advanced video-on-demand and network DVRs commonplace elements in their offerings.

True cooperation with outside delivery mechanisms will be necessary to make this happen. The programming stream would need to be unicast, manipulated at the headend where a server would take that stream and send EBIF tags to the set-top box. This type of data manipulation is already on tap for cable networks with the most to gain by further informing their viewers—shows such as DYI and any number of offerings from The Discovery Channel. The opportunities for embedded information are pretty much limitless. With consumer buy-in, programming can even be tailored to provide information based on a viewer’s habits and preferences letting the network DVR do the job of rooting out and suggesting the appropriate metadata.

The cable networks, as has always been the case, will take advantage of this opportunity first. Cable operators, with their inherent interactive capabilities will assure this.

Broadcasters, as has been their pattern for far too long, will be behind the curve. Perhaps, once they understand that television stopped being TV when they shut down their analog transmitters, they’ll realize the value of digital and join the embedded TV movement.

Posted in Advertising, Content | 2 Comments »

Report Offers Some Food for Thought
Thursday, September 10th, 2009 by Edgar Villalpando – SVP Marketing

While it’s not necessarily must-see TV — although in some instances it might actually be better, considering some of the stuff that was considered must-see — and it will never compare with Oprah’s book club suggestions, occasionally I feel I should offer up my own must-read opinion.

So here you have it, Edgar’s Report-of-the-Month Club suggestion, for want of a better name. It’s my way of highlighting what I’ve found that reinforces my opinions, of course, and validates the interactive TV space. If you’re interested in interactive TV — and who isn’t? — you really should tap into a report written by TV research firm Nielsen that says (drum roll here) there’s a bond between Web and television.

“What we’re finding is that there’s a connection between the two media and that innovative marketers can take advantage of that,” Nielsen spokesman Gary Holmes told Reuters. “One medium can be used to reinforce the other.”

If that information sounds vaguely familiar it’s because it’s what I’ve been saying in this space since I started: there’s content on the Web that belongs on the TV and content on the TV that belongs on the Web. The trick is to make best use of both media to the benefit of the end user and, of course, the provider. That’s what ActiveVideo will be demonstrating this week at IBC, the European media conference that swallows Amsterdam whole for a week.

The Nielsen study threw up some of the expected cautions. While broadcasters can send their viewers to the Internet to learn more about their shows, they must be careful they don’t lose the attention of those viewers. The study somewhat surprisingly — if you listen to the doomsayers — pointed out that TV consumption is continuing to increase. The average American now watches about 141 hours of TV a month, up 1.5 percent over the last year. At the same time, the study found that a TV viewer who uses the Internet simultaneously does so for about 2 hours and 40 minutes a month spending about 28 percent of the time on the Web while watching TV.

In an unrelated note that may come back later, FLO TV, the Qualcomm mobile video provider used by Verizon and AT&T, recently estimated that its subscribers look at video on their cell phones about 30 minutes a day in snippets that range between two and six site visits. That’s compared to about 28 minutes a day these same users spend talking on those phones.

All put together, it’s becoming increasingly evident that there is a link between the Internet and television and that that link is a bond, not a distraction that leads a viewer from one source to the other. As such, the most logical way to tap into that bond is to make it as easy as possible for consumers to get the content they want when they want it on the medium they use most often: the TV.

If you don’t believe me, ask Nielsen. After all, they’re the TV experts and have been for decades and they say 128 million U.S. consumers watch TV and the Internet at the same time.

Posted in Content, Distribution, Ecosystem | Comment »

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