Sshhh!…what’s real reason why Comcast is buying NBC? TV Everywhere of course.
G.E.’s decision to sell NBC Universal reflects the shifts in fortune that are battering the media business, especially network television. The broadcast division of NBC Universal could lose big, a remarkable downturn for a network that had earned roughly $400 million in past years.
Problem: the Internet has fractured audiences and few viable business models have emerged for the distribution of content online.
What the new Comcast venture looks like: Comcast will contribute its own cable channels, which include Versus, the Golf Channel and the E Entertainment channel, and a modest amount of cash, about $5 billion, to a joint venture in which it will own 51 percent. G.E. will retain a 49 percent stake, and would likely reduce its ownership over several years and in theory, Comcast-NBC Universal will be a company separate from Comcast’s cable assets.
Some interesting possibilities could be:
It could use its power in film, with Universal Studios, to expand video-on-demand offerings by altering movie release windows to make movies available on demand the same day they are released on DVD.
It could use its power in film, with Universal Studios, to expand video-on-demand offerings by altering movie release windows to make movies available on demand the same day they are released on DVD to all active basic cable subscribers that buy HBO and SHOWTIME or purchase at least 1 on-demand film per month.
Buying Netflix: Stream movies through this service coupling subscription on cable with certain consumer benefits through Netflix, i.e. day and date with DVD or perhaps even a scheme to stream films just released in theaters 1 time only to ‘frequent flyers’ or renters of the service, but at a big ticket price on-demand.
But here is the real reason why Comcast is buying NBC: TV Everywhere. “TV Everywhere” model, which promises to give their subscribers exactly what they want: anytime, anywhere access to any TV content. They have to do this to keep their customer bases and compete. In a TV Everywhere world, the role of the multi-system operator is diminished. Your cable or satellite TV provider will no longer be your only (legal) means of watching the current episode of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. In a TV Everywhere world, Curb Your Enthusiasm will be available on literally thousands of websites and mobile apps, as long as you can authenticate yourself as a paying cable or satellite subscriber with the HBO package. Comcast risks becoming a “dumb pipe,” providing little more than bandwidth. To avoid that fate, Comcast recognizes that it needs to move upstream and own or control the content itself, thus NBC/Uni. More to the point, a consumer COULD elect to turn off his cable basic subscription and turn around and subscribe to TVE thereby allowing him to see his basic cable channels but on his PC, phone etc. Now that Comcast owns content and some of those channels it can monetize the consumer whether or not they subscribe to the cable in the house or not.
In a TV Everywhere world, it will be a terribly crowded space, with a ton of noise and websites with similar content. The sites that perform best will be the ones that create the best user experience for viewing TV content – and right now, that’s Hulu ( and who knows, maybe Clicker ?). If Comcast buys NBC, Comcast will own about 1/3 of Hulu, providing an ideal launching pad for TV Everywhere it has a very passionate and loyal audience.
This online world is a very splintered and exceedingly difficult to measure, especially when you are asked to sell advertising against the content. The real problem is a lack of tools to properly bring the right economy of scale to online which equates to buying media in a traditional way. Therefore, instead of trying to monetize a cable channel online one by one, with TVE, you can monetize the whole package in a similar way that cable already is monetized. Its a structure already understood by the consumer now. Bundle a bunch of cable channels for a small monthly fee and let consumers have access to them everywhere, including home or NOT.
The Internet while very big, does not yet command the equivalent kind of media rates and fees that Cable or Network gets today. No agreed upon means of measurement exists to give advertisers a definitive ‘rate card’ for the internet. There is no Nielsen for the web, (yet, although it was announced yesterday by Nielsen that eventually, there will be). comScore, even though they do a great job with data can’t extrapolate the data to equate to viewers ‘watching a TV set’. Making the comparison when placing an ad on a video online and the same ad on TV impossible to compare TODAY. Hulu streamed 855 million video stream last month. What does that really mean? Did all 855m viewers who watched those streams watch ALL of each stream or were many of them counted as they ‘surfed’ through Hulu clicking on various videos for a few minutes or even seconds – were they counted among the 855m? What does 855m stream equate to in Nielsen ratings/eyeballs? Does anyone really know? Nielsen despite its shortcomings has some measurable statistics for this, but its still not apples to apples.
Furthermore, Hulu still has a long way to go to prove it can monetize its audience as effectively as its parent companies can do with programs viewed on-air. Why? Its uniques are flat. Hulu’s uniques are scarcely better than they were 6 months ago. Unless the unique number jumps in the coming months (which I doubt it will), Hulu will have to meaningfully enhance its value proposition to grow its audience (can you say “Hulu to-the-TV-via-Xbox/Roku/Apple TV/etc?”) says Will Richmond of Videonuze (Nov 30th 2009). He goes on to ask “What happens to Fox’s programs on Hulu should Rupert Murdoch expand his focus beyond his newspapers’ online content going premium? What if Disney decides to launch its own subscription services? What if Google or Microsoft or Netflix (or someone else) decides to open their wallet and make a bigger play in premium online video?” And, these questions become somewhat less mysterious now that Comcast has bought NBC/Universal.TV will NEVER be the same again.
Comcast chart above courtesy of VideoNuze.com
Posted via email from williamsager’s posterous
Cloudy With NO Chance of Meatballs for $24.95
Someone over at Sony must be watching too many 3 Stooges episodes late at night to think up a promotion like this.
What a terrible value for consumers. I guess their DVD outlets complained so instead of changing their thinking they upped the 24hr. ‘rental’ price. Yes, that’s right. If you’ve got a Sony Bravia TV you too can rent ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’ for the incredibly fair price of $ 24.95 for a 24 hour term. Don’t everyone rush at once. And, those renters will be proud to know that they got to see the film BEFORE their friends got it on DVD….ooooohhh. Sony thinks that there’s a rush to see THIS film 28 days before you can see it or buy it on DVD (Jan 4th, 2010) for less than $24.95 and own the plastic disc and box? I feel really sorry for the suckers who rent it on Jan. 3rd, 2010 the day before its DVD release. If they wait just 24 more hours they can OWN it for less.
Sony, why not offer consumers something of value? Netflix list of 20 Sony films for free? 3-6 month pass to EpixHD online? Something on iTunes? Anything? This is ridiculous.
Virginia Execution of of John Allen Muhammad SHOULD be on PPV
Since we still live in ancient Greece and execute individuals in front of a private audience, we might as well open this up to the privacy of our own homes. So, if you wanted to, you could ‘buy’ on demand the execution. The 
proceeds should go to the families of the victims. Morbid? Perhaps. However, technically do-able and my hunch is that it would be widely subscribed to. Each stream would be individually watermarked across the entire screen with a see-through watermark dissuading further distribution, but not preventing it. OK, what do you think?
What Content Can NOT be Pirated, Is still 100% Free and Millions of People See DAILY?
It’s not the movies. They are all over everywhere. It’s not music. It’s not photo’s or documents. C’mon…Its TELEVISION! What I mean is this: TV isn’t pirated out of the box because the episodes of LOST or V or the last NY Giant football game (sorry, I’m a fan) debut on TV. I can’t find the upcoming episode of V which is on ABC tommorrow -10/10/09 – on any torrent or newsgroup. It may show up AFTER its debut on TV, but never before. There are no ’screener’s’ floating around the newsgroups. This being said, the content on these networks becomes all that much more important. And, I believe because its so accessable, that’s one of the reasons its NOT on the newsgroups or torrents as much as the movies and music are.
-Coming up:
Wal-Mart and Target – The last DVD standing
Are CBS, NBC, ABC and FOX must haves ??
I’ve taken quite a bit of time off from posting any thoughts, but the media business is changing so rapidly that I just had to put a few thoughts down for kicks.
TV how YOU want it and on the TV, not online…but they are stealth for the moment.
Imagine being able to turn on your tv and be faced with 3 choices; any movie old or current that you want to see, any TV show old or current that you want to watch and a large inventory or list of advertisements (both the funny ones you like and the boring ones you are sick of ). Then, let’s say you are the kind of person who hates watching ads on TV. OK, then you can watch whatever you want but you’ll pay a fee per show or movie to see it. You can always watch it again, anytime forever because it goes into your library forever.
Maybe you’re the kind of person who doesn’t mind ads. So you go through and pick out what ads you wont mind watching, then go get your movie or TV show. This won’t cost you anything because you will be watching ads. You can watch it again, anytime and forever as its put into your library. Neat huh? No plastic boxes to keep or DVD’s that get scratched, you can watch it anytime ON YOUR TV at home. Better yet, you can use one of your major credit cards to pay the fees to watch (if you are a ad-hater) and you’ll get ‘bonus’ points or in effect viewing ‘mileage’ on the card. You can use this ‘mileage’ to purchase other movies or TV shows. And here’s the coolest part; most anything that can be offered in High-Def is offered in HD for an extra small fee. But no Blue-Ray or Tivo required. And no clumsy other set-top box to install. Just a small, wireless device that just sits next to your TV. And this device is free. Sounds too good to be true. Its not and it will rear its head early next year, nationwide.
I can’t wait and I’m not telling who this is either. But its definitely very cool.
The Nielsen, Pinta and the Santa Maria – calling 1952.
While this post is about how viewers are ultimately measured, its also about the ad agencies and then their clients, the ‘big brands’ that are being billed monthly for advertising their brand on various TV outlets and others big media sources. 
Nielsen uses a technique called statistical sampling to rate the shows — the same technique that pollsters use to predict the outcome of elections. Nielsen creates a “sample audience” and then counts how many in that audience view each program. Nielsen then extrapolates from the sample and estimates the number of viewers in the entire population watching the show. That’s a simple way of explaining what is a complicated, extensive process. Nielsen relies mainly on information collected from TV set meters that it installs, and then combines this information with huge databases of the programs that appear on each TV station and cable channel.
To find out who is watching TV and what they are watching, the company gets around 5,000 households to agree to be a part of the representative sample for the national ratings estimates. Nielsen’s statistics show that 99 million households have TVs in the United States, so Nielsen’s sample is not very large. The key, therefore, is to be sure the sample is representative. Then TVs, homes, programs, and people are measured in a variety of ways.
To find out what people are watching, meters installed in the selected sample of homes track when TV sets are on and what channels they are tuned to. A “black box,” which is just a computer and modem, gathers and sends all this information to the company’s central computer every night. Then by monitoring what is on TV at any given time, the company is able to keep track of how many people watch which program.
Small boxes, placed near the TV sets of those in the national sample, measure who is watching by giving each member of the household a button to turn on and off to show when he or she begins and ends viewing. This information is also collected each night.
The national TV ratings largely rely on these meters.
Are 5,000 ’samples’ really representative of what 100 million TV sets are ‘watching’ 24 hours a day?? Someone in the household ‘pushes’ a button on a black box when he or she ends or begins viewing? I can barely get to my show on time never mind finding a button to push in the house on a little black box. Since I’m assuming that you, who are reading this right now are included in this statistic, have a TV and fall into place with these TV ‘habits’ or statistics from Nielsen ? I’m not finding fault with Nielsen. But you have to wonder how seriously does one take the ‘Nielsen’ ratings. Can’t this be done in a more accurate, better way in 2008?
I can’t help but ask: Somehow, somewhere and in some possible way, can’t the internet make this data somewhat more accurate? Am I asking too much? Comments please.
Watching the web more than TV
It will take another 3-4 years, but eventually your kids (and mine) will be spending more time in front of the internet than their TV sets. For children ages 10 to 14 who use the Internet, the computer is a bigger draw than the TV set, according to a study recently released by DoubleClick Performics, a search marketing company. The study found that 83 percent of Internet users in that age bracket spent an hour or more online a day, but only 68 percent devoted that much time to television.
Fast forward a few years, and if you were a producer of any show bound for TV and aimed at this age group (now 14-18yrs old), you’ll want to know where and how your show will be exhibited not only on TV but the web.
Viewers spend more time in front of a TV in a single day than they do a whole month with online video but one day…
Surprised? But this is the bigger picture and important because it keeps things in perspective. This is how it is today. Consumers watched 10 billion online videos in December (comScore) . People watched an average of 3.4 hours of online during the month, up 34% from January 2007. TV audiences are shrinking. They are still big and can be huge (like the recent Superbowl numbers prove) but TV has a new competitor. The 10 billion videos watched online in December was the highest total since comScore started keeping track of the stat a year ago. Apple knows this. Apple has applied for a patent that allows widgets to be displayed on TV when you’re watching Apple TV 
. So imagine watching a movie and a small search widget (with advertising embedded in it of course) can be displayed if you want it that allows you to look for any actor or production person in the movie you are watching or reference other info at IMDB, for example. Or give you the ability to chat, read news feeds, get sports scores, etc. What a nice way to integrate the internet with TV viewing. Unobtrusive, but there.
“With the writer’s strike keeping new TV episodes from reaching the airwaves, viewers have been seeking alternatives for fresh content. It appears that online video is stepping in to help fill that void.” This is what the Exec VP at comScore was quoted as saying. I’m not so sure that the writer’s strike had too much to do with these numbers.
The growth in video on the web had been steadily increasing year after year. Consumers are spending less and less time watching TV – and that’s been happening now for many, many years – consistently. This is a trend that is not going away anytime soon.
10 years from today, these numbers will look funny, but for now here is what they look like:
Google Sites 
once again ranked as the top U.S. video property in December with 3.3 billion videos viewed (32.6 percent share of videos), gaining 1.3 share points versus the previous month. YouTube.com accounted for more than 97 percent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 358 million (3.5 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 340 million (3.4 percent) and Viacom Digital with 238 million (2.3 percent).
I wonder if you’ll be able to get an Apple widget on a Google Panasonic TV set next year? Hmmmm, that will be interesting.
Top U.S. Online Video Properties* by Videos Viewed
December 2007
Total U.S. -- Home/Work/University Locations
Source: comScore Video Metrix
Property Videos Share (%) of
(000) Videos
Total Internet 10,156,199 100.0
Google Sites 3,314,962 32.6
Fox Interactive Media 358,353 3.5
Yahoo! Sites 340,409 3.4
Viacom Digital 237,689 2.3
Microsoft Sites 180,443 1.8
Time Warner Network 174,079 1.7
Disney Online 123,009 1.2
ESPN 84,839 0.8
Apple Inc. 50,316 0.5
ABC.COM 47,259 0.5
* Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks.
Online video includes both streaming and progressive downloads
We are getting closer…GoogleSonic TV sets!
We are swiftly approaching the convergence of the TV and the web. Google 
is helping this transformation by signing a deal with Panasonic today as reported by Duncan Riley at GigaOm to build and sell ‘Google’ TV sets. They are suppose to include access the YouTube, Picasa Web Albums and probably gmail, but this is not confirmed. What is confirmed is the blending of TV and the web. This implications of this deal are clear – once consumers get access to larger pipes (bandwidth) to the home, TV will be delivered over the internet. One year, we will all wake up and there will no longer be any difference between ABC-TV that I’m watching on my computer screen in my office or ABC-TV that I watch on my large flat panel TV in the living room which is framed by and delivered through a browser. I can’t wait!
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