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Making TV Better
MrMonroe
passed outon the floor nowRegistered User regular
passed outon the floor nowRegistered User regular
The topic of piracy has been gone over and over in these forums, and one point sticks out to me as generally uncontested:
People turn to pirated media because it is a more attractive product than the "real deal" to them, and several factors lead them to that conclusion.
With TV, I see there being a few points making piracy more attractive:
I don't want to pay for 24/7 access to a "premium" channel when I only care about one show. Why am I going to shell out for Sci/Fi when all I care about is BSG, or for Showtime when all I care about is Weeds? Even worse, why should I pay for 60-odd cable channels if all I cared about was Emeril and American Idol?
Commercials. TV has 'em, teh interwebs doesn't. 'Nuff said.
Availability: If I get home late and miss 15 minutes, I missed it on TV. It starts whenever I want to when I watch it online.
These are all obvious. What's equally obvious is the downsides: a pirated copy on youku.com isn't going to have the same picture and sound quality. It might be missing part of the file, might have video/audio sync problems, etc.
So here's my question: would you be willing to pay a nominal subscription fee per season to the producer of a show if it meant you could get high-definition downloads of each new episode as it came out and have access to older material at the same time? Let's say you could sign up for maybe $15-$35/season (I suppose it would have to be commensurate with whatever ad revenue they would have expected to generate per expected viewer on TV and I'm not sure how much that is) to get BSG online as it came out, along with access to the archive of the older seasons. Would you throw down the money? I think I'd pay up.
People turn to pirated media because it is a more attractive product than the "real deal" to them, and several factors lead them to that conclusion.
With TV, I see there being a few points making piracy more attractive:
I don't want to pay for 24/7 access to a "premium" channel when I only care about one show. Why am I going to shell out for Sci/Fi when all I care about is BSG, or for Showtime when all I care about is Weeds? Even worse, why should I pay for 60-odd cable channels if all I cared about was Emeril and American Idol?
Commercials. TV has 'em, teh interwebs doesn't. 'Nuff said.
Availability: If I get home late and miss 15 minutes, I missed it on TV. It starts whenever I want to when I watch it online.
These are all obvious. What's equally obvious is the downsides: a pirated copy on youku.com isn't going to have the same picture and sound quality. It might be missing part of the file, might have video/audio sync problems, etc.
So here's my question: would you be willing to pay a nominal subscription fee per season to the producer of a show if it meant you could get high-definition downloads of each new episode as it came out and have access to older material at the same time? Let's say you could sign up for maybe $15-$35/season (I suppose it would have to be commensurate with whatever ad revenue they would have expected to generate per expected viewer on TV and I'm not sure how much that is) to get BSG online as it came out, along with access to the archive of the older seasons. Would you throw down the money? I think I'd pay up.
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One possible alternative: ask for maybe up to 2$ per episode, but give me a major discount later when I walk into a store and buy the DVDs, as in, half-off, at least.
Another possible alternative: for a new show, put up a pilot episode for free download (in HD for those who want it.) Then open up pre-sales for the season pass, and announce a minimum threshold under which the show will not be made. Once the threshold is reached, you make the season, and those who paid get the episodes they paid for, possibly an hour or two before "air time" if the show is actually going to be broadcast.
For returning series, you make the last season's final episode a free download a short while before the new season is up for "renewal" and you open up pre-orders, in the same way this worked for the pilot episode.
This way, niche shows with die-hard fan-bases can be directly supported by their fans, instead of being hurt by the fact that advertisers are clueless about specialized but die-hard fan-bases. And shows which seem to have mass-appeal, but which, in the end, are only filler for the people who end up watching them, won't get as much direct funding, leading to those shows getting canceled.
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Here's what would turn me into a cable TV subscriber:
- Allow me to pick and choose the channels I want without raping me in the ass. Right now, I can subscribe to digital cable at 25 - 60 cents per channel. Let me pick and choose my channels at 50 cents each and I'll be happy. I'm not going to spend $60/mo on a 'bundle' that has 90 channels I don't want and 10 channels I do, and still manages to lack 5 or 6 channels I'd really like.
- Don't charge me per-episode. That is bullshit. Don't charge me per-show, either. If I'm going to spend money on a specific show, I'm gonna buy the DVDs. Sometimes I just want to pop the TV on and see what they're exploding on Discovery Channel today. I'm not going to spend $1 for the latest episode of Mythbusters.
- I like On-Demand. I would pay a premium for it. I would pay even more if I could, at any time, access old episodes of any of the shows on the channels I subscribe to.
- Commercials? I can take 'em or leave 'em. That's what mute buttons are for.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
That may be a good thing or a bad thing, but it's definitely the case. Right now the popular channels subsidize the unpopular channels. That's why each successive tier of a cable/satellite package includes 2 good channels and 30 channels you've never heard of.
Convergence! or, your television is ringing.
Oh, I know.
It just bugs me how there are always one or two channels I can't get unless I buy the $120/mo super deluxe package or whatnot. Like, I'd really like to have BBC America and MTV2, but not if I have to spend more than my car insurance premium to get them.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Then, put every single show/movie you can possibly think of on the service. Don't get lazy, go into back archives and have everything.
Then make a set-top box that you can hook up to your network that acts live a Tivo on crack. Have it automatically offer a share of all the downloaded episodes so people can back them up.
A man can dream...
I don't have cable either; I think non-subscribers are in the extreme minority in the U.S., most people will go ahead and pay $50-100/month for cable eventhough they are only really interested in 10 or 12 channels. There's no reason for the cable companies to do a-la-carte cable just so they can capture the tiny revenue stream from those who've opted out of cable entirely. Add to that a bunch of existing subscribers would probably cut their plan down (cause they'd have that ability with a-la-carte cable).
Assuming the average cable watcher is only interested in 10-15 channels, the going rate per channel for a-la-carte cable is likely $3-5.
edit: non-subscribers who are interested but opt out, as opposed to non-subscribers who just aren't into TV or cannot afford cable.
The porn model is probably where the business will go
And yes, I would probably also pay a nominal sum per month for one particular channel straight to my PC. The thing is, TV channels have two sources of income: advertising + the payments of cable providers. In order to offset that as a direct to drive internet service, it would have to cost enough to offset both of these expenses.
Now quick, someone get promoted to CEO of NBC, Showtime, HBO, and Time-Warner. GO!
Porn and poker, eternally blazing a path forward on the internet.
*Start with the 'free' stations: the networks, PBS, and any network provided free (and there are some- C-SPAN is an example).
*You get this catalog of channels, with the prices asked for each channel. The networks are appealing to you directly instead of the cable company, so it pays for them to not artificially inflate prices. (Most channels, from what I see, would come in at under a buck a month, and there's the occasional gem that comes in under a quarter a month. It's the ESPN empire, mainly, as well as a few others, that are causing the pain. The more ESPN you can cut out of your life, the better off you'll end up.)
*Total up the prices of the channels, add in whatever taxes and stuff need to be added (which would have to be mentioned in the catalog) and that's your cable bill.
EDIT: Dammit, I know I saw a chart somewhere, I can't find it again.
If you were to remove most of the infrastructure behind, say, HBO, you would suddenly have to pay significantly more than (monthly bill divided by number of channels) for just HBO. You would pay even more if you didn't want commercials.
If it weren't for sports programming, I would consider doing this if it ended up being cheaper than cable.
Over the internet, there will be two options: a free, advertisement and merchandise based one, which will have good but not great quality. It would be delivered via streaming video (that's what YouTube is, right) on sites with advertising banners at a quality level generally a bit better than YouTube, but not so high as to take too long or choke up computers (I've noticed that, at least on my computer, the video will register as fully loaded at random points, especially on high quality videos [although it might just have been the video]).
The second internet option would be to pay to download a full-quality version, essentially the same thing as on T.V. w/o the commercials.
I should note that my preference is partly shaped by my lack of credit card and my unwillingness to give out my hypothetical credit card number.