I've been bad again!

Between life and work I’ve been so busy, I have neglected my blog.  I’ve tried to calendarize it, prioritize it, and maximize my effort to it.  To no avail. 

So the president thinks we should make the internet a public utility.  Somehow this will ease pricing and increase speed.  What might the reality of it be?  Let’s look at public utilities.  Two that come to mind are electric and natural gas.  So when was the last time you were pleased about your natural gas bill?  Yah, me too.  But what about electric?  It has been said for decades that the power grid is dangerously antiquated and in need of updates.  The innovation isn’t exactly flowing out like a river from energy groups.  So why would you want to take possibly the single greatest innovation since electricity and turn it into a bureaucracy?  Do you think the munificent folks at Google would run all that fiber if it was capped on pricing? 

People are worried about ‘fast lanes’ being created and them being left outside with dial up speed.  But fast lanes are not about how fast internet comes into your home.  It’s about how fast Netflix and other internet dwellers get on to the internet.   

Another argument that is with ISPs getting larger, innovation will somehow be stifled.  Yet with Amazon, Hulu and Netflix taking more than their fair share of bandwidth, where do the smaller operators fit in?  Especially when there is no incentive to improve speeds because everything is set and mediocre might just be good enough.  I think there’s a better way.

A la carte here we come!

So cable haters have been rejoicing because there are going to be online offerings of HBO and CBS.  I posted about this a few days ago.  I have been reading blogs and commentary since then that say this is the end of bundled cable.  One in particular I found amusing was a commentary to an article about this how the poster was going to get 10 channels and by his estimation, pay about $10 for the pleasure.  So I asked him if he actually read the blog post.  If you bought just HBO and CBS at their estimated prices, you'd be at $14.  So if you figure in an average price of $7 per network, that makes his cable bill about $70 for those 10 channels.  About what he pays now to get 70+ nets through the evil bundle. 
And at the end of the day, someone still has to aggregate the billing.  Imagine going into the supermarket and writing out a check to every company that you've bought food from.
The fact is that as content moves to delivery over the internet, it may not look or feel much different than it does now.  Want ESPN, then pay $48 for the"Disney Bundle"  Want CNN?  Buy the Time Warner bundle...$29, MTV...the Viacom bundle, $35.  Now how does it look?

Content, like internet speeds, is a value proposition.  Cable rating vs broadcast keeps heading in opposite directions.  The business model of broadcast was never able to address audience fragmentation.  A la carte can, but don't believe it decreases the value of the content because anything that attracts an audience still has value.

What does that mean to me?

Another consumer confidence report is out:

 

 CONSUMER CONFIDENCE REBOUNDS

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index, which had decreased in September, rebounded in October. The Index now stands at 94.5 (1985=100), up from 89.0 in September. The monthly Consumer Confidence Survey, based on a probability-design random sample, is conducted for The Conference Board by Nielsen. “Consumers have regained confidence in the short-term outlook for the economy and labor market...With the holiday season around the corner, this boost in confidence should be a welcome sign for retailers,” said Lynn Franco, Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board. Consumers’ optimism, which had declined considerably in September, improved in October. The percentage of consumers expecting business conditions to improve over the next six months increased from 19.0% to 19.6%, while those expecting business conditions to worsen fell from 11.4% to 9.3%.

So what does this mean?  That tomorrow there will be another report indicating that consumer confidence has fallen!  Holiday spending will be up!  Holiday spending will be down!  Expect the economy to grow!  Expect the economy to shrink!

The bottom line is if you have a strong identity and a strong message, you will grow.  Most importantly if you provide a good customer experience, you will grow.   Share your customer experience with content marketing and a strong message.  I will write more about that later.

Until then, let’s celebrate the good news of consumer confidence…till tomorrow.

Cable is DEAD....again.

The cry of cable is dead is ringing out across the internet this week with the twin announcements that HBO and CBS are opening up OTT streaming shops.  Before we all get out our black mourning coats for cable there are 2 things to keep in mind.  First off, in every article I read, Time Warner, owner of HBO, is working with MPVD providers (cable companies) in rolling out their services.  HBO is not going to endanger their core business to scrape up a few million ‘Game of Thrones’ pirates.  In fact, all you bit torrent users may want to beware, I feel a substantial change coming over HBO about the pirating of their service to view GoT.  They had viewed it as a badge of honor in past, but I believe they are over that and want the money.  So in the end, I think there will be some folks to leave cable to get only HBO, but far more of their potential viewers get no cable now, so there won’t be a huge change.

Now, about CBS.  They are hoping you will pay $6 per month to view past episodes of current shows, and past seasons of their programming.  So the boys of the Ponderosa will ride again and Captain Kirk will be zooming around the galaxy with Spock, et al.  Here’s the problem, cable subscribers can already access this seasons’ programming with the On Demand function of their cable boxes.  Most if not all of the older shows are available on Hulu, Netflix and other OTT services.  So why would someone want to pay $6 to get it all in one place?  Because Sumner Redstone believes that the Tiffany Network still carries the kind of cache that makes people think that 6 bucks is worth it to get all that content in one place.    It’s a branding effort.  I remember watching a roundtable and the FX network president complained to Reed Hastings of Netflix that he was irritated that there was no branding of FX when people go to Netflix and watch past episodes of Sons of Anarchy.  Same thing with CBS, they hope that the stored goodwill of the past will reflect on the current crop of shows.  Whether or not Redstone is right remains to be seen, but I’m betting not.   

Missed you!

I am guilty of a cardinal sin of social media. Taking too long between posts on a site which is only driven by its content!  Let’s move on and promise each other it won’t happen again. 

It was with particular delight I read that Nielsen had data errors which lead to incorrect ratings during the new season of shows.  I am delighted for a couple of reasons. One is Nielsen has ALWAYS been susceptible to rating errors, especially in diary markets where it was once reported that ratings numbers are only within 10% of the true numbers 10% of the time.  How are they even able to sell data that corrupt?  Secondly raw numbers are worthless.  So 1.8 rating means what?  If I’m selling skateboards a 1.8 in 18-49 just tells me I have lots if waste because I need to reach 18-24 year olds.  Likewise if I’m selling reverse mortgages, those numbers mean nothing to me.

Rentrak is the new kid on the data block and they will be pushing Old Man Nielsen out the door pretty soon.  With their mix of viewing numbers and contextual data on just WHO is viewing and their ability to do mobile measurements puts them light years ahead of Nielsen.   The internet is taking content (TV) and fragmenting it even further.  I had someone complain to me last week that one of the networks had a new channel position and that made them upset.  I asked them, “Do you have Netfilx?”  They said yes, and I asked them, “What channel is that on?” 

This is the future of TV.  Welcome to it Nielsen.

NFL on the air!

So it was just announced that Direct TV had renewed the NFL Sunday Ticket.  Look at this:

DIRECTV RENEWS SUNDAY TICKET 

"DirectTV announced renewal of its NFL Sunday Ticket deal with the National Football League. Renewal of the exclusive right to distribute every Sunday out-of-market NFL game had been required for completion of DirecTV’s pending acquisition by AT&T. Terms weren’t disclosed, but the new agreement expands the satellite pay TV company’s rights to stream NFL Sunday Ticket live on mobile devices and via broadband Internet."

The last line is the entire reason AT&T bought Direct.  Look for more of their carriage agreements to have this clause.  AT&T was not able to buy their way into the TV business with U-Verse, so this is the new in.  This one will work for them because this is the future of how cable TV will be delivered, anywhere, anytime.  It is the way Charter will do it, Comcast, everyone.

Welcome to the future and the next time someone tells you pay for play is dead, refer them to this transaction.  Content is king, and your audiences, your customers, pay for it every day because they can customize it to their taste.

Where we are.

There was just an article in one of the trade magazines that AMC is looking for one million dollars per spot in the series finale of Mad Men.  That’s getting up there in Super Bowl range.  Someone asked me why broadcast shows never get to that level of ask and the simple reason is that by the time the series finales air on broadcast, the show is on a downward spiral.  Breaking Bad was never so popular as it was in the final season.  It dominated social media and even traditional media for months leading up the final.  There were BB binge viewing parties, BB themed events at bars and restaurants and even President Obama caught the bug.  Why, because cable can be happy filling the desires of smaller audiences.  Broadcasters are looking for sheer numbers, and will not wait for a show to build them.  Every season they trot out a bunch of new shows and by the end of the year bring back 2 or 3 of them for next season and start the process all over again.   Another indicator, one that I find a little unsettling, that is putting cable on par with broadcast is for the first time in my memory a show with fairly good ratings, Longmire, was canceled because the viewer profile of the show was too old.  I remember a couple years ago when NBC canceled Harry’s Law.   It was their number one scripted show and number 2 overall, but the demo was too old.  Longmire was the second most watched show on A&E behind Duck Dynasty.  My point in all this is that people in charge should stop determining what is a failure and what is a success based on their expectations.  Give me the number one rated scripted show on a network and I could easily find a way to make money with it.  Most media people would probably agree. 

Who is your ‘audience’?  Why?  It isn’t always necessary for you to define your success…letting your customers do it might be much simpler.