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posted by janrinok on Monday June 29 2015, @04:55PM   Printer-friendly

Michael Wolff writes in the NYT that online-media revolutionaries once figured they could eat TV's lunch by stealing TV's business model with free content supported by advertising but online media is now drowning in free and internet traffic has glutted the ad market, forcing down rates. Digital publishers, from The Guardian to BuzzFeed, can stay ahead only by chasing more traffic — not loyal readers, but millions of passing eyeballs, so fleeting that advertisers naturally pay less and less for them. Meanwhile, the television industry has been steadily weaning itself off advertising — like an addict in recovery, starting a new life built on fees from cable providers and all those monthly credit-card debits from consumers. Today, half of broadcast and cable's income is non-advertising based. And since adult household members pay the cable bills, TV content has to be grown-up content: "The Sopranos," "Mad Men," "Breaking Bad," "The Wire," "The Good Wife."

So how did this tired, postwar technology seize back the crown? Television, not digital media, is mastering the model of the future: Make 'em pay. And the corollary: Make a product that they'll pay for. BuzzFeed has only its traffic to sell — and can only sell it once. Television shows can be sold again and again, with streaming now a third leg to broadcast and cable, offering a vast new market for licensing and syndication. Television is colonizing the Internet and people still spend more time watching television than they do on the Internet and more time on the Internet watching television. "The fundamental recipe for media success, in other words, is the same as it used to be," concludes Wolff, "a premium product that people pay attention to and pay money for. Credit cards, not eyeballs."


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @05:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @05:30PM (#202904)

    Is reality broken or does he not live on the same plane of existence as me?

    ***been seeing up tic in people around me watching streaming online****
    ***never seen a single person choose cable, absolutely never heard of anyone going from internet TO cable***
    ***been streaming for 15 years, no commercials, no cost, better quality, better operation, never going back****

    At a guess stories like this are paid for from a media conglomerate in an attempt to 'right' the world by altering perception of whats happening. Hilarious, I knew a kid who would shut his eyes real tight too if he was getting hit, didn't help much.

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  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday June 29 2015, @05:49PM

    My mother pays extra so tw tvs can be on comcast. she also rents a DVR.

    I cannot convince her to get high speed internet. Dialup is just fine for emailing her sister.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
  • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday June 29 2015, @06:16PM

    by Nerdfest (80) on Monday June 29 2015, @06:16PM (#202931)

    I know a few people that are stuck with cable, but I think the majority have live sports as the main sticking point.

    I'm in the process of moving from cable. For me it was local news, but I picked up a HD HomeRun that has two tuners, enabling you to stream to your PC, record to MythTV, etc. It just took me a while to get a decent antenna up in the attic. The quality and convenience is great.

    • (Score: 2) by SrLnclt on Monday June 29 2015, @06:36PM

      by SrLnclt (1473) on Monday June 29 2015, @06:36PM (#202940)

      I finally made the cord cutting move myself. My wife watches TV all the time, but half the time I don't think she is actually watching whatever program is on. My sticking point was sports. Between MLB, NFL, NHL, and college football/basketball the only way to get the programming was satellite/cable. I finally realized I was paying something like $3/day, and I might only watch a game every other day - making it effectively like $6 per game.

      Already had a WDTV Live to play local media off my NAS. Now I've added a digital antenna for live broadcast stuff and a Roku 3 for streaming. Added Netflix, already had Amazon Prime. This probably pays for itself in 2 months, and after that it's like 10% of what I was paying one of the satellite companies. I'm also "borrowing" a login of a friend so I can do the streaming stuff for live sports on things like ESPN which require a paid TV package to stream.

      It's not perfect, but so far (a few weeks in) it has been well worth it for the cost savings.

      Once enough people make this move in a couple years, the sports teams/leagues/networks may realize they are missing out on a growing portion of the population. Hopefully at some point they realize this is a lot of potential revenue and start offering more streaming for sports without full TV packages. I know that goes against their current business model and goes against language in many current TV contracts. HBO recently saw the light, hopefully others can soon.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @07:56PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @07:56PM (#202975)

    I barely watch any TV any more. No more than 5-6 hours a month, most likely.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by EvilSS on Monday June 29 2015, @08:45PM

    by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 29 2015, @08:45PM (#202995)

    Confusing headline is confusing. The article isn't saying CABLE is winning, it's saying that the producers are, which is somewhat true with people flocking to streaming services and paying to watch content that they used to get on TV. Plus cord cutters are not exactly in the majority yet, so they are sill raking in those cable fees as well. At the same time ratings are down across the board for all of the network due to streaming, 11 billion cable channels, and cord cutters. They are making less revenue from ads at a time their other revenue streams are growing.

    However, then they make a comparison to what are essentially news sites and I don't get that because it's very much not apples to apples. TV shows, good or bad, are unique. They are produced content that takes time, money, and talent to produce. It's pretty hard for another producer to quickly pump out a nearly identical show that people would be happy with (that last part is just as important as the first). That is not what most websites are doing though They are, essentially, dealing in news, in one form or another. News is a commodity these days. The news cycle is so fast no one cares about good editorial content, and once a story breaks everyone and their mother's mommy blog has a story posted about it. I don't see any way couple those two industries and have websites try to copy the TV streaming model. Hell the New York Times can barely get people to pay for its content online, you think Buzzfeed with its ADHD clickbait is going to pull that off? Nope. Better sites have tried and failed spectacularly when it comes to pay walling their content.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by blackhawk on Monday June 29 2015, @09:40PM

      by blackhawk (5275) on Monday June 29 2015, @09:40PM (#203019)

      Most news outlets are simply re-writing a small amount of the text from either the Reuters announcement, or the press release they received from a manufacturer / publicist. You can see this in action by visiting a few sites / papers and see whole sections of the "article" are word for word the same - while the majority is just massaged to fit the "voice" of that particular outlet.

      No wonder there's no value in reading these sites. We'd be better off with a communal site that paid the Reuters fees and simply printed the Reuters text as-is. All press releases could go straight into a bucket titled "advertising" since it's pretty much just that. No need for the so called editorial that many publications use to justify their existence - since it's almost always either subtle advertising or pushing a specific agenda of the publication owner.

      Local news is pretty much crap here in Aus, and national news is often little more than:

      * plane / train / car crash - in that order, pick one
      * repeating today's lies from n politicians
      * celebrity be doing stuff
      * heart warming human interest story - possibly filmed months ago and slotted in to fill in time
      * tie in story for following "current affairs" show
      * sports
      * weather

      There's nothing in that list worth hearing about, and anything really newsworthy is frequently ignored or suppressed because it shows up the channel owners or advertisers in a poor light.