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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."
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by hamsterdan on Monday June 29 2015, @09:06PM
Cut the cord a while ago, installed a crappy antenna about 30 feet off the ground, and I'm getting all local channels, even some american ones (I'm in Montreal). Picture quality is *WAY* beyond the over-compressed stuff cable offers, and it's free...
Mix some Netflix in there, And I can watch anything I want to. TV as we know it will be dead in 10-15 years...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @01:58AM
I'm so jealous. Ever since History stopped showing Modern Marvels and Discovery moved Mythbusters to some other channel to make room for more reality TV, cable has been dead to me. But my wife is another story. Between her soap opera and her reality shows, she's the primary viewer in our house. The good news is, most of her stuff is available over the air. However, we're busy people who can't "make time" to tune in when the shows are broadcast. We have a DVR with our cable so she can watch her shows after the kids go to bed.
Does anyone out there have a recommendation for a good OTA DVR? I understand that the program guides cost money to make, and I'd be willing to pay something like $5-$10 a month for the service, provided it was simple enough for my non-technical spouse to use. Otherwise, I'm tempted to get out my old VCR, an Arduino, and the soldering iron...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2015, @03:27PM
Tivo does OTA.
If you set up a mythtv system you can get program info from schedulesdirect [schedulesdirect.org] for like $25/yr