Television is a interesting media in our day and age. It is the one media where the end consumer has almost total control over what they watch yet at the same time lack the fundamental control that is a given with other forms of media. In our age today a person can purchase any number of different television packages that range from the very basic to everything but the kitchen sink. People if they so choose can even choose to not purchase television and just watch what is broadcast publicly. There is a fundamental problem with any of these television options you (the consumer) have no control over when you get to watch you purchased service.
Think about it, when you get your morning newspaper the ink on the page stays visible for as long as the paper lasts. The ink doesn’t disappear a couple of hours after the paper arrives. When you goto the movies there isn’t just one showing on one screen there are many showings on many screens making it all the more convenient for you the consumer to par take in the movie experience. How come with television if I miss a show and I forget to tape it I’m out of luck?
I can get all of my printed media on the Internet for free, but I still buy books and magazines. Why well sometimes I just want a very small section of what is the Internet other times it’s just nice to have a off line edition. Movies are moving to a on demand format and if you happen to like porn I’m sure that you know all the porn you could ever want from midget porn to super husky amazon porn is available on the Internet for a price. Sure it’s a huge download but you keep it for as long as you like in most cases for the same price as going to the store and getting your DVD from there.
Which brings us to television the last of the big media formats to become wildly a on the Internet. Today if you try to download a television show from the Internet you will probably not have anything happen to you. However the Television industry is out there and they are watching. Somewhere someone will get a notice saying if you don’t want to get sued you will stop downloading the shows right now.
Ok I can understand why television studios/networks are doing this they are losing money in the form of advertiser dollars every time someone downloads a show. If enough people download a show for free then that is the end of the show because there is no more money being made from it. There was a similar situation not to long ago in the music industry. At first the music industry tried to squash the downloading of songs but that didn’t work because for every one service they took down three more popped up to replace it. Finally the music industry got smart started selling music on line for a small fee. Turns out the magic price point for music is somewhere between $.88 and $.99
This led to another problem, formats of the music itself. There are at least FIVE different formats for music files and that is not including the encoding schemes and compression algorithms that may or may not require additional codecs. On top of the technical mess there was also the problem of how to integrate everything so that John Q Public could download their music pretty much trouble free and not have to worry about it.
All of the pieces of the puzzle where there but no one had put them together. Until Apple started a little thing called iTunes. A all in one program that would take care of the music store thing ,the music downloading thing, and the music playing thing. Oh and provided a nifty interface along with looking cool. And Apple gave this little program away for free. What was the catch? You couldn’t play music purchased at other stores on iTunes but once you purchased your music from iTunes it was your forever. Pretty quickly everyone moved to iTunes or was trying to be like iTunes when it came to music.
So what now of Television? The reason I bring up iTunes is because it is one of the few successful marriages of marketing and DRM out there. Would a iTunes for Television work? That is a very good question. However once again we have all of the pieces we just don’t have them put together in the right order.
First off how do you download a television show that is literally 100X the size of a music file? You can’t push it out a single big pipe any kind of user load that would be the end of your service. Instead you share the load. We already have this technology it’s called bit torrent. You have a few seeder files out there on the Internet and when someone purchases a show a bit torrent tracker file is sent to their iTunes for television automatically. The downloading begins immediately at a low priority as to not to interrupt the web connection to much. Now that the load is broken up how do you break it up even more? You have to give to receive. In the iTunes for TV program there is a optional feature that is turned off by default but when turned on it allows the shows that you have purchased and downloaded to be shared with other iTunes for TV users. Ok thats nice you say but what do I get out of it? So long as the user continues to share the television shows they have downloaded they will be entitled to something for free every week. Like one free show a week or if they build up enough credit they could download from a selection of movies that are also on iTunes for TV. I know not the cleanest but it works.
How much do you pay for your downloaded TV? The $.99 a song model seems to work pretty well for music. And something very similar would probably work for iTunes for TV as well. A typical season of television will run for 20 to 24 episodes on network television these shows are typically available 6 to 18 months after their original air date on DVD for somewhere between $29.99 and $49.99. That works out somewhere between a $1.10 and just under $2 a show. This is all gravies for the television studio since the money has already been made in merchandising and selling the series to various television networks. A $.99 model would probably work as well in the form of a loss leader. Drawing people in to maybe purchase the extended edition of the show where some sort of fore shadowing occurs that is not really important but is really more for the die hard fans. Lets crunch some numbers here, Star Trek: Enterprise costs approximately $1.6 Million a episode to make for the studio. That is everything actors salaries, food, sets, film, and whatever else goes into a show. When the Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Babel One” aired approx 2.5 million people nation wide tuned in to watch on a Friday night at 8pm. The studio and television network lost money on the episode of Star Trek. Now at $.99 The studio just made about $2.5 Million for a $1.6 Million investment. That is not including any merchandising or syndication or anything else that is just straight downloads. Paramount just made some money.
What is the last piece of the puzzle? Television it self… people will still surf television not willing to spend their hard earned dollars on shows they know nothing about but. But how do most people discover television shows? Word of mouth and surfing channels. You need television to advertise for your download service so you can make money on both fronts.
Now this is my own ramblings and thoughts on the digital media in this current day and age and quite honestly I could be full of it and I wouldn’t know. So take this with a grain of salt and remember kids starving artists need to make money too.