On Mon, Jan 03, 2005 at 03:53:24PM -0800, Bruce Markey wrote:
And the stations have very little interest in providing accurate listing data to people who don't watch their commercials. Myth
The stations report their schedules to the listings service, period. They do not provide accurate data for the listings services paying customers and inaccurate info to give to end consumers =).
What I mean is, it is in the station's interests to report listing data for viewers who will watch the show with commercials, such as those who read listings in the newspaper and TV Guide, and those using dedicated guides like the on-screen displays of satellite and cable companies. (The latter sometimes include vcr control, but it's a minor use compared to PVR uses.)
I know that is what you meant and is exactly what I meant to call into question. There isn't a good version and a bad version of the data to give out to the good people and bad people. The stations simply report one version of their schedules to the companies that they pay to distribute the listings data. The listings service has no interest in segregating who receives the data. Their mission is to claim the highest number of eyeballs.
The stations want to get the data to as many people as possible in hopes of higher ratings and higher commercial rates. The listings services want to show big numbers to charge the stations. The ones that should be concerned about whether people watch commercials (they don't BTW ;-) are the advertisers. If they believed there was some reason to discriminate, they should also try to screw over people with weak bladders who go to the bathroom during the commercials.
Not all DataDirect users have DVRs. Not all DVR users skip all commercials. Not all TV viewers watch all commercials (flip channels, leave the room, etc.). The impact of DVRs is part of the overall statistics of the effectiveness of TV ads and is something that Nielsen, advertisers and and station's fee structures need to address. However, I just think it's paranoia to jump to the conclusion that the listings services want to punish certain classes of users. They don't. They get paid to promote the lineups. CBS wants you to know when CSI is on whether or not you own a DVR. If a listing service refused to do the job they are being paid to do, somebody else will do the job instead.
My point is, it makes the opposite of sense for them to want the data to be sold to paper users and given away to PVR users. They would much rather it be the other way around.
It is the inverse of illogical non-sense to think that 'they'... Now I'm lost. Listings services exist to get the word out. The partnerships exist, I assume, to recoup some costs but mostly to provide support, service and to hold someone financially accountable for any disruption in service.
I think the confusion comes from the idea that TV listings are something that you want and therefore something that you should pay for or it will be withheld from you. Not true. Stations are promoting their lineups and the listings services are an avenue to get that information out. Listings will always, always, always be available and listings services won't want to try to withhold them nor could they succeed (whatever that means) if they wanted to. TV listings are no more likely to be taken away from you then Greenwich putting the clamps down on all that free correct time you've been receiving without looking at their popups.
In addition, it is in their interests to not report precise showtimes to tapers and PVR users when shows start a minute early or late. They want to discourage watching without commercials, and encourage watching the commercials around the fringes of programs.
Well that's another issue but note that this would be in the
one and only version of the reported schedules. These appear
in printed copies and not sent as an exception for certain
customers.
Next, it is most certainly not "in their interests" to do this but poorly thought out experiments that highlight the stupidity of the morons that make these decisions. The idea appears to be that they may have thought they could force schedulers in simple DVRs to record their shows and force an overlap so that the users would not see a competitors show since the users couldn't fix the overlap. Myth, of course, allows negative offsets. The folly of this is that the opposite is just as likely to happen. Their shows may not get recorded due to the overlap and their sponsor's ads then have no possibility of being seen (and BTW, a recorded program with the ads that might be seen is better than the user never seeing the program at all).
On the other hand, if anyone thought that by jerking around the schedule, users would decide that 'a DVR is a bad idea because NBC might screw me over so I better watch Live TV from now on so I don't miss anything', then they are truly hopeless fools.
users are worse than Tivo users as they have automatic commercial skip.
Data is gathered and distributed. There is no such distinction.
But there is. They know what data goes to newspaper, what goes to cable companies, to Tivo, to Replay and to datadirect/Mythtv users. They may not be making any distinction at present, but they can make it, and will make it if they see it as being in their interests.
Their interest is number of eyeballs (http://biz.zap2it.com/history.html if you don't believe me). The station's interest is Nielsen rating (should be self-evident). The idea that someone wants to segregate and screw over seems more like irrational fear than any practical strategy. How would they choose to harm DVR users and to what end? Retaliation for the fact that they wish DVRs didn't exist? For me, it just doesn't add up.
That's moot. They are in the business of distributing data not preventing distribution. If they didn't want individuals to get
They are in the business of making the most money from the role they play.
The role they play is to distribute listings. If they turn away recipients, they reduce their reach and can not command high fees.
DD is not a for MythTV only thing. If it was attributed to one applications it would be XMLTV.
Aren't PVRs like Myth and BeyondTV etc. the biggest users of XMLTV and datadirect? By far the biggest users?
Good question. I have no idea. I do know that there are a lot of other applications that used XMLTV for purposes other than scheduling data for DVRs. I have no idea what the proportions or numbers are like or how to possibly figure this out. But I do know who does know this. Tribune Media Service Entertainment Products has done a fairly exhaustive study of precisely how many users use their data for which specific applications. I bet they even know the number of users per capita in the 18-34 age range in urban areas west of the Mississippi that use MythTV with a subscription cable service. That's something they didn't used to know. Maybe you should ask them instead of me ;-).
* So rather than just assuming this, I decided to find out for a fact if stations pay the listings services. I called a couple local network affiliates and got voice mail for the person who knows at each of them. However, when I asked my local PBS station, KLVX, if they pay to have their listing go to Gemstar and TMS, I was told (emphatically ;-) that they absolutely and pay and that they "go through TRAC Media" (http://www.tracmedia.org/).
TRAC media is devoted to public television, so I am not sure what this says about the rest of the situation.
Oh, nothing in particular. I didn't include this as some evidence
of something. I just thought it was interesting that not only do
they require the listing services but they even out-source the interface with the services.
However, if the stations do indeed pay Tribune Media to put the data in and the media companies (newspapers, Tivo etc.) pay to get it out, then they've got a sweet little deal going.
See, this is what I've believed all along. Don't know if I'd heard it somewhere or if it was just obvious to me. The way advertising generally works is that a company with a product or service pays to get the message out to potential customers. In this case, it is the networks that are paying someone, anyone, to tell the home viewers what's on and this is an opportunity that lead to TV Guide (I claim no specific knowledge about the history of Genstar =).
I can't imagine a business model where some company went around begging stations for data in hopes of selling it to newspapers just for the TV listings on the entertainment page. I believe the re-distributer agreements would be secondary and have more to do with support and accountability and for the listing service to track the reach of the partner. It just doesn't seem that valuable to newspapers to pay a lot for this feature in hopes of increasing their circulation. On the other hand, it is very valuable to stations to get their schedules out into the hands of everyone who owns a TV.
However, it doesn't suggest they will want to give it to us for free forever. If they feel they could charge, I think they will. They will, in any event, charge _somebody_ as they are not philanthropists.
Right, they are not which is why I've been trying to point out that they want to do this for their own selfish reasons. They will not discourage circulation and lessen their clout with the TV station that they are charging. I honestly believe that they will never charge as it is counter-productive to their mission to serve their primary customers.
I am concerned about the suggestion they would charge the stations for feeding the PVR users data so the PVR users can watch commercial free, it just isn't in the station's interests to subsidize that.
Sounds like a good argument on paper for why users should feel afraid but it doesn't add up. Stations cannot force people to not use DVRs by telling the services to withhold data from them. The stations pay once to get their one schedule out to as many people as possible and couldn't benefit from trying to keep this information out of the hands of DVR users.
-- bjm
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