>From several thousand miles away, it feels that the worst thing about this change is that something which the viewer (or potential viewer) used to have is now being taken away. If ABC had never offered same day/next day streaming, then nobody would complain. Or if it had been a premium from the get go. But that's not the case.
The whole thing does feel a little old-world - trying to get viewers back to seeing programming live because that's still where the big money is made. Failing that, earn a bit more cash from an iTunes or cable option. Streamed shows just don't deliver the revenues that broadcast delivers. But it does seem that this is a flawed business model. Given the choice of paying $1.99 (or whatever) if I miss an episode of a serialised drama that everyone is talking about at college/work, or waiting a week, there's a generation (several generations actually) who are perfectly capable of finding it "elsewhere" generating precisely no revenues. Yes - when I was a kid, the idea of ubiquity of TV that I'd missed would seem amazing. Especially for free! But that's the norm now. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. Well, you can try, but it won't work. What's more, this would seem to completely ignore the value catch-up services provide in developing audiences, particularly at the start of the season when shows' ratings are being put through the microscope on a week by week basis. Indeed it'll be interesting to see what happens in September when too many new shows are all fighting it out at the same time. Adam On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 8:35 AM, David Lynch <[email protected]> wrote: > On 3 January 2014 00:53, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > >> This change will only affect people who a) do not have cable b) do not >> have OTA access c) do have internet and internet devices and d) can not >> afford or do not want to pay two bucks to watch a show immediately. I >> suspect we have just defined a rather small segment of the market >> > > Your A and B are way too narrow for the people who are being impacted by > this change. A should also include people who get their cable through > communal setups like apartment buildings and dorms and thus don't have > individual logins with their cable provider. B should also include people > who don't have a DVR/VCR and can't guarantee that they will be in front of > a TV tuned to ABC for an uninterrupted 30-60 minutes at a specific time and > day of the week because they live with other people who might be watching a > different channel, work in shiftwork or service-industry jobs with variable > hours, are caring for small children, or for whatever other reason. Add > those two and you're talking about a pretty large fraction of the under-35 > set that I know plus or minus the willingness to wait a week. We see cable > as too expensive to be worth it unless there's some programming on there > that we really must have access to, particularly when so much is available > via streaming and we're paying substantial amounts of money for high-speed > internet and smartphone data service. I think that most of the people who > only stream will be willing to be wait a week, but those that won't are > going to see this as a middle finger to them, and I'm not sure that they're > entirely wrong in that assessment. > > The other thing that seems particularly galling to me about a delay of > precisely a week is that it also means that it's impossible to catch up > with a serialized show if you miss an episode and can't or won't pay, > regardless of whether you're a regular viewer of streaming TV or not. With > the number of those sorts of shows that ABC airs, I feel like that's going > to end up hurting them in the end if only in viewer goodwill. > > -- > David J. Lynch > [email protected] > > -- > -- > TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "TV or Not TV" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
