An Essay On Subscription Television

dpu writes "Who would pay $1.99 to download a television episode that only costs about $0.0014 to see on cable? This is a short essay on the current and past state of subscription television, and a hope for the future. It skips a lot of points that the thinkers among us might care about, but it does the math and drives a nail into Big Content's pinky toe."

Re:Three reasons

[zbaron]

NBC provides all episodes of the current season of Friday Night Lights [nbc.com] online for free. CBS has done the same thing with Jericho [cbs.com]. There are probably other such shows out there provided online for free by the parent company that I just haven't stumbled across (I watch and enjoy Heroes and Jericho, and though I haven't watched it yet I ran across Friday Night Lights by accident).

Ironic that I cannot view the episodes because I am outside of the US, but the ads play fine.

Re:Changing the business model of television

[KokorHekkus]

...Reality shows would have to stick in advertising land, because no-one would pay for that crap...

It's sad but you are wrong about that part. The makers of reality shows, especially 24/7 ones like Big Brother, already make a sizeable chunk of money on webcast subscriptions. If anything there would be even more of that reality crap with the direct model because the main constraint for them would go away namely availability of airtime. Part of why reality shows are popular among the tv networks is that they expose the makers to smaller financial risks than other productions and have a significantly shorter lead times. Instead of actors you have idiots appearing for free and specially constructed props/locations are not used that much.

I'd expect, like you, that a directly-paid model would actually create some good quality material. But the majority would still be crap. You'd see every Tom, Dick and Harry Productions scrape together a couple of hundred thousand dollars to make a bunch of pilot episodes, include a couple of "shock-value" ones and give the first ones away for free and then set up a subscription service.

Re:PT Barnum

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad that Barnum never said this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There's_a_sucker_born _every_minute [wikipedia.org]

Re:Well, let's see

[Idaho]

If I could pay $2 per episode for content that was guaranteed to be ad-free, DRM-free (or free enough that it doesn't hinder my fair use efforts), persistent (meaning it doesn't get deleted out from under me), and included added-value content like commentaries and behind-the-scenes features, I would.

Oh wait, it's called buying it on DVD.

Wait, so DVD's are DRM-free now? I must have missed that news.

Last time I checked, it was still impossible to (legally) play DVD's under Linux (without cracking the DRM, that is), never mind playing DVD's from different regions, like, in my case, the US...

It depend son how many shows you really care about

[brunes69]

If you only really care to watch 1 or 2 shows, then even the basic cable subscription (say, $20) is going to be more expensive than paying $1.99 / episode to download the show ( 2 bucks * 4 new shows a month = 8 bucks, 16 bucks for two shows ).

And on top of that, no commercials to wate time on, no schedule to keep or PVR to buy, etc etc.

Cable is only a better value for people who watch a lot of TV. I have digital cable, and the movies package, several other packages, etc etc. I pay over $90 a month for my cable. I love it, and think I get good value (I watch a lot of movies), but I can easily see the other side as well. I have friends and relatives who haven't had cable TV in years and are perfectly content to watch their 1-2 shows a week downloaded.

To each his own. There is never going to be a pricing model that fits everything. It's the same reason there is both subscription cell phone coverage, and PayGo cell phone coverage.

Both cable and pay-to-download are here to stay IMO.