Cable Exec Suggests Changing Consumer Behavior, Not Business Model 675
Techdirt has pointed out yet another cable exec that just doesn't quite get it. Comcast's COO, Steve Burke, recently urged the TV industry to find ways to "get consumers to change" rather than figure out better methods to cater to demand. "'An entire generation is growing up, if we don't figure out how to change that behavior so it respects copyright and subscription revenue on the part of distributors, we're going to wake up and see cord cutting.' How many consumers, in any market, are focused on 'respecting' vendors' revenue streams? How, exactly, does he propose to effect this sea change? And why not just develop products that consumers will willingly pay for, rather than trying to change consumer behavior in such a fundamental way?"
dinero (Score:5, Insightful)
If I was making 2.2 million dollars a year salary [forbes.com] I would probably say exactly what my bosses wanted to hear, too.
WE must change? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry it is your business model that needs to change, not US.
There were many fine works when copyright didn't even exist; hell, if copyright existed, we wouldn't have had Shakespeare's.
Well, if they expect to live off the same franchises over and over in perpetuity, and not really work, I can see where their problem is.
After all, it's all men in suits who would kill themselves just for money.
It's both (Score:4, Insightful)
On one hand, yes, media companies (and indies, etc) should develop things that people are willing to pay for, instead of putting out remakes and rehashes on a regular basis (i.e. Fark's "In yet another sign that Hollywood has truly run out of new ideas...")
On the other hand, there's no real ethical or legal excuse for pirating something, simply because you don't like the price of it. If you don't like the quality of the offering at the price it is offered, then don't buy it. It's quite simple.
I now expect 4 dozen posts, making car analogies, expounding on the "false" argument of lost sales, and pointing out that I'm likely an astroturfing RIAA/MPAA shill.
Have fun!
Alright then (Score:1, Insightful)
"get consumers to change"
Alright then, I'll change. I'll change to a different provider.
Re:Just release TV shows for free (Score:5, Insightful)
Hardy har, so funny. Or maybe instead they could make their money the way broadcast television has successfully done so for longer than most of us have been alive? Hint: advertising does actually work. Then just offer a subscription service to folks who don't want to see ads. Easy as pie. Shame the cable companies are too busy double dipping (subscription AND ads) to realize consumers hate it.
Entitlement (Score:5, Insightful)
The sense of entitlement is sickening. No business has a right to make profit, and I certainly don't have to "recpect" their revenue stream. This generation grew up wanting certain things, the dinosaurs in the content industries refused to adapt and now people are used to getting music, movies, and games they want for free. There are now millions of people who will go their entire lives without purchasing much content, and they were created by the greed and incompetence of the RIAA/MPAA and friends.
not without precedent (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nothing new (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:not without precedent (Score:1, Insightful)
That must be why most people are still using XP.
as a comcast customer... (Score:4, Insightful)
... I say maybe I'll start to worry about what is fair to you a little bit when you start to worry about the level of service given to ME.
The corporations of the U.S. are not monarchy (yet) so it's not our job to make sure you live high on the hog. Maybe if you treated me like a customer I would feel some loyalty.
Re:Might I be the first (Score:4, Insightful)
So yeah, just another industry that failed to adapt to change when they had the opportunity. Well, you missed it buddy.
Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
And why not just develop products that consumers will willingly pay for, rather than trying to change consumer behavior in such a fundamental way?"
Because he feels the same way you do. You don't seem at all eager to adapt your behavior to the terms on which products are being marketed. You instead want to force the providers to change.
So, you don't want to change, you just want to do things your way and force others to change. The provider also doesn't want to change. They want to do things their way and force you to change.
Both parties want to give little and receive much. Consumers want to pay little and get lots of high quality content. Providers want to expend few resources in content provision and receive lots of money.
I'd say the two groups are more alike than different. One just has more members than the other.
Re:Just release TV shows for free (Score:3, Insightful)
Thinking like a dinosaur (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's both (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Might I be the first (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WE must change? (Score:5, Insightful)
There were many fine works when copyright didn't even exist; hell, if copyright existed, we wouldn't have had Shakespeare's.
We would have had Bacon's.
Cut the cord! (Score:3, Insightful)
Cable TV free and proud, two years running.
Improve your life. Cancel your subscription.
Those are two separate things, not one (Score:3, Insightful)
... if we don't figure out how to change that behavior so it respects copyright and subscription revenue on the part of distributors ...
"Respecting copyright" is not really the same thing as "respecting subscription revenue". There are a significant number of people that do respect copyright, even if the typical Slashdot discussion doesn't seem to support that statement. But even if every music and movie "pirate" stopped downloading illegal copies as of today, it wouldn't fix the broken revenue model the music and movie industries still want to cling to - the technology available today has irreparably destroyed their old-school business plan.
Re:I'm no financial wizard, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Comcast's COO should be focused on giving people what they want at a price that will make money for Comcast.
And for all we know, this is exactly how he intends to go about getting those behavioral changes he is advocating. Though, I suspect he'd advocate instilling some sense of value in these customers first.
If people want downloadable media and the existing corporations refuse to provide it legitimately, it is clear that people will simply take it illegitimately.
That is clear, you're correct. What is unclear is whether there is a middle ground. It is entirely possible that even with penny DVD's people will still take it illegitimately. It doesn't take a huge imagination to see where that would wind up leading.
If instead the large content providers had simply created distribution mechanisms where digital media could be obtained easily at a reasonable price with reasonable usage terms then people would have had much less incentive to search out pirated media.
Again, absolutely true. There would be less incentive. Whether 1% or 100% less, is unclear.
I for one don't find fault in the content providers for having their own point of view, even when it doesn't match my own.
Re:Entitlement (Score:5, Insightful)
Entitlement goes both ways. The entire generation you speak of feels entitled to enjoy free content because its *distribution cost* and *replication cost* is $0. The creation cost for the content has always been, and will always be, non-zero, but it was always amortized into the distribution cost. Distribution via broadcasting always brought in advertising revenue, which covered all the costs. Distribution via BitTorrent brings in $0 in revenue and covers no costs. [1]
This generation grew up wanting certain things, the dinosaurs in the content industries refused to adapt and now people are used to getting music, movies, and games they want for free.
I disagree. There is iTunes/Amazon for music, Hulu for TV (*even* if they go to a subscription model), Netflix on demand for movies. I would say lots of good content is now available on-demand, via the Internet, pretty easy to get to. The business models weren't going to change in the one year that Napster came out. It's taken 10 years. But it has happened. The only thing that hasn't happened is content creators giving away stuff for $0, and if these creators are going to stay in business, I don't see how that's ever going to happen.
Look, everyone here can make up plenty of reasons for why they deserve free content, but in a capitalist economy I have yet to hear a single good one. "Live performance" isn't good enough. Many TV shows that I enjoy can't be live. Software developers should *not* have to go on speaking tours to make money, like that ridiculous study out of Harvard said they should. I do not want to go to a book reading.
[1] As an aside, I fully support the notion that *distributors* should get much less of the money. They are just a pipe, a utility for the content creators to sell their content. No one on Slashdot ever wants to make the distinction between distributors, who are invariably big media conglomerates that are easy to hate, and content creators, who might be a team of talented writers and actors and filmmakers that actually produce enjoyable stuff.
Re:Entitlement (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, consumers are willing to change all right. We are willing to stop consuming - legally or otherwise - expensive music and movies ridden with restrictions that do not work for our lifestyles. I saw like 2 movies in the theater in the two years after our first child was born and, now that the "prove that we still can" feeling is out of the way, were are not going again for at least another 3 years. Had they offered the movies on our home TV, we would have payed and watched. But we are not going to buy a new, enhanced DRM TV just to have a privilege of paying more money for the movies. Similarly, I bought a few DVDs for my daughter, but they show 15 minutes worth of unskippable, not age appropriate ads and then get stuck on the menu rather than automatically playing the content. I think I will just teach her to play with other toys or watch free cartoons from broadcast TV rather then going through the hassle of trying to burn a fixed copy with complicated tools or buying expensive hardware to stream H264. I can buy some nice bikes and dolls for the same money.
If producers are similarly ready to stop producing and go out of business, we are truly more a like and different. I can save my money for family trips to Hawaii and they can ask me "do you want fries with that". It's funny how people who are losing sales fail to consider the simplest explanation rather than assuming that the majority of society is composed of malicious criminals.
Re:Just release TV shows for free (Score:3, Insightful)
You're ignoring the part of my post where I mentioned that they should also offer the product in a free, ad supported way as well. Why pirate The Simpsons when I can watch it on Hulu for free? Both Hulu and Pirate Bay show ads, so there's little difference except the fact that Hulu is the legal option.
Re:Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I do expect the providers to change.
I, and other customers have something Comcast needs: subscription revenue. In order to obtain that revenue Comcast must provide something of value to me. If Comcast wants me to change my behavior, it has to provide a compelling reason for the change. Comcast must provide some benefit to me to induce my change of behavior.
This exec shows no inclination of providing any benefit in return for any change of behavior, so why should I (and millions of other customers) change our behavior?
Re:Just release TV shows for free (Score:3, Insightful)
I am familiar with the subtleties of the business relationships, but that's not what's relevant here. What's relevant is how the consumer perceives it. The consumer either wants to pay nothing and see ads or pay a subscription service and see no ads. When consumers are forced to both see ads and pay a subscription fee, they're going to consider it double dipping on the part of the provider, regardless of who is seeing what revenues. As such, this (perceived) double dipping will ruin the cable business sooner or later as more and more consumers turn toward services which don't do it.
Re:Perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
If you were talking about almost any other situation, I'd probably agree with you, except that the one group exists solely to provide content to the other group. If the group that exists to provide content is not providing the content in a manner that is acceptable to the consuming group, then they are unnecessary and by rights should no longer exist, at least not in their current form.
No, I'm not saying we should necessarily get rid of the cable companies, but apply the same rules to all service industries. If the service provided is unnecessary or just plain bad, the company goes out of business. I admit that copyright issues are a problem, but you can't force your consumers to change their habits and buy your service. You need to adapt or at least find a middle ground.
The RIAA is trying to change their customers instead of adapting to the new landscape and look at how well they're doing.
Re:Just release TV shows for free (Score:5, Insightful)
"I fail to see how the cable companies are double dipping but this seems to be a very common misconception around here."
Sigh. I'm old enough to remember when cable TV was first rolled out. There were NO commercials. It was touted as a subscription-based alternative to over-the-air, advertising-supported programming.
Didn't take too long for greed to take over. Now, the only non-commercial channels are the premium ones, like HBO, Showtime, etc. - and they're all busy advertising themselves between shows.
I see the same thing eventually happening to satellite radio. The siren-song of advertising dollars is just too strong to resist.
My favorite button on the remote control is 'mute'.
Re:How stupid can he possibly be? (Score:3, Insightful)
Err locked in phones are consumer driven. We want cheap ass mobiles and we are more than willing to sign over our souls for them, business will provide this.
Re:"products that consumers will willingly pay for (Score:1, Insightful)
for the most part, to pay far less than it's worth
They paid what they thought it was worth. That is basic econ 101 stuff there.
Now the producer *thought* it was worth more. Hell he probably couldn't cover his costs at what people really thought it was worth.
Say you make something cool. I know it is hard to believe but there are people out there who do not care about it. You have put tons of energy into it why wouldn't they like it? They will not even download it for free.
Me I didn't even download the game. That is what I thought about it... Not even worth my time to mess with. I'm sure it is an awesome game and all. But *my* time is more valuable on other things these days...
Someone else put it best here the other day '1 greedy person can not compete with thousands of greedy people'. It is greed but there is more to it than just that...
You're doomed before you start (Score:1, Insightful)
As the father of 3 boys and the pet of 1 cat, I realize that any solution to a problem that starts with or includes the words "make them do" or some variant thereof, is inherently flawed. These people have a wrong worldview. Why doesn't this surprise me?
How about, instead, the wording "they have a need/want; how do we meet it and still get what we need/want?" should figure heavily in the solution.
Re:Segmented Marketing (Score:3, Insightful)
for legitimate copies of the content they're interested in just because it's less of a hassle to do so.
Unfortunately, this is where you are wrong. Things have gotten so out of sorts that it is often less of a hassle to use the non-legitimate version. The problem with these companies is that the legitimate version costs more, can be less reliable, and comes with burdens and accusations. I am left wondering why I would bother to pay them when they add zero value to the transaction.
Re:Perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, you have to sit through a pretty boring two and a half hour ad for plastic dolls made by Hasbro...
Re:Perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently, not enough of you are stopping.
I saw like 2 movies in the theater in the two years after our first child was born ...
The last theater I went to was for Serenity. I don't remember the last one before that. Theaters don't seem to have noticed my absence.
Had they offered the movies on our home TV, we would have payed and watched.
The do. Comcast has a large number of on-demand movies for your home TV. How many of those have you watched? The production houses often release DVDs of their movies for you to watch on your home TV. How many of those have you payed for and watched? I suspect your statement about paying and watching is less than accurate.
Similarly, I bought a few DVDs for my daughter, but they show 15 minutes worth of unskippable, not age appropriate ads and then get stuck on the menu rather than automatically playing the content.
Whenever I hear someone say something like this, I say "WTF?" I buy DVDs and I'm never troubled by ads or menus. The first stop for a DVD after the store is my computer, where the content is ripped and stored digitally. I once made the mistake of trying to watch a recent DVD on my $29 DVD player, and yes, ads and menus. Ick.
That makes me think you are angry at the wrong people. Why do you blame the DVD authors? Why do you put up with DVD players that you cannot control? Aren't they the real problem?
I think I will just teach her to play with other toys or watch free cartoons from broadcast TV rather then going through the hassle of trying to burn a fixed copy with complicated tools...
You could teach her how to run a computer with a DVD player. It's not hard.
Re:Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps you're forgetting the fundamental law of free markets: The customer is always right. If the bulk of customers want X and you offer Y, then don't be surprised when some other vendor comes along offering X and winds up with all the customers. As the vendor, you either offer what the customer wants, at the price they want it, or you go out of business.
Unless you are a monopoly. Unless you get the laws changed in your favor. Unless you use strong arm tactics to buy out your competition or put them out of business. Unless you steal all your competition's employees. Unless your marketing is so strong the consumer cannot make an educated decision. Unless you undercut all other stores until you are the only one left. Etc. Etc.
Re:Perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
Like I am going to spend $200+ on a Blu Ray player for my 2 year old daughter's $240 TV with a built in DVD player, much less for each room where we might need an hour of diversion. Even then, who is to say that they will release "Dora the Explorer" on Blu Ray, for a reasonable price, and without ads for PG13 movies?
I just wish they made a few DVDs with 6 episodes each that automatically start and play in infinite loop as soon as inserted. I already have episodes from iTunes, but these would require an $220 Apple TV in every room and the damn thing loses network connection and thus triggers tamper tantrums every time microwave is started. Bottom line, someone hates making money and makes the simplest thing overwhelmingly complicated, annoying and expensive. The cartoons already play free on Nickelodeon. Just sell watermarked videos for $2/each and get done with it.
Re:Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you missed the memo. The new fundamental law of free markets is: If the bulk of customers want X and you offer Y, then you lobby the government to make X illegal and raise the price of Y. Then you complain to your bought and paid for government officials that Y is still not selling and you need more power to force consumers to buy Y and raise the penalties on purchasing, owning, or even thinking about X. After all, customers' refusal to buy Y clearly indicates that they are all buying X illegally and the only reason for a customer's existence is to funnel money into your pockets.
(The sad thing is, this could be modded as Funny or Insightful and either would be true.)
Re:Perspective (Score:2, Insightful)
hello media industry (Score:3, Insightful)
before the internet, you were a necessary evil. someone had to distribute the media, and you needed to be respected in order to provide that service. that portion of copyright law that provided for your protections was valid... then
you have been replace, by the internet
authors, musicians, directors: they distribute their media for free. it serves only as advertising for their real source of revenue: ancillary streams like advertising, promotion, concerts, the cinema house, pulp copies, specialized content, speaking engagements, movie adaptation deals, etc.
you are no longer necessary, and the laws that protect you are defunct. the laws that protect you are not pronouncements from god that say the economic model that allowed for your existence is a permanent state of being
direct artist-consumer links, that is the internet. books, video, music, anything of value that is consumed digitally: its all free. revenue sources are all ancillary streams. ONLY FOR THE ARTIST. NO DISTRIBUTOR NEEDED, SO NO REVENUE FOR YOU
YOU ARE EXTINCT AND YOUR LAWS ARE DEFUNCT. DEAL WITH IT. FUCK OFF AND DIE ALREADY
On Demand (Score:3, Insightful)
What people really want it on-demand television. No more channels, just menus of shows to pick from. Haven't DVRs proven that. The only people that seem to get that are the fine folks at Apple, that are working on a subscription service for the TV portion of the iTunes Music Store.
Heck, Hulu was awesome for that. And it took off. Now they want to charge for it. Entertainment execs still don't get it.
As you raise prices and gouge consumers, people starting downloading illegally. When you make things more reasonable, like Amazon and Apple did with music, then people come flocking and making money.
Any belief that people are ignoring copyright now, when they didn't before is folly. If people could have copied LPs back in the 50s, they would have done so. Technology has finally caught up with desire. That's all.
Re: say exactly what my bosses wanted to hear (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Perspective (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: say exactly what my bosses wanted to hear (Score:3, Insightful)
...but it is time that slashdotters understand that running a business into the ground by failing to adapt is tough.
FTFY
Re: say exactly what my bosses wanted to hear (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Perspective (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps you're forgetting the fundamental law of free markets: The customer is always right.
Yes, but shoplifters aren't customers. No doubt that the entertainment industry needs to respond to the needs of customers. However, we can't legitimize illegal activity and consider it a market force. At the macro level, if the behavior isn't curtailed, there won't be enough revenue to fund the variety of quality entertainment that we enjoy today, such as the aforementioned masterpiece known as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I'm all in favor of letting people vote with their dollars (or whatever currency they use) for entertainment. I'm all in favor of companies becoming creative and adapting to new market forces. I'm very much in favor of fair use and think that the DMCA is horseshit. However, having said that I still think people who steal copyrighted material suck, and are much more the cause of all the DRM PITA than all the mega-corporate executives put together.
Re:Entitlement (Score:2, Insightful)
Thank goodness, a little sanity. "They should concentrate on making innovative products at prices people are willing to pay." It's interesting that no one (1) ever has suggestions on what those "innovations" should be; and (2) ever mentions that the only price they are willing to pay is zero.
The recent flap over Hulu charging was a bunch of posts like "LOL. They just don't get it LOL. If Hulu charges I'll just go somewhere else and get it free, LOL." How much do you think Hulu has to pay for their media streaming bandwidth? Media distribution costs are NOT ZERO!
One can usually tell where things are heading when you see the phrase "they just don't get it" in a story summary.
Music and movies are copied freely because they can be, in the privacy of people's homes, not because we believe we have some sort of "right" to content at prices WE choose. (Who granted you that right, anyway?) If food could be "acquired" for free we would all be saying that farmers just don't get it when they charge for creation. If cars could be "acquired" for free we would all say that manufacturers just don't get it. If software could be "acquired" for... Oh wait, scratch that example. Software is stolen all the time.
For every product you introduce that is stealable with close to no risk, people will. Surprise!
If the whiners could spend a tenth of their effort in suggesting new innovative models that would result in consumers turning off their bittorrent servers and pulling out their credit cards I'd believe there was something to "get". All I "get" is that if a product can be stolen for no risk, it will be.
Sigh.
Class Warfare (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Perspective (Score:2, Insightful)
I beg to differ. What you mentioned only true if there was free market. With cable companies, entertainment companies, we gave them so much monopoly and let them become so big that they dont care what consumer want. They know they are not going to have competition. They would have shut their mouth, buckle and cater to what consumers want IF the politicians we installed did what they are supposed to do - to keep organizations that provide entertainment/information separate from the organizations that build and support infrastructure. But we did opposite. We let same company(ies) build infrastructure and provide information over it and block any competitors using/doing it. No competition means the big companies come to believe that they can change (and should change) consumer behavior.
Re:Perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes you can suggest that I stop eating meals, cleaning the house or spending time with my wife or attending after hours conference calls with offshore coworkers. However I am more likely to listen to - and financially support - someone who gives me realistic options for when diversions are necessary. Increasingly, it's looking like "suggestion" from entertainment industry are about as helpful as yours is.
Ah, Dinosaurs... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes you do. If you buy a plane ticket but don't like the flight do you not get to pay? Really people that try before you buy line is just silly. If you think you should get to try before you buy then ONLY use products that offer it. You do not have the right to force a content provider to do what you want by any other means than not consuming their content and then not paying for it.
To use their content and not paying for it is piracy.
Dude READ THE REVIEWS!
Re: say exactly what my bosses wanted to hear (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm going to assume that you're trying to play the clown in the dunk tank.
Suits are all Dog Pack mentality. Whether they come up the ranks as salesmen on a commission or as the boss's son or as a ringer, golf partner, they typically are glorified accountants who maintain the status quo. The average slashdotter probably isn't too good at risk assessment but with the current state of the economy, I'm willing to give them a crack at it and sack the entire lot of ex-jock good-ol-boys.
Re:Perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess you are either too young to realize or too old to remember that being a decent parent means staying profitably employed, cooking meals, cleaning the house and keeping one's marriage viable. None of these activities, and especially not the last one, are compatible with an undistracted 2-year-old.
Now go get off my lawn.
Re: say exactly what my bosses wanted to hear (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually America has long been the nation of volunteerism. Americans donate more money than any other nation (per capita). It's only the corporations that are being greedy self-centered tyrants (which makes sense since megacorps are not people & don't have souls or morals).
Re:Perspective (Score:2, Insightful)
Cable companies pay big chunks of money to cable networks (USA, MTV, FX) to carry their programming. Comcast and its ilk are none too happy when these networks then turn around and put said content on the Internet for free.
Maybe That is the part that needs to change.. the cable channels are already making a fortune with advertisments, why should Comcast have to pay for the channels at all. When cable TV first appeared in 1976 in Westfield,MA there were no advertisements on many of the channels. Your monthly subscription paid for the content. That was the argument made to my Dad when told he would have to start paying for TV. No commercials! Sure.
Re: say exactly what my bosses wanted to hear (Score:2, Insightful)