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How Television Is Fighting Off the Internet 194

Posted by Soulskill from the antennas-double-as-lances dept.
HughPickens.com writes: Michael Wolff writes in the NY Times that online-media revolutionaries once figured they could eat TV's lunch by stealing TV's business model with free content supported by advertising. But online media is now drowning in free, and internet traffic has glutted the ad market, forcing down rates. Digital publishers, from The Guardian to BuzzFeed, can stay ahead only by chasing more traffic — not loyal readers, but millions of passing eyeballs, so fleeting that advertisers naturally pay less and less for them. Meanwhile, the television industry has been steadily weaning itself off advertising — like an addict in recovery, starting a new life built on fees from cable providers and all those monthly credit-card debits from consumers. Today, half of broadcast and cable's income is non-advertising based. And since adult household members pay the cable bills, TV content has to be grown-up content: "The Sopranos," "Mad Men," "Breaking Bad," "The Wire," "The Good Wife."

So how did this tired, postwar technology seize back the crown? Television, not digital media, is mastering the model of the future: Make 'em pay. And the corollary: Make a product that they'll pay for. BuzzFeed has only its traffic to sell — and can only sell it once. Television shows can be sold again and again, with streaming now a third leg to broadcast and cable, offering a vast new market for licensing and syndication. Television is colonizing the Internet and people still spend more time watching television than they do on the Internet and more time on the Internet watching television. "The fundamental recipe for media success, in other words, is the same as it used to be," concludes Wolff, "a premium product that people pay attention to and pay money for. Credit cards, not eyeballs."
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How Television Is Fighting Off the Internet

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  • I've noticed these days that YouTube is full of spam.

    if I search for any movie I will see 20 links to what are supposedly pirate websites, although I suspect half of them are set up by the media companies as honeypots to identify people who want to pirate stuff.

    if I search for a review of any product, from computer to a car, probably 10 video show up that are not reviews at all but are instead a few words of product information in slideshow format with really annoying music.

    what is annoying is th

  • I'll tell you how- they're turning the internet (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mark_reh ( 2015546 ) on Monday June 29, 2015 @10:30AM (#50011387) Journal

    into television. I cut the cord years ago because I couldn't stand all the commercials. Now my hulu+ is getting loaded with commercials- it's almost as bad as watching broadcast TV.

    I think I'll go back to getting discs from Netflix..

  • Uhh... of course I am not going to read the original artice, this is Slashdot after all. But the summary mentions 5 shows, 3 of which are on channels with commercials. How does this support the original tenet? I would think you are far better naming only commercial free quality shows. I agree on the point about streaming later becoming a money maker though and that driving a way of thinking in the age of new media.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xrikcus ( 207545 )

      On top of that if you do pay CBS to get streaming access to any episode instead of only the most recent few, you get exactly the same adverts anyway with exactly the same abrupt volume changes at ad boundaries.

  • Fuck Pay TV (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm not paying. No cable TV for me. You turn the volume up on commercials and make them 5 minutes long for every 5/10 minutes of TV. My new TV has automatic volume control which kicks ass! I'll switch to HD antennae if I have to.

    No thanks I'll wait for the seasons to come out on Netflix just like I do now. If that changes I'll just quit watching altogether. You lose. Ha ha..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jedidiah ( 1196 )

      The problem with cable is that they escalate the number of commercials in a given time frame. This means that even new prime time shows end up being butchered as soon as they go into syndication. Older stuff (like classic Trek) can get mutilated to the point of being unrecognizable.

      It's not just about how insulting or stupid or manipulative the commercials are. Content is altered.

  • ...reading your op-ed (as opposed to, oh, I don't know, an actual report containing actual facts).

    One of the unique characteristics of the Internet is that it provides a way to monetize tiny minority tastes. That way, bozos can produce books or videos on "Down is Up", "Beanie Babies: The New Future-Proof Investment", or "The Unexpected Triumph of Old Media in the Digital Age", and find enough paying customers to make it worth their while.

  • I don't think it's working. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Monday June 29, 2015 @10:40AM (#50011491)

    Yesterday, I found myself saying, "if you know someone who still has cable..."

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday June 29, 2015 @10:40AM (#50011497)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • seersucker clad golfbag toting used car salesman marketing drone

      I'm stealing this.
      This was before my time, but I'm pretty sure that television nose-dived when pay-per-view came along. The television market was devised as radio + pictures, a one-way ticket as far as content. Computer networks were devised as tiers of peers, and once it's on my box, it's not yours. Pay-per-view functions, but it's fundamentally illogical. The content providers have to go through DRM acrobatics to sustain it at all. Premium channels overall make little sense. But online content is starv

    • RE: 'Consumer retention' tactics

      In my book it's simple: You say "I don't have to explain myself to you, I simply do not want your service anymore, and if you refuse to cancel it I will refuse to continue paying you. I will return your equipment to your nearest office tomorrow, and get a receipt showing I returned it, and furthermore I will rip the wire out of the wall. Now please do your job and stop annoying me".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )

      take it as a personal act of blasphemy if you try to cancel.

      What if you don't pay the bill? I would think they'd simply disconnect or do they send goons to garnish your wages?

      Overall in the big picture it seems less people are watching television as many viewers spend time in front of the computer or on their phones. But yet broadcasters seem to still be raking in the big bucks, my perception is they replace all their video equipment every three years (and some of that stuff is ***expensive*** but where does the old stuff go? I'd love to get one of those HD camera

  • Or just get rid of it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by future assassin ( 639396 ) on Monday June 29, 2015 @10:42AM (#50011509)

    Ever since cutting the cord two years ago its amazing how much extra time I have per day and now more alive you feel not watching tv. Now I haven't gotten rid of it all yet, still have Netflix and we watch a few Star Trek episodes at night but the medium no longer controls out lives. Now internet had eaten up quite a bit of my life but that is one more thing I'm slowly removing also.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mlts ( 1038732 )

      I find that if I watch stuff, it winds up being YouTube videos, and unless I use an add-on, even there, ads are creeping up, becoming more common, and the "skip at five seconds" button has started disappearing.

      It would be nice if YT offered a no ads subscription service... heard talk about it, but nothing seems to have manifested.

    • Same here. Kinda. I've never owned a tv and rarely watched it at other people's houses. I am out of the loop on many cultural themes of the day for things like Mad Men or Lost. This goes way back to popular television when I was a kid like The Newhart Show and only remain marginal contact with society from reading headlines from which you can follow who did what to whom and what character came back to life in a dream sequence.

      You know what? Who cares? Will I look back at the end of my life and think it was

  • The meat of the issue (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blueshift_1 ( 3692407 ) on Monday June 29, 2015 @11:01AM (#50011633)
    It's always comes down to the same thing. If you want people to get your product, make a damn good product. Some things will naturally be a fad, but will fade away. Lasting revenue is based on making something people actually want/need. For so long, many networks have been shoveling our crap content - now that there are ways to view exactly what you want, they have the incentive to make something you really want.
  • Scientists discover this one weird trick that will make any internet streaming service want to switch over to TV broadcasting!

  • Lawyers. Lots and lots of lawyers.

  • You know, it's funny... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Unknown74 ( 3041957 ) on Monday June 29, 2015 @11:09AM (#50011681)
    ...many years ago, we were told, "in the future, you will pay for TV". And we said "WHAT!? We get it for free, off our antenna now!" And they said, "but since you will pay for TV, there won't be any need for advertising." Many years later, I am paying for TV, PLUS, getting ads that run across the screen all the time. It it any wonder I am feeling ripped off? Oh yes... I think these were the same people who said, "we will put catalytic converters on cars. it will cost more, but they will convert the noxious fumes into harmless water and carbon dioxide." So years later, we are, indeed paying more, PLUS being clobbered by the "carbon crisis"

    • Re:You know, it's funny... (Score:4, Informative)

      by mlts ( 1038732 ) on Monday June 29, 2015 @11:39AM (#50011915)

      Yep, paying for TV, and finding ads to the show are almost a 1:1 ratio.

      Only way to win is not to play.

    • Re:You know, it's funny... (Score:5, Informative)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday June 29, 2015 @01:46PM (#50013041) Homepage Journal

      Oh yes... I think these were the same people who said, "we will put catalytic converters on cars. it will cost more, but they will convert the noxious fumes into harmless water and carbon dioxide."

      Yes. They add a couple of hundred dollars to the price of the average car and they make the world a better place; unburned hydrocarbons are the most foul emission which automobiles make. You might also be interested in knowing that we averted the ozone depletion crisis by banning CFCs. Meanwhile, the O2 sensor that came along with those catalysts actually lets you make more power while burning less fuel.

  • ... but the number of TV subscribers keeps going down. If they're claiming victory, I'd say it's a Phyrric one - but really, I'm not seeing it.

  • At least we get turned back to being the customer after having been the product far too long.

  • Dream on (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Karmashock ( 2415832 ) on Monday June 29, 2015 @11:41AM (#50011925)

    The subscriber base is ratcheting down.

    The only thing keeping the cable model going at this point is sports.

    That's it. And the instant the sports leagues think they can make as much money on line... cable is done.

    Would you pay a 100 dollars a year for access to every NFL game streamed to your machine of choice? A lot of people would.

    Total up the sports leagues people care about... football, basketball, soccer if you swing that way... Its a finite number of leagues that people care about and you could charge 10 bucks a month for access, discounting for a yearly subscription, and maybe throw in minor leagues of the same sport. So the NFL package gets you all the college games etc.

    Its entirely viable. And if that means no blackouts and the ability to watch the games on your smartphone or tablet... Sure, there is sling boxes and some cable services let you stream anything to your devices. But the underlying problem with cable is that it isn't fully a la carte. And until it is... there's going to be a problem.

    The vast majority of what people pay for with their cable package is something they have zero interest in watching. None.

    We're spending a lot of money on other things besides our cable now as well. We've got all these new streaming services. And on top of that the cable bills have gone up.

    Something has to give there. The reality is that people tend to prefer netflix for general entertainment programming... the only edge cable has is the dubious value of cable news stations and sports.

  • Go figure. Make meaningful content that people want to watch and they'll be willing to pay a few bucks for it. Netflix might be beating them to the punch with it's array of coming materials. The things Netflix has produced that I've seen have all be thoughtful and - maybe too strong of a word - innovative.

  • I guess I should check the wikipedia article ...

  • "Television" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TsuruchiBrian ( 2731979 ) on Monday June 29, 2015 @12:12PM (#50012195)

    The thing people are avoiding isn't "television" (video dramas, comedies, etc). The thing people are starting to avoid is "television" (getting those shows via cable companies). I don't think any predicted the death of video as a form of entertainment.

    The ideal situation is for all the content creators, to still make their content, but sell it to the public over the internet, bypassing the cable companies. It is the cable companies that need to die (or just be relegated to being ISPs). They just aren't up to the task of delivering media in the 21st century. They have stopped being a distribution channel and more of a gatekeeper for old people who can't use the internet.

    • The thing people are avoiding isn't "television" (video dramas, comedies, etc). The thing people are starting to avoid is "television" (getting those shows via cable companies). I don't think any predicted the death of video as a form of entertainment.

      Absolutely. I watch plenty of TV, much of it from the networks. But I'm watching more and more on Netflix, and now that they're creating content themselves, the old networks will only get smaller.

  • HBO, anyone? (Score:3)

    by lophophore ( 4087 ) on Monday June 29, 2015 @12:36PM (#50012415) Homepage

    HBO is the best value on my cable bill, right after the 100mbit internet.

    Really!? you might ask. $15/month for that? Well, yes. I like the programming (this is the network that brought us "The Sopranos", "The Wire", "Game of Thrones", "True Detective", and I could go on and on ("Last Week Tonight", anyone?). All this with no commercials, because I paid for superior programming without commercials.

    I get the HBO GO service for that same money, and I can time shift what I want to watch with a ChromeCast, and I can watch just about all of HBO's original programming with the HBO GO service -- not just the current stuff. Sure, I'd like it better if it was $10/month.

    With HBO NOW, HBO has figured out how to cut the need to actually buy cable TV out of the picture. You can just subscribe and buy their content over the internet directly.

    What I'm waiting for is true a-la-carte television, with real options. Pay $15 a month for HBO, or $3/episode for "Game of Thrones", or don't pay, but answer surveys or watch advertising to watch for free. People who don't want ads could pay, people who have the time but not the money could fill out survey or watch ads to watch for free.

  • How Television Is Fighting Off the Internet

    You keep saying "fighting off", but this...

    Television shows can be sold again and again, with streaming now a third leg to broadcast and cable, offering a vast new market for licensing and syndication. Television is colonizing the Internet [...]

    ...this sounds more like "embracing" to me. Maybe we should clear up what we're talking about here.

    TV, the medium, is dying a slow death. It has been slow to adapt to the changing reality and hasn't reacted at all to changes in the market. But the content distributed on the TV medium? The shows themselves? They have a bright future. That said, it's just a matter of time before we stop referring to them as "TV shows" and start referring to them by some other name su

  • This article just recounts the collective fantasy of some tv executives.

  • On what planet is Buzzfeed comparable to something like a television series?

    This is like putting a farm chicken in a UFC tournament and then acting surprised that the prize fighter won.

    Maybe compare television viewership, subscriptions, and ad sales broadcast via traditional means (i.e. cable) to television shows that are exclusively streamed via the internet (ala House of Cards, Community).

    This is a non-story designed to make chump television advertisers feel like they aren't being conned.

  • Thinking back to the late 1980s through late 1990s, I spent a lot of time in a movie theater with my friends. There was always something getting released that we really wanted to see.

    In the last decade, not so much.... Hollywood spends way too much time doing remakes of movies done before, and IMO, the entire comedy genre has been pretty much decimated. Everything's reduced to fart/poop humor or trying to squeeze more laughs out of awkward sexual situations. Occasionally they manage to pull off something a

  • Remember WIRED Magazine? They used to run a sidebar that I loved to hate, which was the Tired/Wired list. And; as I predicted long ago, everything that *was* in their "Wired" column has ended up as "Tired" and Vice-Versa.

    The re-emergence of TV versus online media, the re-emergence of New York City versus Prague, the re-emergence of going to work versus tele-commuting.

    Wired magazine has been wrong about nearly everything, and this article merely cements the fact that the writers and editors never knew what t

  • I think the "make 'em pay" model, has a lot to do with why so many people are cord cutting [pcmag.com]. So this strategy by the TV companies, isn't really a long term solution but more like a placeholder to buy them time to find a new way to fund their companies.
  • I haven't had cable/sat(television) for six years. I've gone strictly NF since and I love it. I get to choose what/when/where I watch.

    And... wait for it...

    There are no ads.
  • From the summary: "And since adult household members pay the cable bills, TV content has to be grown-up content: "The Sopranos," "Mad Men," "Breaking Bad," "The Wire," "The Good Wife."

    Never in my life have I read such nonsense.

    For one thing, of the shows cited, not a single one is from the last five years. (Yes, some ended within the last five years, but the most recent of the bunch in terms of start date is already six years old. Two (The Sopranos and The Wire) are more than a decade old, and predate
  • "Online-media revolutionaries once figured they could eat TV’s lunch by stealing TV’s business model" ref [nytimes.com]

    I disagree, some people in television thought they could recreate the television broadcast modem online - as in videos interrupted by adverts. They were wrong on two counts, people didn't like their videos being interrupted and the Internet couldn't scale to the numbers that a conventional broadcast could. If you take a look at the television demography - the audience is growing older. If
  • They listened to the bean counters. They put more and more junk advertising per hour on TV. Then they got the notion that having less episodes of a series would save a buck. Viewers fled over the air TV in droves. Ads should be restricted to 1 one minute ad per hour. Series should be designed to run 52 weeks a year with a new episode every week. That holds viewers. You could chart the encroachment of advertising and the shrinkage of new episodes of series and offer a strong proof of why

  • > "The fundamental recipe for media success, in other words, is the same as it used to be," concludes Wolff, "a premium product that people pay attention to and pay money for."

    True as far as it goes, but not long ago when television was the only game in town, "premium" only referred to cost, not content. I think what we're seeing is the television industry re-discovering something they had forgotten since the early days when TV first had to fight for new eyeballs. That you can't just put any stupid for

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