Center for Creative Voices in Media Blog

Wolf Howls About TV's Future

Dick Wolf, producer of Law and Order, predicts a long bloody strike in television over a decline in revenue in a future based on not broadcasting, but downloading.  "There's a potential that in 5 or 10 years, the only real revenue streams may be downloading. You may have gutted the off-network industry to an extent that it won't make sense for them to pay for what is no longer secondary programming, but is tertiary programming."

Download fees, he noted, don't seem to have the potential to match the revenues of the current ad-supported TV model.  He noted that his own 12-year-old son watches no television and says his classmates don't, either.  All over America, 6th graders are no longer consuming network television,"
said Wolf. "They're playing videogames. They'll play videogames anywhere. It's the ultimate video-on-demand."  Link: Variety.com - Wolf sounds alarm.

DVR Viewers Skip Ads -- Duh

TV Execs were whistling past the graveyard yesterday, trumpeting their findings that people who use DVRs watch more TV than those w/o DVRs.  But, as Broadcasting & Cable points out, "the $64 million question, how many of those people stick around for commercials, remains to be answered, though early research indicates two-thirds of DVR owners skip commercials."  And selling those ads is what TV is all about, and what those execs' jobs depend on.  DVRs are another shot to the heart of the traditional TV business model.  Link: Broadcasting & Cable: The Business of Television.

Nets Push Original Content onto Net

Who could believe that the traditional model for watching TV in America could be overturned in a matter of weeks?  According to The Hollywood Reporter, "new episodes of Lost are being produced directly for mobile phones in a deal soon to close with a major U.S. carrier, sources said. About 20 episodes -- each several minutes long -- are being shot next month in Hawaii to hit phones sometime early next year.  The project is not being produced by ABC or Touchstone Television but is under the oversight of "Lost" executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.  The Walt Disney Co. declined comment." This latter point is especially interesting as it is Disney that owns Lost.  Our analysis is that Disney doesn't want to produce the Lost for phones episodes for fear of further antagonizing their affiliates, who are already completely pissed over Disney's deal with Apple to put their best series onto iPod immediately after their airing.  Increasingly, the affiliates are looking like the odd men out in the TV food chain.  Link: 'Lost' deal hatched for mobile.

End of Television as We Know It?

The Disney - Apple deal to deliver TV "podcasting" of Diz hits like "Desperate Housewives" may seem like small beer at first.  Slow downloads, tiny screen, why pay $2 for what you can TiVo for free... But the implications are huge.  Local broadcast affiliates are screaming bloody murder at Disney for devaluing their exclusive franchise as distributor of first run prime time video programming.  “Of course it will erode ratings,” said Dene Callas of media buyer MediaCom. “It's going to devalue the original” broadcasts as viewers use iTunes.

This is one of the few times we agree with Comcast, which said in a statement: “Networks are beginning to realize that the traditional television model is shifting dramatically, and consumers want to watch what they want, whenever they want.”  Local affiliates and primetime schedules are an anachronism -- they give consumers what the affiliate wants them to have when the affiliate wants to give it.  Which is why cable Video on Demand, TiVo, and now iPod Video, in combination with video delivered via broadband Internet, will eventually decimate local over the air TV broadcast affiliates.

Link: USATODAY.com.

The Power of Cable

Wonder why cable costs too much and its service sucks?  Here may be one reason:  According to Broadcasting & Cable, last week, Big Cable's top lobbyist Kyle McSlarrow jetted to Alaska to host a fishing trip for Ted Stevens, the Republican from Alaska who runs the Commerce Committee—the Senate’s arbiter of cable and telecom issues.  Also joining the happy outing: Comcast Chairman Ralph Roberts.  All paid for by your excessively high cable bill.  Link: NCTA Stocks Up on Fish Tales.

TV on the PC Gets Real

Convergence has finally arrived.  Time Warner has given 9,000 broadband subscribers in San Diego access to up to 75 cable channels—including CNN, MTV and ESPN—on their computers.  Link: TV on the PC Gets Real - 8/8/2005 - Broadcasting & Cable.

Current TV - On the Air

Current TV, the new cable channel backed by Al Gore, is on the air.  Sort of.  Trying to get carriage on Big Cable -- nearly an impossible task for an independent channel. If it's your thing, give your cable company a call to lobby for it.  Break a leg, Current!  Link: Current TV.

Jeff Jarvis blogs:I don’t get it. From the start, I would have thought that Current.TV would have been built to be seen by anyone anywhere. Why shouldn’t I be able to watch the stream online? Better yet, why shouldn’t I get to see the segments they air whenever I want? Better yet, why shouldn’t I see the stuff they don’t air, too? Best yet, why don’t I find the stuff I like and distribute it for them? That is the potential of Current. I don’t see that online now. Too bad.

Kevin Werbach comments: Jeff, there’s a simple answer for this. Current TV’s contracts with DirecTV and Time Warner Cable, which provide their carriage, effectively prohibit them from streaming the full TV content over the Internet. This is standard operating procedure in the cable business. It’s going to be a big legal issue for the FCC as IPTV takes off, comparable to some of the network neutrality issues we’ve been fighting over in the VOIP world.  But yes, given Current TV’s vision and positioning, one would expect them to look for creative ways around these limitations.

Ver-ry interesting.  Thanks, Jeff and Kevin.

Powell's legacy: chaos and silliness

Aaron Barnhart, TV Critic of the KC Star and proprietor of the terrific website "TV Barn", has an excellent analysis of the Powell reign at the FCC.  Among several excellent observations:

Powell claims to have spent his tenure tirelessly rooting out obsolete media laws, but it’s the one statute he never bothered to examine — the broadcast indecency code — that defines him now.

Link: TV Barn: Powell's legacy: chaos and silliness.

Shocking News

Underwriters Laboratory wrote the following letter to NBC President Jeffrey Zucker, urging him not to air this week's Fear Factor episode which contained a stunt where the contestants were subjected to a series of electrical shocks while running a course through a power sub-station:

Dear Mr. Zucker,

Each year there are 2000 emergency room admissions and over 1000 deaths due to electrical injuries to adults and children...  When UL learned of tonight's stunt on NBC's Fear Factor -- "Couples get the shock of a lifetime!" -- we were appalled.  Electricity, when used improperly, is deadly.  Obviously, NBC is well aware of the sense of risk associated with electricity, hence creation of such a stunt.  However, NBC has a corporate social responsibility to do the right thing -- to not encourage or advocate actions that can lead to severe injury or death by portraying stunts or pranks involving electricity as entertainment, irrespective of any safety measures that may be in place or associated viewer warnings.

In an inspiring example of how seriously NBC takes public service and their obligations as trustee of the publicly-owned airwaves, it went ahead and aired the episode anyway.

Link: Underwriters Laboratories Inc. Urges NBC Not to Air Fear Factor Episode.

The Seattle Times: Opinion: Broadcasters must be made to serve the public interest

We commend to you a brilliant op-ed in today's Seattle Times. Coincidentally, it's written by us, along with Chellie Pingree, President of Common Cause.

We call on the FCC to pass meaningful public interest obligations for broadcasters as they enter the digital age. And we insist that in this process, unlike last year's media ownership debacle, the public have real input into the process of determining the crucial question of what constitutes the "public interest."

"This time, Powell needs to get the process right. Before the FCC can decide whether digital "must carry" is in the public interest, it must first articulate public-interest standards for broadcasters. To do otherwise puts the broadcasters' special-interest cart before the public-interest horse.

And this time, Powell must let the public weigh in on the fundamental question of what constitutes the public interest. If he does not, media conglomerates will meet behind closed doors to craft a deal that serves only their own corporate bottom-line interest, at the expense of the public.

That is something the public has no interest in."

The Seattle Times: Opinion: Broadcasters must be made to serve the public interest