Great day: just started up a new project in one of my favorite sectors: Television. Starting out my career as a mgmt trainee at MTG, and later running strategy assignments for SVT and Ericsson among others have taught me a few things about TV, but like most other media its business and brand dynamics are changing by the hour. Leave it for a year and you’re bound to start over clueless —> a new deep dive was the only way to get going.
The first very basic thing I wanted to understand was: what is television? Finding: it’s actually not basic at all, but here’s my take..
Television = moving images with a business model
This definition separates “TV” from the broader term “video”, which would include all moving images available in all interfaces. TV is premium in contrast to all the free video that’s created and shared online. One might argue that a random video on YouTube has a business model, based on YouTube’s ad sales, just like any show on traditional free-to-air TV, but I still suggest there’s a slight distinction in that the ads are still not accepted by the viewer in the same way as in free-to-air TV.
Conclusion: television today is defined by the way it’s paid for, or rather, the reason it’s paid for. So what is it about certain moving images that makes us open our wallets? It seems like the answer is changing, and that the change is about to bring TV into the same paradigm as music. Maybe not so surprising – since the birth of www video has been following the development in music with a few years lag (for the simple reason that the files are bigger and requires more network power to distribute). However, let me give an example to make my point:
In a talk I had with Spotify last year, they said something that stuck in my mind à when developing the service, Spotify never saw iTunes (the dominant force in music retail at the time) as a competitor. Instead they saw themselves as a substitute to illegal downloads. The explanation is that consumers do not value content anymore. All songs available on Spotify + millions more are downloadable from torrent sites or streamable from YouTube. So why pay Spotify 10 USD / 99 SEK for something that I can get for free?
The answer: convenience
As a premium user, you do not pay Spotify for the access to millions of songs, but for a fantastic interface that helps me search, sort, share and bring with me everywhere. Content is not king anymore. Convenience is, and it’s heavily undervalued. A quick poll of my friends (varying degree of music interest) suggests that doubling the 99 USD one-size-fits-all price point would not by far cut the paying customer base in half (of course a real study would be needed to prove this point).
Back to television. Even here it seems like convenience is taking over as the primary user value, for the same reason as in music. All content is available for free somewhere, but getting it takes effort, knowledge and time. Erasing those hassles is clearly something worth paying for, and this insight is the basis behind the recently launched or updated TV-offerings from both Google and Apple. They are providing interfaces that help me search, sort, share and bring with me anywhere. Compared to Spotify, Apple and Google even go one step further, in that they aggregate content from multiple platforms, some of which are “free” (like YouTube and Vimeo) and some are “premium” (like Netflix and iTunes), but by charging a one time fee of 99 USD (as in the case of Apple TV), these solutions transform free content into a premium experience, based on the value of convenience. To create a solid user experience, Google has even formed an alliance with Intel and Sony to integrate hardware and software smoothly (Apple famously does it all in-house – ”if you are really serious about software, you should make your own hardware”)
Finally I want to recommend another premium TV service, for which I just signed up at 4.99 USD/month: Unblock US. It’s a VPN-free service that makes my browser believe that I’m in the US when I’m trying to access free online video from HBO, Hulu, Comedy Central etc (which is blocked outside of the US since foreginers are outside the target groups for the ads that finance the content). By helping out with this, Unblock US provides me with a premium experience, and hence transforms mere video into television.
PS: speaking of television, read this passive aggressive email I wrote (in Swedish) a few years back to the Swedish head of MTV Networks (that owns Comedy Central), when CC blocked the streaming of two of my favorite shows…
Hej,
Jag har följt Colbert Report och Jon Stewart via comedycentral.com sedan ett par år och blev rätt besviken när jag förra veckan utestängdes från websiten pga era krav som rättighetsägare i Sverige. Jag liksom de flesta av mina jämnåriga (programmens målgrupp mitt i prick) tittar inte längre på tablå-TV utan använder webben som kanal till vårt favoritcontent. Jag är lite förvånad att MTV, som har levt med min generation sedan 80-talet, inte förstår detta.
Som reklammedium är era pengar är sannolikt bättre spenderade på en lösning som streamar programmen till målgruppen on-demand, än på distributörsavtal med ComHem, Boxer, Viasat och gänget, som alla tappar abonnenter i de yngre åldersgrupperna. Via operatörerna tvingas dessutom de flesta som kan tänkas vara intresserade göra ett aktivt val att ”uppgradera sitt kanalpaket”, en tröskel som ytterligare fjärmar er från målgruppen. Ni behöver inte finnas i ”TV” för att etablera CC i Sverige.
Dessutom tror jag inte, trots CC:s starka varumärke, att ‘kanalen’ är speciellt relevant för den målgrupp ni är ute efter. Det folk pratar om (och länkar till) är ‘programmen’ – colbert, jon stewart, south park etc. CC som kanal är bara en begränsande struktur så länge varumärket inte representerar ett gränssnitt som gör det lättare, inte svårare, att komma åt och interagera runt programmen.
En annan sak som gäller Colbert och Stewart specifikt: Dessa är (trots sina komiska alibin) nyhetsprogram vars hela humor bygger på dagsaktuella referenser. Jag vet inte vilken fördröjning ni sänder med (iom att jag inte kommer åt kanalen) men på snacket i bloggosfären verkar det som att era motsvarigheter i andra länder ofta har en knapp veckas fördröjning. Detta minskar såklart programmens relevans ordentligt.
Hur som helst, jag hoppas få återse mina favoritprogram på webben snart. Via Sverige eller USA spelar ingen roll, men om inte ni rättighetsägare löser det lär fansen hitta egna och betydligt mer svårkapitaliserade sätt att komma åt programmen. Det vore synd.
VH
Henrik Evrell
