LIVEdigitally

Solution to Facebook Feed Problem: Trust Your Users

Posted on May 27, 2014 by Jeremy Toeman

Facebook is constantly “tweaking” their news feed algorithm – the thing that determines what you see. The current rules seem to be:

Baby photos
Pictures of food
Pictures of exotic locations
Updates from people you rarely interact with
More baby photos, in case you missed some
The stuff you actually find interesting

I don’t need to visit the neighborhood psychic to make a simple predication: Facebook cannot possibly make all users happy, no matter how much they tweak.

Personally I’ve pretty much abandoned the ‘book, but as I talk to people who use it more than I do, I’ve noticed a simple common theme running across them. Everyone looks at Facebook a little differently. To some it’s a way to stay in touch with anyone they’ve ever met. To others its a vital communications tool. Another friend of mine calls it a digital “locker room”. I can go on at length, but the only thing I’ve learned is there’s literally no way to define Facebook consistently. And if its users can’t do it, neither can the company.

So instead of continuously reworking the magic algorithm (and upsetting the revenue generators while they’re at it), Facebook should switch strategies, and follow the same things that the audio/video industry figured out a long while ago: create some feed profile archetypes, and let the users take control.

What does CATS do???

Most of the time, we leave the TV in the default profile (which, by the way, you should never, ever do), and it works just fine (because you don’t know what you should be seeing). So Facebook could do the same thing:

Of course, includes C.A.T.S.!

The default could be the ever-changing-tweaky-awesome-algorithm-of-magic, which is fine. It would then be easy for the user to change their View of Facebook to reflect what they want to see. It wouldn’t prevent Facebook from running ads, nor neglect the evilness of Boosts, but would probably make everyone’s life in and out of the industry just a wee bit easier.

Even my car stereo from the 90s had an equalizer…

Why Does Anyone Expect More From Apple?

Posted on April 22, 2014 by Jeremy Toeman

Just read Walt Mossberg’s piece on “Apple is Like a Movie Studio” where he (as he typically does) makes excellent points on consumer electronics and Apple’s role in them for the past decade. But then the piece moves into the following statement:

But there have been no new game-changing products, the kind that establish whole new categories, or which finally get product categories right after others had attempted for years to do so. The last of these, the original iPad, was released four years ago this month.

This is true. But really – how off the charts are these expectations? In the last decade Apple “pioneered” (I use the term somewhat loosely since there were actually other players in the space, just none of them building anything on par with what Apple did), and today lead the categories for:

ultrathin laptops – MacBook Air
smartphones – iPhone
tablets – iPad
internet STBS – Apple TV

So if we’re doing the “movie studio” analogy let’s call them Pixar (or Universal or whatever). If the comparison is “invented entire categories” can we name *ANY* other movie studio on a relative basis? I cannot. Sure, Samsung, LG, Microsoft, others “make devices” but what have they actually done on par with Apple? Nothing. I’m not bashing the Galaxy phone or LG TVs or HP laptops in any way disparaging those companies – but they have NOT created new markets out of thin air the way Apple has this past decade.

So perhaps they might not have any more category killers that the world’s never seen. So what? “sequel time is over”? This is the problem with setting such expectations – if they “just” act like their competitors, and make (and sell) lots of devices – is that really such a failure? Mind you I don’t believe this to be their fate, but so what?

If you really, REALLY must compare to movies, then let’s call them James Bond. some years you get The Living Daylights or The World is Not Enough (excuse me while I vomit into my popcorn watching Denise Richards be a “Nucular” Engineer or whatever)… But sometimes you get Dr. No, or Goldfinger, and those are the ones everyone remembers. And along the way a Bourne or Mission Impossible show up, and they’re pretty great too – for a while. And it could even be another decade, but somehow, out of nowhere, you get a Casino Royale, and all is right in the world again.

Thoughts on Amazon Fire TV

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Jeremy Toeman

Let me open by saying: clear win for Amazon. Here’s why:

Internet streamers are still a growing market, only present in less than a quarter of US households – not to mention International opportunities. Bringing *any* product to market under the Amazon brand is sufficient to move units. Amazon has an amazing channel to sell through, and numerous reports cite them as the #1 outlet for both Chromecast and Roku products.
It’s at worst a good-enough product, at best it’s the most thoroughly designed Internet STB available on the market today. Unlike the first gen of Kindle Fire, which had to compete against a mature iPad, there’s nothing utterly amazing in the category to compare against.
Supporting non-Amazon content is brilliant. I think they could’ve pulled off a winner just by supporting Amazon Prime and Amazon Instant Video, but now it opens up to anyone who watches any streaming content. Plus, just as Apple TV helps sell iTunes content, I’d be shocked to discover that FireTV households don’t slowly convert into Amazon content customers.
I’ve heard some naysay (already!) about the price point, and how it should be cheaper than Apple TV to compete. Totally disagree, no reason to do this as there’s no other magic point under $99 other than hitting $49, which I don’t see a reason to do.

Other stuff I like:

Voice search seems nicely done, especially in context with the mess of any 10-foot-UI experience.
Gaming! Very smart to make this a core component of the platform – I actually hope this remains in the cheap, simple, and easy category of gaming. Not that I don’t love trying to push 17 buttons on my Xbox controller simultaneously, but I think “Big Gaming” is just too complex these days and there’s a latent opportunity for simpler stuff.
Gary Busey

My two minor (emphasis on minor) missed opportunities:

HDMI passthrough. The single good aspect of the original Logitech Google TV product was HDMI passthrough – it let the end-user connect the device to the fought-after Input One, and work well. While I know adding passthrough isn’t going to sell any more Fire TV’s, it’s one of those little things I’ve been hoping for.
Not Free With Prime. Okay, this isn’t exactly fair to complain about, but I harbored this suspicion that Amazon would offer the Fire TV free with a 2-year Prime subscription. Now they always can just start a program like this, but I think it’d be a major wow-er out of the gate.

Let me close this this: building products is hard. Building really good products is very very hard. To get a 1.0 product out of the gate in such a strong state is impressive work, and while many might call it a “me-too”, I don’t. I think this is the exact right first step for Amazon in the living room, and will keep an eye on where it goes from here.

Prediction: Amazon Fire TV is the #2 Internet STB on the market (behind Apple) within 2 years.

Also, and again, Gary Busey.

Facebook’s Brand Extortion Perception Problem

Posted on March 31, 2014 by Jeremy Toeman

I originally read Eat24′s “breaking up with Facebook” post via Zite and it echoed so true, I shared it with a lot of folks I know. I wasn’t planning to blog anything, but wrote such a long comment to Mathew Ingram’s piece, I thought, hey, why not – let’s blog this one!

I don’t think anyone’s complaining about signal-to-noise, or even paying to have reach. I’ve never heard a brand complain about running Facebook ads. I think they are complaining about the following:

Facebook users are instructed to Like brands to get updates from them. There is no mention to users as to how to control frequency of said updates, nor any disclosure about brands *having to pay* to reach them.

This is at best unfortunately disingenuous. At worst its deliberately misleading.

What makes it all much, much worse, IS the tweaking of algorithm. If you were managing a brand’s Facebook page, you’ve noticed a steady drop in every single stat/category – unless, of course, you pay. This too is not disclosed to brands. As a result, it certainly appears that Facebook initially made it free & easy for brands to get “hooked” on posting to Facebook, and then, without warning, came along and said brands would then need to pay for the same reach they previously enjoyed.

Now we can certainly remain positively-minded and call this “evolution of a model” – but it sure comes across a lot like extortion. And when Facebook replies with callous comments, it does nothing but reinforce that perception.

Personally, if I were running a brand, I’d make every effort possible to create a funnel FROM my Facebook page to *anything else*. Email newsletters, Twitter accounts, etc – all services where the expectation/understanding of how brands are positioned *to consumers* is clear. The problem I see for Facebook is I’m not the only one thinking this way – it’s an increasing sentiment and one they should stem the tide of.

I’d suggest they start by fixing 3 things:

Inform Users that Liking a brand on Facebook is not the same as subscribing to a newsletter. It’s an indication of taste, and occasionally that brand may appear in a Wall feed.
Guarantee Something to brands so they can make meaningful long term plans. I think a lot of brand managers would feel better about betting on Facebook if they could provide guaranteed plans of any kind – I wonder how many people have had to tell their boss that their reach dropped 90% without anyone knowing how/why.
Enable Subscribing to Brands for end-users. I understand Facebook controls the overall algorithm, but how about letting a user take control of some components? This could be a paid service to the brand – whatever – but if I *want* to get every update from a Reebok, Nike, NextGuide, Eat24 – shouldn’t I be able to?

Curved TVs are the new 3DTVs

Posted on January 9, 2014 by Jeremy Toeman

Apparently the hot, buzzy thing at CES this year is the curved OLED TVs. I saw one – it’s very very pretty. And much like the last 2 attempts by manufacturers to stir up interest in buying new sets, this just isn’t going to cut it.

Firstly, we all need to acknowledge the massive rush to buy new sets last decade occurred because of *multiple* factors that contributed to a zeitgeist-level shift in set ownership:

Thinness: sets went from being 2 feet deep to 6 inches or less deep
Size: sets went from 27 inches to 50 inches
Resolution: shift from below standard definition to high definition
Quality: not only the raw resolution, but every aspect of picture quality was obviously visually improved
Sex appeal: being early to having a plasma was sexy – then when it became mainstream enough, not having some kind of flatscreen was definitively unsexy
Format shifts: simultaneous to new sets, tons of new content was instantly available – and not just new content, but libraries of favorites were accessible
Set price: getting a flatscreen (at Costco!) was very very affordable
Content price: while VHS libraries were only for the few, building a collection of your favorite DVDs was relatively inexpensive (for younger readers: VHS tapes in the early 90s would sell for $80 or so)

All of the above occurred in an effective blink of an eye. There were so many reasons to to upgrade, it just had to happen.

But now that these beautiful, thin, huge displays got mounted on peoples’ walls, it’s become a lot harder to unmount them. I don’t even want to think about doing it – and I don’t think the manufacturers have yet presented us a reason to follow along.

Smart TV? OK, if I’m buying a new set. Or I just get an Apple TV, Roku, Xbox, Playstation, Chromecast, etc. I gain very little benefit from an actual set upgrade, compared with the cost of an add-on box that I can easily replace. It’s akin in my eyes to paying the extra $3+K for an in-dash GPS unit as opposed to buying a $100 Garmin, or just using my phone.

2nd try: 3dTV? Personally, I actually avoided one the last time I bought a set (63″ Samsung plasma – yes!). Turns out I wasn’t the only one, and 3d was (as I predicted it would be) quite a failure.

Batter up…. CURVED SETS! Huh? Don’t get me wrong – they are pretty in so many ways. Thinner than my iPad – love it, very slick. But would I even consider the hassle of the upgrade for it? Same deal for 4K – just not *enough* to cause another societal shift for “MORE”. Further, I think the curved nature of the device is an ill-fit for most living rooms, where the benefit of super-thin is eliminated by the odd shape in the room. Has anyone checked if these things are Feng Shui?

Sooner or later we’ll likely find the next big reason to upgrade displays, but it’ll have to rank in there in the leagues of when TV was first available to the masses, to when it first went color, to the current state, before it happens.

Why it’s (almost) 2014 and you still need a set top box

Posted on December 31, 2013 by Jeremy Toeman

I actually had one of these!

I stumbled onto a discussion on Quora entitled “Why do we still have television set top boxes?” and as I often see, it’s full of conjecture and suspicion about the evil empire that is the pay TV industry. While I am not specifically trying to support or vilify anyone from that industry, I thought it worthy a response that has less conspiracy theory than others. So let’s start with some important facts:

1) Set Top Boxes (STB’s) take, on average, from day of deployment 30+ months to “break even” for a cable company2) Any tech support, home maintenance (“truck roll”), etc is costly to a cable company
3) Software updates, QA, etc are slow and costly to a cable company
4) Most north american pay TV providers now enable some form of “TV everywhere” service available by App or Browser
5) Many pay TV providers now offer same apps on Roku, Apple TV, and several smart TVs
6) Smart TV software platform updates happen 1+/year – which could easily result in incompatibility with pay TV services. Only very recently have any of the manufacturers begun to standardize their own platforms.
7) The technology in homes is moving at an *extreme* pace, so even if a pay TV operator is moving “fast” they will still appear, relatively speaking, to be moving slowly.
7a) thinking point – Until about 5 years ago, this just wasn’t the case at at all, the pay TV providers didn’t really even need to innovate whatsoever. So here we are 5 years later and they have APIs, multiple apps, etc – not too many industries one could point to and make a similar statement about incumbents…

I think if you add the above together, the answer should be something like this:

The pay TV industry would be happy to rid itself of STBs, but only *very recently* have viable alternatives hit the market. Pay TV companies are very rapidly adopting these platforms, but your definition of “rapid” is radically out of whack with how an established industry moves. Over the next few years you should expect most North American Pay TV providers to give you as a consumer multiple options for using their services in the platform of your choosing.

As a bonus:
8) CableCards *could have been* a good solution, but were way too soon to market to make the industry comfortable with them. Ask yourself this question: if you were the person in charge of P&L on the hardware deployment business, and you knew full well that consumers will call you with any problems whatsoever, would you support some “standard” by which *other company’s hardware* was causing YOU customer service issues? Me neither.

Gravity Movie Review (spoiler-free)

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Jeremy Toeman

Let me start by disclaiming “spoiler free” – I assume you have seen a preview or read at least enough to know the most basic premise of the film. If you truly have no idea what it’s about, well, I make references to content used in the trailers. But seriously, if this does describe you, why are you even click to get this far?

I had a chance to see an early screener of the movie tonight, and felt like doing a little writing about it. In all candor, I’m more negative than positive on it personally, but I think there are a lot of reasons to go see it in theaters (if you are going to see it at all). Gravity might well define the “must see in theater” experience far more than any action movie ever would.

The Good:

Beautiful, amazing, breathtakingly phenomenal cinematography. I honestly feel closer to having an idea of what being in space might be like as a result of the way this was shot.

Solid acting. I felt the characters were genuine, and Clooney/Bullock fit their roles quite well – in fact I’m surprised at any negativity toward the acting on IMDB message boards or other spots.

Suspenseful. Cuaron did a great job keeping the audience on the edge of their seat, and had a solid balance between slowly built, drawn out sequences and other “gotcha” kind of moments.

Dialogue and characters. Great blends of comic and serious, deep and light, etc moments. Very well put together from that end.

The Bad:

Repetitive events. You know that scene in the preview where someone is grabbing on to some space ship part for dear life, and it appears that if they miss it they will be lost in space forever? Yeah, I’ve now seen that moment a few dozen times, to the point where I’d predict a Gravity Drinking Game around it. It’s just too much, and while I get it that that’s a big part of the premise, it becomes nearly comical after the first few times it occurs.

Too many crises. If you’ve read the trivia around Apollo 13, you’ve probably noticed they deliberately removed some of the events that transpired in real life from the film, mostly because they didn’t think the audience would find it believable. In Gravity, I felt that the cascading series of mishaps were just too many from start to finish. I think numerous moments could’ve been reduced or removed completely and the end result would’ve been more gripping. Instead, I kept getting that feeling where my suspension of disbelief was being taxed.

Too many “last possible moment” sequences. To avoid spoiling anything, just imagine a caper movie where the bomb is set to go off, and after a ton of action, the bomb is defused with less than a second to go. Now do it 3 or more (I’ve lost count) times in the same movie. It certainly builds up tension, but also increased the “okay, now they are just messing with me” effect.

The trailer. While I’d say it’s a tossup between Drive and Hancock as to “worst expectation setting for a movie, EVER,” I’d say Gravity’s trailer is on thin ice. If you’ve paid too much attention to it, it’s pretty ridden with spoilers (thankfully I had not seen it more than once before going into the movie). But if you also just saw it once or twice, you’d probably be thinking it’s a non-stop space action flick. It isn’t, and if you are unfamiliar with the director’s other works, you should definitely pay them some attention first. The movie paces really well actually, but it’s a much more drawn-out film than I think a lot of people will expect.

Annoying 3D. I wish I’d seen the IMAX 3D version, maybe that would change my feelings here. As it is, I didn’t, and other than 2-3 “really cool” uses of 3D, it was pretty superfluous to the movie.

Overall, I have negative feelings about Gravity. Per the above, it was wonderfully put together, but ultimately I felt the movie spent more time trying to manipulate me with unnecessary tension. I think the basic premise was suspenseful and dramatic enough, but had several too many “and now we’ll find a way for *another* crazy bad thing to happen” moments for me. I wish that weren’t the case, as I really did want to like it, but I’ve spent the past few hours picking it apart, not sitting around stunned at its beauty

What a Next-Gen Apple TV Could Bring

Posted on September 11, 2013 by Jeremy Toeman

While I’m not as bullish as others that the following tweet should be taken as gospel, I’ve been thinking a lot recently on what a new version of an Apple TV product could look like.

I guess those excited about a software refresh in a week are gonna be *really* excited when new Apple TV hardware is unveiled next month.

— MG Siegler (@parislemon) September 11, 2013

So, in no particular order… “why update the Apple TV?”

4K video
I wouldn’t bet on this, at all, since there’s virtually no content available today, and probably won’t be much in the next 24-36 months. If 4K looks promising, they can rev again in the future. Further, Apple has historically *not* led in this category, and I’d be surprised to see them do it this time.
Rich SDK
Yes, there are plenty of apps available for Apple TV today, but access is limited and granted in an ad-hoc fashion to selected content providers. Many folks assume one day they’ll open this up to a wider developer network -as in, all developers. I know very little about the programmability/guts of the Apple TV, but I have to assume the current one simply wasn’t designed to be uber-expandable. As a sub-point, I *could* see an argument for an extension of iOS here, but I’d hope it’d be a differentiated offering to relate to the different UI mechanisms.
HDMI Passthrough
For the literal heaps of things Google TV has done wrong, HDMI passthrough was smart. Enabling the Apple TV to sit on Input 1 at all times enables no-input switching for any connected experience. But even better than that, it’s not a stretch to see a version of AirPlay with a, wait for it, transparent layer. What does that mean? Imagine every cool thing about Interactive TV you’ve ever heard or thought of, minus all the lame stuff, now have it actually work, powered by your iPhone/iPad. Awesome.
Gaming
Many of us already believe the next generation of consoles is doomed, but what if the Apple TV came with an optional joystick and as much gaming horsepower as an iPad or Xbox 360, and stayed at the $99 price point? It’s the exact opposite strategy Microsoft is taking with their platform (gaming first, everything else second), but since about 1998 that’s pretty much a winning approach.

And that’s it – which is telling in its own way. There’s no other “basic” TV/streaming need to upgrade the current hardware, and Apple certainly isn’t going to put out a new version without a very specific reason. Perhaps I’m missing something (comment please!), but I am at a loss to come up with any other drivers for new hardware. Oh, and yes, I’m ruling out Siri, physical motion gestures, cameras, etc – while any could certainly come at some point, they aren’t going to exist without one of the above as well.

Which leaves me with the following: if you do not think the above reasons are compelling, and you can’t come up with a better one, I think you can pretty much write off a new piece of hardware. Further, I have strong convictions that the only truly viable option above is adding a Rich SDK/open developers kit, so if we don’t see that next week, I don’t think we see any new device show up either.

6 Reasons Why Apple Won’t Announce NFC Payments

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Guest Contributor

DisCo-Stan-Za

Disclosure: This is a Guest-contributed Post

In the early part of the last decade, when everyone was carrying blackberries and phones, the big buzzword was “convergence.” We couldn’t wait to have our phone mashup with our email device and carry just one electronic gadget that did both. The iPhone launched and, though Blackberrys had added phone capabilities, this was true convergence as you could do email, browse the web, make phone calls (sometimes depending on AT&T), and listen to music. This was the first widely adopted and functional “SmartPhone”.

We’re still looking for that great convergence of your Smart Phone with our wallets and every Apple release is preceded by rumors of Near Field Communication (NFC) and mobile wallet. Here are the reasons why as much as I’d love to ditch my George Costanza-sized wallet for one device, this isn’t going to happen this year:

1. Stores don’t take NFC

Sure there are some stores that have NFC terminals, but those account for about 2% of all terminals world-wide. For those drugstores like CVS and Duane Reade that do have NFC, it’s painful to watch a clerk try to be helpful when they have no idea how the technology works. Apple won’t ship a phone with NFC payments that only works in some stores, some of the time.

2. It’s not Globally Equivalent

When Apple ships a product it generally is the same product around the globe. There aren’t iPhone 4x’s in Singapore and iPhone4z’s in Germany. The world gets the same platform with a few modifications to radio frequencies. Sure, they add currencies and countries to iTunes over time, but a core capability always ships around the globe within months.

3. Apple isn’t first to market

Remember the Creative Nomad Jukebox. Most of you won’t, but this was one of the many MP3 players that launched before the iPod . How about the Treo mobile phone and email device. Apple is notorious for not being the first to market with a piece of hardware, but when they launch getting it so right that it blows everyone away. There are plenty of people trying to do NFC like ISIS – the consortium of carriers, MCX – the consortium of merchants, Google – the consortium of Google. Apple is happy to wait and watch how they fail, let them educate the market and spend to “terminalize” stores and then swoop in many years later with an updated PassBook that you’ve been using to go to concerts, movies, board airplanes, etc.

4. Payments is messy

Payments is a complicated beast that has so many hands in the cookie jar of a transaction taking their crumbs that it’s hard to distinguish from beltway politics. When you think of where apple would fit in the ecosystem, they closest you get is a PayPal solution for online, where they can set the merchant discount rate. At the store, unless they became their own payment mark (not happening in 2 weeks), then they’d be riding on someone elses “rails” (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex). Sharing in this transaction with a partner upon whom they’d be reliant is not a very Apple thing to do. They own customers and ecosystems. They don’t share so well. Also, payments is a high-touch, customer complaint wellspring. Without accruing a lot of value to Apple, it doesn’t seem likely they would work to add this without nailing all the other promotional goodness that would yield benefit.

5. Apple isn’t an advertising company

The real money is in promotions and advertising where you don’t take .05% of a transaction,but get to take a bigger chunk by delivering a lead or changing customer behaviour. In previous efforts around advertising, Apple hasn’t had the stomach for these messy and high touch endeavors. Look at iAd and why you don’t see Apple competing, seriously, with Google or even Facebook on that front. They make software and hardware. They generally aren’t great at services.

6. Swipe isn’t broken

Finally, Apple likes to create step-change in consumer experiences. Swipe isn’t broken, nor does tap add that much ease of use and simplicity. Anytime I’ve stood behind someone trying to pay with their mobile phone, I watch as customers get mad while they try and open the payments app, enter the pin code, and wait for the clerk to understand what’s happened because they didn’t hand over a credit card or cash.

So, while Apple may launch a neat way to share songs or photos using BlueTooth LE or NFC, or greater enhancements to their ecosystem of entertainment like a more robust remote for your apple TV, I don’t see payments coming anytime soon for physical world transactions.

Nine Things You Might Not Know About Cord Cutting

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Jeremy Toeman

The topic of cord cutting is always an interesting one, one that waxes and wanes across technology and media outlets over time. In all cases, there are compelling arguments for cord cutting, and just as compelling ones against it. I thought I’d opine a little on the topic.

1) Cord cutting is undeniably on the rise. But how much is the real question. First, it’s important to acknowledge this is after the longest run of cable sub GROWTH we’ve ever seen. We hit the peak last year , and are now backing down to some other plateau – but i’m far from convinced we’re heading to an abysmal valley. We might see decline continue for several quarters, but realistically – the rate of decline is virtually meaningless against the business operations of most Pay TV providers.

2) How economic recovery is a factor. This may sound counterintuitive, but I believe much of the decline in subs is related to post-recession recovery – yes, recovery. The #1 thing people spend money on in bad times is home entertainment – its much cheaper to go up to a premium cable package than go to the movies. Now that the economy is doing better, people are reallocating their spend, and choosing to be entertained outside of the home.

3) Cord cutting isn’t inherently disruptive, but it could tangentially be part of a massive change in the industry. Here’s a “major impact” possible outcome: breakdown of geographic/regional MSO barriers. Traditionally the only way for a Pay-TV Provider like Comcast/TWC to expand was via acquiring local providers (of which there are still ~12000 in the US alone, jfyi). As we see these companies increasingly offer TV Everywhere and app-based offerings (on Apple TV, Roku, Smart TVs, iPads, and Web Browsers), it *must* be tempting for them to start figuring out how to legally encroach without boundaries. I believe this must happen over time, and will be the “singularity” that most disrupts the ecosystem as it exists today.

4) Awesome hype: I was recently discussing cord cutting with a reporter, and one thing that emerged from the conversation is the realization that nobody in the media is going to write a blog post/article entitled “TV: Doing Great!”. It’s not interesting, not dramatic, and wouldn’t get page views – therefore isn’t news. But to be the canary in the coal mine – now that’s enticing! So we have a heap of prominent news outlets with articles written by people who don’t necessarily fully get the industry they are writing about (no offense intended – this is one of the most complicated industries to even attempt to understand!) AND are *incentivized* to write dramatic/sensational headlines. “Death of TV” is a good one, “Nobody’s Cord Cutting At All” is not.

5) Live TV is well-loved, and awesome – even if you don’t watch it. I find an amazing correlation between people who believe cord cutting is huge and also think everybody in the world has seen House of Cards, and in fact they all watched it opening weekend. It leads to a terrible bias about how individuals perceive most TV audiences, which are nowhere near accurate. The truth in TV watching comes down to this: even in households WITH DVRs (not the majority of US homes, btw), over 50% of TV watching is done live. Now I personally cannot fathom that behavior, nor the desire to watch 4.5+ hours per day of TV – but it’s still more accurate than someone like myself, who watches virtually everything on my own schedule (and device of choice).

6) MSOs will do just fine even if cord-cutting emerges more significantly. These companies have spent a few decades with a lot of CapEx which has now enabled them to create new value-added services. Voice, for example, became a multi-billion dollar business for Comcast, with NO SIGNIFICANT investment whatsoever. Now they are looking toward: Home Security, Home Automation/Monitoring, increased Communications, etc. The revenue that fades (if any) from TV will shift to Internet and other value-added services.

7) The real damage is to Broadcast Networks. If you really want to analyze the business impact, it’s essential understand the revenue flow and content itself. Even in a cord-cutters utopia, with all of everything available fully on demand (and free, if I get them right), the content is still king. So in this utopia, however the business model works, it seems like the companies whose role is buying shows and distributing them to cable networks will need to find a new raison d’etre. We’ll still need Internet, and we’ll still want stuff on demand – those two functions alone necessitate a service provider.

8. Cord Cutting Paradise might really be more Hellish. Pretty much every analysis on the topic shows that a la carte pricing and unbundling will cost consumers more than it saves them. Again, for everyone reading this who thinks most people are like them, and only watch two shows at a time, all marathon/binge-style – you are in the extreme minority of audiences. Buying, for example, Game of Thrones on iTunes goes for roughly $39/season. Or you can upgrade to get HBO (which typically comes with a bunch of other channels), and get all 3 seasons, and the entire back catalog of HBO originals for (depending on provider) typically $10-20 (or more) per month. It’s a good deal. For a household of 4, who watch 4.5 hours per day (on multiple TVs in multiple rooms, plus their mobile devices), that’s 540 viewing hours per month (or more) – so if you pay $100/month for TV, it’s averaging under a quarter an hour. Not too shabby.

9) One more thing on the “great unbundling” of TV. I’ve read numerous reports about how a variety of ambitious startups and tech ventures are negotiating with Hollywood to offer TV in different forms. Sounds good in theory, and follows a very Google-like logical argument around content, but flies in the face of business interests and, more importantly, long term multi-billion dollar contracts. The “big” service providers (Comcast, etc) all have “most favored nation” style clauses with the broadcasters that utterly prevent anyone else from buying it any cheaper. So for anyone to offer it cheaper, they will likely do so at extreme loss. Literally, any vision of any other type of offering is an unrealistic fantasy, and I cannot possibly imagine how it happens.

Looking forward to thoughtful replies in the comments!

All anyone needs to do to "disrupt" television is…

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Jeremy Toeman

Want to know how to “kill” the traditional TV industry? It’s easy. Come up with a cash flow of roughly $70 billion. That’s it. Pure and simple.

The thing about it, that so many people out there seem to not grasp (which frustrates me to no end, I must say), is it takes about that much money to maintain the rough production costs (and profits) for all the shows we love to watch. See, we all know that there’s some perfect blend between Live TV broadcasting and an all-streaming/on-demand library (neither end of the spectrum are “correct”), but we don’t know how to get there. Meanwhile, everyone wants to talk about killing/disruption the TV ecosystem. So let’s talk about the cold hard facts of this world:

TV Shows Are Expensive to Make. While new technologies across the spectrum certainly reduce many aspects of production, if you want a Game of Thrones, House of Cards, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, etc type of show, you need sets, lighting, etc. We *cannot* get around that statement in any way. So regardless of the surge in lower cost reality shows, if you enjoy quality dramas/comedies for 44/22 minutes at a time, you need a budget. Unless you can get all the actors, directors, writers, key grips, etc to take a big salary haircut, this will not change.

Advertising Pays The Bulk of it. Other than fine shows from HBO, Showtime, Netflix, and a handful of others, the wide array of money that covers costs of TV shows comes from the $70(+) billion ad industry. There is no model, from subscription to a la carte to anything else that can easily replace this cash flow as far as I am aware, but if so, I’m sure we’d all love to hear about it.

victoryag.org Advertising Models Are Based on Live/Near-Live Viewing. Another tough, but true, fact about the existing ecosystem is the revenue is predicated on live audiences. While I love catch-up and streaming as much as anyone, it does not contribute to the bill-paying. For this to change/shift/be disrupted, the massive amounts of people, and money, all have to come up with an entirely new model for their world. Again, even if we know there’s a desire/trend toward a decrease in live viewership, nobody, anywhere, has come up with a successful alternate structure here.

So the TL;DR version of the above: TV Shows Cost a Lot Of Money, and the Only Way to Pay for them is Advertising, and the Only Way Advertisers Spend Money is on Live Viewing.

If you want/expect the above statement to change, get ready for more ads in your streaming – lots of them. Like 8 of every 30 minutes worth. That’s what it takes.

While we’re at it, I just want to add two topics regarding the discussion around TV disruption:

Pay-TV Operators Have an Arbitrarily Bad Rep. It’s easy to blame Comcast, ATamp;T, etc for anything and everything, but they should not be pointed to as “the problem” of television. Yes, they have their part to play, but when you consider the fact that someone has to send people into homes to repair lines, answer customer service calls, etc, there is always going to be an easy enemy. And as much as our cable bills have risen dramatically over the past two decades, the cost the operators are paying for content have risen *more* dramatically, and those costs are not entirely being passed along to consumers. I’m not defending anything about Pay-TV providers, but I’m also not in agreement that they are “bad” and everyone else is “good”.

Most Startups Are Clueless About the TV Industry. Yes, that probably sounds harsh, but considering the quantity of companies who spring out of nowhere and want to disrupt or change things, it amazes me how few of them actually take the time to learn enough about the world and business they are getting into (read Mike Wolf’s solid piece on this here). This is important because the “TV Industry” is actually an amalgam of many industries, from service providers, content production, distribution, studios, data, etc. It’s easy to say “TV Industry” but in reality, we shouldn’t say it at all – it’s isn’t “an” industry, it’s many. My tip to startups: pick one specific sub-industry you want to get into/go after/change/kill/whatever, and go learn how it *really* works.

So there you have it, your simple recipe for how to disrupt the simple world of television. Good luck with that.

Quickie: Introducing NextGuide Web

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Jeremy Toeman

TL;DR version: “Pinterest meets Evernote meets TV Guide”

Today we introduced NextGuide Web. NextGuide Web is a new site that helps people find and explore TV shows and movies and see what their friends recommend and watch. The site lets users discover and watch shows on live TV and popular streaming services including Amazon Prime, Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Hulu Plus, and Netflix.

What can you do with it?

Single Search - No more need to browse site after site to find your favorite show on a streaming service – search once on NextGuide for combined live and streaming results.

Universal Watchlist and Queue - No need to maintain unique queues on all your favorite sites, just create one list at NextGuide for anything you’d ever like to see.

Automatic Reminders - For any show or movie, set a reminder and NextGuide can email you whenever there’s a new airing on live TV or any streaming service.

One Click to Watch amp; Record to DVR - When browsing shows, NextGuide includes direct links to watch on streaming services, or queue recordings to your home DVR (note: DVR features only for Comcast and DIRECTV subscribers at present).

Social Recommendations - Easily discover what shows and movies your Facebook friends are Liking, and get recommendations from other people who watch similar shows and movies as you do.

For an example, here’s my personal TV profile on NextGuide.

Here’s some of the other coverage about NextGuide Web.

VentureBeat: http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/20/dijit-launches-a-web-version-of-its-nextguide-app-tv-utility/

TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/20/dijit-nextguide-web/

Robert Scoble : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRZlfml5Aowamp;feature=youtu.beamp;a

The Verge: http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/20/4346866/nextguide-web-replaces-your-dvr-interface-with-your-web-browser

GigaOm: http://gigaom.com/2013/05/20/nextguide-web-app/

Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/20/dijit-unveils-nextguide-web/

The Next Web: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/05/20/dijit-media-launches-nextguide-web-a-site-to-help-discover-tv-and-movies-your-friends-love-to-watch/

CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57585296-93/social-tv-app-nextguide-goes-from-mobile-to-the-web/

PandoDaily: http://pandodaily.com/2013/05/20/nextguide-web-launches-can-it-possibly-be-a-discovery-powerhouse/

Lost Remote: http://lostremote.com/dijit-media-debuts-nextguide-on-the-web-to-make-it-easier-to-find-and-watch-tv-shows_b37680