There are still troubles(software, hardware, & etc.) getting streaming video on a computer to be as reliable as regular broadcast TV.

Plus, if you don’t mind just having access to only a dozen or so channels, there is nothing cheaper than putting up an antenna and getting your TV that way. The government ran out of coupons to give people to be ready for the switch from analog to digital broadcasting so there is a good chance there are a lot of those people out there.

Human behaviour untimately dictates what succeeds in the marketplace. Otherwise, gamesystems and computers would be one and the same as that has pretty much pushed since the 80’s without much to show for it since people still like to think of them as separate.

these 2 things i think also alter alot of a show is worth it or not.
like for example chuck and how i met your mother, both are great avenues that are set up for branding tie-ins

also shows like knight rider and terminator are shows that have great numbers in other countries (like asia) plus both can be rebroadcasted easily in the US.

i wonder how much these 2 factors measure up whether a serial is worth cancelling or not!

Targeted advertising is the best way to go. You sign up to Hulu. Maybe you pay a subscription fee for each Network you wish to view shows for. you tell them your demographic, you tick some interests. you let people rate the ads based on enjoyability.

Suddenly advertising and TV becomes what it should always have been. International and interesting.

I don’t drink alcohol, but you know, I love the alcohol ads we get Downunder. they’re clever, they’re mysterious, they’re funny, they’re silly. whatever, but they’re enjoyable, and i wont fast forward them or change the channel. if it’s yet ANOTHER ad about nasal spray technology, of course i’m going to change the channel.

just like boys often don’t want to see feminine hygiene product ads, and girls don’t necessarily want to see ads for sport stuff, targeted advertising is the key to online tv. and allowing people to rate an ad, allows advertising companies access to a huge focus group, where people will have the opportunity to say if they like or didn’t like an ad.

The major advantage that Hulu and the network media players all have is that there’s an existing understanding of who the audience for their content is. If a show performs well with young women on television then the general agreement is that it will perform well with young women online. The figures on who the audience is are already in place because everything that’s airing online has already aired on television and been analysed with a system that advertisers and networks agree upon and like.

In contrast YouTube doesn’t have that. Sure it reaches a huge number of people but they have no real world data to explain who these people are or why advertisers want to reach them. The major content issue that YouTube has to overcome (and I don’t think it can) is that its near impossible to predict who’s actually going to watch any given video on the site. It is by its very nature an incredibly unpredictable site and so they have no way of really selling their content to advertisers.

Ultimately what YouTube needs to do is expand well beyond where they are and have more professionally generated content that they can sell to advertisers. There’s a million and one reasons why you aren’t ever going to be able to sell advertisers on user generated content but if you can get more professional content on there that has some real world data to go along with it then you can begin to bring advertisers into the fold. Of course professional content costs money.

Of course the other issue YouTube has to careful of is what happens if you actually put commercials in user generated videos?

As things stand though the systems used to measure online viewing need to become much more detailed and sophisticated before we’re going to see a real explosion in it because until you have that it doesn’t become commercially viable.

I think you have it wrong with YouTube, too. I don’t think it’s that advertisers don’t want to advertise to most of the users who utilize YouTube, I think it’s that they don’t want to advertise on most of the content available on YouTube. The television content is very advantaged in that regard, both due to the content and the length of it.

The major problem that online viewing has to overcome is that there’s no significant, agreed upon or reliable way to measure who is actually watching. Whilst its incredibly easy to measure how many people are watching its much more difficult to determine who those people are. It gets mentioned at least once a day here during ratings discussions that total viewers just aren’t important to advertisers and that holds true for online content – advertisers aren’t bothered by how many people as much as they are who those people are. Advertising is demographic targeted now and until someone creates an online ratings system that’s both reliable and adopted as an industry standard online viewing isn’t going to explode.

Right now the very real fear that a lot of advertisers have is that the people watching the online content are the ‘wrong’ people. The reason YouTube has such problems with advertising is because of the general view of the majority of the people that use the site not matching up with the people advertisers want to target. That YouTube fear carries over to sites like Hulu albeit to a lesser extent, advertisers are essentially worried that its just the nerds living in their parents basements who watch online.

the screen size isn’t the issue here, i really don’t think.

and as for TV internet. apple TV has started the ball rolling, and soon within 5-10 it could well take off as has the ipod/mp3 player movement, with one mp3 player in almost every home.

“Reallocation of existing revenue streams.” Sure but remember that this could also mean that advertising revenue from broadcast gets redirected to online viewing, once the advertisers gets comfortable with it. Better targeted ads will appeal to the advertising community.

“Increased DVR viewing and advertising strategies aiming to combat it” The basic question here is why would you use a DVR when you have your shows on-demand ? It’s possible a lot of DVRs like mine will gather dust when all shows are available online on-demand, advertising load might become a deciding factor.

“Look for new and better offerings from your cable and satellite providers (watch out, Netflix!)”, have to agree with Alex that the trends in the US and the rest of the world seems to diverge, while cable and satellite providers might have a larger role to play in the US online distribution is gaining in acceptance outside of the US, the role of cable and satellite is to provide internet access the rest comes from there.
If the US distributors doesn’t provide on-line options we might actually come to see a Freemium model where US consumers pay the bills while the rest of the world get it for free, mostly because of the lack of pay/ad supported options.

Personally the rise of nichecasting replacing broadcasting is all to the good, a few selected show like Deadwood, The Wire, The Shield, Sons of Anarchy, the Whedon stuff and some selected BBC series to be delivered where and when I feel like it is all I ask for. That’s not too much, is it ?

On the other hand, many Netflix customers run into issues, to the point where Netflix has had to post things that basically amount to “Uh, please don’t download 5 torrents at the same time as streaming and then complain about the quality! And oh, we can’t control congestion with your broadband provider and the Internet in general and in some cases it’s worse than others.”

Robert, you and I basically agree, but agreeing totally never makes for a good dialogue, so maybe I amp up the disagreement a bit when I post my diatribes. Really, the only place we probably actually disagree strongly is that I think right now the networks could position themselves to not just become basic cable nets but premium nets. They have the resources to put on the shows that could turn them into the premium pay-cable networks of all time. People would pay higher fees for them than any other net on cable if—and only IF—they used their resources to start making more viewer friendly (i.e., actually good) television. Right now they are programming as much towards adverstisers and their standards and practices departments as they are towards their actual viewers. Cut out the former, and it is a whole new ballgame.

Also, whenever they do consider viewers, they only consider the lowest common denominator, dumbing down most shows until they are completely insufferable.

All of that has to stop if they want to make the transition to big time premium cable fees.

Lots of problems with all of this obviously, starting with the firestorm that will come from people losing their “free” TV (an oxymoron if ever I heard one), and from the conservative groups who will freak out over the liberalizing of the standards on the big networks. But those will all be teapot tempests compared to the major tornado they will all face if they do not change their model and diversify their programming.

Mark my words: one of these broadcast nets is going to dump the entire old school format, start charging big $$$ directly to the consumers (through the cable companies) and go from fading to dominant. Basically, they will become HBO without as many movies and with a HELL of a lot more subscribers. They may, however, try to keep some form of the local affiliate agreement, so as not to have to program 24 hours a day.

I don’t know which network will bite first, but whichever one does will rule the television landscape for many years to come. If you merged NBC’s resources with FX or HBO’s testicles and subscriber fees, you’d have an old school multimedia behemoth that could survive and thrive until the time comes that they finally figure out a way to meld internet and television into one holitistic pocket draining entity.

UK providers have also started to look very in depth at a complete on demand service – watch what you want when you want rather than having hundreds of cable channels open to you. The system that’s current launched of that is still in the early stages but having had a play around with it I think its going to get very good as it grows. Cable providers have also started to offer online viewing streams through your television and set top box – Virgin Media offers access to some of the BBC iPlayer and 4OD content a service that should continue to grow and if ITV ever get a decent online player will also include them.

When I watch an episode online, it’s still only 40-43 minutes of actual show, but I have to spend only 45 minutes of actual life to see it, not 60 minutes as would be the case in my living room, and the breaks are so short I can remember what I was watching and what was going on when the break is over.

And, actually, RSH is correct. Right now this very minute anyone with a PC and a digital television can hook it up to the CPU just like it’s the monitor and watch online streaming on the big screen. The resolution with the Netflix streaming is fantastic and fully comparable to watching a live broadcast.

We’re there except in the accounting department.

Today the on demand offering from the broadcast networks and advertising supported cable do not have very many ads. I’d expect that to change.

I do see broadcast television as downsized. In fact, I see broadcast networks going away almost completely and becoming the biggest advertising and subscriber supported cable networks. It’s already true in terms of actual viewing, but the economics currently aren’t completely aligned with that, which is the primary reason that I think revenue reallocation has to happen. For me for years, ABC and CBS were just another thing I can get via cable, like ESPN and Comedy Central. But I watch ABC and CBS more than Comedy Central, and so do most people who watch those networks via cable or satellite. The fact that ABC and CBS had broadcast towers has been meaningless to me for years. From the point of view of the local affiliate model and OTA broadcasts, I think broadcast television as we know it is already dead, it’s just a question of what kind of funeral it will have. But although the business models must change, TV as a medium ain’t dying any time soon, it’s the people who think it is who are holding the sporks.

What advertisers and networks are going to have to do is find new ways to incorporate advertising. Product placement is the obvious answer because to skip that you have to skip through the show, sponsorship deals are also going to become increasingly important. The idea of strap advertising during the show will likely be played around with as well.

I realize this would take alot of the appeal out of dvr but couldnt broadcasters make it so you cant skip the commercials? if the DVR companies got allitle on the side to allow for that, then everyone except the consumer is happy.

but the $$$$$ flow free!
Thoughts?