The following post is written by Henry Blodget. Henry is the CEO, founded and writes for the influential Business Insider where this post was originally published.
The traditional TV industry–cable companies, networks, and broadcasters–is where the newspaper industry was about five years ago:
In denial.
There are murmurings on the edges about how longstanding business models will come under pressure as Internet distribution takes over. But, so far, the revenue and profits are hanging in there, so the big TV companies don’t really care.
Specifically, the TV industry’s attitude is the same as the newspaper industry’s attitude was circa 2002-2003: Stop calling us dinosaurs: We get digital; We’re growing our digital businesses; We’re investing in digital platforms; People still recall ads even when they fast-foward through them on DVRs; There’s no subtitute for TV ads. And traditional TV isn’t going away: Just look at our revenue and profits!
After saying all this same stuff for years, the newspaper industry figured out the hard way that, eventually, reality intrudes, that you can’t stuff the genie back in the bottle. And over the next 5-10 years, the TV industry will figure this out, too.
Here’s the problem in a nutshell:
As with print-based media, Internet-based distribution generates only a tiny fraction of the revenue and profit that today’s incumbent cable, broadcast, and satellite distribution models do. As Internet-based distribution gains steam, therefore, most TV industry incumbents will no longer be able to support their existing cost structures.
Specifically, TV business models for the past half-century, from broadcast to cable to satellite, have been built on the following foundation:
- Not much else to do at home that’s as simple and fun as TV
- No way to get video content other than via TV
- No options other than TV for advertisers who want to tell video stories
- No options other than cable–and, more recently, satellite–to get TV
- Tight choke-points in each market through which all video content has to flow (cable company, airwaves), which creates enormous value for the owners of those gates.
And now, slowly but surely, look what’s happening:
- Other simple and fun options emerging at home: Internet, video games, Facebook, IM, DVDs
- New ways to get TV content other than traditional TV companies: Hulu, YouTube, iTunes, Netflix
- Video-story options for advertisers beginning to emerge: Hulu shows, for example (But NBC, et al, making a lot less per viewer now than they do on TV)
- More options for getting video content: telcos, cable cos, wireless cos (soon)
- Fewer choke points in each market: With an Internet connection anywhere in the world, you will soon be able to get to almost anything. And not just to your computer–to your television.
Thus far, the TV industry has reacted to these changes the way most people would: By trying to port its existing model to the new world and maintain its hold on power and money. This is why we’re getting so many ridiculous, consumer-unfriendly TV solutions, such as:
- Market-based control over what you can and can’t watch (thanks to contracts with local cable companies),
- No live-streaming of lots of popular video content despite the fact that this would grow the audience (same reason),
- Time-shifting of popular shows (don’t want to cannibalize more profitable TV audience)
- Hoarding of video libraries that could be easily available, watched, and monetized online
- Single episode downloads that expire after 24 hours
- $150/month “triple-play” solutions that come larded up with absurd taxes, fees, and service-charges, most of which go to pay for crap we don’t want.
All these Band-Aid solutions will eventually fail. Why? Because eventually the cable-satellite-airwave monopoly over TV content in local markets will be circumvented by simple, global Internet distribution.
You won’t have 5 channels, or 50 channels, or 500 channels. You’ll have millions of channels. You’ll be able to watch anything you want, live or taped. You’ll be able to watch it wherever you want–TV, computer, mobile device. You won’t have to sorry about “slinging” video content around or programming your DVR. You’ll just plug a pipe (Internet) into a box (device) and watch.
This is where the future is going. That’s obvious. The only question is how long it takes us to get there–and who gets killed along the way.
A lot of this content, by the way, won’t–and shouldn’t–be free. But you won’t have to pay your cable company for the dozens of channels you won’t ever watch just get the ones you do. You may have to maintain subscriptions with several different content-aggregation companies (a pain) but this will be a lot better than paying for things you don’t want. And whatever content you do pay for will–and should–cost a lot less than it does now.
And what will happen to the companies?
The best content creators will do just fine. Video storytelling won’t go away. Compared to the people who produced Battlestar Galactica, the Sopranos, and West Wing, etc., the folks who post to YouTube generally suck at it. So great content creators won’t have to worry about them.
The lousy content creators will disappear. No big loss. And no big change.
The cable companies will become dumb pipes, and they’ll get disintermediated. We won’t need Brian Roberts to negotiate a deal with the Tennis Channel for us (or, rather, to prevent us from getting the Tennis Channel because of some contract dispute). We’ll just go direct.
The phone companies will remain dumb pipes.
The wireless companies will become dumber pipes.
The competition between the multiple dumb pipes will eventually, we pray, result in lower prices for consumers for the only thing we will really need: Ubiquitous high-speed Internet access.
Box and device companies will remain box and device companies. Unless Apple somehow creates a new global chokepoint via the iPhone.
Networks that produce live news, sports, and entertainment will offer the content direct to consumers. But they’ll no longer get paid big carriage fees from cable companies.
A few clever online aggregators–YouTube? Hulu? Cable companies? Netflix?–will create nice video portals and build powerful new businesses. At these portals, you’ll be able to sign up to watch anything in the world on any device you want. You’ll be able choose among multiple subscription models (monthly, a la carte). You’ll also have a basic “what’s on” option in case you just want to watch TV.
When will this happen? Over the next 5-10 years. And it will leave today’s TV industry looking like today’s newspaper industry.
And from this TV consumer’s perspective, it can’t happen soon enough.
You can read more of Henry Blodget’s (and others’) writing on The Business Insider where you can find stories like:
- Steve Ballmer’s Secrets To Kicking Ass
- Fix California By Chopping it Into Three States
- Chart of the Day: Newspaper Billions Become Craigslist Millions
I would love a la carte TV. There are so many channels that I never watch that just take up space.
i only watch tv on my big screen
@Christopher… yeah? and? The Internet will be there too. It’s not only limited to desktop PCs, laptops, and mobile phones anymore. The box you plug your TV into, or quite possibly your next TV itself, will be Internet connected.
This is a very interesting read on the situation. The problem I see is the timeframe to get to where the newspaper industry is today. TV has a far more dominant share than newspapers, and has for a very long time. TV has much further to fall, and I just don’t see it happening in 5-10 years. Maybe 10-15, and more likely 15-20, but 5-10 just doesn’t make sense when you look at the growth of TV vs the growth of the internet.
But I do think this is the future at some point, and it’s definitely a reason I’m not looking to get into broadcast if I can help it. Broadcast will be the first to go.
Ultimately this is probably the end game, but since most folks in the US get their high speed internet access from companies that also provide cable television service (where they likely make far more money/customer) my guess is that monopoly choke point will be able to be successfully defended for quite some time.
This is a good thing.
i cut my cable four years ago because most of the content I get is online. Just have free TV (outdoor antenna before and after the DTV switch) for sports matchups,local news and two shows..well three.
Online content will continue to be the place. Networks and cable just dont get it yet.
well if they didnt cancle eveything i would tune in i just got showtime and let me tell your there shows are better than network tv
Now the only problem left is the bandwidth caps from your ISP….
What is killing newspapers is the idiots that went on billion buying binges right before the bottom fell out. New York Times spent a billion to buy the Boston Globe. Now they’re whining about losing money – but it’s money going to the banks on outrageous loans.
Content will suffer if there’s no advertisers. Last few times I’ve watched a film on Hulu – all they had were PSAs instead of real sponsors. Sure that’s OK for an ancient AIP film, but a TV show with a budget of $5 million per episode? Although the advertising dollar is shrinking simply because businesses are failing. Car deals won’t be churning out the big bucks for a while. And the new owners of Bud are cheapskates. Don’t expect them to sponsor the Superbowl with a dozen buys.
Expect a future of reality shows that cost next to nothing – plenty of Poker shows.
And sports are vanishing off free TV. Yesterday they announced the Rose Bowl of 2011 will be on ESPN and not ABC.
And isn’t Netflix also killing the video store business and art house theaters?
keep putting reatily shows and you lose me as veiwer and i will turn to cable to watch there shows
^because there are so few reality shows on cable…?
I doubt it will happen that fast. I think Broadcast is in much more trouble than cable right now. I agree cable needs to be thinking of alternatives.
Also for this to happen, ESPN would have to start selling their product ala carte. Until then this isn’t likely.
Corey3rd, your complaint gets me to what I’ve envisioned for a long time – Open source tv. A show with a budget of $5 million an episode? Imagine 5 million fans kicking in a dollar apiece per episode. Just like there have been experiments in musicians and authors bypassing the middle man of record or publishing companies (and like online computer game delivery service Steam is letting video game developers bypass major publishing and retail companies), programs could be developed and delivered without studio control. I told this to the Moonlight fans when they were complaining about having X million viewers no one wanted: kick in a dollar or less per episode, deliver it online, and you guys could still have your show. That’s the future I and others are seeing – direct to the public, no middleman. It suggests LESS reality tv to me, not more: decisions won’t be made solely on attracting a certain demographic of viewer. Enthusiasts could deliver niche content as opposed to attempting to maximize profit by producing generic fare.
Your sports problem – what you’re complaining about is now you’d need a cable subscription to see the Rose Bowl. But in the future you’ll just have to pay to see the Rose Bowl, which’ll be a lot cheaper. That’s happening now with some sports. Other than the U.S. and World championships, this season no figure skating competitions were shown on tv. However, a web site sprang up that for a subscription fee (rather like a season ticket) offered not only all of the major events aired in seasons past on tv, but many minor events, interviews, highlights from past seasons, etc. all delivered over the Internet. It’s rather ahead of its time.
I think broadcast TV is more of a dinosaur than cable. Like ESPN, for example, has great video got catching up on highlight (with ads) and their ESPN360.com is showing a lot of live games now.
The real problem for me is Comcast and whatever cable company I deal with. I don’t want to have to pay for 15 sports tier channels just so I can get the NHL Network. I hate that.
Joseph,
The only problem with your idea is that viewers won’t be contributing to just one show. If it’s a series, say with 20 episodes, that’s $25 that one person would be contributing. Plus, how many of those 5 million fans will watch on the Internet? 1% of them?
I do wonder, like Corey3rd, if content will suffer. TV is already experimenting with coproductions from Canada, UK, Colombia, etc, but even if the stories are good, many of these shows have a “cheap” look to them. What if viewers still want shows that have that expensive look like “Heroes” and “Lost”?
Maybe in the future no one will care as much as we do now about scripted shows. Maybe scripted shows are the mark of the mid 20th, early 21st century, to be swept away in the dustpan of history, like old Vaudeville.
if there is no way to save then why is showtime doing so well with there stuff?
The idea of “viewer supported TV” is done – it’s called The Sopranos, The Wire, Dexter – all those shows on HBO & Showtime. But that’s the not from people clicking paypal buttons. That’s from people subscribing to the channel.
People chipping in to help Marillion make a record is small change compared to the budget of an episode of a TV show. Plus they’ve been around for decades before making this plea to the fans. You can’t have the crew waiting around for those final dollars to trickle in like a PBS pledge drive.
People like to look at pretty pictures. We’re not going to settle for a bunch of ugly cheap productions for our constant viewing. We needs a little beauty on the screen with nice lighting and proper framing. Even the reality show people discovered that element when they jumped on making The Hills junk on MTV. It should also be pointed out that a lot of channels are using reality shows as a way to make sitcoms on the cheap – like Gene Simmons Family Jewels or Hogan Knows Best.
But no matter what happens – we’ll always have reruns.
Well, they are making way to much money as it is, time to make do with less
But
“The lousy content creators will disappear. No big
loss. And no big change.”
And not bloody likely. The majority of viewers are dumb, they don’t want to think too hard. Proof? Turn on the boob tube!
preair says:
“Now the only problem left is the bandwidth caps from your ISP….”
Are these actually common in the states? Obviously, cable shares bandwidth, so there’s some motivation, but I pay my ISP for a 6 Mbps DSL static /29 (no SLA), and I can keep the pipe filled all the live-long day if I please.
>>> Also for this to happen, ESPN would have to start selling their product ala carte
Why would ESPN want to do that? They get higher rates from Cable/Sat then any other non-premium, and since they’re on the basic tiers, they get paid for every last Cable/Sat subscriber there is.
They’d really, really have to crank their rates up in an ala carte setup to make the same amount of money.
>>> Are these actually common in the states?
Not yet, although some already have them (Comcast), but all the other big providers (Time Warner, AT&T, etc.) have already signaled their intentions to implement them in some form in the future.
I’m convinced that if the networks would just ease up on the amount of airtime they devote to commercials that some of the audience would come back. It’s just nutty that sitcoms are 20 minutes long and 10 minutes of commercials. The current system is just asking people to get tivo or use hulu and punishing viewers who are loyal to watching it on tv when it first airs.
“If it’s a series, say with 20 episodes, that’s $25 that one person would be contributing. ”
Don’t people do that already when they buy a DVD of a season of a television series?
Newspapers have always been doing badly. Doubt it? This quote from Citizen Kane was based on how the industry worked sixty years ago:
You’re right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars *next* year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I’ll have to close this place in… 60 years.
The difference between then and now is that the money is drying up, the various trusts and moguls who used to pour money into newspapers because of their own political reasons (right or wrong) are seeing too much loss for too little gain.
Now, that’s not to say I don’t see a problem with the TV industry. I think right now it’s seeing itself as relatively healthy, but it has problems. Unlike the writer, I think newspapers are the wrong industry to compare to, a better industry might be the music industry, but even then that’s a stretch.
Essentially, TV in “channel” form can survive if it strips costs to the bone and reorganizes as an industry, with the studios making a direct connection to the viewer and cutting out middlemen. Essentially, it has to recognize it’s not going to be able to monetize every single level of the distribution any more.
That sits badly with the network/affiliate model it has built up over the years.
I do think the industry “gets it”, but doesn’t see a quick way out right now. Look at Hulu. On one level, it’s a direct indication that the studios and networks recognize they need to get content to viewers directly, that if they don’t viewers will take matters into their own hands and were dangerously close to doing that with torrents. On the other, Hulu is itself crippled because it’s not allowed to “compete” with the affiliates, which means every time it looks like Hulu might be connected to a TV, efforts are made to shut down whoever is trying to do that. It means that Hulu isn’t available overseas, and likewise overseas services like the BBC’s iPlayer are not available in the US.
The best way, for the networks, to reorganize probably involves the FCC removing some of the restrictions on station ownership by the networks, and the networks buying out most or all of their affiliates.
The other option, which doesn’t take action by the FCC, is for the networks to dissolve and the stations to freely syndicate anything they want with no geographic monopolies.
But either way, the concept of using monopolies to maximize revenue is a dead end. So the studios need to think in terms of lower budgets.
@ Joseph, Yes, I do that very thing when I purchase the DVD of a season of a network show. However, it’s not the same. There is no way I will pay $25 up front before I’ve seen the shows.
And if people aren’t required to pay for the TV series up front, who is going to pay for producing the show?
@Corey3rd, you are exactly about production costs. Someone will have to pay to produce the show we would eventually see via the internet. Who will. I know of no one who would fund the production of a show upon the hopes of finding enough people to pay the freight, before they’ve seen the entire season or movie.
There is a completely free system in place amongst the various torrent sites listing every show, movie and what ever from around the globe, and its basically free. I don’t see anything stopping it for the next 5-10 years either, it’s atleast 10 years old now, not torrents specifically but video sharing on usenet, mirc, websites and now torrents is an entrenched community of people, albeit a little naive to the legalities of the process. If anything is going to develop it would most likely come from within these circles. I honestly don’t know why the studios don’t bundle their content with watermark ads and/or inline ads like they do on tv and run a few torrents, see what kind of response they get, they can make money. The Dr Horrible experiment by Josh Whedon appeared to work, though I didn’t like it, many did and bought the dvd.
I do allot of work with Home Theatre PCs and stuff and all the tech today is in place, whats needed is mentioned above a ubiquitous internet connection, something the gov’t could easily regulate into existence if the ISPs don’t stop messing with bandwidth. Incidentally in 2001 there was too much bandwidth, many ISPs went under the big boys bought up the pipes and now cry scarcity, pfft.
I think one option for the broadcast networks that they haven’t done is for each affiliate to stream each channel live online. It will be completely ad supported and it will cost very little and have the ability to go global on their audience
Some valid points, but consider the source. Being guilty of securities fraud doesn’t automatically make you a bad journalist, but just look at his articles. They are a collection of one liners and quotes, and he puts key sentences in bold, so everyone knows what to quote on their blogs, because the more he is quoted, the more of an authority he becomes.
It will be a very long time before pure internet distribution can provide the revenue needed to cover the costs of a 1 hour scripted drama.
What we will see is an equalization in the per-viewer ad revenue.
Subscriptions services are another matter altogether. HBO and Showtime have a predictable per-subscriber revenue and it wouldn’t matter if they stream over cable or the internet. Launching an internet only subscription service would be a huge risk, and I don’t think the market is ready.
The area where the internet could be most disruptive, but nobody talks about it is first-run syndication. First-run syndicated programs, like Xena, tend to be lower budget, and are not necessary available in every market, so the internet would provide significant growth opportunities.
Here’s how it’s going to work. Maybe not in five or ten years, but definitely in 20. Because the bottom line to all this is: 1) bandwidth; and 2) computer power. Both of which are getting cheaper and will continue to get cheaper for at least another twenty years and very likely much longer. And you can produce and distribute anything with enough of both. It’s that simple.
TV and movie production costs will plummet when more computer power is applied to the computer generation of images. Instead of spending a fortune on mechanical effects, they are CGI’d in with perfectly seamless realism. Eventually with enough computer power you WILL NOT be able to see that it’s CGI – except of course that dragons, alien spaceships, and various other things aren’t actually real and that will be your clue.
I’m not even talking about the stuff you see in movies and on TV now. I’m talking about “better than reality” resolution and total seamlessness. It will happen. If humans can’t do it, they’ll program a machine that can. All it takes is more computer power. In twenty years they will be able to create a box with approximately the same level of computing power as a human brain – a stupid human brain, but still…And the cost of putting hundreds or thousands – or like Google does, hundreds of thousands – of those boxes together will be much cheaper than it is now.
The naysayers can groan all they want. This stuff is inevitable.
So then the production costs of entertainment – other than live – come down to manageable levels. No longer does it cost $200 million to make Terminator movies that don’t make their money back.
And it filters down, so even low-budget film makers can do a decent job – if they have any talent, anyway. Most content is crap as it is, so worrying about a reduction of quality in content is just ridiculous.
And once again, NO form of protecting content short of sticking a chip in everybody’s heads that turns off your eyes and ears when looking at “unprotected” content is going to work. All you need is one guy with the (illegal and he doesn’t care) hardware and tech smarts to intercept the clear signal between the encrypted one and human eyes and ears, and the content is free to be distributed everywhere to anyone. And will be.
Five years, nah. Ten years, maybe, quite possible. Twenty – almost a certainty. Why? Because Ray Kurzweil is right – this stuff ACCELERATES. Which means it looks like it won’t happen at first, then it looks like it might happen but much later than everybody thinks – then it happens much sooner than anybody thinks. The only thing that can hold it back temporarily are major legal barriers – and eventually they fall because the law cannot stop people from using technology to evade and obsolete the law – legally and illegally. If the money is there, it will be done. This is the history of the black AND white markets for centuries.
Atlee: “There is no way I will pay $25 up front before I’ve seen the shows”
That’s not how it will work. Business models will always continue to rely on investors investing in an overall operation which is likely to produce a profit. That money produces a product, which is consumed either by direct purchase or subscription. And you’ll pay $25 up front to subscribe once you’ve seen one show in order to see OTHER shows by the same operation. \
Or you’ll pay for more convenient ACCESS to various content, and not the content itself. As I’ve said before, nobody has ever paid for content in history – except during one small period where the only way they could get it is on physical media like phonograph records or disks – they’ve paid for access.
Speaking of access, the cable and telecom companies have a lot of already laid wire and optical fiber (satellite has major problems with latency, so they can’t compete). But so does Google. It’s still possible that one day Google will set up data centers everywhere (ARE doing so, actually) built into shipping containers that fit on a small plot of land in your neighborhood, run or lease enough optical fiber in the neighborhood and between neighborhoods -or wireless gets fast enough and covers enough territory to obsolete wire – then sell you a small box that plugs into your wall’s power outlet and uses data over power to connect to your big screen TV/computer/phone, etc., bypassing the cable and telecom companies entirely – except for whatever fiber they need to lease until they can run their own.
Saying all this can’t happen within another twenty years is a sucker’s bet.
forget netflix. out with the old and in with the new–redbox, 1 dollar movies for a one day. thank god for dvd burners.
more pushing daisies!
rizzo, my complaints to redbox and the movie cube and similar: not enough capacity. too many times my movie is checked out of the supermarket box. granted i simply choose not to rent anything and just go home, but if i had the spare change i’d do well to visit blockbuster instead where dozens of copies would likely be available
MIke the Canadian says:
“There is a completely free system in place amongst the various torrent sites listing every show, movie and what ever from around the globe, and its basically free. I don’t see anything stopping it for the next 5-10 years either, it’s atleast 10 years old now, not torrents specifically but video sharing on usenet….”
Ah, Usenet. My local newsfeed went the way of the quagga last week, a victim of mismanagement and subsequent disuse. Farewell, NANAE, AFW, Monster Truck Neutopians.
I find it hard to imagine a worse platform for “video sharing,” though.
Good article, what he’s missing is micropayments, which is why he suggest the silly content aggregation option instead. I’ve written about what it’ll look like before, including customized content and recommendation services. The key is micropayments, it’ll happen within 5-10 years of micropayments being deployed.
Ajay says:
“The key is micropayments, it’ll happen within 5-10 years of micropayments being deployed.”
Ah, Usenet and micropayments in one evening! So why did Bitpass (where one at least paid in advance) fail, again?
There is no reason to invest in a product when you know that there’s no advertising revenue that will sustain production and minutes after it’s released, it’s going to go straight to a freebie pirate site for millions to watch for free.
There is no business plan than can support this vision of tomorrow – outside of productions that are pure propaganda for a religious or political unit. Micropayments and all this other talk isn’t going to cut it.
Ultimately this vision of tomorrow is nothing more than a view into an entertainment apocalypse. The only shows that will survive will be broadcasts from megachurches and Fox News.
FOOTBALL (NFL AND COLLEGE) and the OLYMPICS will be the only sports properties the networks will pay for. everything else (as is its now) will be regulated to cable. more revune stream than the networks.
9
Dunno. From what I read, they get it. Already there’s been an effort to consolidate and eliminate under performing stations. I just don’t think they get the power of places like Youtube. The power of free access to their shows and the free advertising it gets? They still don’t get it. Places like youtube have make late night television available to folks any where in the world there’s internet access.
What they don’t get is that the day of the networks telling folks what they’ll like and what they won’t — well — I’m thinking the internet has been saying different.
Boris, I actually used BitPass, did you? It was hopelessly clunky to use, micropayments have to be seamless to use: it is that usability problem and only that problem that has delayed their usage. Corey3rd, did you read my link? I addressed the piracy issue there, albeit in reference to segments of a radio show. The solution is customized content, you get a custom sportscenter video download with hockey and baseball highlights, I get extended basketball coverage and some new internet sports. I would no more pirate your sportscenter than you would mine, this custom model can be applied to almost all content.
I haven’t had cable or satellite for over 5 years. I just got tired of paying for a bunch of channels I never watched. If cable or satellite would offer al la carte, I would probably subscribe again. Now I watch a few shows on the internet, and lots of DVDs.
This is all nice and true, but until we can reliably offer broadband to every part of this country the changes you mention will take a little longer. I live in a very rural area of the country. We can barely get reliable cell service and broadband outside the city limits is non-existent except for satellite, and no matter what those commercials say it IS NOT as fast as broadband. When we can join the rest of the industrialized world and get broadband in even the most backwater little community then we will see the changes you mention happen much quicker.
Richard, you are dead wrong about CGI cutting the costs of productions. More computing power will lead to more realistic effects, but it won’t reduce the amount of labor required. In actuality, the demand for more realism will probably lead to an increase in labor.
CGI does allow the creation of scenes that would be prohibitively expensive in real life, but that is not the same thing as saving money.
The key to all of this is us advertisers. It has always been this way and will always be this way. Watch what us advertisers are experimenting with. It only takes one break-away success for TV networks to tank. Not five to ten years. Six months after a break-away success happens and the decline will look like a cliff diver’s jump.
Right now my company is preparing for the future by looking to the past. During TV’s Golden Age, all shows were sponsored by a single advertiser. “Firestone Theatre” being one such example. This is what I believe is the future for video entertainment. My company will be rolling out four sponsored shows (three reality shows and one game show) and distributing them over YouTube.com (and clones) and peer-to-peer networks (which will be how we’ll distribute the HDTV-quality completely-uncensored versions of the shows). This based on what I laid out in a white paper I wrote in 2003 (http://miketurco.com/library/p2prev.pdf). If we get a good return on these shows (shown not with ratings [which have ALWAYS been just bs] but at the bottomline and bodies through front doors), we will expand the number of shows we will sponsor. Our competitors will quickly follow suit.
However, personally, I now don’t think the future of TV is reality shows but cartoons. The key is computer programs that produce them. This month, I have had an animation production house come and show what is the cutting edge of animation. It isn’t CGI of Pixar but how computer programs can make traditionally looking cartoons in a fraction of the time they used to make and at a fraction of the cost. One of the biggest advances is synthetic voices that sound like real voices and even the voices of famous people. No more voice actors. They had a very mind-blowing demonstration by a team of seven. They produced a ten-minute cartoon right before my eyes. How they did it wasn’t how cartoon are traditionally made but by how you would play Halo3 or World of Warcraft. The characters became alive right before your eyes. Two characters took me for a tour of the show they were pitching. They interacted with me … or rather the two typists did that were giving the characters their lines and the two other staffers that were acting out the lines. The other three handled the background, “props”, and such. No more armies of penny-a-day animators in India and China. In fact, they then showed how one person do could it all by himself. It was simply amazing. And the cost was microscopic! For what my company currently pays to make a half-minute ad, you could make a number of half-HOUR cartoon shows. It is all about cost vs benefit. They walked out with a contract to make a pilot.
Because I like this blog, I hope Robert and Bill don’t do an Ahab and tie themselves to TV network’s Moby Dick but follow where trends lead. The experiments that are currently being rolled out and the more that will be coming. I do not in any way think my company is the only advertiser that is experimenting. I know I’m not. And I know us advertisers are watching each other. We always have. If one of us hits on something good, we all jump on it and jump on it fast. And any method that shows how we can cut our costs while still getting the same or better results will be acted upon at once. No need for consensus. No need for a mandate from Daddy Obama. We’ll individually act. My company is still advertising on broadcast and cable TV networks … for now. If my experiments succeed, I will stop TV advertising with a stroke of the pen.
5-10 years is right on the money. What needs to be kept in mind is that technological advances progress at geometric rates. Look at the difference between now and ten years ago technologically. In 1999, having a cell phone alone was a big deal. In ten years we will be using technology that has not even been thought of yet. In ten years, network television will not exist as we now know it. Bank on it.
So many good ideas … i don’t think its only because he came last so far, but I beleive Mr Jensen has hit the key notes. Every idealistic projection above can be countered – based primarily on economic considerations. ( The dismal science – you can’t get away from basic scarcity and everything flows from too many people wanting a scarce resource. ) Right now, regardless of the definition of quality, the felt need of adult viewers with money to spend is that they are pissing away their money on low quality trash. Maybe they’re wrong. But clearly they perceive that, especially, I repeat, especially about the TV networks. To cut to the chase: Animation is where its at, in this cat’s opinion. I just watched American Team: whatever, the hilarious puppet show on Comedy, from midnight to two-thirty. I needed my sleep – I protested all the ads to myself – but I could not take my eyes off of it. ( Maybe Fantasia and Sleeping Beauty and Bambi and all the other amazing movie animation, even Mary Poppins with the live-animation mix, implanted that in me in the 1960’s.) I am 50 but very visual, and I think the rising generation is incredibly visual. Spare us the moral lessons, the romantic sentiment, all the literary values – its not that we are not aware of them, but they just do not stimulate the mind. The visual cortex is a huge part of human cognition, by the way – the eyes are the main brain, all complaints about shallowness to the contrary. (2) I think the people who pay the bill may well feel they have to go back to We Are Your Sponsors – this is Texaco Theater, Ivory Soap Hour, etc. That was very cost-effective before the big ad cost inflation – too many sponsors chasing scarce network hours – of the 1970’s. This post went on too long. The acceleration idea – push them off a cliff – turned me on. I know a little about doping chips, Moore’s law etc – again, sheer economics tells me the prices won’t go down that soon and you are chasing your own tails on that. Mr. Gorman should have the last word; I got tired and only saw that Mr. Seidman was with Charles Schwab years ago, but I assume their economic savvy to be shared. Split the middle and say ten years, I guess. And as usual Mr. Hack’s post was fascinating.
Where will the money come from to keep producing new material if there is no way to turn a profit from the internet?
Mike,
One correction: Xena cost $1 million an episode to produce in 1995, and this is with production costs lowered for being filmed in New Zealand.
When will folks start producing integrated content?
Uhm… Oh for the day when things aren’t television translated into internet. Instead we hear, “I’m information or entertainment. I’ll be translated into any format that gets me to the audience.” It certainly would fit into the single sponsor advertising format.
The late nights should be able to do this now. Interviews and commentary that is recorded and then edited for distribution. First broadcast the audio on radio as a teaser, then later on cable uncensored, on broadcast on television with edit, streamed on the networks sites, released again on a week end up date, released onto Youtube and the chat sites, and then finally packaged in a dvd. Some might think that this is over saturation but to me it’s simply formalizing of what the fans have already been doing.
I’m hoping to see Craig Ferguson’s show try this. His fans do this already.
People are forgetting that the broadcast networks could buy them selves an additional 5-10 years if they become basic cable networks. The affiliets are like cement shoes for them.
A network like the CW who only progrems 10 hours a week, have no business being a broadcast net. I think one of the reasons Dawn hasn’t been fired yet, is that Moonvers and his counterpart at Warner can always go to cable if push comes to shove.
It would be very easy to nail up existing content with a periodic transparent overlay showing ad info and sponsors. Additionally advertisers could embed info on product placements in content. There is no end to revenue generation schemes just like in TV, focusing on the single market model it should by comparison cost more for a sponsor. I kinda like a cost share model where people pay a $25/mn subscription and select various preferred marketers to share in the cost delivery. What is your potential audience size, right now easily 50 mil and growing, people do use there computers for media and this will only continue to be so.
Right now I’m rigging an older toughbook with XBMC Media Centre and that will drive a neighbors media collection and interface with his legacy stereo and TV, plus he connects into a video server thru wifi in the building, surfs using his touchpad on his couch hooked into his big ole panasonic projection tv, a franken HTPC if I ever seen one but it works great and didnt cost anything to rig up, the pc was going to be thrown out at his work instead it has a new life.
I get that business journalism is fun, is there any evidence for any of this article in terms of everyday use of television devices by non-early adopters? Short story long, there isn’t and we will reach a synthesis point where flow media like TV and newer technologies, so no cable and channels won’t go away, someone will need to think how to VALUE ADD via flow configurations.
In a few years someone will claim to “invent” flow after reading Raymond Williams, (Caldwell notes the last example of this in Production Culture) and the formula will look like this, new media + flow = profit. This would mean, perhaps a thousand channels a few more if a more reliable auto-programmer could be produced.
It is all about users and they need flow. Business journalism is fun, ethnographic field work on the uses of television isn’t, but reading it might prove extremely profitable.
Could a contributing factor to the “death of TV” be that you can have 300 or more channels and only about a half a dozen of them are worth a darn??
With news, it’s journalism that matters, not newspapers. With electronic entertainment, it’s content that matters, not TV or TV infrastructure. No one knows for sure what’s going to happen to content delivery, and anybody that does is smoking crack. What is certain is that the TV/cable way of doing business of the last half century is going to change, possibly beyond recognition. IP is far more efficient and lower cost way of doing it, but how it pans out is unknowable,
Each of the Broadcast networks have a plethera of cable networks. The origional big 3 should give the 10o’clock hour to cable dramas. Then NBC ABC CBS and FOX needs to Stream their channels online since their free to begin with. Then they need to expand their ad time on streamed online content. On Itunes daily sold talk shows should be free and ad supported. with the new ipod and iphone software i can about guarentee that TV Show downloads will rise. Then the cable channels need to show broadcast prime time as well.
Cody, CBS Corporation does not have a “plethora” of cable networks. They have one, Showtime. You may have forgotten about CBS/Viacom split.
they do have the CW which is kind of the same thing only a lot worse
. But my point is that the broadcast networks complain that it’s starting to not be able to compete with cable but what they should so is to use their cable networks to promote watching their broadcast channel. For Example putting Monday night FOX on Tuesday night FX. Putting USA dramas on NBC. Simulcasting Late night shows etc…
Cody, won’t it be simpler for the broadcast nets to become basic cable networks?
“Richard, you are dead wrong about CGI cutting the costs of productions. More computing power will lead to more realistic effects, but it won’t reduce the amount of labor required. In actuality, the demand for more realism will probably lead to an increase in labor.”
This makes zero sense. When you can produce ANY EFFECT WHATSOEVER that is INDISTINGUISHABLE from real for next to no money, how is that going to raise the cost of production?
“CGI does allow the creation of scenes that would be prohibitively expensive in real life, but that is not the same thing as saving money.”
WTF?
Look, I’m not saying that just because you can cut costs via computer power that it automatically means people won’t spend the same money on SOMETHING ELSE – like star salaries or whatever. My point is that if there is less profit to be made due to free distribution, then the constraints on profitability will affect those efforts to JUST SPEND MONEY. Meanwhile, the same QUALITY can be produced by not spending money on real effects but rather on computer generated effects that are indistinguishable from real but are cost-effective given the lower profitability of the product.
I really can’t comprehend how people are so totally unimaginative – or ignorant on where computer power is going – that they can’t comprehend how twenty years from now, NOTHING is going to look like it does now with regard to what you can do.
And the notion that nobody will ever make any more media once it’s all free is such horse hockey that it’s embarrassing that people still bring up that canard. It’s never been true in human history and it will never be true, and even if it WERE to be true in the future, it wouldn’t change the FACT that this is what technology does to markets. It DESTROYS THEM – and creates NEW ones. This IS the relationship between technology and the market.
Forgetting that last is where everybody goes wrong when they claim there won’t be any more media content unless we lock down every bit.
I stopped watching Cable TV 30 months ago, and now get most of my Entertainment from DVDs. I have built up a Library of over 200 differant TV Series (Over 12,000 Hours) and over 1,300 Movies. Needless to say it’s going to be a while before I’m finished watching all of them!
This essay would have a lot more credibility if:
a. the TV business were actually shrinking
b. the author hadn’t been barred from the securities industry for publishing fraudulent analysis
But it isn’t and he was.
5 years is far too short a horizon. There will be some pruning (CW will either die or become WB-only), Saturdays and Fridays will officially die off, ABC will go all news programs at 10pm, etc., but their basic model will stay the same.
That said, we will see far more sponsorship of programs. Probably not in “official” titles, but the press releases and interstitials will mention the sponsor, and the actors will do pre-filmed ad bits. It will be amusing when actors prefer to be cast as villains – because they won’t have to do the sponsor spots!
There will also be continued pricing stress on showrunners. As networks realize that 4.0s are the new major hits, per episode costs will be more of a factor than ratings for existing shows in deciding renewals. And expect the producer-only corps (Sony, sorta WB) to see additional pressure from networks as they try to financially shield themselves from flops (see the 6-episode Fall season orders ABC was trying to get).
Also, all this talk about “All content will move to the internet! Total freedom!” ignores that unlimited bandwidth is either becoming more expensive or flat out unavailable. Cable/Internet providers don’t have to worry about their cable revenues dying off, when they will simply deploy uglier access/bandwidth rates. People are completely missing that something like the 20GB/month “standard” plans that are developing only equate to, what, 3 or 4 weekly one hour HD shows? And $deity forbid if you want to download a movie or game on top of that.
I expect to see Congressional hearings on network pricing in a couple years. Probably summer of 2011/2012. Not that they will account to much, but they will encourage more communities to create their own “internet as utility” deployments.
And oh, the fun that will bring. Censorship, scheduling of inner-city vs. suburb vs. high-tech sectors of the city installation/upgrades, budget battles over upgrades vs. low-income programs, etc.
In any case, expecting shakeups over the content creators in 5-10 years? Sure. But expecting the distributors to fall apart (as opposed to reorganizing)? Not so fast….
I’ll say it again: Half of the broadcast networks problems will be soleved if they become basic cable networks.
I do agree that, althought there’s some merit to broadcast TV in particular fading, the 5 year time frame is too short to see this happen. I understand the importance of the younger demographics, but this article doesn’t account well for the shrinking of that demographic and its shifting behavior as the that sector ages within the 18-49 category. In general, as we mature, we get set in our ways; and most of us are set in the cable/satellite TV pattern right now. However, I’ll jump at any change that could make me lazier! For instance, On Demand and DVR has largely taken DVD’s place in my behavior. I barely watch DVD’s anymore, because I’m too lazy to walk to the player and load it. Once my computer has a remote that looks and functions exactly as a TV remote does, for comparable price, I’ll consume all my TV entertainment on a computer. Until I can flip on the computer from my recliner, surf the channels, check the DVR playlist, etc….I won’t be changing much
.
FYI, Mark Cuban posted this response to Blodgett’s post on Business Insider:
with all due respect, you are delusional henry
im willing to bet you cant get the wifi signal in your house to carry 2 HDTV signals of 8mbs simultaneously. Thats not going to change in the next 5 years. But thats not the real problem.
In an IP environment that exists today and for the next 10 years, there is no such thing as broadcast. There is only unicast. So your concept #fails. It fails because of the expense from the source, particularly if you want to eliminate the intermediary. It fails at the last mile even in a fiber to the home environment because of the ability of any network node to introduce any bandwidth hogging application . You can thank network neutrality for this. So if some kid doesnt want you to watch the Lakers vs the Magic because he is a Mavs fan, he just plugs a streaming host on the network and pushes out 100mbs or more of hoise to his buddies, There goes that segment. And once people realize the power they have over the ability of everyone they know to watch TV, they will use it. Power corrupts, power over everyone around you watching tv corrupts absolutely.
Then there is the inhome network. Want to distribute those terrabytes of content you have access to around to all your HDTVs , in HD quality, good luck. In your world, someone is going to make a boatload of money pretending to be able to maintain 100mbs of continuous, dropout free video around your home. What are you going to use, ultra wideband or ?? and how many times are you going to have to change out the wireless technology in your house trying to make it all work ?
your newspaper comparison fails because of the bandwith and delivery costs first, and then the business issues second.
your concept fails because you ignore the fact that just as processor needs expanded to use processor availability on the PC, bandwidth needs will expand to consume bandwidth availability. If the bandwidth is there and the marginal cost is zero, people will find ways to consume it. Which in turn creates congestion and impairs the ability to broadcast on the net even further
finally, the disappearance of video distribution from the cable model could be the best thing to ever happen to the cable companies. Why ?
They make about 50 bucks to delivery you 20mbs downstream and maybe 2mbs upstream of broadband internet
On the tv side, they make about 60bucks to deliver multiple GIGABITS of video data to you. Not only is tv a bandwidth suck, but its a capital suck as well. Switch the network to 100pct IP and make it a 100pct broadband pipe and they make far more money than they do now.
^That!!!
if the big four become cable networks then it will do away with the affialiates and that would kill thousands of important local jobs that do a great service to community. We need the broadcast networks to survive.
Richard,
I have a degree in computer science, and work with computer artists on a daily basis, obviously you have very little knowledge of either field, so here is a very basic explanation.
Computers don’t make CGI, artists do, and no amount of computing power is going to get a computer to start producing art. By your reasoning, we can expect computers to start replacing writers. Writers are no more replaceable than artists and it takes a lot of artists to produce CGI.
To achieve more realistic images artists need to focus on smaller details, which increases the work load, thus increasing the cost of production.
In certain citations, CGI can be much cheaper than live action. Filming a battle scene with 10,000 extras is far more expensive than using a crowd simulation, but you are trying to generalize that into an across the board cost savings and it doesn’t work that way. The process for animating an epic battle is very different than the process of animating a fight between 2 warriors.
Have you ever sat through the credits of a a Pixar film? Look at all the roles that you need to fill: Animators, modelers, matte painters, texture artists, shader programmers, lighting specialists, just to name a few. Every one of those roles is critically important to creating realistic imagery, and no piece of software ever replace.
Don’t take my word for it, go ask some people in the animation industry when you will be able to “produce ANY EFFECT WHATSOEVER that is INDISTINGUISHABLE from real for next to no money?” The answer will be never.
Looks like I will have to post an article on “TV” Being Canceled LOL
~Lanie~
Ajay says:
“Boris, I actually used BitPass, did you? It was hopelessly clunky to use, micropayments have to be seamless to use: it is that usability problem and only that problem that has delayed their usage.”
Indeed I did, around 2003 or 2004. I don’t recall its being “hopelessly clunky.” (I do recall that I lost something like 40 cents when they went belly-up.) The interface was just password based, no?
In retrospect, I don’t think it was any clunkier than PACER, which is still around. Of course, PACER delivers fairly specific content at what I would guess is at least a break-even price. BitPass seems to have delivered pennies to those who would settle for them.
Network TV has died over 10 deaths already. The problem is lack of creative writers I think we all can agree. But the content will come back, and there will be a shift to other large content creaters like USA networks and HBO and the like.
There is still a need for watercooler chat, and you need many eyes on the same program to create that. Witness American Idol
Always an interesting discussion, IMO the financial crisis and the loss of a lot of ad spending from auto and other industries will speed up the process of change and make the 5-10 years more realistic than ever, but there is a high probability that the US due to the existing infrastructure of cable companies and networks risk falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to internet distribution, when too many people have too much invested in the current industry structure changes will take time, a pity, watch the auto industry for current example.
From a European perspective the english speaking countries with Hollywood in the lead sets the tone and produces quality tv, there are no guarantees though that’s the way it’s going to be in the future, maybe Hollywood needs to learn how to work leaner and smarter in the post-network environment ? Low budget but high quality shows will always find a niche and be profitable even in the era of internet distributed tv.
@Josh, “There is still a need for watercooler chat, and you need many eyes on the same program to create that. Witness American Idol”, The watercooler have gone online and so have the tv shows
Mike: “no amount of computing power is going to get a computer to start producing art.”
Your degree in computer science is completely worthless, then, since you have so little conception of what computer power we’re talking about. First of all, nobody is suggesting that the computer will “create art” – not yet, anyway. That requires conceptual processing which nobody has solved in the AI field – yet.
However, an artist will sufficient computer power and a database of components will be able to generate photo-realistic stuff far faster than one who does it by hand or using conventional computer art tools.
“Animators, modelers, matte painters, texture artists, shader programmers, lighting specialists, just to name a few.”
And every single one of them can be replaced by an expert system that knows how to do what they do, regardless of what you think. And that is what the sort of computer power I’m talking about can do.
“The answer will be never.”
Never is a very long time – and is always wrong as an answer to these sorts of questions.
You probably believe nobody will ever solve the conceptual processing problem, too, right? Wrong. It will require further brain analysis which nanotech will make possible. But in any case, that is irrelevant to what we’re talking about here.
We don’t need a true AI to do this stuff, even if we have the computer power to do a decent brain simulation in twenty years. All we need are decent expert systems with the relevant knowledge-bases and sufficient actual power to speed up the process so it’s cost effective.
Anybody who says this won’t be done is utterly wrong. The only question is the time table in play, and again, twenty years is very likely on track, and ten is possible, and thirty is a certainty.
Cuban: “bandwidth needs will expand to consume bandwidth availability. If the bandwidth is there and the marginal cost is zero, people will find ways to consume it. Which in turn creates congestion and impairs the ability to broadcast on the net even further.”
Uhm, what he’s ignoring is that broadcast IS what will be creating the congestion. That issue has been discussed repeatedly – there are solutions which nobody has tried yet, P2P being one of them.
He’s also babbling about WiFi signals? WTF? Who says anybody’s going to do this with current WiFi or even WiMax? Then he dismisses FTHM because some kid might stream something? He’s clueless about network design or about future bandwidth capabilities.
Then he says there’s no such thing as broadcast IP. Partially true – doesn’t mean it will stay that way once there’s money to be made.
People who think the world will look like it does now ten years from now are the ones who are delusional.
And NN is right – the US might not be the ones to lead this revolution. With the attitudes I see here, I’m fairly sure of that. I suspect the Asian countries will lead shortly. As the late Dr. Richard Smalley points out in one of his lectures, by 2010 – that’s next year – ninety percent of the physics graduates in the world will live and work in Asia.
Better learn to speak Japanese and Chinese, oh, wait, never mind, they all speak English.
Richard Steven Hack says:
“You probably believe nobody will ever solve the conceptual processing problem, too, right?”
Given that the “conceptual processing problem” is a Googlewhack with you hanging off of it, you might want to elaborate.
Richard,
Artificial intelligence is the one field where technological advancement has always fallen well short of predictions. I’m not going to put any more energy into this pointless argument, we are never going to see eye to eye. I will point out that you are trying to apply the wrong branch of AI. The advancements you describe would fall under the domain of knowledge-based engineering (KBE), not expert systems.
Boris, I used Bitpass to buy a podcast back then and it required several clicks and a weird redirect to buy, same for you? Micropayments have to be seamless, one-click to buy after a daily login, that’s what’s been missing. BitPass refunded my money, maybe you didn’t email them or perhaps the amount was too small for them to bother at that point? Never heard of PACER, some govt payment system? As for Cuban’s remarks, he’s right that we need to manage bandwidth better, wrong that it’s scarce. What we’ll see in the home is local wired networks like HPNA and MoCa, perhaps with a wireless network for each room. His video Gbps vs internet Mbps numbers are idiotic because they don’t take into account how shared that bandwidth is, what the real throughput is. However, it’s inevitable that the dedicated video bandwidth will all be turned over to IP unicast and there’s no reason for all-IP to cost more, with current hardware costs. Cuban’s biased anyway since he owns a HDTV channel, HDNet, and all his arguments are skewed by that. He simply doesn’t understand the choice that will be available online and has given up on online and bought into the antiquated system of cable networks trying to guess what a mass audience will like.
There are two scarcities that you can’t automate out of the equation: talent and new ideas.
You can bottom feed a diet of old ideas and second rate performances but eventually you will be beaten by smart talent with business savvy.
The bottom of the market always finds a way to displace the top. It is a matter of persistence and survival. That is why smart money watches for the emergence of small art communities centered around a few very talented individuals. These will be the new “art dynasties”. The problem of the moment is the established power moguls believe they can buy these people for cheap and acquire all the rights to their products. To make that work in the face of savvy talent they have to create an atmosphere of desperation within that community.
That is the game the music moguls have played with bands for decades and it worked. The bands had to achieve three major selling albums and then renegotiate for the next release. Smart bands got good lawyers early and kept their nose to the production grindstone. That worked until the industry was able to create the hat acts typical of Nashville based on the A-list session players. Every decade at least one artist such as Garth Brooks will emerge who gets enough power to overturn that (can’t be replaced by a clone) but it is rare and it is fought. As a record producer told me once “We’ll never let the Beatles happen again.” He meant it.
Smart talent keeps the rights, keeps their lifestyle in line with their revenues, and jealousy guards access to and is careful to maintain their own social network apart from the powers that be. When the offers are finally right, they make the right deal. TCB, kids. TCB.
Perhaps if creativity replaced ideology, hatred and their accompanying viciousness they would not die. For literally thousands of years the same stories have been told over and over and over in all cultures all over the world. Yet, they have been repeated just because they had lessons to teach and were told in a passionate and truthful style with so much creativity that they were always successful. This has not been the case for at least thirty years. With no creativity their is only failure.
I hope not. When that happens there won’t be any good new video content created because the good stuff costs $$$$$$. People aren’t willing to pay for it and the only way that advertisers will pay is if a huge number of people tune in. However, we don’t have 3 networks anymore, so any 1 show’s slice of the pie will be miniscule. News reporting is already in a steady decline because most of budget cuts in newspaper investigative reporting.
Mike: “I will point out that you are trying to apply the wrong branch of AI. The advancements you describe would fall under the domain of knowledge-based engineering (KBE), not expert systems.”
Actually, the two are related in that both require knowledge engineering. KBE is used mostly for manufacturing and design, expert systems for the delivery of expertise, which is certainly related to what I’m talking about.
And I’m quite aware that AI has oversold and under-delivered. Like I said, without further brain analysis, since the brain is the only conceptual processing engine we know of, CP is unlikely to be resolved until we have more knowledge. But that is coming. But again, it’s irrelevant to what we’re talking about here in the short term. Knowledge engineering and computer-aided-engineering is more relevant.
Len: “There are two scarcities that you can’t automate out of the equation: talent and new ideas.”
How true. But you can enhance talent and new ideas with automation.
“I hope not. When that happens there won’t be any good new video content created because the good stuff costs $$$$$$.”
That is the challenge. Acceptable quality at lower costs will rise. Genius at acceptable costs will soar. Survival not of the fittest but the fit.
“But you can enhance talent and new ideas with automation.”
Kaching! This is The Deal: Automation cannot capture content. Rehosting is survival for those old stories. Wrappers are not owners. Otherwise, the artists get screwed.
bring back such shows as my mother the car, its about time, petticoat junction (without uncle joe), my favourite martian, my living doll, etc. and you’ll have us eating out of your hand.