OK, sure he runs a studio and not a network, so his biases aren’t the same as his brethren who run networks but I was amused to see Broadcasting & Cable’s Claire Atkinson live blogging some of Warner Bros CEO Barry Meyer’s comments at a B&C conference via Twitter:
Barry Meyer WB chief launching attack on nets giving away shows for free online. We’re training young aud to watch with fewer commercials
Barry Meyer WB CEO, what doesn’t work is digital exhibition of our content. Ind[ustry] is tossing money and premium content down the drain.
Onscreen Barry Meyer WB CEO. There is no free TV, its all pay. Tech should be used to enhance value; we’re underming the base biz model
Is he not aware of thewb.com?
Chief, I think he is referring to the WB.com. But then the WB.com has mostly old shows that were on the WB network which people watch out of nostalgia. I don’t think they’re looking at that website to make any real money for them.
The part about “training people to watch without commercials” is ridiculous. Really, what does he think people do when they watch live tv, watch the commercials? Most everyone uses that time to get refreshments, go to the bathroom, whatever. The reality is that most on air commercials go unnoticed.
So that’s probably why WB produced shows like Big Bang Theory aren’t available to watch online.
Meyer put too much value in the dregs they put out. There is hardly anything I ever want to pay for directly with my own coins. With most TV shows, if it’s not easily available, I’ll do without. There is tons of ways I can amuse myself.
One thing the TV moguls have to come to grip with is that broadcast and cable TV are so 1950s with their we-command-you-to-watch-on-our-time mentality. Who do they think we are? Oliver Twist. Only prisoners are required to eat their meals at specified times. Would anyone put up with a restaurant that demand you eat a specified dish at the same time every week. Why should I have to be entertained on a specific date, at a specific time.
Jon K, I heard The Big Bank Theory not being available on line is a CBS policy.
Accidentally On Purpose is the only CBS show I like. But since it’s sandwiched between shows I don’t watch, I end up not watching it. If it were online I would watch it.
Jon K, it isn’t a CBS policy, it has to do with what they negotiated for as far as digital rights for shows they don’t own. Every now and then they will briefly stick up an ep of TBBT for example, and there are full episodes of How I Met Your Mother.
The latest episode of AOP from 10/19 is online as a full episode:
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/accidentally_on_purpose/video/
He has a valid point. The Nets are making content available for free and/or with far fewer ads than on TV. Viewers are getting accustomed to getting the milk for free.
Actually, I think he needs to look at the case of the newspaper industry. There was (and is) a time when much of the content on a website, like the New York Times, could only be accessed if the user had a subscription.
But instead of going to the website, people simply went elsewhere for news. It’s what will happen to broadcast content that’s charged: people just won’t watch it online, they’ll go someplace else.
And they still won’t watch the live broadcast. There are multiple reasons why people are moving away from that, you know…
Godfather — I don’t buy the newspaper analogy really. If you wanted weather and sports info and someone charged for it, but you could get it dozens of other places easily and for free, you would. But if it wasn’t available anywhere easily for free…most people would either not look at it at all, or pay for it.
I don’t think they can charge for broadcast network content easily, but they sure as hell can and should’ve had more ads. I’d argue that for the cable networks they probably can get away with a small fee. Sure, some people will download the torrents, but most people will either subscribe, get the DVDs, rent the DVDs or not watch.
Thanks, Robert, I’ll check out AOP on CBS.com.
I wouldn’t mind watching more commercials online. I would even go as far as to say I’d watch even more commercials online as on TV for the convenience of watching on my schedule. But even that won’t resolve things in the networks’ favor, will it, since the online ad rates is miniscule compared to broadcast network rates.
Actually the CPM rates aren’t smaller (they’re often reported to be bigger online), it’s just that there are far fewer people watching online than on TV and there are about 5X as many advertisements on TV (for an hour show) and the rates might be higher, but they are not 2X let alone 5X.
I never watch live I record everything so I can fastforward through commercials. I hate them now their in the movie theaters as well. One reason I like hbo and showtime, no commercials.
So more commercials? God I hope not. Long live the dvr!
While I can certainly see where he’s coming from, free ad supported online video is the best option out there to make money on viewers who don’t want a show at its regularly scheduled time period.
If the option was removed, it seems unlikely that the people who had been watching online would watch live. The more likely scenario would be people would stop watching the show or start to DVR it and neither of these make any money.
Plus Meyer isn’t taking into account that with serial shows or even some reality shows viewers who miss an episode need online video to catch up so they can watch it again live next episode.
I don’t think he is complaining about legitimate ad supported online viewing. The problem is currently there is no ad supported online viewing. In other words there is no current places that shows enough commercials to match the amount that is generated on the networks.
Hell I love DVR (Hell I edit out commercials on VCR’s going back to the early 80’s). BUt the simply fact of the matter is that is going to completely kill the industry.
Yes people tend to do things during commercials (or not pay attention), but they also know that just the sound of them can lure customers awareness.
So what they truly need is DVR’s that can’t advance play. Which frankly gives you the ability to watch at your time of choice, need to truly advertise online (It truly should be equal time as on air, and as more and more people view online that ad based revenue will grow, and it will stay proportional). Or they need to work off of a subscription base (actually they need all three).
I am just as guilty as the next joe (or Jane) but skipping commercials through any medium is going to take everything you like (even if its just one show) away. I have this year started leaving the DVR on for commercials because I love TV (well about 2.5% of it anyway), and the idea that one year, one decade we will have destroyed the ability of producers to create the content that each of us as individuals love kills me.
Even making all online viewing have the same number of commercials would be a huge, huge help. And its true that they don’t generate anywhere near as much as broadcast, as more and more viewers go online, keeping an equal amount would eventually give them a very strong revenue source.
It also, unlike broadcast gives teh provider far more accurate numbers on things like downloads (the only problem is breakdown of audience per household and the demos), but HH would be far, far, far more accurate.
I believe that the way that commercials are presented has to be changed. I too watch a lot of TV of the computers. Even the shows that I watch live I record while I am watching and then if life interrupts you can watch the rest of the show.
Advertising has to be incorporated into the show. Content has to be created with advertising in mind for it to survive in the long run.
Also sponsorship of shows. Subway and Chuck, maybe Harley Davidson and Sons of Anarchy, Tide and Vim for Monk with lots of product placement.
Also I am watching more and more TV streamed directly off of the internet. I do not mind the 15 second commercials at all but go crazy when there are 5 minutes of commercials on broadcast TV. I either skip them or flip to a news/weather feed for those few minutes.
I have been considering dropping cable just to force myself to see what I can get on the web. The only thing that is stopping me is that I do not have a computer at all 7 TV’s yet. If I could get a device that would let me stream content from the main computer over the exisitng co-ax cable in the house I would probably try this just to see.
I could easily be wrong about this, but all I think we are destroying is the ability of people associated with television to make massively obscene gobs of money. What we are headed for is not a time when television as we know it will not exist. No, what we are really heading for is a time when people who make television will not make that much more than the average US worker.
COSTS!!!!!
It’s all about the costs. The costs of making television shot to obscene levels because the public supported it. The public’s habits no longer support those cost levels, and so the days of actors making a million an episode, or studios pulling in hundreds of millions (with studio execs making millions in salary and bonuses) are coming to an end.
Think about it: if actors made 100,000 grand a year, rather than 100,000 grand an episode, TV could continue for a long, long time on this model or any other model. Ditto for TV execs.
In the past, when the audience was captive and gigantic, and alternative entertainment options did not exists, salaries were commensurate with that fact. Now that audiences have shrunk and become mobile, and now that alternatives are practically endless, salaries will have to adjust to the fact that they are not playing to the same sized audiences.
Think of the movies. If your movies sell 10-20 million tickets, you make buttloads of money. But if you are, say, Kevin Smith, and your movies might sell two million tickets, then you make a lot less. Everybody understands that is how that business works.
In TV, however, everyone is used to everyone essentially selling 10 million tickets, because in the old days that is what even some of the worst rated shows did. You didn’t have to be good to get 10 million viewers, you just had to be on the air. So even the worst rated show on television actually made quite a bit of money, and the the best rated shows made great green gobs of greasy grimy money.
For networks, those days are dying hard. They all remember when you could get rich off the 63rd rank show, but you’d cancel it anyway because you were trying to get richer. So, basically, they remember the days when you didn’t even have to succeed in order to be successful.
Now, you actually have to succeed big time first in order for a show to make you rich, and that is freaking people out. Entertainment execs are being made to work for a living for the first time in the history of television.
They will figure it out, and TV, in some form, will never die. But it is going to have to go through the same sort of massive restructuring and contraction that so many American businesses already have, or are now being forced to do as well.
This isn’t about being able to survive. It’s about being able to thrive to excess. It’s about Barry Meyer’s three houses and six cars and all the people he hires to do everything but wipe his bottom.
Hulu to become a pay site as early as next year: http://www.broadcastingcable.com/blog/ADverse_Atkinson_on_Advertising/23941-Chase_Carey_Hulu_to_Charge_in_2010.php
Moonves spoke on this issue at the 2007 CES. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/les_ces_keynote_shows_convergence_8qjjvYw1xTXEBjeYE3wIqM (but if you can find it watch the presentation; informative, entertaining and ahead of it’s time. Still can’t figure the Chen move though ;<} ). He advocated encouraging online video since convergence was coming anyways and pointed out that the net results of the RIAA crusade to secure their product was wasted $s and effort and negative press that will take years to overcome. A demo of some pro BB players remotely but interactively watching an NCAA final they were part of showed the potential of online enhancement. Riding the flow and using even a tiny rudder to direct your path is much more productive than trying to reverse a wave.
In answer to the WB exec, I hate commercials and is a big reason I don’t watch Network shows. There is only one network show that I watch live. Chuck. I liked it enough last year to watch it live.
The only other scripted shows I watch are Monk, Psych, Burn Notice, Royal Pain, and In Plain Sight. I do put up with commercials for those shows.
If Hulu goes to being a pay site, I’ll stop watching shows there. If Comcast’s OnDemand shows keep adding commercials, I’ll stop watching them.
Through September, I missed a lot of Monk & Pysch because I was out of town for college football games. I’d watch those shows later on OnDemand. Monk still just has small breaks, mainly to shill for other NBC or USANetwork shows. But I’ve noticed long full fledged ads on Psych. That may drive me away.
I’ll just wait and buy the DVD. Then I can watch anytime I want, without distracting commercials to bother me.