Maybe The Meteor Is Inside A Roku Box

We talk a lot about how it’s going to take a meteor to disrupt the way we watch television, so tightly bound are the legal arrangements that impede innovation. But maybe that meteor is already here and we don’t know it yet.

Maybe that meteor looks a lot like a Roku box.

Roku is far and away the most successful of the streaming devices, both from a sales perspective and from a usability perspective (I test them out both in the office and at home and Roku is the winner hands down - more content, easier to use and cheaper.)

And now, in addition to all the network apps, there are MVPD apps: Time Warner introduced an app a few months back that has over 300 channels - including all the good ones - housed in a far more user friendly interface than we’ve ever seen from an MVPD.

Which raises the issue of network apps versus MVPD apps.

To date, most of the activity around second screen apps has come from the networks, HBO GO and Watch ESPN being two of the more prominent examples. But there’s a limit to how many apps we can open - imagine if your TV experience consisted of 150 apps, each for a different network with a different navigation and different experience.

Which is where the MVPD can come in. Live viewing aside, there needs to be some sort of organizational framework for the various network experiences, a common discovery engine and a way to personalize each user’s experience on a macro level, not just network by network.

So here’s where the MVPD can come in. Imagine Time Warner didn’t just have an app but that the Roku OS was their app. They would handle discovery, wish lists, recommendations and the like, and they’d enforce standardized ad units and ways to measure the success of both ads and programming.

But once you crossed that line, once you moved from the home screen to the show of your choice, you’d move into the world the network created.

That would, in turn, give the networks a renewed sense of purpose. The loss of brand identity is what's keeping network executives up at night. (They’ve fallen rapidly since the days of “must see TV.”) A unique second (and/or first) screen experience would help each network to maintain its identity and connect with the user, while the MVPD would still be able to create a framework with the program guide, controlling things like discovery and channel flipping along with any DVR functionality (which is likely to take the form of catch-up TV.)

Is it the system you’d design if you were designing TV from scratch? Probably not. But then again you probably wouldn’t design networks or production companies into the picture either. We work with what we’ve got, and this seems like it could be a very good solution. It doesn’t necessarily require Roku-- you could create it on any streaming device, and the only caveat is that you’d need a decent sized pipe to ensure that picture quality was the same as it is on broadcast TV.

But that’s it. The pieces are all there. Someone’s just got to put them together. And start killing off the dinosaurs.

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Heresies

Every so often it's a good exercise to examine some of the core beliefs of a company or industry and call out the ones that don't make any sense. In the short run, saying out loud what a lot of people have been thinking pisses off  those who are heavily invested in these now outmoded ideas, but in the long run, it's healthier for all involved to recalibrate.

TV Everywhere Wasn’t Worth The Battle. It sounded like a great idea at the time: you can take your television with you anywhere you go and watch it on your tablet or smartphone. The reality, however, shows a very limited number of use cases beyond sports and live events.

Because seriously, when are you going to have a half hour to an hour to watch live TV outside the house in a place where you have a decent 4G or WiFi connection?

It’s not like you’re going to leave your bedroom or living room to go down to Starbucks to spend an hour watching Game of Thrones. Sitting in the park may sound appealing, but anyone who’s ever tried to use an iPad outdoors knows it’s not a pleasant experience. Hotel rooms? Maybe, if you want to watch something off your DVR, but for most people, travel is a once or twice yearly event.

Commuting is the one use case that makes sense, but here again: (a) what percentage of Americans commute 30 minutes or more each way via public transportation, and (b) moving from cell tower to cell tower does not create an optimal condition for video reception. So even if you solve for B, A still makes it a niche product.

TV Everywhere does make sense inside the house for personal viewing: using the iPad as the bedroom or kitchen TV. But that’s it and it certainly doesn’t seem worth the amount of money the networks and the MVPDs have spent in legal battles over it.


Cord Plussers Are More Common Than Cord Cutters/Nevers: A Nielsen study that came out this week confirmed something I’d suspected all along: Netflix and other OTT subscription video on demand (SVOD) services are far more popular with upper income households who use them as an add-on to their existing Titanium Level pay TV packages. Let’s call this group “Cord Plussers” as they’re looking for options beyond what their cable package offers and for $8/month each, they think it’s a steal to add on Netflix and Hulu Plus.

Never mind that the success of Netflix and Hulu is a huge fumble by the MVPDs, many of whom maintain extensive VOD libraries that could compete with Netflix and who should be enabling the kind of 7 day catch-up TV you find in Europe, but who have outsourced that function (and then some) to Hulu, Amazon and Netflix-- the price of these additional services and the value add they bring is enough for people to add them without feeling the need to drop their existing pay TV service.

As for cord nevers, we’ve been through this already, but to reiterate, it’s not that surprising that certain busy, single, tech savvy 20somethings don’t feel the need for a cable subscription: at some point, as they grow older and settle down, they probably will. That, and study after study fails to find any evidence of cord cutting outside of the anecdotal evidence offered by tech bloggers.

Another recent study showed that 18-24 year olds watch an average of 5 hours of TV online each week. What's important to note is that’s not 5 hours they chose to watch TV on their laptops instead of a big screen TV, but 5 hours they carved out to watch TV online in the absence of an actual television set. People really do like watching TV.


Twitter Is Not The Future of Second Screen. This is another seemingly obvious one: most people are not on Twitter, so why do we expect Twitter to become the dominant medium for second screen?

If you’re Fox, and (to use an extremely generous figure*) 30% of your American Idol audience is on Twitter, but 100% of that same audience can take part in a second screen poll, which one are you going to go for?

It’s a win for Fox if the 30% who are on Twitter start tweeting about the poll, but it’s crucial to remember that they are just talking to each other: the 70% who are not on Twitter will never see what they're saying.

Here's the problem: Right now, Twitter has a much larger install base than any second screen app. It's also free to implement, since the only real cost is whatever "tweet about our show" promotion the network decides to run. So in Spring 2013, the numbers work in its favor.  But that won't last for long: as second screen becomes more ubiquitous, the percentage of people using Twitter will be dwarfed by the number using second screen. If MVPDs and/or TV manufacturers go ahead and make second screen the primary program guide and remote control option, you're looking at close to a 100% adoption rate.


Second Screen Engagement Will Never Replace Marketing.  Like it’s cousin, social media, second screen TV is really good at two things: (a) making hard core fans even more hardcore by giving them an outlet for their obsession and (b) moving casual fans up a notch by fleshing out the experience.

This does not mean every hardcore fan and every casual fan: it means just a few of them.

Because really, how many shows can you be a hardcore fan of? 3? 6? In any season, there are only a handful of shows people can fully devote their energy to. Second Screen interaction can help make sure a show remains one of those handful, but that’s it: it can’t create interest where previously there was none.


Aereo Is Not Worth Worrying About. While the networks are all up in arms about Aereo, it's worth thinking about why someone would want it: while Aereo plus Netflix may be a way to replace cable for $20/month, the resulting experience is not all that desirable. Aereo has a less than ideal UI (see my review on VideoNuze) and, like Netflix, you don't get the "always on" option - you've got to make a choice every time you use it and as this piece from Nilay Patel at The Verge points out, that creates an experience that's very different than just turning on the TV and flipping the channels.

That, and the notion that Aereo plus Netflix is a perfectly good replacement for a full cable package is debatable. Lots of people still want their MTV. And ESPN and Disney and Nick and Comedy Central. So the question remains - is it worth it?

UI and content issues aside, all Aereo offers is a very basic cable package for $8/month. There's no reason the MVPDs couldn't replicate this (and then some - throw in some cable only channels) at the same price point and drive Aereo out of business. So it's all sounding like much ado about nothing. Or much ado about retrans fees, which winds up being about nothing.


TV is the one medium that has not yet been disrupted by the digital revolution... yet. That's why it's so fascinating to watch the various pieces as the industry slowly changes and important to keep track of what's a wish and what's reality.

 *Extremely generous. According to a recent Pew report, only 14% of Millennials use Twitter. And that’s use Twitter period, not "use Twitter regularly to chat about the TV show they're currently watching."

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From VideoNuze - Aereo: The Hands On Review

I’ve been testing out Aereo for the past two weeks (see video above), ever since they expanded their service area to include the entire New York metropolitan area. I tested it at home where I have a blazing fast 50 Mbps FIOS connection using both their new Roku app and my iPad 3, and outside the house, where I rely on a Verizon Wireless iPhone 5 with 4G service. (Well, when 4G is available, that is.) 

Interface: The interface on the iPad and iPhone are fairly similar. There aren’t that many channels: Aereo has fleshed out the over-the-air offering with iON and a couple of foreign-language offerings, but most users are going to be looking for content from the Big 4 networks and PBS. On the Roku app, the channels are arranged in Roku’s linear filmstrip layout, so that getting from one end to the other is quite a hassle. 

Changing the Channel: This is Aereo’s biggest fail: changing the channel is a monumental hassle on all their devices. On the iPad or iPhone, it’s a multi-step process: Minimize the screen, hit “done”, go back to the channel guide, find the channel you want to switch to, go to that channel’s screen, hit “play” (versus “record”), go to the first screen, maximize the video.

READ THE REST AT VIDEONUZE

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From NPR: Why Are TV Remotes So Terrible?

I made my debut on NPR this morning, and part of Neda Ulaby's piece on the issues that are holding back tech advances in the TV industry.

Let's call it the baby sitter's dilemma.

If you go to someone's house and pick up the TV remote, chances are, you won't know how it works. You know the situation's bad when even a tech writer who also majored in physics at an Ivy League school is confused by her own TV remote.

"It's unbearable to me," moans Ars Technica writer Casey Johnston, of her remote's many cryptic buttons. "Sub.code? Comp/mix? I couldn't even tell you what one of those things do, but then assign them to the same button? It just doesn't make any sense."

So why, at a moment when both technology and TV shows are so terrific, are interfaces so clumsy and counterintuitive? 

By interfaces, I mean both the actual, super-inscrutable remote controls and the unwieldy grid on our screens that many of us are forced to navigate to find what we want to watch.
And I have to confess the entire idea for this piece was inspired by Alan Wolk. His official title is global lead analyst at KIT Digital, and he writes a terrific blog called The Toad Stool. That's where I read his essay, "The TV Business: A Primer For The Uninformed," which elegantly points out how inelegant our TV interfaces are.

READ THE REST AND HEAR THE INTERVIEW AT NPR.ORG 

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New On Digiday: Second Screen Is Not Social TV

While the terms “social TV” and “second screen” are often used interchangeably, they are, in fact, two different experiences: Social TV is a subset of second screen — and a somewhat minor one at that.  

As technology and adoption advance, every show will need to come up with its own unique spin on what constitutes valuable second-screen content. For a baseball game, it may be a very graphics-intensive take on statistics; for a reality game show, it may be online voting. Those decisions are up to the networks and the individual show runners, who’ll need to balance their goals (e.g., increase tune-in or cement loyalty) with what their budget allows.  

READ THE REST AT DIGIDAY.COM

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From The Guardian: Beyond Apps: The Future of Smart TV

I have my first piece in The Guardian this week, the UK's leading newspaper and quite possibly the world's.

It's a big leap forward in terms of reach and I'm extremely psyched about it.

A smart TV's connected features can be controlled from a second screen, creating many different commercial possibilities. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

A recent study by the NPD Group showed that more than 40% of households with smart TVs have never actually bothered to hook them up to the internet. However, given the state of the interface found on most smart TVs, this should come as no surprise.

TV manufacturers got it into their heads that users might like an easy way to connect to Netflix. Which was not a bad idea. If only they'd stopped there. Instead, they turned the screen into a Compuserve 1993 concoction of random apps, few of which had anything to do with television...

READ THE REST AT THE GUARDIAN

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Beet Retreat Interview #2: TV Everywhere

This is the second of three interviews I did during the Beet TV Executive Retreat - this one is on TV Everywhere.

As an indication of how fast the industry is moving, although we filmed this about 3 weeks ago, in the intervening period, Nielsen announced that they would soon begin counting views on iPads, Xboxes and other non-TV devices.

Since that was the crux of the network's objections to TV Everywhere (the fact that they'd lose ad revenue when people watched remotely on a iPad) it would seem to give a green light for a renewed push. One that may have the full cooperation of the networks, or at least their tacit blessing.

Read the full interview and story and Beet.tv

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The Meteor Cometh

So for a long time, we’ve been talking about the mythical meteor that was going to hit the TV industry and wipe out all the dinosaurs. Because there didn’t seem to be a logical out to the situation we were in, where everyone was making money and no one wanted to rock the status quo. Which left prognosticators like me talking about the meteor, the “something” that would happen and cause change in the industry. Only we couldn't figure out where that meteor would come from or what it would look like.

Then suddenly this morning, the meteor appeared.

I’m talking about the lawsuit that Cablevision filed, asking the court to void the late 2012 carriage agreement they signed with Viacom because Viacom had “coerced them” by “threatening to impose massive financial penalties” unless they complied with Viacom's demands."

There’s a wonderful irony in this too, given that it was Viacom who successfully shut down Cablevision’s TV Everywhere play back in 2011. 

But I digress.

The “why” isn’t hard to get: the MVPDs hear all the consumer complaints about bundling and they’re tired of getting blamed for it. It’s an odd thing: the networks are quite teflon when it comes to the viewing public, who blame the MVPDs for forcing them to take thousand channel bundles without ever considering that their existence is purely the doing of the networks, whose carriage deals leave the MVPDs with no other option.

And so after years of handwringing about how and where the first crack was going to be, who was going to "cave" and let the barbarians into Rome, it now seems that the answer is the Federal court system (and likely the Supreme Court itself, as neither side is likely to go down easily.) They will be the ones who step in and save the TV industry from itself. 

And if and when they do decide that forcing bundles on MVPDs is a bad thing, that will indeed be the moment the meteor falls and kills the dinosaurs and busts the industry wide open so that Apple TV and beautiful, personalized interfaces and cloud-based DVRs and dozens of other magical things we can now do with our televisions come to life and start populating the ecosystem like mammals who no longer need fear being chomped on by a tyrannosaurus every time they pop their tiny little heads out of their holes.

Only don’t hold your breath: it takes a while for a case like this to make its way to the Supreme Court. So that meteor’s not striking tomorrow.

Popcorn Moment: while you’re watching the festivities unfold, keep your eye out for whether any of the other networks or MVPDs jump in and join the fray. It’s in the network’s interest to keep things mano a mano, since if all the MVPDs join in and turn this into TV’s version of the Great War, public opinion is sure to be with the MVPDs and the forces of anti-bundling.

Once again, it’s time to sit back and enjoy the show.

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