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Central was whether a specific technology was built on “point to point” or “point to many” communication. The pony express was exclusively point to point. Same for the original postal service and for dial-up telephones. All sharing a goal of delivering one specific message … call it “content”... to another single receiver or customer.
But other media emerged from “point to many” where one message or packet of information was for general consumption to anyone who could pick it up. We all got the same content. Think of smoke signals, printed books and newspapers, old-style billboards, broadcast radio and over the air television. One message going out to anyone who had the decoder to receive it ... whether electronic device or just plain old human ears and eyeballs.
What made the emergence of the Internet so disruptive to mass communications was that for the first time in history, one medium had the technology to be BOTH point-to-point AND point-to-many at the same time. I can send a private email to my aunt in Des Moines, while a vertically integrated international corporation can multicast simultaneously to hundreds of thousands of recipients around the globe. The carrier for both … the medium of communication … remains the Internet.
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Flash forward to this week’s announcement that Disney is firing up its own over-the-top streaming service, with Mouse House pulling all their branded content from Netflix starting in 2019. Disney’s not alone in jumping feet first into streaming. In just the past couple weeks, we’ve seen similar announcements from cable’s AMC, ESPN, Fox’s FX distribution arm, along with CBS All Access. Let’s not forget skinny bundles already coming from Dish’s SlingTV, AT&T’s DirecTV Now, and others. Verizon’s trying to get their similar streaming service off the ground but can’t even sign up enough broadcasters to kick off their effort, just revealing yet another launch delay until sometime “after the fall season.”
Many of these new over-the-top offerings are available without any commercials. No ads. Out, damn spots. Abandoning the old dual-profit profile that grew them fat and complacent. For Comcast, Charter, Cox, Spectrum and others, this must evoke the shock and awe of raising a spear while spotting Daenerys and Drogon sweeping down onto the open battle field.
But cable companies were already on borrowed time, as a secession of subscribers and cord cutters demonstrate and their exodus comes down to greed on the part of MVTD providers. I don’t really need to define "greed." You’ve experienced it. Rising customer fees, dismal service, force-feeding unwanted channels as packages and ... greatest of all ... the dreaded “dual stream revenue” model, where access for which we pay a premium is riddled with additional endless ads and commercials, sold and inserted by our very same cable provider. Charging us for watching, and charging the advertisers for getting watched.
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Yes, some channels earmarked “premium” are an exception to glut advertising, as with HBO and Showtime, but watching them brings another access fee on top of your regular monthly charges. Surcharge on an already inflated invoice, just to be not held hostage to endless hucksterism and crass hawking. Anyone remember that cardinal consumer rule, “the more a thing is advertised the less you actually need it” ?
The point here is that we as the consumer base demonstrate an encouraging new spin on two aspects of an old profit model:
(1) Abhorrence for traditional advertising, with it’s intrusive and offensive command and control dominance over our viewing experience
(2) Actual willingness to fairly compensate the content providers in exchange for what we want to watch, when we want to watch it
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What the major cable and satellite providers promulgated up to now was no different than the supermarket forcing me, as a customer, to only buy overripe avocados in bulk when I just wanted one for tonight’s meal. Charging for a bundle of alligator fruit that I’ll never be able to consume, with most going bad and getting tossed unused. And expecting me to come back and buy the same terrible deal, week after week!
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Blame or praise iTunes and Apple Store and Amazon, but the millennial generation accepts the business model that if priced fairly, good content is worth the purchase. This means cable and dish companies have to resist old business habits that created corporate addiction to supplemental advertising profits and allowed them force feeding us quantity over quality as a customer retention technique.
Take this little guacamole parable and replace the "avocados" with "video programming content" and it demonstrates how big cable companies and their profit-above-principle policies created a consumer demand for simpler services like Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime Video. And why streaming newcomer newbies like Disney and AMC and Fox must eventually respect the profit model of fair price for unsponsored content, and in quantities we as customers can actually use.
Here, Comcast … hold my avocado.
