Hold My Avocado

One college broadcasting class I taught was "Electronic Media and Society," a survey course of communication, platforms, how each developed and in some cases such as the telegraph, what new medium came along to kill or replace it.

Image provided by fhwa.gov

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.

Image provided by standardrepublic.com

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.

Image provided by areasbestbusiness.com

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

Image provided by produceclerkshandbook.com

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!

Image provided by californiaavocado.com

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.

Siri, Where's My Movie Seat?

I grew up with this concept of “first come, first seated” at music concerts and softball games and at the movies. It was unwritten etiquette for many public events. Assigned seating? That was for mass-commuter airlines and live Broadway theater events.

But most of the movie chains like AMC, Cinemark, Century and Landmark converted to the practice over the past year. It’s upsold in some theaters as “VIP seating” but more commonly called “reserved seating” when done online. But why, to what end? I’d never considered that red-eye flight to Chicago or shelling out to see the touring company of “Phantom” in the same league as going to the movies. The whole concept of sit-by-the-numbers to see “Justice League” struck me as conceptually itchy.

Now, I know the movie theaters are struggling to keep their profits. Anyone who’s media aware understands that Netflix and Hulu and other streaming services are giving Millennials their entertainment fix in a new way. Sure, there are pressures on the industry -- big studios make their greatest share of money from a smaller selection of films, and movies are burning out at the box office more quickly. There was a recent article in Bloomberg pointing out the number of screening days it takes movie to earn 90 percent of its total box office haul keeps shrinking — for top films that figure stands at about 30 days, down from 40 days just two years ago.

Movie theaters have met challenges in the past, as when network radio exploded in the 1930’s and consumers could sit at home in the living room and hear superstar performers for free. Or in the 1950’s when the same effect, this time with television, sent movie theater attendance plummeting. 

So movie theaters today need to get more people in the doors more rapidly. After all, herding and crowd control are now a mainstay for the airlines, why not apply that model to entertainment?  Make the customers (1) book themselves in advance; (2) pay premiums for seating options. Columnist John Kelly, writing in The Washington Post, details how online ticketing pushes more of the transaction costs back onto the consumer -- including printing the ticket and processing the transaction. Can you say "United Airlines"?  Topping it off, we have to pay a “Convenience Fee” surcharge for this dubious honor.

But that same Bloomberg report pointed out that switching to reserved seating may make it harder to sell out shows — if customers see that the only seats left are those in the front row, they may put off buying tickets to shows they otherwise would see. Instead of the old model — going out with several friends on a Friday night, but finding out you can’t all sit together after buying tickets at the box office — instead you can find out when you book online and decide to do something else -- maybe come back next Tuesday night.

Reserved seating doesn’t mandate booking online in advance, old farts like me can still walk up to the ticket window on a whim. But this reserved seating system only works if EVERY seat is reserved, including walk-up point of purchase. So now the cashier gestures me to a tiny LCD screen full of boxes and rectangles and tells me to pick my seats from those still available. The tiny icons don’t translate spatially, and if I’m with Lynne then it becomes something to discuss because we make decisions together. All this means lines move slower as patrons ahead of you hash out all details of this seat versus that seat. If the movie’s not sold out, this kind of delay is just plain aggravating for those of us in the queue.

And If you’re willing to buy online and reserve ahead of time, then you’re no longer motivated to arrive before the show starts. Getting a good seat used to mean showing up early. That doesn’t work for Millennials, they prefer the assurance of walking into the theater at the last minute and having the seat they've selected waiting for them. Does this make one feel like a VIP -- when you can call "dibs" and later stroll in and sit down just as the studio and distributor logos hit the screen? Apparently so, since it’s called “VIP seating”.

After the lights go down and the show’s actually started, late comers are at best disruptive, at worst antagonizing, stumbling over seated patrons while trying to get to that one specific magic chair. For those of us used to the old first-come, first claimed model, mitigating this friction could take a while. Who referees disputes between latecomers who reserve seats online, and those traditionalists who would rather buy tickets early on site and hunker down in the best seats?

And those best seats are really getting the luxury treatment. Upgrading to plush recliner-style seats also means fewer seats fit into each auditorium. As Julia Humphrey writes at the Odyssey online site: “For what would normally be a row of about 12 to 14 stadium seats, around 7 luxury seats take their place. For each row of luxury seating, about one row of stadium seating is removed. So one row of luxury seating takes away the potential for around 20 more people. Those 20 people no longer have the opportunity to go catch a big blockbuster when they had the chance. Those 20 people are money lost for production studios and, assuming they buy concessions, a lost source of revenue for theaters.” 

Someone eventually will pay – theater chains, lead by AMC, will only wait about a year after upgrading theaters before raising ticket prices again to cover their remodeling costs and reduced capacity.

Sure, reserved seating can eliminate what the industry calls “holdout lines,” those long queues waiting outside the theater for exiting moviegoers to leave the previous showing. On the other hand, nearly 6 percent of overall revenue at AMC and Regal theaters comes from on-screen commercials before the movie starts. But without movie goers arriving early to snag the decent seats, no one’s there to watch advertising and commercials before the main show. Movie theaters are caught between wanting people to show up early (because they make extra money that way) and making it convenient (so that people don't decide just to watch things at home). Here’s the online sales pitch from one regional theater chain in the midwest:  “Avoid lines, arrive anytime knowing you have a great seat, sit exactly where you and your friends want, and reduce seat-saving anxiety by reserving a large number of seats for your family or friends.”

What’s scary? Theaters now have the technology to charge more for those seats with a better view of the screen or discount the crap seats. Or charge additional for seats with extended leg room, replicating the torture-based model used by most commercial airlines. And the software running the "seating and ticketing" operating system has all sorts of coded surprises in place, awaiting activation at some future date.  Ability to tier seating prices, charging more for the optimum sweet spots in the middle of the theaters.  Accept electronic tipping payments to employees and bonuses for cashiers for successfully up selling higher-tiered seats. Tracking and demographics. It’s not happening right now, but I’ve seen the screen shots intended only for theater managers and executives – check out the industry supplier RTS Ready Theatre Systems, if you don’t believe me.

With enough pre-sold reservations, theaters can dump those "dark" intervals in between screening times. With enough seats pre-purchased, let the poor schmucks arrive late and stumble around in the dark as features roll back-to-back-to-back. And what about the traditional loyal movie patron? With all seats reserved, if you play by their rules, then you’ve lost all control of mitigating obnoxious patrons who end up sitting next to you. What if someone tall sits right in front of you? It used to be easy to just quietly get up and move down a few seats.

Reserved seating might actually prevent me from deciding to go out to a new movie at the last minute, as most seats would have already been reserved. 

Is the escalated ticket price for perceived luxury worth this hassle? Hand me my remote, I’m staying home tonight.

"X" Marks a Brand New Spot?

I spent quite a few years working on the production of national television commercials, and I know a classic rebranding campaign when I see one.

So, it's no surprise watching the rapid morphing of Comcast cable into Xfinity, and this current campaign follows to a “C” the classic rebranding structure:

1. Announce new name, but assure "we're still Comcast"

2. Use existing name, but share screen with new brand logo

3. Use new name, but share screen with old brand logo

4. Use new name exclusively, drop all reference to old identity

Current crop of ads place Comcast half-way between three and four. So far a very predictable metamorphosis, and one so textbook it breaks absolutely no new ground whatsoever. I can only hope that Comcast did not spend millions and millions on consultants or creative fees for this unimaginative corporate retread. 

  Of course, I would be wrong.

The current high-end national TV spots even go so far as hiring actor Jon Hamm for his come-hither voiceover, intoning as though he were the voice of computer HAL in Kubrick's space odyssey looking to hookup at a singles bar:

Actually, Hamm sounds here for all the world like his character ad exec Don Draper, in AMC's Mad Men, soullessly pitching new creative to a hapless client.

The bigger question in all this is "why"? Theories abound:

• Having totally trashed their image for customer service and support, Comcast wants to walk away from all their negative image issues and start over.

• Having max'd out their rate structure and facing mass customer defections to more cost-effective platforms, Comcast is simply repackaging their s.o.s. (same old service) in a fancy, shiny, glitzy wrapper in hope of dangling some suggestion of improvements. Well, my Comcast bill arrived last week, the same identical bundle at the identical price but with a big "welcome to Xfinity" sprawled across the invoice.

• Finally, in light of the current hearings in Washington debating Comcast's purchase of NBC-Universal, the Comcast execs decided divorcing their cable distribution from all soon-to-be acquired broadcast and motion picture content providers might be a wise move.

Overall, this last grand master plan is probably closest to the truth, but the laughable selection of the "Xfinity" monicker not only sounds like something out of the early 1980's, but also smacks of "X-rated" and "porn" which isn't surprising considering “adult content” makes up the largest portion of all cable's programming profits.

Or as one customer of a competing cable company so aptly put it, in a recent blog posting:

" … just so long as Cox cable doesn't try a similar name change."

Jim Furrer

Hear the Podcast of this Blog!

Original Audio Content by Jim Furrer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.