ABC Affiliates Grapple With TV-Show Downloads [episode sales, actually]

ABC Affiliates Grapple With TV-Show Downloads


Choice
(Score:5, Insightful)
by BWJones (18351) * Alter Relationship on Monday October 17, @06:59PM (#13813200)
(http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/ | Last Journal: Monday October 17, @05:11PM)
Thank you Apple! Once again this company (along with ABC this time) has the stones to step up and offer a service that is a market primed to explode. The iTMS has proven to be a good long tail [thelongtail.com] business model for the distribution of music, offering popular and otherwise out of print or hard to find (Indie) tracks that are simply unavailable in the large retail outlets. I have not watched much TV in the past while, but having the iTMS model of distribution for TV shows that are out of syndication or are otherwise hard to obtain would be a tremendous boon. And if Ted Turner would get on the ball, all sorts of older movies could also be made available via this model, that would increase revenues over what they are making by the current limited access to the media. Documentaries, "foreign" (to the US) films, and indie films could make it truly big by talking to Apple. Sundance Channel and TCM, you are the big guys in this market......So, are you paying attention? And for you TIVOheads out there, in essence, if this propagates to the rest of the industry, this will be a centralized TIVO allowing you to pick and choose without having to take the time to program, and like the article said, this could make the ala carte system moot. Who knows, this could even open up the option of letting us pay for content that is without commercials or get it for "free" if we agree to watch the commercials. It's could simply be our choice.

P.S., Ted, thanks for the buffalo ranching, but there is more money to be made still in media. Don't give up.
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Completely Analogous
(Score:5, Funny)
by Ohreally_factor (593551) Alter Relationship on Monday October 17, @08:05PM (#13813538)
(Last Journal: Friday January 02, @07:40AM)
Yeah, the way Apple has exploited their dominance of the OS market to take over the downloadable music market and the MP3 market is pretty heinous and I'm sure the DOJ is keeping a close eye on them. And the creation of a new market of downloading video clips! That's just the sort of unfair business practice to which the DOJ pays close attention. Reminds me exactly of how MS has bullied PC makers to maintain its monopoly.

Er, wait.
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Slow Down Cowboy! Slashdot requires you type with one finger, so you needn't remove your thumb from your ass.

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Re:Choice
(Score:5, Insightful)
by Zocalo (252965) Alter Relationship on Monday October 17, @07:34PM (#13813378)
(http://www.zocalo.uk.com/)
I couldn't agree more, and kudos to ABC for being one of the first TV media companies to break ranks and try and embrace the inevitable future as well. Now if Apple can get other studios onboard and also flatten the staggered global release schedule for new series (which is completely pointless on a digital distribution network) then media nirvana can take a step closer. What on *earth* have the execs at the affiliates being doing the past few years that they've missed the fact that the music business in is absolute turmoil over digital distribution? They can hardly claim that they were so busy producing Reality and Car-Crash TV shows that they didn't realise the inevitability that they were next and Hollywood is going to follow.

Feh, who am I kidding. That's exactly what they are going to do, all the while frantically trying to buy legislation to protect their business model, no matter how shortsighted and dumb it makes them look.
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UNIX? They're probably not even circumcised! Savages!

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Re:Translation from Weasel follows:
(Score:5, Insightful)
by Jah-Wren Ryel (80510) Alter Relationship on Monday October 17, @07:55PM (#13813495)
ABC has chosen to act as an independent agent in a free market, rather than subjecting its decisions to cartel politics.

Don't for a moment think that affiliate demands on the network are all one-sided. Maintaining affiliate status means a station has to comply with all kinds of rules set by the network too.

ABC is not simply acting as an independent agent, they are, in some sense, unilaterally re-writing their contracts with their affiliates. I would be damn pissed too if one of my clients decided that they could get away with rewriting our contract, in their favor, with no negotiation.

I agree that the net has changed things and it is high-fucking-time the television industry started to catch up, but don't go thinking ABC or even Apple is the white hat in this episode of the drama - its a lot more complex than that.
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iTorrent?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by 3770 (560838) Alter Relationship on Monday October 17, @07:41PM (#13813415)
(http://vsxgen.sourceforge.net/)
This is slightly more technical, but I've been wondering about if they are going to offer up a torrent style iTunes client. This could be a tremendeous boon for for instance podcasts, and video podcasts in general. Maybe only for free content but still.

Sure, many wouldn't be able to figure out how to open up their firewall, but enough people would, that it would make a tremendous difference for some poor podcaster. It will likely let them cut their provider bill in half. Or they could reach 10 times as many people for the same cost. They could even make sure that all their friends have seeds before they release the podcast, that way they don't even really need a server provider (not of the type where you need to know how many GB per month you are allowed).

This would also be a tremendous benefit for Apple since being on iTunes definitely would be the shiznat for all the podcasters because now it also has a very direct benefit for them.

Also, if they did the torrent thing then they would get some serious Google type respect from geeks. Apple would be credited for making decentralized file sharing mainstream.

I can't even think of a down side. Can someone slap me out of this?
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Generate code using XML and XSLT with Visual Studio XGen V1.0.1 [sf.net](GPL)


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d downloads by the numbers
(Score:5, Informative)
by prockcore (543967) Alter Relationship on Monday October 17, @08:51PM (#13813726)
Desperate Housewives commands $350,000 for a 30 second spot. There are 17 minutes of commercials in 1 episode, which means there are 34 commercials in each episode.

That comes to $11.9 million per episode. That means 6 million people need to purchase each episode in order to match what ABC currently gets from advertisers.

Somehow I think the people talking about the death of broadcast TV are a bit pre-mature \\\\\\\\\\\\\js:
Pricing deals are made accross the board...;
and note to dummies: the content is tiny-format, LOW DEF. THIS is a NO-brainer, and just free 'gravy' for ABC, because ALL the FANS will STILL PURCHASE (or usenet) the DVD versions, with the extra teasers... because the whole show is puffery achieved via beef and babes, naught more> ////////////
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