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Mike Berkley  //  Product Strategy @ Comcast's Social Technology Group. Formerly CEO of SplashCast Media. This is my personal blog. My writing and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Comcast.

 
Mar 18 / 7:45am

Silicon Valley Doesn't Understand TV

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/18/google-tv-apple-tv/

Ugh. We just don't get it in the valley.

The above TechCrunch post is a typical Silicon Valley perspective that again exposes its misunderstanding about the TV screen. TechCrunch ends the above post with:

We, as consumers, need a living room arms race between Apple and Google (and Microsoft, TiVo, Roku, Boxee, and the rest) to kick the cable companies’ shitty television user experience to the curb.


Nicely chosen words. The thing that we tech folk in silicon valley don't seem to get is that TV is primarily not about whiz-bang technology, applications, or even user experience.... It is first and foremost about access to CONTENT, and then getting out of the way.

People spend a ton of money on gorgeous, huge-screen TVs... for what purpose? So they can read their twitter feeds on their living room wall? I don't think so.

TV is still primarily about ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, PBS, ESPN, CNN, FOXNEWS, HBO, SHOW, MTV, DISCOVERY, SPROUT, BRAVO, etc...

No where in the TechCrunch post above is access to TV content even mentioned. Not once.

Google does not have the content relationships to make the cable companies lose sleep over Google TV. Nor do they have a meaningful business model to support TV content. If they did have 75% of the content relationships that Comcast has, and were successfully extracting monthly bills from its users, then I would bet Brian Roberts (Comcast CEO) would become very concerned. But right now they aren't even close.

Once you do have the content, THEN amazing, mind-blowing things can be done with 3rd party apps and social features, integrated into the content experience. But content is the first step.

It's interesting to note that the TV is the oldest of all the screens and the only one that pre-dates silicon valley.

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3 comments

Mar 18, 2010
IanBell330 said...
I agree with you Mike 100%. The valley still does not understand the value of content. They are technology driven and that's about it. There are very few VCs I have met down there that understand content revenue models, or that even invest in companies that create content. And what they consider to be content are short form blogs and user made videos.
Mar 18, 2010
SJungmann said...
Agree. Each of us has our own personal programming/content requirements that are currently met by the big MSO's for most of us. If my requirements can be met by another provider then I'm interested in changing. But outside the valley, once I can get my content, it's about user experience and cost. It cannot be harder to access my shows than cable/sat or it's not worth it to me. And 99% of us don't (and can't because we're not tech savvy) care about open source, platforms and other under-the-hood stuff.
Apr 14, 2010
acoustik said...
Mike - just found your blog through Google. It's a fascinating read. Thanks for writing it. Re this post: How long do you think until we can find quality (or good enough) TV/video content outside of the networks? E.g., web episodes, blip.tv, etc. Cost of making content is going down, consumers' own threshold for quality is lowering, and ease of discovery/ distribution is going up. Only missing piece is connecting web episodes to my TV. But with the Boxee box does that change? How long until we live in a post-network world? Would love to hear what you think.

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