View from 42nd floor of Comcast Center in Philly
Comcast Center is the tallest building in Philly. 56 floors. It sways in the wind, which is very poor UX, I'd say. :-)
Mike Berkley // Covering TV Everywhere, Hulu, and Netflix Business Models. By former CEO of SplashCast Media (www.splashcastmedia.com), Mike Berkley.
Comcast Center is the tallest building in Philly. 56 floors. It sways in the wind, which is very poor UX, I'd say. :-)
Disney (ABC) and CBS are reportedly in negotations with Apple to provide their TV shows, without commercials, on a subscription basis via iTunes.
I have a few questions about this. The first obvious question is: will consumers be willing to pay a monthly fee of $3 - $5 per show, for ad-free TV downloaded to their computer, iPod, and iPhone? This is content that is already available for "free" (broadcast, cable, Hulu, network websites, etc).
But more importantly, the business strategy question: are ABC and CBS really ready to take sides in the emerging Apple vs. Cable TV battle of the decade?
It's no secret that Apple wants to disrupt the TV industry like it successfully did the music industry. Their approach is to disintermediate the old guard content distributors. In the case of TV, that means pushing out the cable companies from the supply chain; connecting consumers directly to the content, removing the "middleman". This, of course, terrifies the cable operators (Comcast / Time Warner / Cox / etc).
The problem with that approach is that it forces the TV programmers (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and the cable channels) to align themselves with one side or the other: Apple or the cable MSO's. Remember that the programmers are still heavily reliant on "carriage fee" revenues from the MSO's.
Apple and Comcast both need ABC and CBS... however, ABC and CBS both need Comcast more they need Apple, at present time. So it's a big gamble for them to jump in bed with Apple.
I've written about this political gamble for the TV programmers here: Apple Creates Bad Political Situation for Content Providers
That all said, Steve Jobs is Disney's largest shareholder and has a lot of influence over strategic decisions. That could partly explain ABC's motivation to deal with Apple, but why CBS? It seems like CBS decisions are based on "anything but Hulu" (where "anything" also means "everything").
More background from NewTeeVee: http://newteevee.com/2009/12/22/will-consumers-pay-for-what-abc-and-cbs-already-give-away-for-free
To access Comcast's newly released TV Everywhere product, called Xfinity, Comcast customers must be both Broadband and Cable subscribers. I am. But subscribers are also required to use their Comcast-issued email address to login. I was issued mine 4 years ago. Never used it. No record of it. To recover it, the only options are to call customer support or chat online with a rep. After 2 hours waiting for both, I gave up. No other way to initiate Xfinity.
How could Comcast launch such an important product, one that needed to be as attentive-to-detail and user-centric as Hulu... with such a poor initial user experience? Hopefully my experience is unique. Maybe I'm of the few Comcast subscribers who doesn't use the comcast.net email address. I wish this were the case, but I doubt it. I also doubt that I am the only frustrated Comcast customer tonight.
It makes me sad, because cable subscribers deserve a great TV Everywhere user experience. They pay for it.
I hope that after I am able to login to Xfinity, the experience becomes awesome. I will let you know.
UPDATE (3 hours later): Comcast customer support rep via web chat gave me my email address and reset my password. Now I am off to the races. Note that it took me about 4 hours start-to-finish to get started with Xfinity.
This is good analysis:
With Comcast's acquisition of NBCU finally official this morning (technically, it's not an acquisition, but rather the creation of a JV in which Comcast holds 51% and GE 49%, until GE inevitably begins unwinding its position), it's time to assess the winners, losers and unknowns from the deal, the biggest the media industry has seen in a long while. I listened to the Comcast investor call this morning with Brian Roberts, Steve Burke and Michael Angelakis and reviewed their presentation.
I guess Comcast's original name "OnDemand Online" (or ODOL, as they called it internally) felt too big company-ish. But I'm not yet sold on Xfinity -- feels a bit forced.
This new name / brand is specifically for it's TV Everywhere service on Fancast.com. On other sites, like CBS.com, it will be named something different. TV Everywhere branding is going to be decided by the site publisher, apparently, which makes sense to me. Story: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-comcast-naming-its-tv-everywhere-service-xfinity/CNBC broke the news today: http://www.cnbc.com/id/34225581
We will have a solid year to wait for this deal to pass through all the regulatory hoops and hurdles. That will give us time to consider so many really interesting questions:
Comcast-owned ThePlatform is arguably the top Online Video Platform (OVP) provider, and almost certainly is within the TV industry. They unseated encumbent Brightcove over the last year by launching Hulu.com, CBS.com, TV.com, and a slew of other broadcast and cable TV networks. They announced even more TV programmer customers today (most of whom are owned by Comcast) as well as Rogers, Canada's largest cable operator. ThePlatform also powers online video for Comcast's largest competitors: Time Warner Cable, Cox, and CableVision.
Today, thePlatform made a major announcement that brings TV Everywhere a HUGE step closer to reality.
ThePlatform is launching a cable Authentication & Authorization component to its white-label video publishing product that will enable programmer web sites (HBO.com, Showtime.com, NBC.com, etc) to publish their premium TV shows on their sites, requiring the user to authenticate himself as a cable subscriber with access to that channel (ie, you can only watch HBO shows online if you pay for HBO through your cable provider). Enforcing this authentication ensures everyone in the media supply chain gets credit for that view, and money is transferred accordingly. To that end: an integration with Nielsen to directly track views would be a killer strategic move by thePlatform!
This solution also has the following compelling side benefits for the MSO's and TV Programmers:
Here's a nice diagram of how this new component works:
ThePlatform is initially providing this technology only to TV Programmers for their sites (broadcast networks and cable channels). That's a great first step, though I believe the killer app will be making this capability available to any web site, not just NBC.com or HBO.com, etc. I wrote about this just yesterday.
Regarding the rest of thePlatform's competition in the OVP space... DigitalSmiths, despite its strong TV Everywhere positioning campaign last month, hasn't released any technology yet that addresses the initiative's largest challenges: authentication and authoriziation. Meanwhile, Ooyala and Brightcove appear to be sitting on the TV Everywhere sidelines.
One step at a time, I understand. But I believe it's critical that TV Everywhere becomes an "open" premium video distribution platform available for any web publisher, on any web site.
Consumers will demand the freedom to watch Entourage in their preferred environment, be it Hulu.com, Facebook, Boxee, etc... not just on Fancast.com or HBO.com. That is the promise of TV Everywhere. Universal authentication will make this a technical possibility. It is ultimately the right thing to do and will benefit the entire media ecosystem, starting with the paying customer.
Clearly Comcast, Time Warner, and the other MSO's need to weigh the benefit of providing their subscribers a good experience (in the form of choice) versus the economic benefit of locking their users to their own sites (or programmer sites, such as HBO.com, CBS.com, Showtime.com, etc).
The MSO's have a reputation for opting for the economic benefit over the user experience benefit, which has really hurt their brand image.
Creating a "win" for the user should be the top priority for Comcast and Time Warner. Remember, TV Everywhere was born out of a defensive move to stem cable cord cutting.
I understand that we are just in the first inning of TV Everywhere, and these are the necessary first steps. However, I would like to hear Comcast and Time Warner talk about the longer-term vision for where this is all going.
Here is Comcast's Amy Banse articulating their near-term TV Everywhere (OnDemand On Line) rollout:
The Wall Street Journal ran a story today discussing the potential regulatory challenges to a Comcast acquisition of NBC Universal.
What these stories seem to miss is that this a DEFENSIVE move by Comcast, not an aggressive move against its rivals. Comcast is NOT buying NBC to seek an "unfair" advantage in its cable markets. The real motivation behind this deal (I believe) is survival. Comcast understands that the price point for distributing TV into homes is going to fall dramatically in the coming years. Comcast's 3 distribution products, Voice - TV - Internet, are collapsing into just one, single product: Internet. This poses a huge threat to Comcast's top line. As such, Comcast is hedging through diversification into content, moving up the media value chain. Comcast will be looking to replace lost revenue in distribution with revenue from content (advertising, subscriptions, etc). At it's core, it's that simple. Therefore, I believe Comcast will be willing to live with any reasonable regulatory restrictions the government slaps on this deal.
