Unfiltered

Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, who may be retiring in the next year or so, reportedly said at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference this week that video cord-cutting in favor of over-the-top video is a real problem, not the myth that many cable TV providers and other observers have alleged. He also appeared to suggest that cable TV companies have the most to lose because they are the incumbents whose businesses are built on a pay TV foundation.
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TV Everywhere has gone from much-hyped to frequently attacked in the last couple of years, as TV service providers have been slow to add online content. Now Bruce Eisen, vice president of online content development and strategy for Dish Network, is admitting that TV Everywhere doesn’t have a viable business model. That’s not what we expected to hear from a company that started offering TV Everywhere content just last month, though Eisen said Dish sees it instead as a customer retention tool.
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Are you surprised that Netflix is still around? That it hasn’t been brought to its knees by Apple iTunes, Amazon, RedBox or a boatload of imitators? That it hasn’t gone the way of bankrupt Blockbuster? Techdirt has a post titled “Why does everyone underestimate Netflix?” that sorts through the pile of disrespect that has been heaped upon the DVD-by-mail innovator turned Internet movie-streamer (and links to a related post at Slate).
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Consumer spending is down, and the pay TV market just posted a subscriber loss for the first time in its history, yet the cable TV industry continues to raise rates. That just doesn’t make sense and won’t continue to work, said Craig Moffett, senior analyst with Bernstein Research. These price hikes may be on a crash course with both economic reality and over-the-top video.
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Intel CEO Paul Ottelini said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal this week that Google TV would ship in devices starting this month — a curious statement considering that Google has left the launch timing pretty open, mentioning nothing more specific than this fall. What makes the statement even more curious is that, if true, it would out Google TV’s launch at the very same time as the re-launch of Apple TV, currently targeted for the end of this month.
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Internet market research firm comScore recently said live video streaming at six of the top live streaming site jumped a collective 600% in July to about 1.5 billion minutes of live video viewed, compared to around 200 million minutes in July 2009. YouTube and other recorded video sites draw many times those viewing minutes, but the huge increase means live streaming is growing at a much more rapid rate than other online video viewing habits — and that the second punch in online video’s one-two combination is ready for impact.
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Video game consoles increasingly being outfitted to support over-the-top video present an intriguing threat to traditional TV service. Recent Yankee Group research suggested that 20% of game console owners already watch some video through those devices.
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Google has been slowly adding “pro” and long-form content to the user-generated juggernaut that is YouTube. Now, it looks like it’s ready to make its biggest play yet, pitching studios on a plan to rent Hollywood movies on YouTube for $5 a play. Originally reported in the Financial Times, the move would put it in competition with other online players such as Netflix (which is increasingly adding online rentals to its DVD mix) as well as traditional cable/telco TV competitors.
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It won’t be until next week that Apple finally makes its TV strategy clear, in a planned event scheduled for September 1. But The blogosphere has been rife with rumors: mobile apps coming to the TV; 99-cent play-anywhere TV show rentals; large-screen HD Apple TV interfaces. The latest rumor even has Apple rethinking including Apple TV in the event at all, on fears from CEO Steve Jobs that the product he has called a “hobby” for Apple in the past still isn’t ready for a big-time breakout along the lines of the iPhone and iPad.
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