(Oh, I gotta go off on this topic. Sorry for the length but if you wanna skip it all, feel free to read the SparkNotes version in the next two paragraphs–I won’t love you any less for doing so, promise.)Saw on Drudge how AT&T, Microsoft and NBC are trying to figure out ways to filter the internet. Yikes. Oh, I’m sorry, not censor it, just filter it—for content they already own. That they haven’t yet figured out how to properly monetize. And make a killing from. (What, you didn’t actually think they were concerned with going after hate speech or keeping kids safe from porn did you?)
So what’s the answer. A fee for every single thing online once a year? A model based on cable TV? Blow it all up and start over?
Next to search, downloading of anything these days is a trend bigger than the Beatles, bigger then Jesus even. Problem is, major media is still scrambling to figure out how to make money off of and control this emerging beast. Maybe it’s more a question of bringing into the existing fold of TV, the way cable first did.
When it came out way back in seventies, cable was supposed to be this big threat to TV until they figured out how to monetize it. Solution: charge for the physical service of having cable, charge for specific channels/packages like HBO and then specialized events lke Pay-Per-View.
Then along came the biggest repurposed content scam going: rerun TV’s glory daze of Boomer classics and call it Nick at nite or TV Land. (Which makes me think P.T. Barnum’s descendants had to be cable executives.)
And now that the lines between TV and cable have eroded even more as newtworks for well over a decade have created content exclusively for cable while advertisers run rampant over both segments of that market. People don’t really think of it as TV or cable anymore do they?
Still, nobody can figure out the internet. Only thing they’ve come up with is “Hey, I know, we’ll put our TV ads into any clip that run online, sweet! We’ll even throw them in our news, trailers, all of it! Maybe even charge for subscriptions!”
Yikes indeed.
Worth noting though is the second comment to the article that encapsulates the issue: this potential move is akin to having the water company tell you how you’re going to use the water in your house that you already paid for. If I shower with it, will it cost me more than if I cook with it? Is watering the lawn cheaper? Like all utilities, we pay based simply on volume. With rare exception, how much you use each month is how much you pay, not how that volume is used.
On closer look, this move to filter seems more about a perceived loss of an additional revenue stream they didn’t have before, rather than it being a direct attack on their primary source. If I watch a half-hour episode of whatever show on regular TV, advertisers pay the networks for that in order to reach me the viewer. (I watch 23 minutes of sitcom glory–network makes money off the remaining seven and the brand hopes I remember their name.)
Now, why should I pay again just to see it online? So that the networks can make even more? I seriously doubt the show is going to be any better the second time around, and I damn sure could less about seeing more ads in it.
Others make the case that the sheer volume of internet traffic alone creates a unique situation on how to charge for content, one that just doesn’t apply to how it’s been done with traditional media. Maybe. But is the implication there that TV doesn’t have decent traffic?
Look no further than the 100+ million viewers of the upcoming Super Bowl in the U.S. alone, let alone the estimated one billion globally. How’s traffic on the internet really any different. Other than being something that’s built incrementally over time rather than all at once, like you might have with a mega TV event like the SB or weekly hitcom?
Part of the Axis of Media Evil’s problem may be in understanding that the internet is not simply TV in terms of content. TV has shows on a regular schedule. Controlled by ratings, sure, but unless it’s a trainwreck, no show is yanked after one episode–you’re stuck with 13 weeks of a mediocre show whether you like it or not. Stuff is constantly tested to make sure you’ll like it.
For purposes of simplification, and because I feel like it, the internet though is broken up into two areas: Disneyworld and the Wild West. The Disney side is nice and safe, a pre-packaged vacation of your dreams where every experience is controlled. No surprises. Awwww. How about a nice kid-friendly website.
H&G tips on making your apartment nicer? Sweet! And to be fair the internet does have original shows as well, not anywhere to the extent TV has of course, but it’s in its infancy and it’s getting there. And this is what TV wants: let’s set up a base of operations on the internet where we can just give people more of the same.
Then there’s the Wild West.
There’s a weird divergence here of factors that regular network TV can’t control. Extreme content nobody watches. Stupid content everyone watches. Stupid content everyone creates but nobody watches. How can Neilsen measure that? For years, TV controlled what we did between 7:00 and 10:00 at night.
No longer.
Now, viewers/users dictate the flow because the internet is the shrink/creative outlet/friend in our daily lives available to us 24/7. The only interaction you had with TV was when the ref made a bad call and you threw something at it.
Not anymore.
Angry at a store? Blog it. Hate someone in school? Post a video about them. Can’t get a record deal? Make a vid of your AWESOOOMMMMMEE band!
Leave Britney Alone! catches on over a few days in response to a typical snafu moment at the MTV Awards and starts becoming huge, leading to parodies and parodies of parodies. The controlled environment of the TV event took on a life of its own online. Other crazes start slower and work their way into your email–and brain. There are too many to list but you know The Star Wars kid, Chocolate Rain, etc.
What’s the closest TV has to this, Bob Saget videos? Game shows?
It’s this Wild West freak factor that TV and other media don’t get because it falls outside the normal channels of how they’ve made money in the past. Nobody’s watching Everyone Loves Raymond if sponsors are offended by its content. Certainly CBS won’t be getting paid if that happens–and CBS won’t let that happen.
It’s this gap though between what sponsors find acceptable and how wildly popular some outrageous content online becomes that’s a big hurdle for them: advertisers want a piece of anything that gets 14 million views–but they want it to be ‘safe’ and family-orientated
Good luck with that. This mindset is why the non-wardrobe malfunctioning Tom Petty is playing the halftime show of the Super Bowl this year: I can make money from it if I can control it.
To that end though, seems that NBC & Co. is worried too much about those end-users, (downloaders), and stopping them, when what they should do is go right to the source of distribution, (the ISPs) to instead let people have their MTV–for a price.
So here’s what I propose: since people already pay a monthly fee for internet service, why not pay an additional but nominal fee that covers content in general. Call it, um, a ‘content fee’ if you want. Shock. Awe. A Gilligan’s Island rerun would cost me no more than a U2 concert would. After all, if there’s so much ‘volume’ on the internet, the ones who would never watch the YouTube concert would subsidize the million who would.
(Look at renvue sharing in pro sports because this same thing keeps small market teams from disappearing. Hate the Yankees and the Cowboys all you want, but they help prop up the weaker teams in their respective sports.)
Thanks to TiVo, nobody’s stopping YouTube Nation from downloading an episode of Heros–so why not just go to the ISP. You mean to tell me you wouldn’t pay a single flat rate per year to download any content of your choosing? We do now with monthly cable and those HBO packages, no?
While I understand piracy is a problem, too often the industry in question tries to elicit sympathy for its cause by referencing that so-called ‘volume’ of the internet to point out how much they’re losing. How many times have you heard the arguement that piracy is destroying their business model due to illegal downloads, all because x-amount of people contribute to this industry-wide problem?
Too many.
As if people are spending six hours a day watching or listening to pirated material? Who has time? I barely have time to watch the two DVDs I rented from Hollywood Video in less than five days, let alone sit there all day watching stuff I may have downloaded, let alone wait for it to download.
As an aside, this brings up another unique aspect of the digital age as it relates to content. Those of us who grew up with records never had to worry about paying additional money once we bought them. If I wanted to lend a record to a friend, I did. If I wanted to play it wherever and whenever I wanted to, I did, and it cost me nothing extra.
While music sharing has been going on for a long time, the big difference is that now technology is available to monitor that exchange and profit from it. Is it getting out of hand though? At some point, will consumers be fed up enough with this cradle to grave mindset that has a stranglehold on them by major media?
Sorry to say, probably not.
Face it, we’re lazy. We’ll pay, we always do. And it may sound like I’m contradicting myself when on one hand I say don’t charge me and on the other, let me pay a one time fee. What I’m saying is this: I don’t mind paying. Just don’t keep charging me for every single thing I do related to how I use the content each time I turn around–and then keep coming up with new ways to charge me.
Or will we pay? Radiohead and other artists’ collective middle finger to the industry notwithstanding, little by little, there’s more original content being created by sources other the networks, so who knows where this ends up. Again, remember, cable TV was once thought of as a joke too, just like Fox’s then push to become the first real threat to the three major network system that was ABC, NBC and CBS.
The promise of the internet was suppose to be that it was a free and open exchange of ideas. This in addition to also being a failsafe method of worldwide communication in time of major catastrophe. That this rush to monetize it has somehow violated the spirit of the former is unfortunate, but let’s face it, without the internet and what it’s become, I’m out of a job and you’re not reading this.
So what’s the answer?
Tags: NBC filter content
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