why iTunes doesn't matter

[Hermiod]

^I think it's next season, yes.

From next season the rights will be arranged as follows:

BBC: Premier League highlights, a limited number of live Championship matches, Championship, League One and League Two highlights, one live Carling Cup semi-final and the final, Carling Cup highlights.

ITV: Live FA Cup games from early rounds to the final, FA Cup highlights, One live Wednesday night Champions League game of their choice per week, Champions League highlights, England home competitive internationals and some friendlies, live Europa League matches from the Quarter Final stage.

Sky Sports: Live Premier League matches, extended Premier League highlights, live Carling Cup matches including one semi-final and the final, live Championship, League One and League Two matches, all Tuesday and the remainder of Wednesday's Champions League matches live.

Setanta: 38 live Premier League matches, limited Premier League highlights (mainly just the goals), live FA Cup matches from the early rounds, live England competitive away internationals and some friendlies, live Blue Square Premier league matches.

Prior to the quarter finals, other Europa League matches will be available for individual purchase by arrangement with the home team.

After next season, Setanta's Premier League rights will be reduced to 25 matches, with the other 13 going back to Sky. This will most likely mean the return of Monday Night Football.

 

[Angel4576]

^^ It will. The rights that Setanta held on to were the 5pm Saturday games.

Disappointing that Sky have got the rights to so many CL games. As much as I dislike ITV an equal split was better IMO.

 

[Hermiod]

ITV's coverage is horrendous. The cover the world's biggest club football competition yet they can't pronounce the names of most of the players or the clubs playing in it. Their pundits rarely have a clue about the teams they're watching either.

 

[StolenThunder]

True, but I can't afford satellite/cable so I certainly get to watch less football.

Having said that, STV up here has even less football than ITV and I have no interest in watching Rangers, and little in watching Celtic.

 

[wamdue]

The BBC License Fee is more of a tax than a fee.

damm it, did I bang my head and wake up on Digital Spy again.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

The BBC License Fee is more of a tax than a fee.

damm it, did I bang my head and wake up on Digital Spy again.

I know, seems like it some times, doesn't it?

 

[JoeZhang]

Anyone tried spotify?

It's an itune like app which streams music but unlike lastfm, you can select and listen to whole albums. You have to list to a 15 second advert every 30 minutes... I've been using it for a little bit and it's great.

 

[wamdue]

The BBC License Fee is more of a tax than a fee.

damm it, did I bang my head and wake up on Digital Spy again.

I know, seems like it some times, doesn't it?

we are even slagging off ITVs football coverage, all we need now is a minute by minute thread of ITVs shareprice, and this thread IS the Digital Spy Boardcasting forum.

 

[Hermiod]

^Needs more threads about getting deals from Sky/Virgin by phoning up and threatening to cancel.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Anyone tried spotify?

It's an itune like app which streams music but unlike lastfm, you can select and listen to whole albums. You have to list to a 15 second advert every 30 minutes... I've been using it for a little bit and it's great.

I've been using We7 which I guess is similar, I was wondering whether it was worth signing up for Spotify or not though.

 

[The Borg Queen]

Anyone tried spotify?

It's an itune like app which streams music but unlike lastfm, you can select and listen to whole albums. You have to list to a 15 second advert every 30 minutes... I've been using it for a little bit and it's great.

I would do, if it wasn't shit and actually worked.

Oh wait, that's just New Zealand. Silly me, I keep forgetting.

 

[mimic]

I don't know about Hulu as I am not American.

Not entirely sure since I've never actually tested it (only heard of it recently) but this software should let you get by regional censorship stuff.

Anyway I use hulu or netflix or the network website - used iTunes once or twice but I prefer watching a handful of ads or getting DVDs.

 

[mrcoaster]

I don't know about Hulu as I am not American.

Not entirely sure since I've never actually tested it (only heard of it recently) but this software should let you get by regional censorship stuff.

Anyway I use hulu or netflix or the network website - used iTunes once or twice but I prefer watching a handful of ads or getting DVDs.

Same here. I'll either buy the DVDs, use Netflix (yay, Instant Watch streaming on demand!), watch on the website, or just d/l it. That's assuming that I somehow missed it on the DVR in the first place. I'll pass on paying per episode or d/l a season of a series for the same price that I could have the actual media for otherwise.

Was there some post recently that claimed iTunes was the end all for show sales/viewer? I thought it would have been a no-brainer that iTunes (or other similar stuff) might be a drop in the bucket (though every bit counts).

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Who knows, maybe as a TV pirate, and internet ad non-clicker, morons who are distracted by 'shiny' and buy this crap are subsidizing my viewing habits and I should be thankful. But then again, it looks to me as though my kind of programming is going extinct in favor of whatever requires the shortest attention span.

The "morons" are subsidizing the stuff they like - short attention span* - so your habits are contributing to the death of the stuff you like. The only way the "morons" would help you out if their tastes coincided with what you like by sheer coincidence. You're still going to be limited to pirating stuff the "morons" like.

*Short attention span is oversimplifying the case. What's really happening is an explosion of stuff geared to all sorts of tastes, including extremely long and patient attention spans, such as Lost.

I doubt any model where people just pay for TV outright is ever going to be all that successful.

HBO and Showtime beg to differ. And I could envision Internet-based dramas with serious production values following the same general philosophy - target a certain group of people and give them precisely what they want, and they might just pay for it.

For HBO and Showtime, it's high-income households. For a theoretical Internet-based drama/comedy network, it would be Internet enthusiasts, minus the pirates. I'm sure there's a way to sort them out, maybe by age, gender, household income? There's a business in there somewhere...

Anyway I use hulu or netflix or the network website - used iTunes once or twice but I prefer watching a handful of ads or getting DVDs.

I dislike watching TV shows on the PC, too. Until they let me burn a DVD off iTunes, I'm sticking with taping and Netflix DVDs.

 

[JoeZhang]

Anyone tried spotify?

It's an itune like app which streams music but unlike lastfm, you can select and listen to whole albums. You have to list to a 15 second advert every 30 minutes... I've been using it for a little bit and it's great.

I've been using We7 which I guess is similar, I was wondering whether it was worth signing up for Spotify or not though.

It doesn't look like we7 has a desktop client? With Spotify, you download the client (which looks like the itune player) and use that - it's very quick and simple.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Anyone tried spotify?

It's an itune like app which streams music but unlike lastfm, you can select and listen to whole albums. You have to list to a 15 second advert every 30 minutes... I've been using it for a little bit and it's great.

I've been using We7 which I guess is similar, I was wondering whether it was worth signing up for Spotify or not though.

It doesn't look like we7 has a desktop client? With Spotify, you download the client (which looks like the itune player) and use that - it's very quick and simple.

I see. Yeah We 7 only has streaming via the website, and free downloads with 10 second ads attached.

 

[Hermiod]

HBO and Showtime beg to differ. And I could envision Internet-based dramas with serious production values following the same general philosophy - target a certain group of people and give them precisely what they want, and they might just pay for it.

For HBO and Showtime, it's high-income households. For a theoretical Internet-based drama/comedy network, it would be Internet enthusiasts, minus the pirates. I'm sure there's a way to sort them out, maybe by age, gender, household income? There's a business in there somewhere...

Internet enthusiasts already get the TV they want off the net. They're going with online TV companies like Revision3 or Mevio. There aren't any technology shows on TV to match the quality of Tekzilla or Geekbrief.tv.

With Showtime and HBO people are still not paying for a specific show.

On top of that, in the US and in the UK ISPs are trying to choke the development of Internet TV with download caps, metered broadband, traffic shaping and even going so far as to suggest restricting services such as Hulu to paying cable TV customers.

The companies making our TV are too closely linked to the companies supplying our Internet connections to allow broadband to eat in to our traditional, advertising supported TV viewing time without a fight.

 

[Corwwyn]

Because there is such a difference in scale, we can discount the price of commercial advertising down to even $100,000 per commercial for that show with 5 million viewers just to have a nice round number. With 32 commercial spots, it would generate around $3.2 million dollars in revenue.

If 25,000 downloaded a show from iTunes at $2.00 per download, that’s $50,000 in total revenue. Or one half of what the show would make for a single thirty second spot even at only 5 million viewers. And that assumes that all of the money goes back to the network, which of course isn’t the case — iTunes (Apple) gets a cut.

But if 5 million downloads of a show were made off of itunes at $2.00 per download, that's $10 million. Apples(sic) and apples...

 

[TheArsenal]

I doubt any model where people just pay for TV outright is ever going to be all that successful.

HBO and Showtime beg to differ.

As does every channel not offered in the basic cable/satellite packages that people also pay extra for.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Internet enthusiasts already get the TV they want off the net.

I'm defining them a bit more generally - just think "Internet users" - millions of them. Nobody's captured that market yet to any significant degree for scripted drama/comedy that makes money on par with TV networks or even remotely close.

With Showtime and HBO people are still not paying for a specific show.

They're paying for a specific type of show - adult, complex, very high quality. They expect to see stuff they can't get on broadcast networks or basic cable (tho basic cable is nipping at their heels).

Finding what Internet uses want to see in terms of comedy and drama, that doesn't exist on TV, and giving it to them, is a business model waiting to happen.

But if 5 million downloads of a show were made off of itunes at $2.00 per download, that's $10 million.

But 5 million downloads don't happen - the volume isn't there. But that's the right idea. Why aren't there 5 million downloads of any given TV show? Because the TV shows aren't there yet - there's no analogue to the premium shows that impel viewers to pay extra to subscribe to HBO and Showtime. Those shows don't exist because nobody has figured out what they need to be. (Even then, there's no guarantee that they could exist; I just have a hunch they will.)

They're going with online TV companies like Revision3 or Mevio.

Just for fun, I scanned their pages, acting like an Average Consumer willing to be grabbed by something.

Revision3 - video game stuff, something about Star Wars, nothing looks interesting enough to click on. Got bored and left.

Mevio - interesting that they provide categories to focus your viewing but I doubt I fit neatly into stereotypical Female or Male viewing patterns. Just clicked on the Channels - looks like the crap you'd find on TV during the day on basic cable. Talk shows about fashion, video games, etc. Cheap, uninteresting. Nothing grabbed me. Got bored and left.