PHILADELPHIA – While CTAM Canada put together a fun night for programmers and distributors on Sunday evening here in Philadelphia (see photos below this story), CTAM Summit attendees on Monday morning were shown that the programmer-distributor relationship can be as contentious as ever when we start talking about high definition.
During the “Monetizing Advanced Video Services” session, Time Warner Cable’s SVP programming Lynne Costantini, Showtime Networks’ SVP marketing Geof Rochester and Channing Dawson, SVP emerging media at Scripps Networks (Food Network, HGTV, Fine Living, DIY Network) argued about who should pay for HDTV.
When Dawson complained about the high cost of producing HD shows compared to traditional means, and compared that to the very few number of eyeballs seeing a high def picture, Costantini was unsympathetic, saying simply, “it’s a cost of doing business,” pointing to her company’s investment in its network during the past five years.
Dawson insisted that MSOs should pay more for HD programming and pass those costs along to the customer. Costantini said that Time Warner Cable and its customers are interested in paying extra for “unique (high definition) content” – but not repurposed or re-packaged HD, or just an HD version of what’s already available.
Rochester then added that he found the conversation, which happens all the time among MSOs and programmers, frustrating, pointing out that they need each other. “We’ve got to get beyond this rhetoric of who pays,” he said. “We’re all co-dependent.”
“If we get into a pissing match continually, we’re just losing time.”
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The same panel talked about the impact of the DVR (or, as we call it in Canada, the PVR, or personal video recorder). Costantini said that if cable could get unique content for their on demand platform, it might consider disabling the ability to skip commercials for such shows. TWC has a project under way called “Start Over” where it’s trialing such an option.
But, skipping commercials is nothing new, said Costantini, it’s just that with DVRs, there’s now a device to measure the fact that people don’t pay close attention to them. “This is the elephant in the room that no one will acknowledge,” added Dawson, explaining that people often surf or leave the room when commercials come on – but now that a growing number can record and fast-forward, data is coming out about how prevalent skipping ads is. “Now everyone’s hair is on fire,” he added.
His solution? Don’t abandon the 30-second ad, “just make the 30-second ad really appealing and people will watch them.”
(Ed note: Either that or air a 30-second static product image where when customers are fast-forwarding, they’ll still see the brand image.)
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Taking on-demand up a notch, and adding sampling, is also top of mind here. With American MSOs demanding more original content from their program suppliers, HBO is giving its customers and cable distributors a gift when it launches its ambitious new drama, ROME, on August 28th. The new hour-long drama centering around the rise and fall of the Roman Empire will premiere that day after a week of on-demand DVD-like extra content has been made available to cable subscribers via their VOD platforms and on-line.
When episode two airs, on September 4th, it will be immediately followed the next day by episode three – but only to cable SVOD customers. That means cable on demand customers will be able to view the third episode six days before it airs on the linear channel. This is the only episode which will be made available in this way and is the first time a programmer has made original content available on demand prior to the scheduled day and date. It simply wants to build buzz around the show and the SVOD option.
Showtime’s Rochester also talked about providing content sampling to distributors so that there is original content available, while boosting the profile of his services. Rochester talked about making two to five minute snippets of Showtime’s original fare such as Fat Actress and new series Barbershop available as free content for cable VOD customers.
“The ability to sample shows is very powerful for us,” he said. “We’re on an aggressive sampling strategy right now.”
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In the afternoon’s session on adding wired or wireless phones to the cable bundle, the panelists divulged little new information. However, Rogers Cable’s telephony v-p and general manager Tim Wyllie said that new services will be added to Rogers Home Phone by the end of this year including unified messaging and video phone, among other services.
He also added that Rogers went to market with the name “Rogers Home Phone” as a conscious decision to distance itself from the word digital. Many players, including Bell Canada, have launched VOIP by calling it digital phone or some variation, “and we wanted to stay away from the word ‘digital’,” in order to give its product some difference.
Finally, when asked by an audience member when we might start to see the ability for people to have one phone number that follows us everywhere – regardless of where we move to or what phone we have (POTS, VOIP, wireless, all of them), Wyllie said he thought that we might see that capability within 18 months or so.
– Greg O’Brien
CTAM Canada treasurer and president Chris Fuoco of Alliance Atlantis addresses the crowd at the annual CTAM Canada dinner at the Summit.
Fuoco thanks the night’s primary organizer Peter Grewar of Persona with a couple of gifts – including that red Phillies cap. Looks like he’s being drafted, no?
Vision TV’s Tony Greco (centre) with Aliant’s Blair Day (left) and Stephen Flogeras
(l to r) CHUM Television’s Andrew Irwin, Cogeco Cable’s JP Caveen, and Discovery Networks’ John Rislinger.
