WHILE SITTING IN TUESDAY morning’s IPTV session at NAB 2007 in Las Vegas I was reminded of the Sesame Street song: “One of these things is not like the other.”
You know how the rest of it goes, asking kids to pick out the thing in a group of objects that doesn’t belong. Unlike Sesame Street, during this morning’s session kids wouldn’t have been able to tell by looking, but once everyone started talking, it would have been easy.
The panel this morning, led by Carmel Group’s Jimmy Schaeffler, consisted of executives from Verizon, SES Americom, OpenTV, and Qualcomm. And Capitol Broadcasting’s Jim Goodmon, a local broadcaster based in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Schaeffler told me after the session he had trouble getting a broadcaster to agree to be part of the panel and full marks for Goodmon for jumping in but oy, where to begin? This was the oldest of old-style broadcast thinking on display.
He started by unveiling a little USB device that would plug into a PC and deliver (using his Raleigh, NC station WRAL as an example) programming to folks in his DMA (designated market area). And it would only deliver it to people in that area because it picks up the FM signal of two local radio stations. Without those OTA signals, the device wouldn’t work.
“It’s cable over the Internet,” he said.
While the device on the face of it would look to have potential, because it would give local broadcasters a way to go to the net fully streamed and keep to the old parameters of the DMA one wonders why any consumer would want one. If you can only use it in Raleigh, wouldn’t you just watch WRAL on TV?
And if you want the network content Goodmon may not be allowed to stream on your PC, you’d go to CBS.com, for starters. Hopefully WRAL is at least streaming its own news content. And if it is, why then is this device he had needed at all?
“Him and his general manager will be the only two people with those things,” whispered someone beside me.
The panel then went on to discuss where the IPTV industry is actually headed. Schaeffler’s research says there will be 42 million IPTV subscribers by 2010, pointing to Verizon’s rollout in the U.S. and AT&T’s commitment to have its IPTV service passing 17 million American homes by the end of 2008. There are 500,000 IPTV customers right now in France.
Verizon’s FiOS TV vice-president Shawn Strickland talked about his company’s all-encompassing approach to entertainment, where he wants all content on all devices at all times, anywhere, from cell phones to PCs to TVs to even the screens available on some advanced universal remote controls.
SES Americom CEO Ed Horowitz brought with him the $100 laptop, an innovative device that will be distributed around the globe and will, it’s hoped, help close the digital divide. Users of this device, “will only know what this empowerment tool can provide. They don’t know from linear television. They don’t know from cable TV.”
OpenTV CEO Alan Guggenheim admitted Goodmon faces serious challenges, as all local broadcasters do, but he then asked the broadcaster that if he can get the New York Times anywhere in the world, just about, “why can’t I get Raleigh TV?" and mentioned the Slingbox by name (which is a $300 consumer device that ties into your cable/satellite and broadband connection, to deliver your home town TV anywhere you and your laptop are in the world. Meaning I can watch Rogers Sportsnet or Cable 14 Hamilton down here in Vegas through my own).
Guggenheim pointed out that by 2010, 50% of the American population will be “digital natives” or “digital immigrants” – Gen Y or Gen X types where digital technology is second nature and who won’t accept the fact the only place they can get Raleigh TV is in Raleigh.
When asked specifically about the Slingbox then, that’s when Goodmon really showed just how far away many traditional broadcasters are from embracing the digital future when he said: “Nobody has any right to take my signal out of my market at any time,” adding that what Slingboxes do is “illegal.”
This is wrong on so many levels. A broadcast market, first off, can’t be defined by broadcast contours or geographic constraints. The market is people – the viewers, the public in Raleigh. He’s not serving a geography. He’s presenting desired content to his loyal viewers.
And that’s also why the content he airs isn’t really his. Yes, he pays for content. He processes it. He transmits it and sells ads around it. Makes sure it’s in a pristine format and delivers it to the people of Raleigh.
But the content belongs to his viewers, not to him and WRAL. They love it. They watch it. They patronize the advertisers shown during the six o’clock news and NCIS and The Late Show with David Letterman.
The key for broadcasters is that your viewers love their TV and love you for bringing it to them. So much so that once they see a great show, they describe it as “their show”. It’s not WRAL’s show (or CH or Global Calgary or OMNI or CKCO or…) and once we as an industry embrace that concept, we can move on to innovate and find new lucrative business models that better serve customers/viewers rather than trying to protect old ones with odd USB devices and lawsuits.
When that happens, broadcasters will truly be able to adapt to and thrive in the digital age we already live in.
Greg O’Brien is editor and publisher of Cartt.ca
