Category Archives: Reality checks

March 11, 2015 · 10:33 am

A New Dark Age?

Are you watching less TV than you used to? If the answer to that is “yes” then you’re not alone. Oh sure, you’re probably spending a lot more time in front of a screen, but when I ask that question I’m asking about cable network programming delivered live or watched via DVR within 3 days. That measurement, by the way, is known in the business as C3 ratings and there is not a lot of good news. Michael Nathanson, a senior analyst with MoffettNathanson LLC issued an analysis of recent data and this lede from the International Business Times sums it up nicely:

The biggest American horror story on cable last year, didn’t come from FX — it came from Nielsen. Ratings across national cable television networks tumbled 9 percent in 2014, triple the decline seen in 2013 and more than quadruple the 2 percent decline seen in 2012. To call it a crisis would be an understatement. If the trend continues, TV could be heading for a new dark ages.

Why the dark ages analogy?  You’re seeing it in the news.  Cable operators pay these networks a lot of money each month (OK, you’re right – WE pay…) but if no one is watching maybe losing those networks from their systems isn’t a big deal.  That sort of explains the stories you read about networks going dark on some systems (as I’m writing this Verizon just turned off the Weather Channel and Dish turned off Fox News for a few weeks)over what those fees might be.  Without a hue and cry from consumers who appear to be moving on to alternatives, the networks have no leverage.

While some in the industry are complaining yet again about faulty measurement methods, the reality is that people are shifting their viewing habits away from live, linear programing.  Even sports, which is supposed to be immune to this, suffered a 5% decline. You’re probably aware that HBO, NBC and CBS are launching their own streaming services. That sort of move might hasten the demise of business model that has fed TV networks with licensing fees as the cable and satellite distributors focus more on their broadband ISP businesses and less on TV.  After all, if they can distribute the programming services for free via their internet side, why pay?

Hopefully this is good news for those of us who pay for this stuff.  What do you think?

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March 4, 2015 · 12:32 pm

Bloatware

Do you use an app to clean up the digital flotsam and jetsam on your phone?  I do and it’s constantly telling me I have files I don’t need or use.  I have 16 gig of storage on my device and quite a bit of that storage is taken up by software I didn’t install – it came with the phone.  I can’t remove it either, not without gaining root access to the device which might cause other issues.  Call it bloatware, crapware or whatever.  It’s unwanted and some of it runs in the background, eating up battery life.  There is some here from the device manufacturer and even more from the carrier.  It is a constant annoyance.

This issue is only going to become a bigger problem as newer devices do not have expandable storage.  In addition to the built-in device storage I have an SD card inserted to give myself another 16 gig of storage.  Without this, my phone would be full.  Yes, I know how to use cloud storage to keep my device clean but you can’t run apps from the cloud nor do apps cache data there.  More importantly, when consumers buy a product which is advertised to have 16 gig of storage (or 32, 64 or whatever) there is a reasonable expectation that the product will have about that amount available.  Both Apple and Microsoft have been sued for promoting devices with far less storage available than advertised, and in their cases it was actually just the operating system that was taking up space.

Why do I bring this up?  I don’t like the vision of the world in which you don’t own or control the goods you buy, and the company who made it has embedded everything possible to give them access to your information.  That seems to be the attitude of the manufacturers and carriers.  Yes I know about unlocked phones (they still have crapware) and how to disable (but not remove) this stuff, but it seems to me that the negligible revenues taken in by adding some of this bloat are negated by consumer disdain.  Put aside the potential data vulnerabilities – and fallout – each of these apps pose.  They are annoying at best and harmful at worst and there is no reason for them.

Ask yourself this – is my business doing anything similar?  Am I trying to make an easy buck while annoying my customers?  Think about how people feel about their wireless carriers as you do.  Is that how you want your customers to feel about you?

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March 2, 2015 · 1:55 pm

Misplaced Problem Solving

A new week and another bit of news that has me shaking my head.  Today it comes from the folks at thePlatform which is a widely used video streaming service.  thePlatform announced that it has been working on a feature to defeat ad blockers and they have something that protects against ad blockers, making it easier to get ads onto new devices with minimal client work.

Diagram of Unicast Streaming

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I like thePlatform and have worked with them so please don’t misconstrue what follows as anything but me trying to a little wider perspective.  I’ve written before about the challenge of ad blockers for the ad-supported digital community.  To quote one article on the subject:

There are stats out there that say nearly 28% of users have some sort of ad blocker installed, a percentage that has spiraled by nearly 70% in a year. Ads that are blocked, combined with all the other ads that aren’t seen because of viewability issues, makes for pretty bad business.

Indeed.   In this case, thePlatform is looking out for the businesses that support their services.  I applaud them for that even though it’s a misplaced solution that doesn’t cure the underlying problem.  It’s fine to defeat some of the ad blockers for a short time and to help your clients with generating advertising revenue.  However, when you have 70% annual growth in something that runs counter to your business model, maybe the answer is to examine why people are using ad blockers in the first place.

Ad blocking is most popular with younger users – 41% of American internet users aged between 18 and 29 used ad blocking software, rising to 54% when only young men are counted.  Those are the prime years for developing habitual customers.  Yet rather than figuring out how to get product messages across without being annoying and intrusive the industry is figuring out how to thwart customers’ technology.  “We’ve been extremely diligent about making sure that ad blockers can’t find patterns in our URLs they can block on” says thePlatform’s CTO.  Hmmm…

I believe in the ad-supported business model.  I also believe that you can’t force-feed consumers.  Defeating ad blockers is a band-aid and a misplaced one at that.  We need to focus on how to make ads that don’t tax computer resources and crash web browsers.  We need to respect privacy, which is another reason people install blockers.  We need to stop producing band-aids and focus on real solutions.

That’s my opinion.  Yours?

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