Tag Archives: Television

September 15, 2011 · 4:11 pm

A Random TV Thought

This tidbit crossed the wires here at the world headquarters yesterday and I want to bring it to your attention:

A new study from Altman Vilandrie says just 1/3 of 18-34 viewers in the U.S. now watch TV during normal broadcast slots, preferring instead on-demand programming via Netflix and Hulu. The study also makes a connection between increased control over when video is watched to how it is watched with nearly 1/2 of respondents saying they prefer smartphones to TVs.

“Oh sure – another TV death story,” you think.  Probably not – a lot of the content on Nextflix and Hulu comes from the TV nets who are actually more than just distributors these days.  But it brought to mind Internet Explorer, the web browser with a 90+% market share at one point which is now down substantially thanks to the growth of Firefox and Chrome. Continue reading →

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August 16, 2011 · 11:14 am

Everybody Wants To Get Into The Act

Jimmy Durante

Cover of Jimmy Durante

When I started my career in media I worked for a content distributor – the station division of a national TV company.  We bought programming from content creators and used our distribution system to put it in front of consumers.  Other than some local programming such as news and public affairs, we didn’t create much and I suspect we’d have done a bit less had we not been mandated to provide what we did in return for our broadcast licenses.  Our business was to buy content and sell eyeballs and it was a very good business indeed.

By the time I had moved over to the network side, 10 years later, the business has changed a bit.  Networks now produced some shows and invested in others.  The business was still primarily about distribution but things were starting to change.  And now? Continue reading →

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Filed under Reality checks, What's Going On

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August 11, 2011 · 9:16 am

Great Expectations

Customer Service center at 23d Street downtown...

Image via Wikipedia

Today’s thought comes from a friend. She recently had a close encounter of the corporate kind with her local cable company although which company is actually immaterial for our purposes (TWC). In fact, this could be the phone company or an e-commerce site or a doctor’s office.  The reason I say this, as you’ll see, is that any number of businesses are guilty of committing the same sins as this one.  But I’ll let her tell you about it. Continue reading →

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Filed under Helpful Hints, Reality checks

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