Category Archives: Alan Wolk
Heresies
Every so often it’s a good exercise to examine some of the core beliefs of a company or industry and call out the ones that don’t make any sense. In the short run, saying out loud what a lot of people have been thinking pisses off those who are heavily invested in these now outmoded ideas, but in the long run, it’s healthier for all involved to recalibrate. TV Everywhere Wasn’t Worth The Battle. It sounded like a great idea at the time: you can take your television with you anywhere you go and watch it on your tablet or smartphone. The reality, however, shows a very limited number of use cases beyond sports and live events. Because seriously, when are you going to have a half hour to an hour to watch live TV outside the house in a place where you have a decent 4G or WiFi connection? It’s not like you’re going to leave your bedroom or … Continue reading
From Digiday: Second Screen Is Not Social TV
While the terms “social TV” and “second screen” are often used interchangeably, they are, in fact, two different experiences: Social TV is a subset of second screen — and a somewhat minor one at that. As technology and adoption advance, every show will need to come up with its own unique spin on what constitutes valuable second-screen content. For a baseball game, it may be a very graphics-intensive take on statistics; for a reality game show, it may be online voting. Those decisions are up to the networks and the individual show runners, who’ll need to balance their goals (e.g., increase tune-in or cement loyalty) with what their budget allows. READ THE REST AT DIGIDAY.COM
From The Guardian: Beyond Apps: The Future of Smart TV
KIT digital’s Alan Wolk has a piece in The Guardian this week, the UK’s leading newspaper and quite possibly the world’s. It outlines our vision of the future of connected TV in a rather prestigious forum: A smart TV’s connected features can be controlled from a second screen, creating many different commercial possibilities. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images A recent study by the NPD Group showed that more than 40% of households with smart TVs have never actually bothered to hook them up to the internet. However, given the state of the interface found on most smart TVs, this should come as no surprise. TV manufacturers got it into their heads that users might like an easy way to connect to Netflix. Which was not a bad idea. If only they’d stopped there. Instead, they turned the screen into a Compuserve 1993 concoction of random apps, few of which had anything to do with television… READ THE REST AT THE GUARDIAN
The Problem With Facebook Data
The more I use Facebook Graph Search, the more evident it becomes that Facebook made a major mistake with their most ubiquitous feature: the “Like.” Follow this train: Facebook’s value, their kryptonite, is their data. They have a billion users, and they know the habits and preferences of all of billion of them because they can easily track that information by examining what they’ve Liked. Or can they? On the pre-Like Facebook, users were Fans of pages. That information – which brands, bands, books, movies, sports teams, etc. a user was a Fan of was prominently displayed on the user’s profile page. Which meant users spent a lot of time curating those selections, pruning and adding so that the list was an accurate reflection of who they were. Or at least who they wanted people to think they were. As a result, it was tough (or tough-ish) to get users to become fans of pages they didn’t think would give … Continue reading
From Beet.tv – KIT Digital Analyst Alan Wolk: The State Of TV Everywhere Is At An Impasse
This is the second of three interviews Alan Wolk did during Beet Retreat 2013 Wolk notes “As an indication of how fast the industry is moving, although we filmed this about 3 weeks ago, in the intervening period, Nielsen announced that they would soon begin counting views on iPads, Xboxes and other non-TV devices. Since that was the crux of the network’s objections to TV Everywhere (the fact that they’d lose ad revenue when people watched remotely on a iPad) it would seem to give a green light for a renewed push. One that may have the full cooperation of the networks, or at least their tacit blessing.” Read the rest at Beet.tv
The Meteor Cometh
So for a long time, we’ve been talking about the mythical meteor that was going to hit the TV industry and wipe out all the dinosaurs. Because there didn’t seem to be a logical out to the situation we were in, where everyone was making money and no one wanted to rock the status quo. Which left prognosticators like me talking about the meteor, the “something” that would happen and cause change in the industry. Only we couldn’t figure out where that meteor would come from or what it would look like. Then suddenly this morning, the meteor appeared. I’m talking about the lawsuit that Cablevision filed, asking the court to void the late 2012 carriage agreement they signed with Viacom because Viacom had “coerced them” by “threatening to impose massive financial penalties” unless they complied with Viacom’s demands.” There’s a wonderful irony in this too, given that it was Viacom who successfully shut down Cablevision’s TV Everywhere play back in … Continue reading
From Beet.TV: KIT Analyst Alan Wolk On The Slow Adoption Of Innovation by The TV Industry
With the proliferation of second screen applications and social media, television networks have at their disposal more tools for innovation than ever. However, while networks are beginning to experiment with these tools they have been slow to adopt, says KIT Digital’s Global Lead Analyst, Alan Wolk in an interview at the Beet.TV executive retreat earlier this month. Wolk says, “The TV industry is not hurting—it’s actually the opposite. It’s doing better than ever. People are watching more TV, the networks are making more money and so, when you have a situation like that, there’s really no incentive for them to innovate. Why fix something that’s not broken?” READ THE REST AT BEET.TV
Talking TV On TV: KIT’s Alan Wolk on The Brian Lehrer Show
KIT’s Global Lead Analyst Alan Wolk appeared on the Brian Lehrer Show last week along with Lost Remote blogger Natan Edelsburg and Tampa Bay Times TV critic Eric Deggens. Topics included the reaction to Netflix House of Cards, Netflix business model and the general future of television. The clip starts at 30 minutes and 30 seconds into the show.
Intel Inside Your TV: Evaluating The New Intel Virtual MVPD Announcement
In an announcement so expected it seemed almost anticlimactic, Intel finally fessed up that they were indeed building a virtual MVPD and its companion device. The venue, the Wall Street Journal’s D: Dive Into Media Conference, was as puzzling as the tone of the announcement itself, which took the form of an interview All Things Digital founder Walt Mossberg did with Erik Huggers, the Dutch-born project lead. Huggers spent the entire interview prevaricating. About the only statement he made without adding a weasel was “I am Dutch.” The rest was just one waffle after another: he couldn’t announce the name of the “consumer electronic device” Intel was introducing, other than to admit it wouldn’t be named “Intel.” He couldn’t say whether content deals were in place or who they were with. Just a purposely ambiguous “We are working with everyone right now.” Whatever that means. In a nod towards the Theater of the Disingenuous so common to the tech world, Huggers actually tried … Continue reading
The TV Business: A Primer For The Uninformed
It’s a relentless drumbeat: the TV industry is dead. It’s just like the music industry. 20somethings are avoiding the cord. I want HBO a la carte. YouTube will kill cable. The TV industry is dead. And yet, if there’s a common thread to all these articles and blog posts, it’s that so many of the people writing them have a limited idea of how the television industry actually works, particularly from a business perspective. So here’s a little primer on how the US television industry works (there are significant difference in other countries), just to clear the air. The Players: This is step one – knowing who is who and what their relationships are. We are going to look at the 7 key players, circa 2013: The Networks, The MVPDs, The Premium Networks, The OTT Networks, Smart TVs, Third Party devices and Social TV. PLAYER #1: The Networks: The networks (ABC, CBS, MTV, et al) provide content and right now, … Continue reading
TV Everywhere Just Got Blown Wide Open: New On Digiday
Charlie Ergun sure knows how to keep things interesting. The Dish CEO poked his finger in the eye of the TV networks last year with his ad-skipping Hopper device. He just jabbed them again when he introduced the SlingHopper at CES — and blew TV Everywhere wide open. READ THE REST ON DIGIDAY.COM
10 Questions About The TV Industry 2013
All the upheaval in the TV industry (and we’re just at the beginning) leaves us with lots of questions that can only be answered over time. Here are ten of the big ones we’ll be watching in 2013: 1. Will Anyone Cave? Meaning, will any of the networks give in and start selling content to a third party disruptor like Apple, Google or Intel, opening the door for the complete dismantling of the current economic structure? Right now that seems unlikely: the TV industry is not like the music industry or even the cell phone industry – none of the major players are losing money. But stranger things have happened and it’s worth keeping an eye on, particularly because until someone actually does cave, innovation is pretty much a pipe dream. 2. How Many Hours Until The Other MVPDs Start Pressuring The Networks Over TV Everywhere? As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the Sling Hopper pretty much blows the whole TV Everywhere scenario wide … Continue reading
From Beet.tv: KIT Digital Turns Video Ads Into Retail Experience With Ad Locker
KIT’s Alan Wolk was interviewed at the 2nd Screen Summit at CES by Beet.tv’s Megan O’Neill LAS VEGAS — As second screen technology continues to evolve, consumer desire for the second screen experience is on the rise and video software and services company KIT Digital is at the forefront of this evolution. At the 2nd Screen Summit at CES we had the opportunity to talk with KIT Digital’s Global Lead Analyst, Alan Wolk, to find out what the company has in store for the coming year. In our video interview, Wolk discusses a Windows 8 app, which KIT Digital recently created for 4oD, channel 4 in the UK, and is “already one of the more popular apps on the Windows Store.” Wolk also told us about updates to KIT’s Social Program Guide, a white label solution enabling cable television providers to offer subscribers a second screen experience. Talk explains that KIT is prepared to launch a major update which is … Continue reading
KIT’s Alan Wolk Named One Of 20 Top Thinkers In Social TV and Second Screen
The impressive list includes Zeebox’s Anthony Rose, MIT’s Marie-Jose Monpetit, GetGlue’s Alex Iskold, Dijit’s Jeremy Toeman, Orange’s Nicolas Bry, Natan Edelsburg from Lost Remote and our own Alan Wolk. That’s the sort of company we like to find ourselves in. Well done.
The TV Industry Is Alive and Well: New @ Digiday
I have a new article about the TV industry up at Digiday this week, explaining why the business is currently more analogous to the pre-iPhone mobile phone industry than to the post-Napster music industry. It’s a relentless drumbeat: The TV industry is dead, 20-somethings are cutting the cord. They want HBO; YouTube will kill cable. Not so fast. The pay-TV industry is not that easy to dismantle. That’s largely because the business dynamics make it a pretty tough beast to slay.Let’s start with the giant bundles of channels you’re forced to take as part of your pay-TV package. READ THE REST AT DIGIDAY
“TV” or “Video”: A Rose By Any Other Name…
It is frequently debated nowadays whether “television” is still the right word for all the video entertainment we watch these days on a multitude of screens, given that so much of it comes from sources other than the main TV networks and is watched on devices other than a TV. The suggestion is that we just start calling all this content “video.” Logically it makes perfect sense. But logic and consumer behavior are rarely in sync. In the mind of the consumer, the people using the product, the distinction is not as easily made. To them, “television” is high production, long-form video content, something that’s worthy of being watched up on the big screen, while “video” is of lower production value and, unless it involves one’s own pets or children, better viewed on a smaller, handheld device. That, and television is always television, no matter where you watch it. Take in an episode of Seinfeld on your iPhone on the way home … Continue reading
Why “Cord Nevers” Don’t Worry Me
The latest study to put the television business in a tizzy is a study from TDG that shows the number of “Pay TV refugees” — users who have broadband but not TV– growing from 9.5% to 12.5% over the past 2 years. Particular attention is being paid to “cord nevers” — people (usually in their 20s) who have never had a cable subscription. The easy conclusion is that because this generation grew up with a wide array of online video options, they are going to abandon TV en masse and that it’s just a matter of time until pay TV dies. Not so fast… The problem with making sweeping generalizations about generations and their behavior is that the generalizers forget that the behavior often has more to do with life stage than with birth year. Millennials switch jobs and careers a lot because they’re in their 20s and people in their 20s have always switched jobs and careers a lot: they’re unburdened by families … Continue reading
Still Not My Friend
I was at a conference the other day and much to my dismay, I heard an entire panel of what seemed to be reasonably smart people repeating the old canard about location based advertising and how great the world will be once it’s up and running. Not at all. I remember reading a piece by Robert Scoble about 4 or 5 years ago where he waxed enthusiastically about a scenario where he’s walking down the street in his hometown of Half Moon Bay at lunchtime, receiving text messages with offers from every restaurant serving lunch. And all I could think was “this is the seventh ring of hell.” Users, guys. Users. So easy to forget, yet so critical to the success of whatever it is you want to do. So, to use an example from someone on stage at this panel: I am walking down the street and pass a pub where I have had dinner before. The pub texts … Continue reading
Apple’s iTunes Problem
Apple does a lot of things right, but iTunes video isn’t one of them. I’ve rarely had a smooth experience with the service, and my recent experience shows they’ve not gotten any better. With Hurricane Sandy approaching, I decided to rent Casablanca after my kids noted they hadn’t seen it. So I downloaded it to my laptop, as I’m able to plug that directly into my FIOS router and get a faster connection. All good… until I decided I wanted to watch it on my iPad. I plugged the iPad into the laptop, opened up iTunes and dragged the unwatched movie into the iPad line-up. It showed up on iTunes, but when I unplugged the iPad, the movie did not show up. Thinking there might be some kind of WiFi connection needed to make the transfer, I logged both the iPad and the laptop onto my iPhone’s hotspot (we had no power and thus no wi-fi at that point.) Success … Continue reading
7 Things You Should Know About Second Screen Interaction
Originally presented in London at Screen Digest’s “The Future of Digital Media” event, this is Alan Wolk’s latest salvo in his attempt to bring common sense to the discussion around second screen: 7 Things You Should Know About 2nd Screen Interaction from Alan Wolk
Apples To Oranges
As someone who is frequently driving to unfamiliar locations and who relies on an iPhone based GPS to get himself there, I have to say that the new Apple maps program is quite an improvement, particularly in terms of the graphics, which make navigating while driving a lot simpler. The problem, for Apple, is that the program it’s quite an improvement on isn’t Google Maps, which it replaced, but rather TomTom USA, which is the company the app is based on. While Google maps on iOS is a wonderful thing, it didn’t work like a GPS. If you wanted step-by-step directions, you needed a co-pilot: you had to both read and advance the app yourself. That’s why so many iPhone users went out and bought GPS apps like Tom Tom and Wayz: they allowed you to use your phone instead of a unique GPS device to access a program where a robotic voice read you directions as you drove. That … Continue reading
IBC Retrospective: KIT’s Double Whammy
KIT digital walked away from IBC with an unbeaten record, winning both the IBC Innovation Award and the CSI (Cable and Satellite International) Award. The XBox app that KIT created for Channel 4’s 4oD video-on-demand service received the prestigious IBC Innovation Award on Sunday night. The app app extends 4oD to the Microsoft Xbox 360 game console and leverages the Xbox Kinect’s Voice andNatural User Interfaces, allowing users to browse and choose video content using intuitive gesture and voice control. On Friday, our white label Social Program Guide product beat out three other finalists to garner the CSI Award for Best Social TV Technology, Service or Application. The Social Program Guide or SPG is a second screen app that is a mash-up of an EPG and a remote control with an overlay of social functionality. Because the product is owned by the network operator, the SPG provides the unique ability to change the channel directly from the app, so that users can … Continue reading
Video Interviews From IBC: The Next Web and Beet.TV
I was interviewed on camera twice last week during IBC- you can see the results below. The first is a conversation with Beet.TV’s Andy Plesser about the KIT Social Program Guide, which won the CSI (Cable and Satellite International) Award for Best Social TV App, beating out never.no and three other competitors. We also touch on the Second Screen Society, a very worthwhile organization KIT has played a lead role in helping to get off the ground. The second interview, with TheNextWeb’s Martin Bryant, takes a deeper dive into the current and future state of television and where we see the industry headed next. (And yes, I need to learn to look directly at camera.) Enjoy.
IBC 2012
IBC 2012 is on this weekend in Amsterdam and I will be there representing KIT at two different sessions. On Saturday night, I’ll be delivering the keynote at the 2nd Screen Summit Amsterdam with the first live version of the viral “10 Things You Need To Know About The Future of Television” (I’ll be providing a more Eurocentric spin for the IBC audience.) There are a lot of really big name speakers as 2nd Screen, so if you are in Amsterdam for IBC, please check it out. Then, on Sunday, I will be on stage at the IBC Rising Stars event, along with Naomi Climer from Sony Entertainment and Tony Churnside from the BBC. We’ll be discussing what our paths were into the industry and how it’s changed over the years. I’ve pointed out to my kids (several times) that the program refers to me as an “inspirational industry figure” but they seem rather nonplussed. Check me out on Twitter for updates and other news from the show.
Apple TV Is Going To Be Software, Not Hardware
Back in January, we predicted that an Apple TV would be sold like an iPhone, via a proprietary deal with a select MVPD, who’d offer their subscribers an iPhone-like discount on the beautiful new box for a two-year engagement. So now I’m invoking Clause 34.2.A of the 2007 Addendum to the 2005 International Internet Code* to take that back. Sort of. I still think Apple is still going to offer someone a proprietary deal for its product similar to the one described above. Only the product is not going to be a TV set, but rather software that will put a beautiful new interface on the TV you already own. There’s no need for Apple to build a TV: the ones we already have work really well. They’re dumb terminals. There’s not a whole lot of clamoring for improvement on the size and shape of the screen or the quality of the HD display. (Compare that to the cell phone market … Continue reading
Nothing To See Here
The amount of lazy reporting that goes on in this space continues to amaze me. The latest example is the misinterpretation of a report on a drop in US cable subscriptions to mean that cord cutting is on the rise and viewers are abandoning pay TV in droves. Only the report was about actual cable subscriptions, e.g. the numbers reported by cable companies like Time Warner and Cablevision. It does not take into account the numbers reported by pay-TV services that don’t rely on cable, like Verizon FIOS, AT&T U-Verse, Dish and Direct TV. The telcos in particular reported a net gain in subscribers. Oops. Furthermore, most industry observers assume that since the two numbers are relatively equal, all that’s at play here is that the newer telcos services (FIOS and Uverse) are stealing subscribers from their more entrenched rivals. And, as Peter Kafka points out in the Wall Street Journal, cable subscriptions almost always drop in Q2, a time when … Continue reading
Why #NBCFail Is #Doomed
This article originally ran on Digiday It sure sucks to be NBC this week. The Peacock Network is at the center of yet another Twitter-centric firestorm around a relatively minor First World Problem that’s got the cable-free utopians in yet another uproar. Granted, not showing the opening ceremony in real time online or on Bravo was a bit of a miscalculation. But it’s certainly not the disaster of apocalyptic proportion the Occupy TV types are making it out to be. It was a business decision. And while I get that no one else you graduated from Vassar with has cable, between 80 percent to 90 percent of Americans do, so NBC really isn’t all that worried about the 2 percent to 5 percent that don’t. No matter how much you tweet about it. They (and the rest of the TV industry) actually do get that change is coming. It’s just that right now, it’s not profitable for them to radically … Continue reading
2nd Screen Rising
While Google’s recent announcement of details around their Great Kansas City TV Adventure raised all sorts of questions about both their eventual intentions and the viability of their current ones, one crucial detail got lost in the shuffle. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Google is planning on giving every new subscriber to their pay-TV service an Android-based tablet to use as a remote control. That’s a development we’ve been predicting for a while now, but Google’s announcement moves the timeline up. A tablet as a remote control opens the door for all kinds of 2nd screen apps, particularly one that’s controlled by the MVPD themselves. (Full disclosure: our KIT Social Program Guide app is a white label app that does exactly that: give control of the 2nd screen app and all the resulting data to the MVPD.) By putting a tablet directly into consumers hands and telling them to use it as a remote control, Google is all but ensuring the rapid ascension … Continue reading
10 Things You Need To Know About The Future of Television
10 Things You Need To Know About The Future of Television from Alan Wolk
Lessons From Netflix
While it’s a given that Netflix’s runaway success as an online streaming service took everyone (including Reed Hastings) by surprise, I’d like to offer up a few reasons why consumers are so enamored of Netflix. First off, it just works. The UI is very well designed and has a real indie film theater vibe. Recommendations are sorted by quirky categories, but there are enough of them that it works as both a discovery engine (when I have no idea what I want to watch) and as a recommendation engine (when I do.) It’s easy to search for movies and TV shows, and just as easy to watch them. That may not seem like such a big deal at first, but the fact that there’s no Buy or Rent option, no HD or SD choice, makes the whole experience feel more like watching a cable channel than watching VOD. And if you’ve ever had to wade through the VOD offerings of … Continue reading
Aaron Sorkin and the Counterrevolution
One of the most fascinating aspects of Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO drama The Newsroom, is just how blatantly anti-“spirit-of-the-internet” it is. Which is a sign that the pendulum is about to start swinging in the opposite direction. For years, media was ruled by gatekeepers: editors who manned the doorways and decided what was worthy and what was not. They could do this because the means of production– printing a book or making a movie– were too expensive for the average person. And if that didn’t work, they could rely on the fact that distribution channels were tightly controlled: you could only buy books through bookstores. You could only watch movies at theaters or on TV. The web blew all that up and gave everyone a voice. Even something as simple as letters to the editor took an a different cast online: the editors couldn’t just decide which letters they wanted to publish: on the web, every letter (or comment) got published. … Continue reading
E-TV in the Age of Personalization
Adland has long dreamed of a world where viewers sat in front of their television sets, buying everything from Anacin to Zest with a single click of the remote. They’ve even named it “Jennifer Aniston’s Sweater” after a hypothetical situation where viewers would be able to click to buy the garment the moment they saw it on the Friends star. Only that’s never going to happen. For the Jennifer Aniston’s Sweater experience to be viable, it needs to truly be one-click, or it becomes too distracting and takes the viewer away from the show, something the actual viewer regards as a negative outcome. And the fact of the matter is that very few products– impulse purchases or otherwise– fall into that category. There are always decisions to be made: what color? what size? where do you want it shipped? do you want it sent overnight? And by the time you’ve made those decisions, Chandler’s already asked Monica to marry him, and … Continue reading
An End To Bandwidth Caps?
The Wall Street Journal is reporting tonight that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether cable companies are “acting improperly” by using bandwidth caps to “quash nascent competition from online video.” Depending on how this plays out (and it will take several years to play out and likely require a Supreme Court decision) this could significantly change the industry: without some sort of government action there’s no way any virtual MSO could take off: the cable companies and telcos (e.g. Comcast, Time Warner, FIOS et. al.) provide internet service (and the wires that bring the internet) to a huge percentage of the US population – estimates are somewhere between 75 and 90%. As we discussed here last week, the ability to impose bandwidth caps allows cable companies and telcos to effectively shut down any internet-based MSO by making it prohibitively expensive to watch online video from another provider. Especially since subscribers to their double and triple play packages (TV + Broadband … Continue reading
Alan Wolk on The Real Story At Apple’s WWDC
Apple made a number of noteworthy announcements at today’s WWDC, but the one that’s of most interest to the TV industry is the fact that the newest OS, dubbed Mountain Lion, will have AirPlay enabled for laptops and desktops, not just iPhones and iPads. AirPlay is Apple’s software solution for streaming video from your device to your TV set using the $99 Apple TV box. Enabling it on all devices, while not unexpected, is still a huge breakthrough. That’s because most people don’t have iPads. A fact that’s easy to forget if you are in the industry and surrounded by people who do. (We call that “NASCAR Blindness” after the ad industry’s inability to recognize the huge fan base NASCAR had accrued because no one on Madison Avenue actually knew someone who admitted to liking NASCAR.) Most people don’t have iPhones either, and neither iOS device has a whole lot of storage. But laptops and desktops? They are plentiful. And … Continue reading
TV 3.0 Summit at the Paley Center
One of the signs of a really good conference is that you actually walk away with the feeling that you’ve learned something. Which I why I’m glad I went over the Paley Center yesterday for the TV 3.0 Summit sponsored by The Media Council and Broadcasting and Cable. The TV industry is reeling from all the digital changes. Not necessarily in a bad way, but everything is happening pretty fast and furious and, as Discovery CEO David Zaslav noted in his interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick, no one really knows what’s coming next. One of the themes was a recent article by Henry Blodgett proclaiming the death of the television industry. Irwin Gottlieb, Chairman and CEO of WPP’s Group M had the most blunt assessment as he told CNN’s Erin Burnett, “with all due respect to him… he’s totally wrong. One should never do ‘sample-of-one’ research” Gottlieb’s analysis was spot on: Blodgett’s analysis was based on his own NASCAR Blindness. … Continue reading
The Orange Milk Crate: Musings on the Rapid Shift in Power in Retail and TV
A few weeks ago, I set out to buy an orange plastic milk crate to use as a newspaper recycling bin, so, like many consumers these days, I went online to search for one via Google. Looking back, I realized that my decision reflected a real sea change in consumer behavior that involved a couple of unique decisions along the way. Pre-internet, I would have walked into a store like Target or Bed, Bath & Beyond and chosen from among their selection of plastic milk crates. If I was really committed to finding an orange one, I would have continued my search by roaming from store to store. The amount of time and money I spent on my search would be directly correlative to the degree to which I wanted an orange milk crate. Nowadays, that paradigm is reversed. It’s easy enough to find an orange milk crate online. My key decision has now changed to “does the price exceed my … Continue reading
The Convergence Conundrum
Verizon’s FIOS TV service announced a rate hike this week, which coincides with their announcement at The Cable Show that they were going to be rolling out a mobile video app called Viewdini, which searches through content from Netflix, Comcast, Time Warner and others (but not FIOS, interestingly enough. At least not yet.) The app allows you to look for a particular show or movie, find it and then stream it to your mobile device. This comes on the heels of the telco’s recently confirmation that they are done with FIOS build-out for now, and are concentrating instead on fill-in: gaining additional customers in areas where they already have a presence. All of which leads industry insiders to wonder: is Verizon looking to sell FIOS? While the service is widely regarded as the Neiman Marcus of cable service, with new fiber optic cable and truly “blazing fast” internet, it’s been very, very expensive for Verizon to build: it can take … Continue reading
The Assault Continues: Four New Consumer-Centric Video Technologies
It wasn’t too hard to predict that once every permutation of text-based social media had been explored, would-be entrepreneurs would shift their attention to video. And while “social TV” has become an all-purpose buzzword these days, this spring has seen a couple of notable consumer-centric introductions First off are the competing social video services Viddy and SocialCam. Both of which take the cute-puppy-video meme to the next level. While users are encouraged to upload their own video and share it with their Facebook friends, the primary use of both sites seems to be sharing new cute puppy videos on Facebook. That’s because both apps use “frictionless sharing” – updating your Facebook timeline every time you watch a video through the service. Once “Janet Smith just watched “Beaglemania!” on SocialCam” starts populating your news feed, it encourages your friends to sign up so they can watch too. This cycle– both Viddy and Social Cam rate high on Facebook’s SuperSecret Algorithm– has … Continue reading
Announcing The KIT Social Program Guide
Finally, after months of hard work and preparation, it’s here: the KIT Social Program Guide or SPG. What Is An SPG? It’s a Social Program Guide- a white label product that lays social functionality on top of a pay-TV provider’s EPG so that viewers can see what their friends are up to and then act on that information… by actually changing the channel or hitting “Record.” Hence “social” program guide. We’re emphasizing the program guide end of things because the genesis of this product is our belief that people rely heaviest on social data in the discovery phase – when they are figuring out what to watch. The KIT SPG lets them get input from a number of sources: friends, neighbors, all viewers, and critics. Chat– via Twitter, Facebook and other social networks, is enabled, but we have found that chat usage varies greatly depending on the type of show. That, and the presence of multiple chat options, makes this … Continue reading
NAB 2012: The Five Things You’ll Be Hearing About. (I Think.)
While NAB is due to start in about 12 hours, I wanted to do a quick rundown of the sorts of things we expect to be seeing there: 1. Social TV Apps: The Pets.com of 2012. Lots of VC money being thrown at any and every permutation of “social TV,” 99% of them suffer from two big problems: they don’t interact with each other and they don’t interact with the TV set. Anyone who solves those problems will be drawing huge crowds. 2. Ahhhhh! Netflix!!!: The astounding success of their streaming service caught everyone (including Reed Hastings) by surprise as it flew in the face of three things that used to be part of the Conventional Wisdom: (1) Consumers are giant technophobes who won’t try new technology until it’s neatly packaged and served up on a platter for them, (2) Consumers are only interested in seeing the latest hit movies and anyone who can’t offer that is dead in the … Continue reading
The VOD Wars
While social TV seems to be garnering the bulk of the buzz these days, the real action is happening in Video on Demand or VOD. VOD was once treated as the ugly stepsister of the industry, with most operators regarding it as a promotional vehicle (hence the proliferation of 5-minute “Making of X” videos on most On Demand channels.) Purchasing broadcast rights from the studios was costly, VOD technology was very unstable and prone to mid-broadcast meltdowns, and, with the ubiquity of DVD rental services, there was very little demand for On Demand. Until, of course, there was. Reed Hasting and his board seem just as stunned as the rest of the industry by the rapid growth of Netflix streaming video. The fact that consumers, a notoriously technophobic lot, would actually figure out how to hook up a third-party device (laptops, PlayStations, Roku boxes and the like) and use them to stream movies over WiFi to their television sets was … Continue reading
The Social EPG Is The Social TV Of Tomorrow
While social TV apps continue to crop up like proverbial weeds, the future of the social TV app will likely be a proprietary social EPG (electronic program guide) provided by the same company that supplies your pay TV service. It will likely come with a companion tablet device too, one your pay TV provider gives you for a low monthly fee, much in the same way they now provide set top boxes. Multiple tablets will mean multiple fees, but most households will want at least one for every adult or teenage member. This model is the obvious next step for an industry that’s waiting and watching as the current wave of app developers figure out the rules of the game. They’re helping to figure out the ideal user experience and which behaviors (e.g. check-in, chat, recommendations) viewers are most interested in. And they’re doing it all on their VC’s dime as the big industry players just sit back and take … Continue reading
An Apple TV Will Be Just Like An iPhone Because…
It will be sold to you at a heavily subsidized price from a service provider looking to lock you in to a multi-year contract. Because Apple can’t build their own pay TV service. Nor can they launch an internet only service. Just like the iPhone, someone else owns the pipes: in this case it is likely to be the same company that provides pay TV service. And if you own the pipes, you can make using lots of bandwidth to watch someone else’s pay TV service really expensive and inconvenient. If you are Apple, going through a specific pay TV provider allows you to have all the control you had over the iPhone. You can design the interface and do all the branding you want. Because if anything goes wrong, consumers will blame the pay TV provider. Not Apple. It’s a business model that will turn the TV industry on it head. And likely be very good for consumers. Televisions … Continue reading
Changing Behaviors Around TV: What’s Next?
As the convergence of the TV and Interwebs moves ahead, there are still a number of behaviors the industry must figure out how to change, solve for or live with. To wit: TV Is Not A Solitary Activity: whether it’s a group of college roommates or the more traditional family unit, few people have their own personal TVs. That makes recommendation engines a bigger challenge than the kool-aid drinkers let on. Figuring out an easy way for the system to understand who is in the room is going to be one of the biggest UX challenges of our time. Because it’s not just knowing that Dad is in the room and showing him shows he might want to watch. It’s knowing that dad and 8-year old Betty are in the room and figuring out which shows the two of them might want to watch. Or knowing that Betty is the one actually watching TV and Dad is just there keeping … Continue reading
Why A Suggestion Engine Is Different Than A Recommendation Engine
While the terms “Suggestion Engine” and “Recommendation Engine” are used interchangeably, they actually refer to two very different behaviors and desired outcomes.A “suggestion engine” is for those times when we have a fairly specific idea of what we want and are in active search mode. A “recommendation engine” is for those times when we are already doing something (shopping, watching, listening, reading) and basically says “here are some things you might enjoy the next time you decide to shop/watch/listen/read.” That distinction shows that the suggestion engine is far more valuable, because it comes into play in response to an active request on the part of the user. A recommendation engine is far more passive: the user is not actively looking for any additional input: if the engine shows them something that they wind up being interested in, that’s just a lucky strike extra. To put a real world face on these terms, Jinni is a good example of a suggestion engine: … Continue reading
Where 2012′s Virtual MSOs Are Likely To Come From
There’s been a lot of noise this week around an article (registration required) by noted analyst Rich Greenfield claiming that 2012 will see the launch of an internet-based MSO (multi-system operator, e.g. a large pay TV provider like Comcast or Time-Warner.) It’s an interesting argument, one that all but guarantees a lot of buzz since so many would like to see it happen, but I’m just not seeing it, at least from the sources he’s predicting. Greenfield’s argument is that virtual MSOs will be considerably cheaper and more user friendly: (V)irtual MSO pricing to the consumer will be substantially lower, subscribers will receive a significantly better user-interface/navigation across a wide-array of IP-enabled devices in the home and service will be accessible anywhere in the US, rather than being stuck in a certain region. I’ll buy the user interface argument… maybe– existing pay TV operators are putting a lot of time and effort into improving that experience precisely because they know it’s an area they … Continue reading
2011: The Year That Was (Part 1)
The ersatz Chinese proverb “May you live in interesting times” comes to mind when trying to find a way to sum up the wild ride that social media and social television have taken us on this year. The entire industry seemed to be in constant motion and keeping up with the multitude of peaks and valleys has become a full time job– mine. So after eleven plus months of watching all this very very closely, here’s my take on where we are, early December 2011. Twitter: What’s The Next Act? Twitter seems to be in the least secure position of any of the major platforms. On a macro level, it’s never been able to move beyond being a 140 character broadcast medium. It’s incredibly polarizing: people seem to either love it or hate it in a way you don’t see with other social networks. Twitter’s popularity also creates problems: the more people tweeting, the less likely it is that you’ll see … Continue reading
Why Social TV Will Extend the Reach of Shows
Part 3 of 3 of a series on SocialTV by our strategy director Alan Wolk that originally appeared in DigiDay. Last week, I wrote about how social intermissions are taking the place of commercials in the television viewing experience. Today we’ll look at how social can impact the reach of a TV program. In the first two parts of this series, we reviewed Social TV’s role in the decision to watch shows and how the shows are watched. But what happens after the programming ends? The social experience continues in the third phase, the Reviewing phase. Once a user has watched a show, they’re inclined to share their thoughts. We’ve already seen an explosion of reviews when it comes to restaurants, hotels and other things. TV is ripe for the reviewer in every household. A well-designed social TV app can prompt that behavior, either by asking viewers to rate a show as it’s ending or creating a points and levels … Continue reading
Social Television Isn’t Necessarily Social
The term “social TV” has been thrown around a lot these days to describe any and all second screen experiences created around television shows. But it’s well worth noting that many of these apps and features have nothing inherently “social” about them: they are information sources that viewers may choose to share on social networks, but that is not the primary function. I’m talking about apps that provide statistics during football games or episode guides during dramas and cast bios during reality shows. That type of functionality is going to be more valuable to many viewers than something that allows them to have conversations during the show. It’s well suited for family viewing– only 31% of Americans watch TV alone – where we are more likely to share whatever we’ve learned with the other people in the room (as opposed to say, the entire Twitterverse.) It is also key insofar as creating any kind of buzz: the more content you … Continue reading
Video: The Future of Social TV
KIT digital’s Managing Director of Social Strategy, Alan Wolk was part of a panel at Digiday Video that included Sabrina Caluori, VP of Social Media & Marketing at HBO and Cinemax and Kimber Myers, Director of Partnerships at GetGlue. The panel was hosted by Digiday reporter Jack Marshall and the lively conversation contains great insights from three top professionals who are at the red hot center of the Social TV revolution.
The Yin and Yang of the TV/Internet convergence
The industry has been buzzing about this insightful analysis from our own Social Strategy Director Alan Wolk The Ying and Yang of the TV/Internet Convergence View more presentations from Alan Wolk
This is the first in a weekly series of updates on the rapidly changing world of social TV. View the Slideshare full screen to access the links. Social TV Update #1
When 30-Second Spots Morph Into ‘Social Intermissions’
Part 2 of 3 of a series on SocialTV by our strategy director Alan Wolk that originally appeared in DigiDay. Last week, I wrote about how social platforms can play a critical role in the decision-making stage of the television experience. Today we’ll look at how social plays out while our eyes are on the set. There’s little doubt social media and TV are colliding. The only question is how they will be weaved together. There’s no easy answer here, as social’s role morphs with the type of programming. Watching TV is a “lean back” experience. And how much we want to lean back depends on our relationship to the content. Sports programming has lots of timeouts and other breaks in the action. These provide ample opportunity to lean in and start talking with our friends, both online and off. But take a new episode of a crime drama. For most people, this demands their full attention. They may want … Continue reading
The Three Stages of Social TV
This is the first of a three-part series by Alan Wolk, our Managing Director of Social Strategy, on emerging consumer behaviors around multiscreen television. It originally appeared in DigiDay Daily. Social media might just be the best thing that’s happened to TV. While you probably think all that tweeting and Facebooking is tearing us away from the flat screen, it’s actually making TV programming even more powerful. Social TV is a hot trend nowadays. Everyone has an opinion; only there’s a tendency to lump any and every TV-related interaction under the banner of “social television.” There are, however, actually three distinct stages of the TV-watching experience: deciding, watching and reviewing, all of which feed off each other in a circular rather than linear pattern. In this article, I’ll concentrate on deciding. In subsequent articles, I’ll address what it means for watching and reviewing. The first part of any TV-viewing experience is always going to be “what should we watch?” And much … Continue reading
Is FIOS Making A Netflix Play?
More than a year after announcing that an iOS app was “coming soon,” Verizon FIOS finally rolled one out last week. Four things about the product immediately struck me as rather curious: There was no PR around the launch. Or else I’m using Google incorrectly. But the sort of sites that are normally all over stories like this (Engadget, Fierce IPTV) only picked up the story yesterday or today, about a week after iTunes indicates the app was first available. And they seem to have figured it out via someone accidentally stumbling on it at the iTunes store – there are no references to any sort of press release or official statement. The app is incomplete: while there are two tabs, one for Movies and one for TV Shows, the TV part is not live yet: all you get is a pop-up message stating that “TV Episodes are coming soon for iPad.” It’s unclear whether this is a rights … Continue reading
The Value Of A Check-In
The other day I went into Modell’s, a local sporting goods chain, and saved myself $10 because I’d checked-in on FourSquare. It’s a great deal (you save $10 on any purchase over $40) that I’ve already taken advantage of several times. And while I don’t mind letting people know I’m at Modell’s, I would never have bothered to check-in without the discount. Because even if I was hyper-competitive about the gaming aspects of FourSquare, I’m never going to be mayor of a store I visit about four or five times a year. So what’s in it for me? Ten bucks. I got to wondering at what price point I would have decided that checking-in wasn’t worth the hassle. (And it’s still a hassle: GPS isn’t all that fine-tuned in places like New York, where any given block may have 30 different places to check-in, and it’s a crap shoot whether the place you’re at shows up at the top … Continue reading