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 living room to go down to Starbucks to spend an hour watching Game of Thrones. Sitting in the park may sound appealing, but anyone who’s ever tried to use an iPad outdoors knows it’s not a pleasant experience. Hotel rooms? Maybe, if you want to watch something off your DVR, but for most people, travel is a once or twice yearly event.

Commuting is the one use case that makes sense, but here again: (a) what percentage of Americans commute 30 minutes or more each way via public transportation, and (b) moving from cell tower to cell tower does not create an optimal condition for video reception. So even if you solve for B, A still makes it a niche product.

TV Everywhere does make sense inside the house for personal viewing: using the iPad as the bedroom or kitchen TV. But that’s it and it certainly doesn’t seem worth the amount of money the networks and the MVPDs have spent in legal battles over it.

Cord Plussers Are More Common Than Cord Cutters/Nevers: A Nielsen study that came out this week confirmed something I’d suspected all along: Netflix and other OTT subscription video on demand (SVOD) services are far more popular with upper income households who use them as an add-on to their existing Titanium Level pay TV packages. Let’s call this group “Cord Plussers” as they’re looking for options beyond what their cable package offers and for $8/month each, they think it’s a steal to add on Netflix and Hulu Plus.

Never mind that the success of Netflix and Hulu is a huge fumble by the MVPDs, many of whom maintain extensive VOD libraries that could compete with Netflix and who should be enabling the kind of 7 day catch-up TV you find in Europe, but who have outsourced that function (and then some) to Hulu, Amazon and Netflix– the price of these additional services and the value add they bring is enough for people to add them without feeling the need to drop their existing pay TV service.

As for cord nevers, we’ve been through this already, but to reiterate, it’s not that surprising that certain busy, single, tech savvy 20somethings don’t feel the need for a cable subscription: at some point, as they grow older and settle down, they probably will. That, and study after study fails to find any evidence of cord cutting outside of the anecdotal evidence offered by tech bloggers.

Another recent study showed that 18-24 year olds watch an average of 5 hours of TV online each week. What’s important to note is that’s not 5 hours they chose to watch TV on their laptops instead of a big screen TV, but 5 hours they carved out to watch TV online in the absence of an actual television set. People really do like watching TV.

Twitter Is Not The Future of Second Screen. This is another seemingly obvious one: most people are not on Twitter, so why do we expect Twitter to become the dominant medium for second screen?

If you’re Fox, and (to use an extremely generous figure*) 30% of your American Idol audience is on Twitter, but 100% of that same audience can take part in a second screen poll, which one are you going to go for?

It’s a win for Fox if the 30% who are on Twitter start tweeting about the poll, but it’s crucial to remember that they are just talking to each other: the 70% who are not on Twitter will never see what they’re saying.

Here’s the problem: Right now, Twitter has a much larger install base than any second screen app. It’s also free to implement, since the only real cost is whatever “tweet about our show” promotion the network decides to run. So in Spring 2013, the numbers work in its favor.  But that won’t last for long: as second screen becomes more ubiquitous, the percentage of people using Twitter will be dwarfed by the number using second screen. If MVPDs and/or TV manufacturers go ahead and make second screen the primary program guide and remote control option, you’re looking at close to a 100% adoption rate.

Second Screen Engagement Will Never Replace Marketing.  Like it’s cousin, social media, second screen TV is really good at two things: (a) making hard core fans even more hardcore by giving them an outlet for their obsession and (b) moving casual fans up a notch by fleshing out the experience.

This does not mean every hardcore fan and every casual fan: it means just a few of them.

Because really, how many shows can you be a hardcore fan of? 3? 6? In any season, there are only a handful of shows people can fully devote their energy to. Second Screen interaction can help make sure a show remains one of those handful, but that’s it: it can’t create interest where previously there was none.

Aereo Is Not Worth Worrying About. While the networks are all up in arms about Aereo, it’s worth thinking about why someone would want it: while Aereo plus Netflix may be a way to replace cable for $20/month, the resulting experience is not all that desirable. Aereo has a less than ideal UI (see my review on VideoNuze) and, like Netflix, you don’t get the “always on” option – you’ve got to make a choice every time you use it and as this piece from Nilay Patel at The Verge points out, that creates an experience that’s very different than just turning on the TV and flipping the channels.

That, and the notion that Aereo plus Netflix is a perfectly good replacement for a full cable package is debatable. Lots of people still want their MTV. And ESPN and Disney and Nick and Comedy Central. So the question remains – is it worth it?

UI and content issues aside, all Aereo offers is a very basic cable package for $8/month. There’s no reason the MVPDs couldn’t replicate this (and then some – throw in some cable only channels) at the same price point and drive Aereo out of business. So it’s all sounding like much ado about nothing. Or much ado about retrans fees, which winds up being about nothing.

TV is the one medium that has not yet been disrupted by the digital revolution… yet. That’s why it’s so fascinating to watch the various pieces as the industry slowly changes and important to keep track of what’s a wish and what’s reality.

*Extremely generous. According to a recent Pew report, only 14% of Millennials use Twitter. And that’s use Twitter period, not “use Twitter regularly to chat about the TV show they’re currently watching.”

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

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

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 them social currency or look good on their wall. Hence, the Like, an easy way to give a brand a thumbs-up (and permission to coat your wall with brand messages.)

But while the Like button has become ubiquitous and a seeming smash hit for Facebook, it does not appear to be used in any consistent manner. That was its selling point: a lower key way for users to indicate approval for a brand, but it’s also it’s Achille’s heel: if users aren’t displaying any sort of consistency in the way they use the like button, then the resulting data is fairly inaccurate and not all that useful. (Bye-bye monetization.)

This is evident in the spate of Tumblr blogs flagging the random overlaps Facebook Graph Search pulls up (married men who like prostitutes, Christians who like porn) and in less quirky uses, like the study BTIG did on the accuracy of using Graph Search as a movie recommendation engine. What they found should be somewhat troubling for Facebook: the Likes users entered dated back to when they first signed up for the service or last used the Fan format.

There are multiple reasons users are either promiscuous or inconsistent with their Likes, but they all circle around two competing forces: (A) If The Brands We Like are how we present ourselves to the world, it takes a lot for a new brand to crack that list and (B) if Likes are easy to give and easily buried in the News Feed, there’s no reason not to give them out at random.

Now by brands, I mean any sort of product: movies, books, songs, actors, vacation spots, along with the more typical products and services we call brands. To the consumer, they’re all a part of who they are, and attaching their name to anything other than the tried and true, when that preference is in a prominent location, is a leap.

The constant rejiggering of the Facebook interface – particularly the introduction of the Timeline, where the “About” section, with the brands and media the user likes, is now one level down– has lessened the amount of attention people give to their Likes. That in turn, works on the validity of Likes from another direction: those who don’t see their Likes as a reflection of who they are are likely to become more promiscuous with them, and at the same time more random, on the assumption that the action has both an immediate value (unlocking a coupon offer) and limited aftereffects.

The other culprit here, perhaps even more to blame than Timeline is Frictionless Sharing: by posting every article the user half-glanced at and every song they or their offspring started to listen to, Frictionless Sharing greatly reduced the impetus the user had to be sparing with their Likes. While “Mary is listening to Ruby Tuesday by the Rolling Stones on Spotify” was supposed to be of lesser significance than “Mary Liked Ruby Tuesday by the Rolling Stones,” users did not really grasp that subtlety and many likely figured that if all bets were off, why not just start Liking just about everything?

While it’s possible to imagine a scenario where Facebook encourages users to carefully parse out Likes to new products so that their opinions can help guide their friends, it seems unlikely:  first and foremost there is the black and white nature of the Like: it’s an endorsement, pure and simple, in the way that 3 stars out of 5 is not.

Can Facebook fix this? Probably. They’ll need to rethink both the Like and frictionless sharing and the value users place on having their brand and media preferences prominently featured on their profiles. If they can solve for that in a way that encourages more, rather than less interaction, and more curation of the brands (media and otherwise) a user Likes, they have a good chance to make their data more accurate and thus, more valuable.

The stakes are high, and it’s a big “if.”

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

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 2011. 

But I digress.

The “why” isn’t hard to get: the MVPDs hear all the consumer complaints about bundling and they’re tired of getting blamed for it. It’s an odd thing: the networks are quite teflon when it comes to the viewing public, who blame the MVPDs for forcing them to take thousand channel bundles without ever considering that their existence is purely the doing of the networks, whose carriage deals leave the MVPDs with no other option.

And so after years of handwringing about how and where the first crack was going to be, who was going to “cave” and let the barbarians into Rome, it now seems that the answer is the Federal court system (and likely the Supreme Court itself, as neither side is likely to go down easily.) They will be the ones who step in and save the TV industry from itself. 

And if and when they do decide that forcing bundles on MVPDs is a bad thing, that will indeed be the moment the meteor falls and kills the dinosaurs and busts the industry wide open so that Apple TV and beautiful, personalized interfaces and cloud-based DVRs and dozens of other magical things we can now do with our televisions come to life and start populating the ecosystem like mammals who no longer need fear being chomped on by a tyrannosaurus every time they pop their tiny little heads out of their holes.

Only don’t hold your breath: it takes a while for a case like this to make its way to the Supreme Court. So that meteor’s not striking tomorrow.

Popcorn Moment: while you’re watching the festivities unfold, keep your eye out for whether any of the other networks or MVPDs jump in and join the fray. It’s in the network’s interest to keep things mano a mano, since if all the MVPDs join in and turn this into TV’s version of the Great War, public opinion is sure to be with the MVPDs and the forces of anti-bundling.

Once again, it’s time to sit back and enjoy the show.

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

KIT digital has launched a new app for Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system that will enable viewers to access the 4oD video-on-demand (VOD) service.

The UK’s fourth largest broadcaster says that it commissioned KIT digital for its experience and knowledge of the 4oD architecture to develop the new app, which was the first UK VOD app to be made available on Windows 8. KIT digital had already developed a similar app for the Xbox 360.

“Channel 4 recognises that its audience expects to be able to access its programmes on the platform of their choice, at the time of their choice,” explained Mark Christie, chief technology officer of KIT digital…

READ THE REST AT RAPID IPTV NEWS

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 to convince a skeptical Mossberg that “carefully curated” content bundles were a better thing than a la carte, resorting to the old rhetorical trick of repeating his main point over and over, lest someone ask him to explain.

Not that Mossberg and his co-host Peter Kafka didn’t try. They grilled Huggers on that assertion and pulled out the sharp knives when the topic moved to Intel’s facial recognition feature, which uses a built-in camera to determine which family member is actually watching, so as to surface their preferred programming. (It wasn’t clear what happens if people are watching en famille, an equally common scenario.) While facial recognition software is not in and of itself creepy, Huggers’s description of the non-user initiated manner in which the Intel device would automatically recognize users prompted Kafka to ask him “don’t you think a lot of people are going to be skeeved out by that?”

Like I said, it wasn’t an easy interview.

Intel seems to be working off the notion that “if you build it, they will come.” They, in this case, being the various TV networks whose programming they need to make the Intel device a success.

The one tangible benefit Huggers spoke about was true BBC iPlayer type catch-up TV, where every single show would be available for 7 days after it was first broadcast. Though here again, it was unclear whether this was merely something Huggers would like to see or a real feature.

Stripping away all the “maybes,” it seems the Intel TV will be positioned as a premium product– Huggers acknowledged it would not be a discount play– where consumers would actually pay more for TV service in order to have a much prettier, more intuitive and useful interface. How much more this service would cost is up for debate. One source I spoke with estimated that Intel would need to pay the networks a 25% premium versus the other MVPDs for content. 

What’s more, while Huggers touted the Intel device’s groundbreaking interface, the “dream team” he mentioned assembling from Apple, Jawbone and Microsoft seemed to consist of sales and marketing superstars: there was no talk of anyone with UX experience, though that may have just been an oversight.

Bottom Line: While Intel is to be lauded for their commitment and for having come this far, the product may turn out to be a tough sell. 

First and foremost, there’s the content issue: I have a Verizon app on my Xbox that has around 75 channels on it. Unfortunately, none of them are channels I ever really watch (ESPN and the major networks are not on there) If the Intel offering can’t get beyond a similar scenario, it’s likely to be dead in the water, particularly if it’s a premium product: why pay more for something I don’t watch? Intel’s plan seems to be to launch with a small group of channels and then hope the larger networks come on board as the product becomes more successful, but that’s far from guaranteed.

Another hurdle Intel will face is the difficulty of installation. This isn’t a Roku box that easily plugs into your existing TV system, this is a whole rip-and-replace move, and it’s going to have to be really, really good to get consumers to chuck their existing pay-TV service (set top boxes included)  Given the premium price, this is going to be a whole-house install, not just something you throw on the TV in the spare room. Add in too, the strong aversion people outside the early adopter cohort have to somewhat complex installation scenarios.

The final hurdle Intel faces, one that several audience members brought up to Huggers, are the bandwidth caps the ISPs can impose, a particular issue given the amount of bandwidth that video eats up. While Huggers gave a long answer about advances in video delivery systems the rapid growth of bandwidth capacity, he glossed over the most salient fact: for most people, their pay-TV provider is also their ISP, and the MVPDs are not going to want to give up that revenue stream.

All of which is too bad. The TV interface, as Huggers pointed out, does look like it was transported directly from 1994 CompuServe page and finding what to watch has become more complicated and frustrating than ever. The MVPDs have flubbed the chance of creating a decent catch-up TV function, pushing a lesser version of that off onto Amazon and Netflix, while the price of all of the above keeps spiraling upwards. 

A well-designed, feature rich platform would be godsend for consumers, one I believe people would indeed be willing to pay a premium to own. 

If only the networks and MVPDs would play along.