Tag Archives: alan wolk
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
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