Tag Archives: convergence
Beet.tv Interview with COO Alex Blum
Global COO Alex Blum was interviewed by Beet TV’s Andy Plesser about our new Social Program Guide and other initiatives during this year’s NAB. It’s a great overview of everything we’ve been up to in the drive towards productization
The Nielsen Myth
This originally ran on Digiday and was picked up by IPTV News. Co-authored with KIT COO Alex Blum TV is a hugely successful $60 billion industry. It’s also built on a jury-rigged measurement system that’s a bit of a joke and needs to be replaced for the potential of the modern media world to be fully realized. Nielsen ratings have admittedly come a long way from handwritten diaries, but they’ve still become antiquated as our viewing experience shifts from broadcast television to over-the-top services like Netflix and Hulu. This sea change of Internet meshing with TV presents a golden opportunity for anyone with the smarts to step up and figure out a better way to mine the resulting avalanche of consumer-engagement data that is now becoming available. Nielsen guesstimates shouldn’t be OK anymore. With IPTV, it’s possible to track exactly how many people are watching any given show and where and when they are watching it, and it can break … 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
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
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