BOSTON – Turns out cable and technology executives are no different than the folks they serve. They want what they want, when they want it, where they want it when it comes to video.
Executives from Sling Media (Jason Krikorian, EVP business development), MobiTV (Alan Moskowitz, director of strategic alliances); Tivo (David Sanford, VP marketing and product management), Time Warner Cable (Maura Fox, group VP, NYC), and Rogers Cable (David Purdy, VP and GM Television) all expressed that desire in a session called “Your Television is Ringing: The Value of Cross Platform” Sunday afternoon at the CTAM Summit here in Boston.
Purdy noted that with the launch of HBO in Canada – and HBO On Demand, as well, that he “can’t wait to have a broadband and mobile extension of that.”
In fact, said Purdy later in the session, Rogers has taken note of the success of sites such as Hulu and Comcast’s Fancast, two broadband portals where viewers can watch thousands of hours of television shows on their PCs.
These sites, however, aren’t available to viewers outside the U.S., due to copyright ownership. Noting that at Rogers folks there are “trying to think of ourselves as an entertainment solutions provider,” says Purdy and not just a wireless/cable/Internet/phone company, “we’re looking very seriously at what’s been done with Hulu and Fancast.”
In fact, Purdy doesn’t just want to do content deals just for cable any more but when the company acquires content – it’s for all platforms, TV, mobile and on line.
But, if Rogers did make such an broadband content portal attempt, “we’d want to make sure it’s comprehensive and built into the existing billing relationship with customers,” said Purdy, as all panellists agreed customers won’t pay twice for the same content.
Since P2P traffic is somewhere in the range of 25% higher in Canada than in the U.S. – because Canadians have long trolled for TV shows online that they haven’t been able to get from a Canadian broadcaster the way abc.com lets its fans watch its shows on line, for example – there may be a business case here.
However, cautions Purdy, don’t lose sight of the traditional business, too. “A lot of people are chasing digital dimes at the expense of analog dollars,” he said.
As for Time Warner Cable’s Fox, she takes a more nuanced view of time and place-shifting of viewing among consumers.
“Where I want is a sub-function of ‘when I want’,” she noted, explaining that consumers will accept a tiny mobile screen on a train if that’s the only way to see a big game at the time the consumer wants to watch.
Consumers think “I’ll settle for watching on the PC, because I want it now,” she added.
While “the phone is still a bit of a compromised service” added Sling’s Krikorian, of the too-small screens and network hiccups, viewing on the PC “is more and more legit.”
Because of that sea-change in viewing habits, where the PC is accepted as every bit a fine place to watch television – and because of the growth of broadband portals (52% of video downloads are coming from “legit” sites like abc.com, said MobiTV’s Moscowitz), “operators need to ask themselves ‘how am I going to be relevant in this world because it’s not a closed system anymore,” said Krikorian.
Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien is in Boston this week to cover the 2008 CTAM Summit.
