DBS provider EchoStar is gearing up to launch an online video network under its Dish Network brand name, and I understand that the launch could occur very soon. The service, the first of its kind for a DBS provider, will feature a broadband portal that offers not only content from the networks that make up the company’s standard satellite channels, but also exclusive online-only content.
Although the pricing and packaging of Dish’s online services are not yet clear, it appears that Dish will offer some kind of special discounts to its traditional multichannel video customers, while allowing non-subscribers to purchase or gain access to the same line-up of streamed and on-demand movies, TV shows and specialized niche and international content. The price breaks that Dish plans to give its existing multichannel video customers are clearly designed as retention tools to keep customers from churning off their regular video subscriptions.
Dish is clearly pushing the new technology envelope — VentureBeat this morning reported that Dish is also about to enter a pact with Google to use the search giant’s targeted advertising technology for television ads.
Clearly EchoStar is trying to survive in a two-way world where it is stuck with a one-way platform. Although the company is the preferred satellite provider for the nation’s top telco, AT&T, which is pushing Dish inside a triple-play package of services it calls HomeZone, Dish Network faces limited growth prospects as its cable competitors tilt the consumer sales proposition in favor of bundled voice, video and data services.
EchoStar and its main rival DirecTV toyed last year with buying broadband wireless spectrum to mount a two-way terrestrial broadband network that would, at last, give the DBS providers a true interactive platform. But, the prohibitive costs of the spectrum purchases combined with News Corp.’s disenchantment with the U.S. DBS business (News Corp. ultimately gave its DirecTV ownership stake to Liberty Media in a complex transation) scuttled that idea. Now, it seems, EchoStar will rely on the broadband Internet as its two-way pipeline into the home.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 5:00 PM | Print | Comments (0)
U. S. cable operators are gaining telephony customers at a scorching rate. According to my tally (see table at end) the top cable companies counted 8.77 million voice customers at the end of 2006, which represents a year-over-year growth rate of 582%.
Based on the sequential net additions, it looks like cable’s growth rate in the voice business is accelerating. The quarterly net new voice customers has continued to ramp up every quarter since Q4 05.
Look for more growth acceleration ahead as the operators continue to light up new voice launches - Comcast still has nearly six million homes passed that are not yet capable of buying telephony services. You can bet that most, if not all, of these homes will get the hot product soon enough.
Penetration of cable voice services is very healthy, particularly at what is a very early stage of the market. At year-end 2006, industry-wide voice service penetration (subscribers as a percentage of homes capable of buying cable telelphony) stood at 9%.
It took about four years for cable modem service to reach a comparable level of penetration, about double the amount of time. (Granted, high-speed Internet access was a new idea back in 1997, when operators began to roll out modem service in earnest. Telephony, on the other hand, is a well-understood service that needs little explanation.)
One other interesting point: Four companies dominate the cable voice market. Comcast, Cox, Cablevision and Time Warner accounted for 88% or 7.7 million of the combined voice subscribers, at the end of 2006.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism, an arm of the Pew Research Center, is releasing today its annual State of the News Media report, and the news is not good. Although the exhaustive report covers every aspect of journalism and news gathering — newspapers, magazines, the Internet, radio, cable, national and local TV — the Project appears to ring the loudest warning bells for newspaper journalism.
As James Rainey at the LA Times points out, the new trend of “hyper-local” coverage in newspapers comes in for particular criticism by the Project. The trend toward hyper-localism has resulted (and perhaps was triggered by) cost-cutting; major papers around the nation have slashed or shuttered their international bureaus, for example, and filled the resulting holes with more intensive, and less expensive, local coverage. “Concepts like hyper-localism, pursued in the most literal sense, can be marketing speak for simply doing less,” the report states.
The report also raises some very obvious issues that have bedeviled the news media over the past two to three years and makes some no-brainer recommendations, such as “The evidence is mounting that the news industry must become more aggressive about developing a new economic model.”
One interesting observation made in the report is that blogging is starting to splinter into elites and non-elites when it comes to standards and ethics. Because bloggers range from true journalists all the way down to part-time rumormongers, some top journalists are moving in the direction of professionalizing the blogging world, ironically creating an elite sphere in what is the “citizen’s” medium.
To protect themselves, some of the best-known bloggers are already forming associations, with ethics codes, standards of conduct and more. The paradox of professionalizing the medium to preserve its integrity as an independent citizen platform is the start of a complicated new era in the evolution of the blogosphere.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:52 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The broadband entertainment platform is a booming marketplace with no clear path to profitability but that isn’t stopping hundreds of start-ups and established companies from forging ahead to develop new video programming for the web. The latest entrant: Michael Eisner’s Tornante Co. has formed a studio called Vuguru to acquire and develop professionally written and produced web entertainment.
Vuguru’s first product is a program called Prom Queen that will roll out over 80 days starting April 2. Prom Queen will be short, 90 seconds, and run every day on Vuguru’s website as well as site that is live now called promqueen.tv. (Right now there is a very well-produced promo for Prom Queen at the site and from all appearances it looks to be a prom-slasher series and has the tag line “Some girls will kill for it.” Eisner, however, claims the show will be PG-13 or lower.)
Vuguru has lined up sponsors for the show including Fiji Water, Pom Wonderful juices and Teleflora florists. Eisner, with his extensive background in professional entertainment, thinks that pros will win the web video race.
“Winning the marathon will be professionally produced, emotionally driven story content.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:30 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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