ABC and Cox Cable are trying an experiment in Orange County this fall. They are going to give subscribers of the service the ability to watch some of ABC’s big hit shows — Grey’s Anatomy, Lost, Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives — anytime that they wish. So far, so good.
And, furthermore, they are offering these shows for FREE. Uh-oh. That’s a bit of a red flag. Because we all know that there ain’t no such thing. If you’re not giving money, then you’re giving time.
In this case, FREE means that the on-demand shows have commercials. Which is fair: so did the original broadcasts. But what it also means is that Cox and ABC are disabling the fast-forward button so I can’t zip through the commercials. And that’s where I get off of the bus with this particular idea.
As someone who has been time-shifting since the first time I videotaped SCTV in 1981, I think that it’s a bit creepy for the Cable Company to disable the fast-forward whenever they damn well please. I don’t want to encourage that type of behavior.
I may be in the minority, however.
During the last year, TV executives have tested the digital waters by putting some shows online with just a few commercial messages. CBS and NBC have offered ad-free shows for 99 cents through some cable and satellite TV providers.
So far, people have been more inclined to watch shows they don’t have to pay for even if they include ads.
Viewers, according to Pyne, are willing to watch commercials as a trade-off for seeing their favorite shows at a convenient time. That was one finding from an ongoing Disney experiment, which he said had demonstrated the popularity of ad-supported online streams of ABC shows.
The shows ABC has put on its website have drawn more than 100 million views since last fall, Pyne said. That’s why Disney believes that consumers might warm to this latest offering through Cox — which also provides time-shifted shows for free.
The way I read this is that they are comparing apples to oranges. They are saying that more people are watching online streams than are paying 99 cents to watch something on demand on their TV.
But I think that there is a difference here between watching something on the computer, which is still a novelty — and gives you the extra added advantage of portability — and watching something on your TV, which you’ve been doing all of your life. And your TV ain’t portable, so you really can’t take it to work with you to watch those video streams.
So you don’t mind watching those commercials because you get that’s the price of portability (or ignoring your work).
But when it comes to actual network TV — I only have so much leisure time, and since every hour of broadcast TV has nearly 15 minutes of commercials, I don’t want to give up a quarter of my leisure time for commercials.
This is how it isn’t free, from my standpoint: let’s say I make $10 per hour. That’s what my time is worth, 24/7. So that quarter hour of commercials that was forced upon me cost me $2.50 of my wasted time. So if I’m going to have to waste that money, at least get some of my time back.
And while some people might say that watching TV is still free, that’s not really true. According to a survey last year by JD Power and Associates, 88% of us are already paying for our “FREE” TV via cable or satellite.
Including, BTW, that FREE TV on Demand, which you can’t get unless you’re already a Cox subscriber.
It seems to be that the market for this is people who somehow missed tivoing these shows in the first place, and don’t want to (or can’t) deal with iTunes or Unbox or the various network streams.
Look, if my lame-ass cable company (rhymes with non-starter) told me that they were going to be offering me TV Shows on Demand, my first question would be “how much does it cost?” Because I understand that they need to make money, and I’m willing to occasionally pay for a show that I somehow missed the first time around because my TiVo fritzed or it was pre-empted for sports or breaking news.
I think that they are holding onto an outmoded business model when the mechanism for the new business model for on-demand is staring them right in the face: make everything available all of the time (after the original air time/date, of course), but charge for it.
But I could be wrong, so why don’t we do some testing of my theory vs. ABC’s: let people choose whether or not they want to sit through ads or want to pay a bucks to have full control of the experience. Make those shows available for, say $0.99 with no commercials or FREE with 15 minutes of commercials. Let the market decide. Eventually, it’s going to anyways.