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TV Industry's Fear of Digital Age Is Getting Old

October, 04, 2009 11:44 am | On #Emmys, internet, Ringtones

What's become a familiar backstory to the Emmy telecast is the TV industry's fear and loathing of a new "digital world." One destined to wipe out Hollywood.

I understand where this misplaced emotion is coming from. Hollywood is filled with creative types who are intimidated by every uptick in Internet usage. But Hollywood has not dug deep enough to see that a maturing web won't spell the end for television as we know it.

First off, to be clear, no one in the industry wants to see television unhooked from today's distribution system. To that end the distribution side of the business (cable, telco, DBS) has been working -- since the 1990s, when cable system consolidations started -- to convert the industry's subscribers to digital.

What digital means for TV content is that new technologies can be introduced, such as "clickable television."...

Clickable TV Needs the WGA

September, 20, 2009 6:41 pm | On #Television, WGA

On the heels of several announced interactive television launches, chatter spread through the business and trade press comparing these efforts to the many that have failed in the past. But for many of us in the field, these announcements are something that we believe marks a turning point.

The first applications to be launched by most of the participating cablers and telcos will be to bolster advertising revenue. Over interactive TV's long history we have all seen promotional videos of how through the click of a couple of buttons we could get catalogs or coupons mailed to us from TV commercials.

But I don't think advertising-related clickable moments will hold the TV viewer's interest unless the TV programming community comes along and takes the interactive experience to a whole new level./p>

In November of 2007 Hollywood came to a standstill as the...

So, Merge TV and the Internet Already

September, 03, 2009 8:40 am | On #internet, televison

Internet video distribution today seems like the inevitable path media companies are going to take in order to ensure their content gets to consumers. But big media needs to figure out a way to operate (for at least the next five to seven years) with one foot firmly planted in today’s TV distribution platform, while incubating their Internet audiences.

Decades were spent getting the digital standard ready for prime time. During the process the industry communicated to vendors how to make digital television sets and how new transmission equipment needed to work. This expensive digital TV rebuild brought about a flurry of industry PR by networks on why cable companies should be paying more for HDTV content.

Broadcasters have also been trying to play catch up, and they want to see their compensation some day match the cable networks’ subscriber fees. ...

Networks Need to Forget About Nielsen

August, 23, 2009 10:44 am | On #Networks, Nielsen, ratings, Television

This past week brought the announcement that a consortium of industry players -- NBC Universal, Time Warner, News Corp, CBS Corp, and many more -- were banding together to give Nielsen Media Research a run for their money.

Why are they bothering when digital TV offers so many other ways to secure the platform’s future?

Plenty of people watch TV so let’s not just yet send out the sympathy card. But what the industry has not done in a long time is look inside the digital spectrum to find more money.

Jeff Zucker should try to shake loose some of those digital dollars from PSIP data (Program and System Information Protocol).

PSIP is the data section on the backside of all digital content. Nielsen Ratings’ codes for each TV station are carried inside PSIP data that can be read by special set-top boxes and decoders.

In the 1990...

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Michael Kokernak has written about the disruption of the traditional television business model for virtually every industry trade magazine since 1998. He is also an inventor and the company he founded, Backchannelmedia, has filed several patent applications in the TV advertising space. Kokernak’s company has been profiled in Business Week, New York Times, Boston Globe, Advertising Age, and in a Harvard Business School Case Study. He welcomes questions and comments at mkokernak@gmail.com or on LinkedIn.

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Latest Posts

TV Industry's Fear of Digital Age Is Getting Old

Clickable TV Needs the WGA

So, Merge TV and the Internet Already

Networks Need to Forget About Nielsen