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The Blurring Line Between Mobile App and Web Site

May 27, 2010 | Neal | 1 comment

For those who like to kill time while on the go, this article is certainly welcome news.  I’m all for there being more ways to get to the content that traditionally showed up only on the TV and only once.  Here’s the question that this raised in my mind though…”with mobile devices becoming so much more capable, why would the model for me paying for (or not paying for) content be any different between my iPhone, iPad, laptop, and desktop?”

I definitely understand the difference between owning the content (paying to download from iTunes vs. watching it for free on Hulu.com or one of the network sites knowing that it will have ads interspersed in the experience).  What I don’t understand is why I would be willing to pay $10/month (or whatever other scheme they come up with) for streaming to a small screen on my mobile device vs. watching for free with Hulu.com/CBS.com/etc. on a larger screen on my home PC hooked into an HD monitor.  Throw in the new middle-ground between mobile screen and laptop screen, the iPad, and the consumer choice related to paying or not paying for mobile video gets even more complex for providers to figure out.

Would I be surprised if networks and services like Hulu eventually emulate the cable/satellite companies and go all the way to a subscription model? Not at all.  That would be the easiest way for them to rationalize pricing across platforms.  Everyone can decide if they buy “all you can eat” from sites like those or “pay as you go” on iTunes.  Ultimately though, it seems to me that as everyone is figuring it out it will be tough for anyone entering the subscription mobile space to get users to agree to pay for something on the small screen that they don’t have to pay for on a larger screen.


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The War Continues…

March 3, 2010 | Neal | No comment

I am a huge fan of both The Daily Show (dating back to the first episode with Craig Kilborn) and The Colbert Report and it’s always nice to have an excuse to write about them. In this case however, they are really secondary to another favorite running plot here at the Black Turtle blog, the running battle between content owners and distributors over how they’re going to split the revenue pie. In this article, we see that Viacom is going to remove TDS and Colbert from Hulu.com in a dispute over revenue sharing. This after ABC and Comcast have entered into a dispute over rights fees moving from the cable distributor to the network giant for the first time.

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So, here’s the big question for all of you content owners out there, why are you letting yourselves be dependent on the content distributors? If you have a property, you should be finding ways to monetize it across ALL channels rather than counting on the Hulu’s and ad networks of the world to do it for you. If the content is bundled with sponsorship embedded – there are multiple ways to do this – then you quickly become channel agnostic and your only job becomes getting the content in the hands of as many consumers as you can whether that is via paid service like cable and satellite or free-to-consumer services like Hulu or embed code in blogs, social network, and web sites. Certainly if there is a chance to “double dip” and charge Comcast a per subscriber fee AND get sponsorship dollars that’s a bonus but with so much content becoming available via free channels, it’s hard to believe that the “fee per subscriber” model will be around for long so content owners had better be preparing for life without it.


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