The Skinny on Broadband Video Viewing

Every quarter, Brian Wieser at MAGNA Global publishes his On-Demand quarterly analysis. You can get the entire report here.

MAGNA looks at traditional linear programs broadcast on the internet and concludes:

"Between May and June of this year, Disney reported 5.7 million episode requests from its trial streaming free episodes of Lost, Desperate Housewives, Alias and Commander-in-Chief. Over an identical time frame, this compares with a total equivalent number of program views of these shows through linear broadcasts at 235 million, a popularity factor of 41 times for free broadcast content over free streams"

Read the report. It is well researched.

My question is: Are the young new adult viewers s queung up to watch Lost, or are they "tuning in" to YouTube?

Scanning the TV News

You might want to review a few of the 100's of stories I scan:

• The commercial ratings from Neislen are hitting some bumps. (Ad Age)
• Advertising expected to grow 6.4% next year. TV happy for elections! (Ad Age)
• Cable MSO 's hope to find new ways into your pocket. (David Deans)
• Battle of the Titans (Murdoch / Redstone) for the young viewer. (GigaOM)

Advertisers Sign Up for Streaming ABC

Ad Age reports that 35 advertisers have signed to advertise on ABC's broadband.

They report that 16 million streams were downloaded during their tests starting in June. (and YouTube had how many?)

Anyway, this is a must do step for all TV. They have to move to the net. As an advertiser, you will want to pay more and encourage the TV guys to move.

Problem child in all this is still local TV. When ABC streams and a viewer switches to broadband viewing, the local affiliate loses a viewer. Since ABC has rights and the local affiliate does not, ABC is doing the right thing for ABC, but rings a warning bell for the local affiliate network.

Expect that pressure to increase!

(Sorry with the posting gap .. had a bad hard drive crash and am just getting back to normalcy.)

Hold On to Your Wallets, TV Guys!

Here is the moment that will push traditional TV executives over the edge. Yahoo today reports that AT&T will offer 20 TV channels (we should really refer to this as video channels) over the internet.

Content owners rejoice. Traditional distributors of TV content --- cringe! IF you run a local TV station, viewership has no-where to go but down ... and as we have seen from this year's up-front ... rates can no longer go UP despite the fall of ratings.

So where does that put many of the traditional TV companies?

Somewhere where they have never been before! They must re-examine their basic assumptions about who they are, where they spend dollars and how they attract and retain customers.

New CW Network to Run Programs on Broadband

Ad Age reports that the CW will show a number of their youth-oriented programs on the internet before they appear on the old linear network!

And they are teaming up with Microsoft to manage the broadcasts.

This is the the trend, and advertisers (even though they promise these programs will run commercial free) will love it.

The suits have to understand how ads will work in the internet world. People's attention spans are shorter on the net and perhaps the 30 second spot is not it.

In any case, here is a move in the right direction. Unfortunately, if you don't own the content, it's not much help (local broadcaster --- weep now).