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This article, and the details behind what is driving the changes for Sesame Street, are a good illustration of the tectonic changes coming to the industry. Com
by GeorgeOrr 11y ago
This article, and the details behind what is driving the changes for Sesame Street, are a good illustration of the tectonic changes coming to the industry.
Combined with HBO Now available without Cable, availability of services like Sling, and the recent financial troubles in the cable industry it is an interesting time. Cord-cutting is no long an if, it's a how quickly.
Or am I reading too much into this? Wishful thinking?
- chipgap98 11y agoNo I think you're right. The one big thing that has yet to really move online is sports. Once I can watch all the games I want online, cable is going away
- k-mcgrady 11y agoThat's already very possible too, they just need to make it unrestricted. For those outside the US services like NFL/MLB/NBA Game Pass are really fantastic. I can watch live, on demand, and condensed versions of any game.
- stephengillie 11y agoI watched the most recent Superbowl via streaming. Technically, streaming sports is about as easy as streaming any other video. One big hurdle is all the licensing because there is a lot of money involved. Edit: The other hurdle is horizontally scaling live streaming video to over 100 million devices. Networks like the NFL Network are doomed as soon as most NFL fans realize they could be streaming literally any game they want to watch from a Netflix-style service, or watch any number of games in a community from a curated Cytube-style list, instead of having just the 1 game at a time.
- maxerickson 11y agoOnce the NFL put together the NFL Network it quickly started using it to broadcast games. It isn't doomed by streaming, it provides some (much?) of the stadium side infrastructure that is still necessary for streaming.
- gknoy 11y agoIs there a way to legally stream sports like the big football game in february, without already having a cable subscription? That's the one thing (well, aside from big bang theory) my family and I miss from cable.
- stephengillie 11y agoI was surprised to find it so easy to stream from NFL.com last winter. Maybe adblock software helped. And the television ads were included in the stream and so were basically unavoidable. I used the old-fashioned adblock of muting the stream during the television commercials.
- nitrogen 11y agoIf you are close enough to a big city, you should be able to use free-to-air TV broadcasts. You can get an ATSC receiver for your PC if you don't have a TV, and DVR software that lets you skip commercials and run your own replays as you like.
- qzcx 11y agoNot completely true. Everyone wanting to want to watch it at the same time causes issues. Other videos you can distribute the video to caches ahead of time, so the burden on the outgoing connection is less.
- stephengillie 11y agoAre you describing a problem between live streaming and pre-recorded video? How does Twitch handle their load? How many more people are watching the average football game vs watched "Twitch Plays Pokemon" at its peak? Edit: TPP had 60,000-70,000 simultaneous viewers on average, with a peak of 120,000.[1] In 2014, each NFL game had about 17.6 million viewers.[2] So an order of magnitude increase. How well does live streaming video scale horizontally? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitch_Plays_Pok%C3%A9mon#Viewership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitch_Plays_Pok%C3%A9mon#View... [2]http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2015/01/09/nfl-2014-tv-recap-202-million-viewers-game-viewership-nearly-triples-broadcast-primetime/348433/ http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2015/01/09/nfl-2014-tv-reca...
- slg 11y agoMLB streamed to 60 million viewers on opening day this year. [1] Granted that is 14 different events being streamed, but they eclipse Twitch in terms of live streaming by a huge amount. [1] - http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/07/mlb-com-hits-home-run-with-record-opening-day-streaming-numbers/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/07/mlb-com-hits-home-run-with-...
- kuschku 11y agoYou can take the Eurovision Song Contest as example. Millions of people watching via livestream, overall (including TV), the largest annual TV event (197 million overall) Livestreaming scales very nicely horizontally, if done properly. And this is an event that is completely done without any ads or commercial investor backing it.
- brwnll 11y agostephengillie, "twitch plays pokemon" maxed out at 121,000 concurrent (according to Twitch) viewers, last years Super Bowl maxed out at 120,800,000 viewers. So yes, I would say it is a considerably different scale.
- wrsh07 11y agoThis is an area where MLB is way ahead of the rest. There was even a nice article linked here a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9416565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9416565
- happycube 11y agoYup... to the point where (as mentioned before) MLB is running HBO Now. (HBO's attempt at doing it inhouse with a bunch of ex-Microsoft peeps failed...)
- slg 11y agoThe problem is that like a lot of other streaming content, sports has to follow archaic rules designed to protect the broadcasters. Specifically for MLB, you are not able to stream any game from your local market's team(s). This nullifies the biggest market who would be interested in streaming games.
- jonknee 11y agoThe funny thing is they actually stream the local broadcasts (you choose which one you want) and then cut out the commercials. If they showed the commercials I don't see how it's different than watching locally on TV, except there's even more money involved because you paid a lot more than the carriage fee for MLB.tv. It's even a nice compliment to watching it on TV because you can watch on a mobile device. ESPN lets you stream stuff if you have a cable subscription, but you can't stream local games with MLB.tv regardless of your cable subscription.
- kodablah 11y ago"If they showed the commercials I don't see how it's different than watching locally on TV..." I have always wondered about this. I have to assume television broadcasters (e.g. the regional Fox Sports networks) who pay billions over decades to have broadcast rights want to protect their hegemony on TV. But in general you would think that they could sell their advertisers on the fact they are also being viewed by online subscribers. Maybe the advertisers don't want their otherwise local commercials broadcast, but then that doesn't explain why I can watch commercials when I watch a regional channel from another state. "ESPN lets you stream stuff if you have a cable subscription, but you can't stream local games with MLB.tv regardless of your cable subscription." But ESPN doesn't really let you stream local stuff of the US's big 4 leagues. It is unfair to compare the professional sports streaming options of ESPN3, Fox Sports Go, NBCSN, etc with those of the 4 leagues considering that none of the broadcasters can broadcast ANY games, much less be blackout-stricken.
- debacle 11y agoI think you're failing to consider the impact of the death throes of an industry.
- twoodfin 11y agoBut what does it mean to "cut the cord"? If your IP connection is still coming from Comcast/Verizon/Time Warner, you've still got a cord and a corresponding bill. The real question to me is whether the cable providers can turn $150 "Triple Play" (phone/internet/TV) bills into $150 IP-only bills. If I were them, I'd keep prices on the 'next generation' (100Mbit+) of IP-only plans very close to those that include traditional TV service, and offer bundles of discounted (unmetered?) third party services. "Cutting the cord" won't save you very much money as long as there's minimal competition in the physical infrastructure.
- pjc50 11y ago$150 IP-only bills That is only going to happen if they can maintain monopoly pricing. Which is gradually being chiselled away at; maybe the US will even invent LLU.
- twoodfin 11y agoWhy wouldn't LLU have the same effect in the U.S. on cable that it had on DSL, namely causing essentially all investment in higher-bandwidth infrastructure to cease?
- Karunamon 11y agoIt was my understanding that DSL was at or around its theoretical maximum anyways in most places.
- jazzyk 11y agoGradually chiselled away? Where??? In my suburb of Boston, both Verizon Fios and Comcast have been available for a few years now. Neither one has lowered its prices one cent. The only positive change was a relatively minor increase in downstream (but not upstream) speeds for the same package price at Comcast. Duopoly is usually not enough to foster real competition.
- Shivetya 11y agoConsidering the options out there cord cutting may not be they best financial choice for some customers. Be careful because its easy to saddle yourself with forty to fifty plus dollars a month of selected content.
- stinkytaco 11y agoIt's not just cord-cutting, however, this changes Sesame Street's relationship with PBS, and over-the-air broadcast service. The group Sesame Street needs to reach the most is not cord-cutters, it's people without an Internet connection. Low income and low literacy families are what Sesame Street was created to reach, that's why it's a show designed to appeal to both kids and adults. Certainly with a show like Sesame Street having the newest episodes is not necessarily critical (though they have done some good topical pieces in the past, the episode where a Hurricane hits Sesame Street comes to mind), so it's not a major issue in this case. Needless to say I was happy to see that there would continue to be some relationship with PBS, and I can't emphasize enough how important I find over-the-air public programming (both TV and radio). EDIT: To be clear, I do not necessarily think this is a bad deal. I think the STW produces great content and anything that helps them continue to produce quality non-commercial content is great. I just hope that content continues to be available for free on over-the-air broadcasts in the long term.
- oddevan 11y agoIt's my understanding from the press release that, once the 9-month window passes, PBS will get the episodes both for broadcast and for streaming, and they'll get them for free. I might have misread, though. Regardless, they're also trying to keep the relationship with PBS alive, probably for exactly the reasons you state.
- intopieces 11y ago>"Historically, less than 10 percent of the funding for “Sesame Street” episodes came from PBS, with the rest financed through licensing revenue, such as DVD sales. So this does change the relationship with PBS. But instead of PBS using their limited funding to make up for the decline in licensing income (90% of which came from other sources to begin with), it seems like they'll still get to air Sesame Street and Sesame Street will have a more significant source of funding.
- justizin 11y agoYeah, but I'm worried that current-events based shows that feature public figures like the First Lady will be delayed to lower income households. The kids won't really care, but it makes Sesame Street less of a bullhorn, because going on Sesame street next week only gets you into the homes of HBO subscribers. Maybe with the 'differently edited' previous shows they'll be rotating through PBS, they'll address this. It sounds like a decision come to out of desperation. :/
- fuzzywalrus 11y agoRight now, the biggest protection for cable is the insane license agreements with layers of bureaucracy. Having done contract work for three network TV shows, its interesting as cable providers license from the networks which licenses from the TV show. Three's a reason why some Hulu broadcasts are delayed and some shows have full seasons, some the last X, some entire series. There's no real standard for who owns the rights to what. Big Cable won't go down swinging, sports still sell TV subscriptions and we're seeing the evolution like DishAnywhere. More than likely, we'll see package services from ContentOverIP with more fragmentation: Service A provides TV Shows from Networks A B & C but no live broadcasts. Service B provides live broadcasts from A & C and on demand and so forth. I doubt Al La Carte will happen.
- rquantz 11y agoI think it's interesting that you and others are using the term "industry" here. Sesame Street is made by the non-profit Children's Television Workshop and it has always aired on Public Television. It was founded specifically with the intention of not being industry.
- protomyth 11y agoIf you have a former IBMer running your licensing program because of its size and complexity, then you are industry regardless of your founding.
- rquantz 11y agoYou apparently are only able to think in terms of commerce? Not every undertaking that is large and complex is industry.
- protomyth 11y agoNo, I think in terms of attention and time. Sometimes attention is indicated by the trading of goods or currency. On the other hand, Sesame Street is an industry with a lot of money in it. They can talk all they want about their humble origins, but they are big business.