5 ms·
This reminds me of an old Jeff Atwood blog post Commandos, Infantry and Police [1]. HBO was innovative in their "commando" phase but now they're a large cable
by cletus 15y ago
This reminds me of an old Jeff Atwood blog post Commandos, Infantry and Police [1].
HBO was innovative in their "commando" phase but now they're a large cable incumbent. They're either in the infantry or police phase now. Basically they're not concerned with gaining new territory. They're most concerned with defending their current position.
This is a problem every incumbent faces when they grow sufficiently large. Microsoft's decisions of the last 15 years have been borne of a fear that something will kill the Windows/Office golden goose.
The ultimate evolution of this defensive strategy is for a company to launch a conflagration of litigation, often with a new CEO, in a last-ditch effort to squeeze out some value. You saw it with SCO. You see it with Yahoo.
Defense is a short-term strategy. At the point you stop innovating you've already begun to die. It may take awhile. Billion dollar companies don't die overnight (although Groupon may prove me wrong). Yahoo has been dying a slow death for years.
I would gladly pay a (reasonable) monthly fee just for HBO. But I'm not going to pay $100+/month for cable and it. I pay for Netflix. At $8/month it may not have all the content but it's enough for me.
HBO is now locked in the same death spiral big cable is: big cable doesn't want a la carte cable because people either won't use it if it's too expensive or they'll spend less on cable, neither being a good outcome (for them). HBO needs big cable to distribute their content. My theory is they can't circumvent that without threatening what is their main source of income (big cable won't react well to being cut out of the loop). The risk of that strategy, from their perspective, is simply too high.
HBO should be afraid of the rise of the likes of AMC. If they're not careful the next generation of innovators is going to eat them for breakfast.
[1]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/06/commandos-infantry-and-police.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/06/commandos-infantry-...
- wpietri 15y agoI don't think they're at particular risk of a death spiral. Atwood and Cringely were talking about product companies. Content companies work differently. As long as HBO continues to make compelling content, various distributors will line up to buy it. For now, the US cable companies are the bulk of their revenue. But they already make $1bn or so annually from overseas sales of their programs, so it's not like they're unprepared to sell a show to somebody like Netflix, Amazon, or Apple.
- mey 15y agoI'm heading over to a friends house tonight for a group view of ep 3/4 of Game of Thrones. He pays for HBO, we pay for food. If HBO offered me delivery options that I could consume with my lack of cable/sat TV, I would gladly pay, and they'd get a cut of paycheck for their quality content. More interestingly is this "piracy" or simply lost revenue?
- stoolpigeon 15y agoMore interestingly is this "piracy" or simply lost revenue? There's a difference? That you see them as separate shows you aren't on board with the large groups focused on trying to force people to pay as often and as much as possible to access the content they control.
- mey 15y agoSince the media companies refuse to clearly provide a license and terms for their material I have no idea what it is. To my knowledge, a group of friends watching a TV Show together from a DVR is not Piracy, but HBO isn't making money from me.