Why don’t all the networks stream their feeds to their web sites? Why do they want to limit the audience to those with TVs? Wouldn’t it boost the ratings to include people who can, or prefer to, watch on a computer? ABC makes Lost episodes available, but only after the TV broadcast. People would still have to sit through commercials just like TV. What am I missing?
I suspect it’s because people probably don’t veg as much in front of the computer. If I watch lost on the TV, I’ll probably start watching the next show. Online, I watch what I want and move on. This is pure speculation, BTW.
Sits back to wait for someone who actually knows something.
One of the big barriers is how to price the ads since traditional pricing models based on Neilsen ratings don’t carry over to the web. This same routine is what led to a lot of radio stations being online a few years ago, then suddenly not. Now some are back online with a different set of ads online than over the air.
Then, you have to pay the people involved. Radio went through this trouble to with how to charge royalties on music played online. Part of the writers’ strike is based on how to pay writers for shows that are distributed online.
Then, you have the local affiliates. If ABC runs Lost on the internet live, then how does KVUE in Austin sell the local ad spots to Furniture Factory Warehouse and Steve’s Liquors?
It’s a business issue.
I don’t know anything, but, one thing that may be an issue is that that would bypass the local stations and all their local ads, promos, and programming.
The networks are putting some shows on the internet. Internet streaming: five U.S. television networks compared.
I don’t know if they include the original commercials, but I doubt it. Too many commercials are regional or local rather than national. Ratings aren’t for shows. They’re for commercials. Without commercials there are no shows.
Advertisers want to know when their commercials are being watched. That’s why DVR viewership is only counted for a week after the original broadcast.
Right now the numbers of people willing to watch television on their computers is too small to make a difference, so the networks are doing this as a good-will gesture. (Don’t forget, only about one-half of households have broadband, so most can’t watch streaming video very well.) It can’t last in its current form. The networks have to find a way to get advertising revenue from internet viewing or they’ll fold.
No.
The rating are based on measuring people who watch the shows live, recorded via instruments or diarys. There is still controversy over people who use TIVO & other DVR’s to watch, since they are not included in the ratings, either.
Presumably, the ratings companies might find some technical way to count both TIVO & internet watchers. But they haven’t done so yet, so this would NOT help the ratings any. (It would probably hurt, since some would choose to watch the internet version at their own time rather than the broadcast one.)
NBC does put ads in their full-length TV replays. Only one sponsor per show, but it’s a start.
What aktep said.
That makes sense. But even though I may not represent the majority, I never watch live TV at home and instead download all my shows through bittorrent websites which contain no ads. But if the networks were to stream their shows live and include commercials, I would rather tune in to those broadcasts than wait a couple of hours for the show to be uploaded to a bittorrent website (I don’t have any TVs, only computers and monitors).
Be careful what you wish for. While the networks provide show cheaply or in some cases, free (ABC) over the internet, they do it a a loss. That’s fine because they make enough money from the broadcast to justify it. But if that became the only way to distribute it, the cost would rise dramatically.
Also, the hardware over the internet just can’t handle it yet. If you took a typical primetime audience had them watch the show on the internet, it would tax the site pretty significantly.
The last reason is, there isn’t enough programming for them to fill the day. Networks provide only about 7 hours programming a day (Primetime, early morning news/talk shows and soap operas) the rest is provided by the local stations through local programming (news) and syndication (Oprah, Ellen, game shows, etc.).
And, depending on how the writers’ strike turns out, they’re going to have to change how they compensate the writers (and, perhaps, other personnel) of those shows.
Streaming video takes a lot of bandwidth, and for each user connected, needs another stream sent to that dedicated user. This contrasts to over-the-air broadcasting, where it takes exactly the same equipment and cost to send out a signal to a million listeners or none.
Although data capacity is increasing, if everyone who watches antenna-TV switched to IP-addressed cable feed, the data pipes would bulge beyond capacity.
But it’s coming. There is a proposal in my county to connect a large number of rural households to an IP-based, video on demand system from scratch, and turnkey systems like that are available to service providers (like cable companies) for ever-decreasing prices. But until then, 60% of my neighbors would have to download video thru a 24K dialup connection. There’s such a gap between the haves and have-nots in some places in the world.
That won’t affect people like berff who are illegally downloading the shows anyway.
TV Networks aren’t a big homogenous beast. They’re coalitions of smaller stations with a central hub.*
When it comes to airing a primetime program, the hub sends out the show with national ads, and black holes to be filled by local stations.
If a central hub streamed out the show ‘live’ all the local stations (and every station in the Central/Mountain/Pacific time zones) would be robbed of ad revenue.
Given that TV stations and networks exist to make money off of your TV set, this is never going to happen. The only reason shows are put on the web by networks is for branding – it helps diehard viewers stay connected if they miss a show, and might bring in new viewers next week.
[sub]*In some areas, one station belongs to two networks. [/sub]