Free Content Will Become New Standard

I was amazed to see Disney, once again, leading the pack when it comes to television and new forms of media and media consumption. Earlier in the year, ABC, one of the many holdings of the Disney empire, announced a working relationship with Apple's iTunes store, allowing users to download shows like "Desperate Houswives" to their video-capable iPods.

The original downloads were $1.99, and were commercial free. However, as predicted by industry analysts, free content was made available with a mandatory commercial which is viewed before the show can be seen.

I also think that this free content will help drive down the cost per episode to $0.99 from its current figure. Now time-shifted media consumption will become the 'norm' for the 25-44 year-old generation and their kids.

Interestingly I wanted to see the article touch upon the rise in DVR usage among consumers. According to S&P's Equity Research, by the year 2010, penetration of DVRs in U.S. homes will be as much as 35 percent. However, the research was unclear as to what effect this would have on the advertising revenues to the large network TV channels. VCRs, however, originally marketed as a means for TV viewers to record programs for later viewing, never had much impact on revenue dollars from TV advertisers.

"The VCR came in as a potentially disruptive technology, but as a result of poor usability design, its impact on television viewing was generally limited to movie watching," according to Dr. Bruce Klopfenstein's online blog post on March 6, 2006 (http://emergingnewmedia.blogspot.com).

The future with regard to the proliferation of technologies which allow users to control when and what they are exposed to in the media and entertainment market is quite clear. These technologies will continue to matriculate into the general population. The least likely consumers of these technologies are senior citizens, those people in the 65 year-old and higher category. As those people begin to leave the marketplace as potential consumers, and the current 25-44 year-old market begins to expand, the On-Demand media forecast is strong. As this age bracket begins, or as the case may be, continues to have children, and as those children are exposed to an environment in which they have some or total control over their media consumption, just as the current 25-34 year-old age bracket experienced with the rise of cable and multiple channels, the idea that TV or other entertainment options should be limited to a finite number of channels, or a concrete time schedule will be foreign to them. They will not have had the experience of being held to a block of time dedicated to airing a program.

However, I am predicting that a rise in time-shifted viewing will not be a downfall for network channels. The attention given to programming which calls for some level of response, in terms of interactivity, from the viewer may be the perfect way advertisers can reach their target audiences. Just as cable channels narrowed the specific make-up and demographics of an audience from the large national audiences that watched the major broadcast networks, so to will interactive channels and programming that is recorded to DVR or other personal On-Demand media device. The more specific the program, the more specific the audience will be. Advertisers may see this as a shift from trying to buy large national or regional ad spots, to purchasing fewer, but far more effective and receptive ads at the individual program level.

Find the article about free Disney programs at :
http://www.ajc.com/tuesday/content/epaper/editions/tuesday/living_44a3df88801e32d90075.html