Quote:
Originally Posted by Natural Cause
I actually think they could make WAY more money using the internet. Being able to track things you could charge advertising in a totally different way, target specific audiences based on age/sex/interests/location.
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There isn't much more money to be made, because the first thing you are doing is cutting your potential viewership down to next to nothing (statistically) and attempting to make money on a sort of long tail play (especially hoping that people will come back and pay to watch a show again 1 year later, example).
No matter how NARROW you can target your ads, you cannot make up for the masses that you will lose. Coca-cola advertising isn't going to be hugely different between me and the guy down the street. But in the internet model, you would have to stream an ad for each one of us. Coca-Cola and McDonalds and a whole bunch of other companies meet exactly the mass market advertising model and make network TV work. Without a mass to sell to, they aren't going to pay.
Most people aren't going to pony up $1 to watch a TV show... and they certainly won't put in the type of hours they do now in front of the idiot box. That is where the real money is made, with people who turn the TV on when they get home from work and stay about glued to it until they sleep. All those ad views are what makes things go around. Asking those same people to pay, I don't know, $150-$300 a month extra to see the same shows isn't going to work out (figure $1 per half hour... 6 shows per day average, more if they like football or hockey)... plus pay for a pretty darn high speed internet connection to be able to get the stuff (and pay the excess bandwidth, because they are going to use gigs and gigs of transfer).
The current broadcast model, especially the network affiliate model, allows advertisers already the chance to customize their messages based on regions (perhaps running a local sports star, celeb, or personality), without forcing the end user to own an expensive computer and to pay for a very high speed net connection just to watch your show.
Joost, the file sharing P2P think form the kazaa and skype guys is said to run at about 500kbs... to get quality similar to current SD broadcast. 30 meg a minute. 1.8 gig an hour... say 4 hours per night? Call it 7 gig a day. 210 gig a month. Someone is going to pay for the bandwidth.