Greystone
Communications
CONTENT
AND CULTURE:
A Demand Side
Perspective
ABSTRACT
Assuming that all the technological pieces come together
and TV over the Internet becomes possible, will people make use of its
capabilities for two-way video phone calls, movies on demand, rich multi-media
and other new services that will be possible in a broadband Web environment?
That is, if you build it, will they come?
This paper will focus on what is known about current users of broadband Web services and what can be learned from past trials with high bandwidth video services.
It will include:
A secondary analysis of existing researches about the behaviors of broadband Web users.
A review of historical research from trials that have utilized high-bandwidth video services, including what content has and has not been used.
Original ethnographic research that the author has been conducting in homes that have broadband Web service. This includes in-depth interviews and observations of user behavior.
These research findings will be matched against technological developments to assess how people may respond to specific broadband Web technological advances. In the presentation of the paper, specific content examples of TV over the Web will be shown.
Professor, Annenberg School USC
INFRASTRUCTURE
IMPLICATIONS OF INTERNET TV:
1. Internet TV: Definition and Prospects
ABSTRACT
It is natural to expect that television of the future will become increasingly interactive and will involve electronic delivery over such packet-switched networks as the Internet. Similarly, the technologies of television and computers are converging, perhaps all under the concept of Internet television. This paper defines and describes the different possibilities for Internet television. The paper ends with a discussion of the uncertainties facing the future of the convergence of television and the Internet.
2.
TV Over The Internet: Technological Challenges
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the technological assumptions, challenges, and uncertainties of the confluence of television with the Internet. Various delivery media are described, and the different technological requirements of voice, data, and video are compared. Bandwidth and architecture requirements are discussed for different services. Alternative technological scenarios for the convergence of television with new broadband technologies are presented.
AT&T
Labs
INFRASTRUCTURE
IMPLICATIONS OF INTERNET TV:
Internet TV:
Implications for the long distance network
ABSTRACT:
The migration of traditional TV to the Internet is likely to have little impact on the long distance network. The main reason is that consumers still take on the order of a decade to embrace new technologies (such as cell phones) or even improved variants of old media (as with CDs replacing vinyl records). Yet within much less than a decade, progress in photonics will produce an increase in the capacity of Internet backbones far beyond that required carrying all the broadcast TV signals. There will continue to be bottlenecks in the "last mile" that will limit the migration of TV to the Internet (and this will reinforce the natural inertia of the consumer market). However, the backbones are unlikely to be an impediment.
The Internet is likely to have a much larger impact on TV than TV will have on the Internet backbones. There is vastly more storage than transmission capacity, and this is likely to continue. Together with the requirements of mobility, and the need to satisfy human desires for convenience and instant gratification, this is likely to induce a migration towards a store-and-replay model, away from the current real-time streaming model. Further, HDTV may finally get a chance to come into widespread use. The flexibility of the Internet will allow for the introduction of HDTV to niche markets.
Professor,
Indiana University
NETWORK
BUSINESS MODELS AND STRATEGIES:
Economic Models
for IP-TV Content Providers
ABSTRACT
Many enterprises, and many more to come, are experimenting with Internet broadband delivery. Both start-up firms and established media conglomerates are offering Internet-original content, notably interactive program forms, as well as already-produced movies and TV. Their business models range from advertiser support, subscription support, pay-per-view or "rental," to outright sale of content. Several big questions come immediately to mind. Which business models will tend to predominate on the Internet? What types of programming will tend to predominate? Will piracy or file sharing undermine the copyright power of the content suppliers? If so, how can business models adapt to compensate?
No one can answer these questions with any certainty. In fact, arriving at the answers is the market function of all the experimentation. By applying economic principles and considering lessons of the past with other media, however, we can develop a useful framework for thinking about these interesting questions. Considering the latest developments in business model experimentation, I will attempt to develop such a framework in this paper.
In economic terms, the Internet offers a potentially ideal method of selling broadband content to consumers. First, the pressures of economies of scale on the marginal costs of physical distribution virtually disappear. That permits programming of exceedingly narrow appeal to be transmitted to individuals scattered around the globe at low marginal cost. Second, the Internet offers increasingly efficient pricing systems. Assuming that bandwidth constraints become increasingly lower, true video-on-demand is easy to manage. Such systems also permit more easily managed market segmentation of high value and low value viewers via intertemporal price and quality segmentation, including the reduction of prices for repeat viewings, bundling, the sale of expanded versions of the same program (e.g., a movie plus an extra charge for outtakes), different prices for different qualities of transmission, and different prices offered to people having different buying profiles. The placement of advertising with programs is also straightforwardly done, although the ease with which consumers can evade commercials within digital transmission is not a positive force for effective advertiser-supported models on the Internet.
The comparative advantages of Internet distribution, mostly for improving direct program-by- program pricing business models, suggests that the Internet will increase economic opportunities for broadband program suppliers in general, resulting in greater programming investments and still further expansion in the variety and content of the programming that we have available from all media.
Probably the greatest comparative advantages of Internet broadband distribution involve interactivity. Interactive programming becomes far cheaper and easier to manage, opening up marvelous creative opportunities that will be fascinating to see unfold. It is important to recognize, however, that history offers little precedent for thinking that people, in any large numbers at least, want to fiddle with narrative form. So a very large component of Internet broadband content is likely to be essentially one way delivery of entertainment programming.
Because of lower economics of scale in distribution, the threshold limiting highly specialized original broadband programming will be reduced, expanding variety in that respect, just as cable television and videocassettes have done. To a high degree, however, the most lucrative programming opportunities on the Internet will be the sale of relatively expensive, broad appeal programming that can also be sold to other media, such as home video, theaters, and broadcast television. This is likely to occur because the Internet does nothing to change economies of scale with respect to creation of the "first copy" of any program. That is, the Internet also does not change the fundamental positive relationship between the production quality, and value, of a given program and the audience demand for it. Internet-original content, or narrow appeal programming more generally, is thus severely disadvantaged in competing with relatively expensive, broad appeal programs (such as Hollywood movies) that can be sold on a variety of different media over time. The wild card in any speculation about viable Internet broadband economic models is piracy, copying, and other ways that consumers might undermine the power of copyrights held by programming suppliers heretofore distributing via established media. The fundamental Internet innovation of electronic file sharing, for example, lowers the consumers' cost of sharing programs, such as movies, among themselves, to alarmingly negligible levels. If history is any lesson, however, the program suppliers will triumph, both in the courts and in the marketplace. Their business models, however, will have to adapt. In the conclusion of the paper, I will discuss possible adaptations.
Department
of Political Science, Indiana University
Content
Models:
Will IPTV Be
More of the Same, or Different?
ABSTRACT
This
paper was prepared for delivery at a conference on TV Over the Internet:
Implications for Infrastructure, Content, Policy, and Strategy,
co-sponsored by the Columbia Institute of Tele-Information and the European
Institute for the Media, November 10, 2000, New York.
Abstract:
Will the content of internet-delivered digital video be different from
the video content delivered by other means?
What audiences are Internet video providers trying to reach and with
what types of content? Are we moving away from mass-audience driven video production
to a more niche-oriented business? Does
the new technology empower individuals and startup firms or reinforce the
dominance of existing large firms? What
is the role of advertising in the Internet video marketplace?
These are some of the questions I will try to address in this paper.
Internet
Television and Copyright Licensing
ABSTRACT
This paper summarizes five main points. First, Internet technology may improve advertising, widen consumer access, and enhance the viewing experience. Second, video retransmission can displace or promote audiences for viewing original program material. Third, compulsory licensing is too information-intensive to provide an economically efficient mechanism for pricing retransmission. Fourth, limited fair uses seem reasonable if original copyright holders are not displaced. Finally, the list of fair uses" may be expanded or rescinded from time to time as more knowledge comes to the table.
More generally, a proper policy for protecting intellectual property must include an administrative structure that practically gathers information to forward this advancement. Administrators now face the implementation of copyright protection in a distributed computer network with countless open nodes throughout the world. Each represents a source of creativity and a means for enhancing the network. With information obviously imperfect and in a constant state of becoming, the practical administrative response in this digital sea is to exercise restraint, learn-by-doing, and move in a purposely sequential fashion.