Studios Throw Blockbuster Video a Lifeline

It is not unheard of for one or more content providers to favor one channel, or even one contestant within a channel. As a rule, theatrical exhibition gets priority for new movie releases, with a standard set of release windows for other channels. In recent decades, the home video and DVD windows have changed the most, since home video and DVD channels now represent the single-biggest source of revenue, by channel.

But there are stresses in the channel as the revenue from home video and DVD, especially DVD purchases, is declining. In the once-hugely-important, and now simply important video rental channel, Blockbuster, historically the single most important video rental channel, and now the largest remaining place-based retailer, is struggling to survive, and seems to be getting a lifeline thrown to it by some of the leading stuidos.

Blockbuster recently got an exclusive deal with Time Warner, and apparently now has distribution deals with the Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment that give Blockbuster an advantage: new release rentals will be available at Blockbuster, and not through Netflix or Redbox, about a month earlier.

Basically, that means Blockbuster will be able to rent new hit movies and releases on the same day they become available for purchase. Since each form of distribution satisfies part of the fixed demand for any new title (most people view a movie only once), it makes a difference in terms of sales volume that one channel partner has a month advantage.

The unusual new arrangement with Blockbuster shows just how important a distribution channel it is deemed to be. So appparently concerned are studios about the company's survival that some are giving Blockbuster a significant sales advantage over the rival video rental distributors.

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Digital TV Transition: Not Y2K

In February 2009, all over-the-air analog TV broadcasting will be shut off. Some observers are concerned that consumers aren't acutely aware of the coming changes, resulting in massive disruption of the TV experience on the day of the analog broadcasting shut off.

Maybe not. The only potentially-affected customers are those who rely solely on over-the-air signal reception. Customers of cable, satellite or telco TV services won't have to do anything. To be sure, cable, satellite or telco TV providers will have to supply a new digital decoder if one is not already in place. But the point is that the providers will take care of their own customers, and that's 85 percent to 90 percent of all TV viewers.

Of those customers who have over-the-air connections, those who have bought TVs with digital tuners will not notice anything other than universally-better pictures. So the real issue lies with a single-digits number of viewers who have analog-only tuners.

By the time the transition nears, every mass market electronics retailer will have taken steps to push the sale of digital decoders. So this will not be anything like a feared "Y2K" event.

FCC Reimposes Market Share Cap

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has voted to impose a limit on the size cable operators can reach on a nationwide basis, limiting any single company from controlling more than 30 percent of total subscribers. The FCC in the past has maintained such a rule, but the limit was invalidated by a court decision in 2001.

Consumer groups say a strict limit on cable television system ownership is needed to prevent them from dominating television programming and Internet services and from blocking video competitors.

As a practical matter, the FCC action could affect merger deals Comcast Corp. would like to pull off, as Comcast already has about 27 percent. The rule might also affect smaller operators like Charter Communications and Cablevision , as it might rule out their acquisition by Comcast.

"Bulk Up or Sell" Key for Telcos, Media

The big global media and telecom companies face very similar business issues in some of their key lines of business. International calling rates are getting so competitive that only large players with scale will have the mass to make a go of it, says Stephan Beckert, Telegeography head of research.

Likewise, media comapnies such as like Vivendi, Time Warner and News Corp. are investing very heavily in gaming. In fact, some observers suspect that gaming will grow to be the biggest media business in time, and will and supplant older media to a significant degree. That is sort of the same position telephone companies find themselves facing with their core voice businesses.

Gaming is set to grow 40 percent in two years, many project. And bulk really confers advantages in game publishing, which has massive scale economics. A publisher that can guarantee over a million sales, with global distribution and quality marketing, has an immense advantage over a publisher that struggles to get to half a million sales.

Much the same sort of thing is happening in the U.S. competitive local exchange carrier industry as well, where scale has started to assume a key role as well. Basically, every executive has to decide whether to be a strategic seller or buyer.

European Commission, FCC Disagree on Competition

As U.S. competitive local exchange carriers and cable companies await key decisions from the Federal Communications Commission, the quantitative tests of "effective competition" are key. And on that score the FCC and the European Commission do not see eye-to-eye. In the video arena, the FCC targets the 30-percent market capture level as denoting "effective competition." In the voice services area the test seems to be 20-percent share loss by incumbents. The EC doesn't even think 50-percent loss of market share by incumbents is sufficient.

The disparities in thinking about what marks "effective" levels of competition leaves at least some room for new thinking on what measures might be required to stimulate even more robust levels of competition. In mass markets, 30 percent quite often is the share held by the market leader.

Cable Industry to Get Clipped by FCC

In a move that will limit business opportunities for Comcast and Time Warner Cable and help independent networks, the Federal Communications Commission is preparing to impose significant new regulations to open the cable television market to independent networks, after determining that cable operators are too dominant in the multichannel video entertainment market.

Satellite and telco competitors should benefit at least in part, as the new rules are expected to force cable-affiliated programming networks to sell their content to competitors at better rates.

The new rules essentially would prevent Comcast from acquiring any other system assets, and limit Time Warner Cable's ability to make large acquisitions, shutting off a revenue growth path for both firms.

One of the proposals under consideration by the commission would force the largest cable networks to be offered to the rivals of the big cable companies on an individual, rather than packaged, basis. Up to this point cable-affiliated programmers have used the "bundled" wholesale tactic to get wider carriage for niche networks that piggyback on the popularity of major networks. In other words, to get the "must have" channels, competing service providers have to buy the weaker networks as well.

The agency is also preparing to adopt a rule that would make it easier for independent programmers to lease access to cable channels. Cable operators oppose that measure because it reduces their control over scarce channel slots.

Though consumer advocates believe the rule changes will lead to lower prices, that might not happen. What might happen is that consumers will be able to buy more targeted channels and packages without the "buy through" requirements that typically result in viewers "paying" for scores of channels they don't want.

In all likelihood, the changes will benefit a small number of viewers that really are interested in just a few channels, or who do not want to buy sports programs. For most viewers, who watch eight to 12 channels fairly regularly, it likely still will make sense to buy a broad package.

ESPN and sports programming in general is a major reason cable prices have risen so much over the past couple of decades, so opting out of ESPN carriage is one way consumers might save some money. Conversely, the rule changes could be damaging to ESPN if any significant number of consumers they can live without it.

Time Warner Launches Business TV

Time Warner Cable Business Class has launched BusinessLink.tv, an IPTV service that delivers real-time, high-speed broadcast TV video service directly to the computers of its business customers in select New York and New Jersey markets.

The BusinessLink.tv service delivers high-quality news and information video programming to clients via cable modem across their enterprise LAN using IP multicast connectivity. It is, in other words, bandwidth efficient.

The television networks included in the BusinessLink.tv New York City offering are: NY1 News, CNN, CNN Headline News, CNN International, CNBC, CNBC World, Bloomberg TV, Fox News, Fox Business News, and The Weather Channel. This 10-channel IPTV delivery service requires a 4 Mbps core local area network bandwidth.

And you thought people were wasting time using Facebook! Just kidding. I do the same thing in sneakernet fashion, having one of the news channels up all day in the background while working. It is quite helpful. Of course, I'm in the news and analysis business, so it is simply another form of "scanning" the environment. I would not give it up.

Skype Valued at $1.7 Billion

Skype is worth $1.7 billion, based on charges EBay has taken both for the Skype acquisition and payments to outgoing CEO Niklas Zennstrom, who has left EBay.

Since the second quarter, EBay CEO Meg Whitman has made clear its concern that Skype is not delivering financial results on the scale EBay had expected.

At the time of the acquisition, eBay and analysts trumpeted the move as a way to increase higher end auction sales by making it simple to connect buyers and sellers by voice. So far, it appears the synergies haven't materialized in any significant way.

Skype also has more competition these days from alternate providers offering calling from mobile handsets and standard analog telephones that provide a reasonable alternative for some applications.

PC-based calling remains the Skype mainstay, despite the availability of Skype-compliant phones, as probably had to be expected. There's nothing wrong with that. But the consumer electronics industry has proven the difficulty of getting mass adoption of specialized appliances of all sorts.

Then again, unified communications and messaging now have the attention in the business space, while video and audio get the attention in the consumer space. VoIP also is a victim of its own success. Now that it has become a mainstream product, it is, well, just a product.

Also, beyond obvious cost savings in the enterprise, small, medium business and consumer spaces, it might be hard to argue that VoIP has had the impact of text messaging, instant messaging, simultaneous ring, visual voice mail or "presence." True, some of those features are enabled by or enriched by VoIP, but the value is harder to convey in a marketing message, at least in the North American market.

We seem to have moved beyond the simple "cheap calling" stage and into a much more complex "new capability" stage in some sense. But that's a harder, more complex sell with a longer adoption cycle.

On the other hand, the market for IP-based replacement of voice lines is quite large, in comparison.

In its most recent quarter, Skype booked $90 million in revenue. Assume Skype does not worse than that for a whole year, generating $360 million in revenue. Attributing just $20 a month in revenue for U.S. digital voice accounts, and assuming just four million U.S. subs, the U.S. cable industry is earning $960 million a year selling VoIP services.

Even beleaguered Vonage, at its present pace, will book revenue of $784 million over a year.

Time Warner Fires Opening Salvo

Though Comcast won't start firing its guns until early 2008, the U.S. cable industry has begun its assault on small business customer accounts. Time Warner Cable has rolled out a phone service for small and medium-size businesses in Central Ohio.

Time Warner introduced its Business Class phone service in the Columbus area Sept. 21.

A Time Warner analysis estimated there is a $40 billion market for business phone service in the company's eight-state service area, $9 billion of which is made up of small and mid-size companies, according to Ted Stine, Time Warner VP.

Time Warner first is targeting its existing business customers in the region who already subscribe to the company's Internet and cable video services. Companies that sign up for phone service will then get a discount on all their services. Once it has saturated that segment, Time Warner obviously will start cold calling prospects who have not existing business relationship with the company.

The biggest share shift should occur in the small business segment (four and five access lines, especially), though most observers would define the segment as "four to eight lines."

Internet Phobia?

BT wants to find out why some people, even living in homes with broadband connections, resist using the Internet. About 39 percent of U.K. households do not have Web access. Fear of technology might be one reason, BT theorizes.

To acquaint them with online life, four subjects have been given a broadband link, a laptop, webcam and a digital camera. A two-month training plan has also been developed that will introduce them to what they can do on the Internet.

Writ large, that's one way to deal with any lingering short term "digital divide." Long term, I don't think there's a problem. There used to be a joke several decades ago in the U.S. cable TV industry about "resisters." Basically, the punch line is that the "resisters" are dying. There was a clear shift in the character of demand for television that now has fully established itself, as tough as it might have been to get the new behavior established in the first place.

The same thing is going to happen with broadband. Demand simply is shifting. All of which suggests BT ultimately will move beyond its fiber-to-cabinet; copper drop strategy and move ahead with a full fiber-to-customer upgrade. Like any other tier one service provider it is going to hold out for the most favorable deal it can get from regulators. But there's not much doubt about the long term outcome.

Bandwidth consumption is going to outstrip anything all the wireless networks together can provide, which makes the fiber connections an essential part of the future bandwidth story.

U.S. cable operators used to "diss" switched digital video" as well. Now they're starting to embrace it. They still say in public that fiber-to-home networks are way too expensive, and are unnecessary, from a cable standpoint. That's not necessarily what executives think privately, though.

Nor is it the case that resisters stay that way forever. Those of you with grandparents, who are grandparents or who have pre-baby boomer relatives know that mobile phones, PCs, cable and Internet connections frequently are used daily by people who might be prime "resisters." And the people who move them into the "connected" camp are friends, children and grandchildren. So BT might consider a "friends and family" program that enlists other family members in providing training and support for resisters. That's the way it works anyway.

ISP Subscriber Growth Favors Tier One Providers

Not that anybody should be surprised by the latest ISP subscriber figures, but large tier one telco and cable providers are racking up more market share while independent mass market providers are losing share. The one countervailing trend is that providers focused on the small and mid-sized business, such as Covad, continue to grow.

For those of you familiar with the SME space, it is, always has been and always will be a fertile segment for independent providers of all sorts. The latest ISP figures only confirm that observation, again.

SunRocket, Vonage Not the Whole Story

As much as people think VoIP providers (other than cable) have got traction problems in the U.S. market, that is far from the case elsewhere. In western Europe, for example, independent VoIP providers are not only the market share leaders, but their share of market might actually be increasing, even though major incumbent telcos are actively in the market as well.

And where U.S. cable providers including Comcast, Cox, Time Warner and Cablevision are the new driving force for VoIP-driven POTS replacement, that is hardly the case in western Europe, where cable operators still have relatively slight market share.

Still, there is no denying the traction problem. According to analysts at TeleGeography, VoIP growth already has hit a plateau in the U.S. market. In western Europe growth rates not only have accelerated but might not hit a peak until 2008, says TeleGeography.

Hence the interest in VoIP 2.0, the integration of voice services with Web and enterprise applications, portals, email, documents, gaming and other end user experiences.