Creating a "Cable TV" Style Bundle for Print

The Content Project, slate to launch in the first quarter of 2011, is going to try and create a "pay once, get multiple sources" approach to print content bundles.

Developed by WPP, the world’s largest advertising firm, TCP hopes to create a sort of cable TV style bundle of content that a user pays for on a recurring basis, as a subscription, just like they pay for a cable bundle, and watch what they want.

Rather than doling out $10 a month to the Wall Street Journal, as an example, users will be able to pay a single fee to TCP to gain access to a network of sites. Revenue will be shared among this network depending on usage.

“Our ambition is to create a network whereby we have a number of publishers agreeing to a common platform, so we could roll this out on a broader scale,” says general manager David Restrepo. “From a consumer perspective, you won’t need dozens of accounts at different places.

In principle, it has a chance of working. In its early days, cable TV service was a true "access" service, allowing people to watch TV who otherwise would not have been able to view it. But most of cable TV's success came when it became an "add choice" value proposition, bringing consumers channels and programming they could not see on the broadcast channels.

That same model should make sense in the online print content space as well, to the extent it succeeds in presenting a "more choice" value proposition.

The analogy in the music business is the trend to buy songs rather than collections of songs known as CDs or albums. The TCP model implies that many users want to read "stories," not magazines or newspapers.

the Content Project

Sprint Embraces Femtocells

Sprint Nextel Corp. plans to give some of its mobile customers femtocells, reportedly at no cost, as a retention device in areas where Sprint signal strength is weak.

“In certain situations, where you have really bad coverage in your home, we will give it to you as a retention tool,” Paget Alves, Sprint business markets group president, said.

Up to this point many mobile operators have been hesitant to embrace femtocell technology too broadly, as that would imply their macrocell networks are, by definition, inadequate.

But there are many circumstances under which the cost of upgrading the macrocellular network does not make economic sense, and that is where femtocells could be very helpful.

The other angle is that Sprint's plan explicitly acknowledges that it is using femtocells as a part of its infrastructure, and not a "subscriber amenity."

Sprint Cell-Tower Giveaway May Put Pressure on AT&T, Verizon

Sprint, Grid Net Deal Aims at Meter Market

Sprint and Grid Net are collaborating to allow wireless smart meters and smart grid routers to connect using the Clearwire 4G network.

Grid Net currently has customers using WiMax in the Australian market.

Sprint Inks Grid Net Deal -- Seeking Alpha:

Google Has No Interest in Creating a Facebook Competitor

Google CEO Eric Schmidt says Google will add social networking features to its existing sites, rather than create a new application positioned more directly against Facebook.

"We're trying to take Google's core products and add a social component," Schmidt said.

Google sites to add social networking in layers

Twitter Redesign is Designed to Boost Consumption

As the Apple iPad is designed for content consumption rather than creation, so Twitter's redesign of its homepage is designed to make it easier for mainstream people to consume content on Twitter.

"You don't have to tweet" to take advantage of Twitter, said Twitter co-founder Evan Williams. As other sites have found, most users consume, but do not create content, and adding content richness creates more incentive for non-creators to use the sites.

Twitter Aims to Duplicate YouTube's Success

Mobile Securities Trading in India

The Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has approved trading of securities using mobile phones.

The facility will enable any registered broker or a client to trade, place orders and view positions from anywhere in the country through their mobile phones. All trading facilities accessible in Internet trading will be available in mobile trading and Investors will be able to see real time changes in share prices and market data of multiple companies on their mobile screen.

Mobile Trading: The Upside for Telecoms and the Indian Market

13% of Multichannel Video Subs Might Cancel in Next 12 Months, Survey Finds

Some 13 percent of current multichannel video subscribers in the United States say they are "somewhat" or "very" likely to cancel their current subscription in the next twelve months, and not sign up with a competing provider, according to a survey of 2,000 US households recently conducted by Strategy Analytics.

“While it may represent only a relatively small percentage today, we anticipate the number of cord cutters to increase going forward,” says Ben Piper, Strategy Analytics director.

Younger Americans consume and value content in a way far different from their parents’ generation, and have little regard for how content is delivered, says Piper. That is undoubtedly true. What still remains unknown is the degree to which consumers will do what they say they will (often they do not).

The other unknown is the extent to which service providers will adapt by offering on-demand access to desired content, shoring up demand for the traditional product by requiring a traditional subscription in order to access the on-demand content.

The other angle is the extent to which younger users, who have grown up in households where somebody else pays the bill, and who initially do not subscribe (to save money) when founding their own households, might change their views as they progress in their careers and find "saving money" by not subscribing is not the big consideration it once was.

So far, online and mobile video seems to be supplemental, not a replacement for multichannel video services, for nearly everyone. The verifiable percentage of users who have had service and stopped using it seems to be somewhere less than three percent of households.

The percentage of all households that buy broadband access but not video service is in the three percent range or so, Nielsen says, for example. The issue there is that not every household that doesn't buy video service is a "cord cutter." Some newly-formed or temporary households do not buy video entertainment services, but are not, strictly speaking, "cord cutters."

They might never have bought multichannel video service before, but that is not always an indication they do not want the product, or will not buy it in the future. Also, there have always been some households that do not buy such services because they do not see the value, and three percent of households would not be at all unusual on that score.

The point is that actual levels of "video cord cutting" are rather insignificant at the moment, and barely different from "non-subscribing" video households overall.

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