Juan Mortyme
21-04-2005, 08:47 PM
Tension growns as telecoms take up internet TV
Source:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Technology/Tension-grows-as-telecoms-take-up-internet-TV/2005/04/20/1113854261309.html
April 21, 2005
by Paul McIntyre.
This new medium is causing traditional tellyland much stress, writes Paul
McIntyre.
As Telstra Media boss Gerry Sutton trooped through Hollywood earlier this
year chasing content deals for Telstra's internet TV project, the folks at
Foxtel were quietly seething.
Officially, there's a lot of love flowing between Telstra and its 50 per
cent-owned pay TV operator but behind the video montage lies a different
plot.
Telstra, like a growing list of telecommunications players, is preparing for
a triple play - telephony, internet and video services. And interestingly,
Telstra's old Hong Kong telecom joint-venture partner, PCCW, has finally
cracked broadband-delivered TV in a big way - in its first 12 months PCCW
took 35 per cent of the Hong Kong pay TV market with a content offer very
similar to that of Foxtel.
Internet protocol TV (IP TV) is being aggressively rolled out by telecoms in
the US and Europe and Telstra's service could be launched before the end of
next year. One of the key obstacles is sourcing the content and its cost.
Telstra won't talk about its internet TV project but it's not the only
Australian telecom chasing the concept. Primus Telecommunications last week
unveiled its plans to roll out its own $100 million broadband network,
reaching 50 per cent of the population. It, too, is pursuing
internet-delivered video content.
Interestingly, Primus is pursuing discussions with free-to-air TV networks
about carrying traditional broadcast content on its service, although the
specifics are well under wraps.
"They are cautiously looking at it and are interested," says Campbell
Sallabank, general manager for strategy, products and development at Primus.
"It opens up a whole raft of possibilities which you can do with your
broadcast signal.
"You can have interactivity on your TV. You could watch something like Who
Wants To Be A Millionaire while playing the game online at the same time. It
has potential for a creative thinking TV network and, if they're smart about
it, it should open up more revenues without cannibalisation."
Convincing existing content producers to embrace new distribution channels
has been one of the biggest challenges for Hutchison 3, although it is now
making headway.
Its customers in the past 12 months have downloaded more than a million
music tracks, music videos and ring tones at between $3 and $5 a pop.
"Trying to convince these players we weren't competitors has been a
challenge," says 3 Mobile's head of content, Amanda Hutton. "We're not
talking about taking broadcast TV and chucking it on your handset or taking
the internet and putting it on your handset. It's used in a different
context."
The former head of programming at US TV network ABC, Lloyd Braun, who now
works for Yahoo, said as much in February at the iMedia Brand Summit:
"There's going to be a big place for video streaming but I don't believe
ultimately that the future of internet content is by doing on the PC or on
mobile devices what you can already get on your living room TV."
But try telling that to the rapidly growing number of people using internet
peer-to-peer (P2P) networks to download TV shows and Hollywood films.
Although most of the activity is probably illegal, in strikingly similar
fashion to music file sharing, video files are booming on the internet. More
than 20 million people have so far downloaded one of the fastest movie and
TV show file-sharing applications, called BitTorrent, which accounts for
more than a third of all data sent across the internet, according to British
internet traffic analysts CacheLogic.
"There's no doubt the movie and TV industries are in big trouble with this,"
says one major music label executive who did not want to be named. "They've
got a huge problem. Kids can now get the movies before they are even
released. They need to make sure their content is available as soon as it
comes out. What the music industry did was sit back and say, 'no, you can't
have our content'. All we did was create a void in the market which was
filled by P2P."
And in case you figure Australia is a bit part player for the global
BitTorrent tribe, a recent report from research firm Envisional says
Australians rank second in the world as the worst offenders for online TV
piracy, accounting for about 15 per cent of total activity.
It's these sorts of changes to content distribution that has TV networks and
content producers in deep contemplation. The head of research and planning
for CBS in the US, David Poltrack, told Wired magazine in January that TV
broadcasters had 10 years to work out a new model for delivering traditional
broadcast content "on demand" rather than when the networks decide.
"The scary future with that," says OgilvyOne's Asia-Pacific boss, Kent
Wertime, "is that virtually everything could be bought and sold as content
only. The whole model as we know it, is you get to watch broadcast TV for
free because of the pods of commercials. When you buy a TV program, you
might pay 50 per cent less to watch five commercials. Some people will do
that, some won't, but clearly we are moving to no schedule programming,
meaning on demand. When you have on demand, content is absolutely king."
Source:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Technology/Tension-grows-as-telecoms-take-up-internet-TV/2005/04/20/1113854261309.html
April 21, 2005
by Paul McIntyre.
This new medium is causing traditional tellyland much stress, writes Paul
McIntyre.
As Telstra Media boss Gerry Sutton trooped through Hollywood earlier this
year chasing content deals for Telstra's internet TV project, the folks at
Foxtel were quietly seething.
Officially, there's a lot of love flowing between Telstra and its 50 per
cent-owned pay TV operator but behind the video montage lies a different
plot.
Telstra, like a growing list of telecommunications players, is preparing for
a triple play - telephony, internet and video services. And interestingly,
Telstra's old Hong Kong telecom joint-venture partner, PCCW, has finally
cracked broadband-delivered TV in a big way - in its first 12 months PCCW
took 35 per cent of the Hong Kong pay TV market with a content offer very
similar to that of Foxtel.
Internet protocol TV (IP TV) is being aggressively rolled out by telecoms in
the US and Europe and Telstra's service could be launched before the end of
next year. One of the key obstacles is sourcing the content and its cost.
Telstra won't talk about its internet TV project but it's not the only
Australian telecom chasing the concept. Primus Telecommunications last week
unveiled its plans to roll out its own $100 million broadband network,
reaching 50 per cent of the population. It, too, is pursuing
internet-delivered video content.
Interestingly, Primus is pursuing discussions with free-to-air TV networks
about carrying traditional broadcast content on its service, although the
specifics are well under wraps.
"They are cautiously looking at it and are interested," says Campbell
Sallabank, general manager for strategy, products and development at Primus.
"It opens up a whole raft of possibilities which you can do with your
broadcast signal.
"You can have interactivity on your TV. You could watch something like Who
Wants To Be A Millionaire while playing the game online at the same time. It
has potential for a creative thinking TV network and, if they're smart about
it, it should open up more revenues without cannibalisation."
Convincing existing content producers to embrace new distribution channels
has been one of the biggest challenges for Hutchison 3, although it is now
making headway.
Its customers in the past 12 months have downloaded more than a million
music tracks, music videos and ring tones at between $3 and $5 a pop.
"Trying to convince these players we weren't competitors has been a
challenge," says 3 Mobile's head of content, Amanda Hutton. "We're not
talking about taking broadcast TV and chucking it on your handset or taking
the internet and putting it on your handset. It's used in a different
context."
The former head of programming at US TV network ABC, Lloyd Braun, who now
works for Yahoo, said as much in February at the iMedia Brand Summit:
"There's going to be a big place for video streaming but I don't believe
ultimately that the future of internet content is by doing on the PC or on
mobile devices what you can already get on your living room TV."
But try telling that to the rapidly growing number of people using internet
peer-to-peer (P2P) networks to download TV shows and Hollywood films.
Although most of the activity is probably illegal, in strikingly similar
fashion to music file sharing, video files are booming on the internet. More
than 20 million people have so far downloaded one of the fastest movie and
TV show file-sharing applications, called BitTorrent, which accounts for
more than a third of all data sent across the internet, according to British
internet traffic analysts CacheLogic.
"There's no doubt the movie and TV industries are in big trouble with this,"
says one major music label executive who did not want to be named. "They've
got a huge problem. Kids can now get the movies before they are even
released. They need to make sure their content is available as soon as it
comes out. What the music industry did was sit back and say, 'no, you can't
have our content'. All we did was create a void in the market which was
filled by P2P."
And in case you figure Australia is a bit part player for the global
BitTorrent tribe, a recent report from research firm Envisional says
Australians rank second in the world as the worst offenders for online TV
piracy, accounting for about 15 per cent of total activity.
It's these sorts of changes to content distribution that has TV networks and
content producers in deep contemplation. The head of research and planning
for CBS in the US, David Poltrack, told Wired magazine in January that TV
broadcasters had 10 years to work out a new model for delivering traditional
broadcast content "on demand" rather than when the networks decide.
"The scary future with that," says OgilvyOne's Asia-Pacific boss, Kent
Wertime, "is that virtually everything could be bought and sold as content
only. The whole model as we know it, is you get to watch broadcast TV for
free because of the pods of commercials. When you buy a TV program, you
might pay 50 per cent less to watch five commercials. Some people will do
that, some won't, but clearly we are moving to no schedule programming,
meaning on demand. When you have on demand, content is absolutely king."