@ VOD Summit: Subtractive Mentality

(by Dorian Benkoil) Call me nuts, but I think the new media paradigm is additive. Consumption begets more consumption. Rather than ownership, there’s distribution. Rather than control and limits, there’s choice and expansion.

Which is why I was very curious about the NFL Network‘s strategy, as stated by Brian Rolapp, director-finance and strategy, of making partners turn off the NFL’s on-demand products during live broadcasts of games. He said it was to protect ESPN and NBC’s investment (ESPN alone spent a reported $1.2 billion for the right to broadcast games live next season) and make sure viewers went to the live games rather than skip them to consume on-demand football programming. But will football fans really stop watching an exciting live game to click into some pre-packaged NFL on-demand stuff? Or mightn’t the two products feed each other and create more demand for each?

Plus, if the game is a boring blowout, wouldn’t you rather, as the NFL, have someone click over to more NFL programming on demand than, say, MTV or Spike TV? Not to mention the “logistical nightmare” Rolapp acknowledged it takes to institute the on-demand blackout during games. They have to block the on-demand products server by server, “head-end by head-end,” as he put it.

The Kagan VOD Summit coverage is sponsored by Maven Networks’ IP VOD Delivery Platform

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