Anytime, Anywhere Has Its Limitations

A pair of articles in the Sunday Times biz pages caught my eye en route to Las Vegas for this week’s NATPE Mobile ++ and NATPE conferences. Each invokes the “anytime, anywhere” mantra that seems to be de rigeur these days. (I may try counting the number of utterances this week.)

The first explores the concept of geo-targeted media as though it isn’t already playing a major role in online distribution. For instance, the IOC requires protection of geographic boundaries before rights holders put video online; The idea is to prevent distributors from encroaching on another rightsholder’s territory. Ditto, for Vongo, inaccessible when Rafat tried to access Vongo from India or Danny Sullivan gave it a shot from the UK. Starz only has U.S. distribution rights and has to block anyone from another location. MLBAM had hoped to launch live mobile video of baseball games last year, but was thwarted, in part, by geo-coding issues. They’ll try again this year.

The twist here is the idea that local TV stations could use geo-coding to create an online replica of TV markets. An ABC affiliate might be able to get the benefits of anyone downloading “DH” from within its market — providing it could come to terms with Disney. This could come into play if the cannibalization effect ever shows up from downloads; so far, it appears to be benefiting affiliates.

As for the other, a typically splashy Times trend story, at first I thought the greatest flaw in the look at the digital generation, online communications and media access was the reliance on subjects who are plugged in for a living. It takes 13 paragraphs to mention that the avid downloader and media free spirit in the lead actually is a writer and producer for Current TV. Subject #2 is a senior editor for Gurl.com while Subject #3 works at Linked In. They are supposed to be typical and — they may well be — but it would ring a lot more true if at least one came from another walk of life, say, for instance, the 20-somethings gathered at the same hotel as NATPE this week for a ski/snowboard conference.

But the real stopper was buried even deeper: “The television and film industries, like the recording industry before them, are slowly recognizing that consumers – particularly young ones like Mr. Hanson – want to watch on their own schedules, in a variety of formats, and at a low price. Clearly, if the market doesn’t find ways to make programming simple, inexpensive and legal to download, millennials will continue to find solutions for themselves.”

The industries haven’t been particularly slow in recognizing the interest. Where they have lagged all too often is in execution — some efforts could be outpaced by turtles — and in matching that interest to sustainable business models coupled with smart technology. We’ll hear a lot about bringing those elements together this week.
By the way, making programming simple, inexpensive and discoverable is no guarantee that people like Mr. Hanson will pay for it.

NATPE conference coverage is sponsored by Brightcove.

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