“In written questions to Comcast and NBC Universal regarding their
$30 billion proposed marriage, Sen. Franken — who has been one of the
harshest critics of the deal — wants Comcast and NBC Universal to
promise that it will put all its television shows online. He also wants
assurances that shows that the companies put online be made available
to every one and not just people who get their Internet service through
Comcast,” according to the LA Times.
Also in the Times article: “As Franken notes in his questions to the
two companies, “The Internet is the future of the media business.””
Lets start with the first request that all NBC Universal/Comcast
shows should be delivered over the internet.
Someone needs to explain
to Sen. Franken that TV shows delivered over the Internet consume
bandwidth. A lot of bandwidth. There are reasons why YouTube limits
the size of files that users can upload to it. The first is that video
is the ultimate bandwidth pig. The second reason is that bandwidth is
not unlimited or elastic.
The more bandwidth that is consumed, the
more bandwidth that must be added to maintain existing levels of
service. That costs a lot of money. Think that might push up Internet
rates to consumers?
I get that no one really cares if Comcast has to spend money on
capital improvements to add bandwidth to the home. But they should. It’s
pretty damn stupid to push consumption in a direction that will raise
internet rates to receive the same content for which there is already
a phenomenal digital network in place to deliver that content.
Think about it for a minute Senator Franken. Comcast, and every
large TV provider has a digital network in place that can and does
deliver gigabits of TV content perfectly, every second of every day,
to any TV set in any home that is connected to their network. It
works well. What you are asking Sen Franken, is that Comcast
duplicate the delivery of theirs and NBC Universal’s shows on a network,
the Internet, that is not, and has never been designed to handle the
delivery of huge volumes of video and TV shows.
What you are forcing them to do is not only going to impact Comcast,
it’s going to push any Internet provider on which NBC Universal and Comcast
owned shows are delivered to deal with the increased bandwidth needs
your request requires. Increased bandwidth needs to the home means more
money spent on infrastructure needed to support that delivery, which in turn is going to mean higher interest rates and/or caps on Internet bandwidth consumption for consumers.
Did you even think through what would happen if NBC Universal/Comcast
was required to simulcast the Olympics over the internet?
Even if shows are only required to be placed online after the fact
and offered on demand, even if we put aside the cost issues, you then
have to answer a bunch of expensive questions. Which video format?
Flash? Great, except that it won’t work on most mobile devices. Flash
and Mpeg2 or the Google owned On2 format? And should the on-demand TV
shows be streamed or progressive download? Streaming is more
expensive, but progressive download leaves a copy on the destination
device, which is going to create huge issues for copyright owners. Does
this apply to shows that NBC licenses or just the shows it and Comcast
produce and own?
Try explaining the difference to your voters. And
what timing? Do they have to post the shows immediately after they air,
or is it OK to have them post the shows one, two, or three days or weeks after the
show airs? Right now these are questions that the market defines. If
you require delivery online in order to make your constituents happy,
will you try to make all of them happy ?
Let me try rephrasing all of this in a different manner. Google can’t make money delivering video content that costs them NOTHING
over the net for free. What do you think will happen to internet rates
when you require NBC Universal/Comcast to deliver content that costs
millions of dollars per hour for free?
I understand that you just want to make sure that people who are
getting shows online now continue to get them. What you don’t
understand is that the vast majority of shows online are library shows
that weren’t generating much, if any revenue for their producers, so
any advertising revenue they could get by placing the shows online was
found money. Established shows that are currently on
air are either not online or are delayed. Now that producers are
recognizing that the advertising dollars generated by current shows is
of marginal value at best, you will see more and more shows put behind
pay walls available only to subscribers. Try to regulate these market
driven decisions and you will certainly find the law of unintended
consequences biting you in the ass.
But wait! There’s more. The hardest and most expensive part of
delivering all of this content to the home isn’t even what the TV providers have to do. It’s what has to happen in the home. Senator
Franken, did you install your own wireless router in your home? Ever
try to put in a second one to make sure you can get a signal that is
strong enough to carry the video you want to watch into the other rooms?
Ever experience a slowdown in that wireless network at your place ?
Ever get annoyed that video you were watching buffered and you couldnt
figure out why ? Ever try connecting them to your TV? Who is going to
solve these issues for people who think its their right to watch their
TV over the Internet ? Who is going to pay for it ?
Finally, lets get to your statement “The Internet is the future of the media business.” Dead Wrong. Not even close.
Let me explain to you the future of the internet. We all are
becoming more and more dependent on our handheld devices which are
becoming more and more powerful and an expanding part of our daily
lives. For many, the mobile device never leaves their side.
This
increasing dependence on mobile is slowly but surely weening us off
our desktops and laptops. As the capabilities of mobile devices and
their apps increase, so will our transition away from traditional
computers. Soon we will rely exclusively on our mobile devices or be
able to tether the mobile device to the screens and keyboards we use at
home. Over the next few years we won’t sit down and fire up the laptop
or desktop. We will place our mobile device next to the screen and
keyboard we have on our desk or pulled out of our briefcase. For those
of us who need always on Internet for family members or business, we
will consider replacing our land internet lines with a 4G access
device that is part of our mobile account. Combined with all the
advances in cloud computing, it should be a simple and very compelling
option.
At that point people will ask why they pay for both fixed internet
and mobile internet . Just as people are dumping land phone lines for
mobile, they will dump fixed internet lines. Not everyone of course.
Not even most. But like phone lines, enough will leave their fixed
internet lines behind to change the economics of the internet. How
does that affect the future of media ? Mobile internet is different
than landline internet. We won’t look to replicate the experience we
got from internet landlines, we will expect new and different
experiences that play to the strengths of the device and delivery
platform. And we will still get our TV the old fashioned way on those
new 60 inch big screens we just upgraded to for $499 dollars. Moores
law applied everywhere.
Let me translate all of this for you Senator Franken. If you get
what you ask for, by the time you are done answering the complaints of
why didn’t you realize that your request would jack up everyone’s
internet bill. put caps on usage and negatively impact the performance
of your constituents home internet, you just might be the former
Senator from Minnesota.
How you view the Comcast/NBC merger is up to you. But before you go
off on an Internet rampage, please get a different side of the
technology story.
(Image source: publicradio.org)
