TV networks expand on-demand offerings to fight 'cord-cutting'

[Reality]

I think it really comes down to how much time is spent watching TV for most people, and I don't mean individually, but rather as a consolidated whole for your household. If someone has two or more non-adult kids and at least one parent that stays home most of the time, $200/month might be very justified.

I know that in my case, I have one main TV and that's it. I watch most of the TV shows on 27" computer monitors, that given their proximity to my eyes present a larger view than my TV provides. To put this in perspective, my previous TV, along with my stereo receiver system, bluray player, dvd player, etc. were all taken out by lightning one night. I went 9 months without buying a new TV simply because I didn't miss it. The only reason I ended up buying a new one was because of football season and instead of buying a much larger TV, I bought the same size TV I previously owned.

It basically comes down to usage. Someone who barely uses their phone can get away with a $60 or less phone bill each month. Someone who has a spouse and two kids who live on their phones, will think that a $200-250 phone bill is well worth it.

For me, I enjoy a few TV shows, but I would rather watch them without commercials and when I want to watch them, and most importantly, I want to be able to watch however many episodes in a row in one sitting. The easiest way to do that is to simply purchase seasons after the fact or to use a service like Netflix.

As I pointed out previously, for every three one-hour *cough* episodes you watch on cable, an hour of your time has been wasted, or at least interrupted, by commercials.

 

[TheBigEasy]

I had those cable descramblers for years before they went digital....best money I ever spent......they never caught on and the boxes were never zapped like the urban myth

Heck, I picked me up a new 'hobby' a few years back and it was a 'hobby' that I really enjoyed. Taught myself to write code to these cards that looked a lot like credit cards. Before I knew it, I had people knocking on my door, at all hours, looking for me to open the 'gates of heaven' for them. It was a very gratifying 'hobby' now that I think about it.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Most businesses are running brand-building advertising with no call to action... Thus no way to track the results– which is a method of advertising supported by many advertising agencies because they do not want to be held accountable.

The infomercial and direct marketing based companies are greatly interested in their results... 99% of the other folks that advertise on TV like to "think" their commercials are working but don't have a clue on if they are or not.

I get no call to action, but to say they do not measure the results is not true. Brand building most definitely is about end-result conversion. That is what brand building is about.

 

[MichaelWinicki]

I get no call to action, but to say they do not measure the results is not true. Brand building most definitely is about end-result conversion. That is what brand building is about.

If you can't accurately measure response then no.

I'm sorry but "Well sales are up so our advertising is working" or "Well sales are down so our advertising is not working" is a business fail.

If you're running TV commercials, radio commercials, FB ads, PPC and billboards and sales are down can you say accurately that your TV commercials are not working?

Of course not.

TV stations know this... And that's why their interest in your ads "working" is strictly their mouths opening up and saying the words without any sincere interest on their part– because they know you can't measure and they can't be held accountable.

And actually everyone in the chain is happy about this... The TV stations are happy, because they can't be held accountable. The advertising agencies are happy because they can't be held accountable. And the execs at the big dumb businesses are happy because there's no hard data to disprove their choice of advertising agency, ad creation and media selection.

 

[Nightman]

They weren't zapped.
They just moved the channels lol

Causing you to get a new box!

It never happened to me......I had several black boxes over the years and they all worked and never stopped working.....I even sold a couple when I moved away to friends and they kept working....they descrambled all the pay channels like HBO, all the PPV and even the big fights and big wrestling.....I watched them all for free for years and years....

 

[LittleBoyBlue]

It never happened to me......I had several black boxes over the years and they all worked and never stopped working.....I even sold a couple when I moved away to friends and they kept working....they descrambled all the pay channels like HBO, all the PPV and even the big fights and big wrestling.....I watched them all for free for years and years....

How did you not lose channels when they changed the channel and the box was set for the new channel?

Just curious.

 

[YosemiteSam]

If you can't accurately measure response then no.

I'm sorry but "Well sales are up so our advertising is working" or "Well sales are down so our advertising is not working" is a business fail.

If you're running TV commercials, radio commercials, FB ads, PPC and billboards and sales are down can you say accurately that your TV commercials are not working?

Of course not.

TV stations know this... And that's why their interest in your ads "working" is strictly their mouths opening up and saying the words without any sincere interest on their part– because they know you can't measure and they can't be held accountable.

And actually everyone in the chain is happy about this... The TV stations are happy, because they can't be held accountable. The advertising agencies are happy because they can't be held accountable. And the execs at the big dumb businesses are happy because there's no hard data to disprove their choice of advertising agency, ad creation and media selection.

That's not how it works.

What you are saying is that companies blindly spend money on advertising and that is most certainly not true at all. Metrics are always taken. Always. For companies that do not, well. A fool and his money are soon parted.

 

[MichaelWinicki]

That's not how it works.

What you are saying is that companies blindly spend money on advertising and that is most certainly not true at all. Metrics are always taken. Always. For companies that do not, well. A fool and his money are soon parted.

Yes, many of them do spend blindly on advertising... The bigger the company the worse they are.

They'll advertise based solely on what their competition is doing in the way of advertising (and will assume they know wth they're doing) or they'll spend based on some good industry-wide "rule of thumb" like "We need to spend 3.2% of gross sales on advertising because that's what our industry does."

Metric's mean doo-doo unless you can trace them to one specific media and best yet– one specific ad.

Beyond that data can be manipulated into proving whatever point you're trying to make.

 

[Nightman]

How did you not lose channels when they changed the channel and the box was set for the new channel?

Just curious.

I don't know how it worked.....it just descrambled all the channels, wherever they placed them....this is different then those cards you get for Direct TV.....they would have to get reset from time to time....once things went digital it was pretty much over

 

[LittleBoyBlue]

That's not how it works.

What you are saying is that companies blindly spend money on advertising and that is most certainly not true at all. Metrics are always taken. Always. For companies that do not, well. A fool and his money are soon parted.

Yes, many of them do spend blindly on advertising... The bigger the company the worse they are.

They'll advertise based solely on what their competition is doing in the way of advertising (and will assume they know wth they're doing) or they'll spend based on some good industry-wide "rule of thumb" like "We need to spend 3.2% of gross sales on advertising because that's what our industry does."

Metric's mean doo-doo unless you can trace them to one specific media and best yet– one specific ad.

Beyond that data can be manipulated into proving whatever point you're trying to make.

You guys are both right.

1.) Marketing budgets are set by metrics.
2.) Then what happens is they throw in the "across the board" so called "marketing" and it gets plastered everywhere. i.e. Billboards, ballparks, etc.

 

[LittleBoyBlue]

I don't know how it worked.....it just descrambled all the channels, wherever they placed them....this is different then those cards you get for Direct TV.....they would have to get reset from time to time....once things went digital it was pretty much over

Yeah I get that. Digital changed everything. I know.

But boxes my friend got 3 or 4 times.... The ppv fights would get moved from let's say channel 50 to 77.
77 wasn't unscrambled to begin with because nothing was there before. So when ppv fight was changed to 77. Dead.

 

[Jammer]

I don't know how it worked.....it just descrambled all the channels, wherever they placed them....this is different then those cards you get for Direct TV.....they would have to get reset from time to time....once things went digital it was pretty much over

About 15 years or so ago I used to have a side business programming the access cards for DirectTV. It was great. I was able to get all the programming DirectTV offered. They then started sending ECM signals and each ECM program became more sophisticated. It finally became useless trying to stay ahead. Some of the signals pretty much destroyed the cards. It was great while it lasted.