Today I read an interesting piece from the NY Times, describing the changing landscape of television and advertising. It’s titled “Someone Has to Pay for TV. But Who? And How?”, and I guess that’s what the everybody is trying to figure out.
But what is frustrating is that the ones who should be working to figure it out are not. Instead they are working to figure out how to keep making money the way they are now. Rather than coming up with new business models – such as they did when they lost the battle against the VCR – they are coming up with things like the ability to make your remote incapable of changing the channel on a commercial. The Philips Electronics company has a new patent that allows them to sell you the right to negate this.
So, rather than coming up with something better for the consumer, they decide to hold your TV hostage and make you pay to get it back. Brilliant. Except that if I can’t change channels during the commercials, I’ll do so during your show. Oops, that might be a pickle for you.
Consumers are the ones who paying the price for this type of thinking, and I’m tired of it. I’m really tired of being punished for the lack of innovation on the part of content distributors.
(Hmm … Perhaps I should credit them with changing what we used to call TV, movies and the like into what we now call “content.” It’s fitting; the word content just seems to take all of the fun out of it.)
I’m tired of the fact that these companies don’t want to innovate. They don’t want to give the public what they want. They would rather brand those who want more freedom (the ability to watch what you want, when you want, how you want) as pirates or thieves.
For years the way TV, movies, music, etc. were made and consumed stayed the same. Artists created, large companies funded and distributed. We, the public, consumed. The processes have evolved slightly over the years – higher quality copies were made; the use of smaller and better media, such as CDs and DVDs, replaced older models like cassettes; and every great once in a while something like the VCR would come along and muck up the beloved business models. With every threat to their business model, those who make a living off of the current business model fight against the change hoping to keep making money the only way they know how. They usually lose and then end up making more money than before by properly using the thing that they fought to destroy.
Unfortunately for them, the world keeps on changing. And, with the rise of the Internet, the world is changing faster than ever. The world has become a very small place. Information travels faster than ever imagined and there are new challenges to the established business model everyday rather than every ten years.
This scares the hell out of the top brass of companies and groups such as Time Warner, Sony Music, the RIAA, the MPAA, etc.
But instead of changing to meet the changing world – like everyone else does – they fight. Rather than spending time and effort to come up with new and better business models, they seem to prefer trying to figure out how to sue the Earth to keep it from spinning. The good news is in the end they always lose. The consumer always eventually gets what it want. The bad news for them is often times we get what we want at the expense of what they want.
So all of the content distribution companies out there listen up. You can figure out how to change and ultimately profit for it. Or you can fight against what the public wants and simply delay the inevitable. Eventually you will go down fighting. It’s your choice.
Adam Movies, Music, TV, Technology