Apr 09
18
The Real Value Of Time-Shifted Content
Or Foxtel Continues Ignoring the Facts
A few weeks ago I pointed out that P2P pushback was no doubt
partially caused by an over-abundance of adverts in Australian cable TV,
To illustrate my hypothesis, I analysed a popular show – “Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles” series currently running on
Foxtel.
In the first episode I analyzed, the program had 22 adverts.
The second had 21 and this weeks episode had 23.
So I thought I would break it down so that even network
executives, the public and possibly even judges awarding damages in law suits about
copying movies could understand how ridiculous some of these damages awards
have been in recent content infringement cases – where the content is purely
for personal consumption and not for resale at a market stall.
The Episode I am analyzing hereunder was aired on Foxtel
Channel 108 at 8:30 pm 17th Apr 2009
Series 2, Episode 6. “The Tower is Tall, but the fall is
short”.
The program had 23 adverts including community service
advertisements.
There were three groups of multiple adverts with the addition of a lone straggler, the Nissan
advertisement at minute 19, which was obviously the premium advert of the
program preceded by the voice-over leader “Don’t go away, your show will be back in
thirty seconds.”
Advertising Table for the Terminator.
|
At minute 8 |
5 Adverts |
3 |
Minutes |
|
At minute 19 |
1 Advert |
0.5 |
Minutes |
|
At minute 28 |
9 Adverts |
5 |
Minutes |
|
At minute 38 |
8 adverts |
6 |
Minutes |
|
Advertising Total |
-15 |
Minutes |
|
|
Program finish at |
57 |
|
|
|
Actual Program |
42.5 |
Minutes |
|
Armed with this information, we can now review the actual valuation
of the shows actual content based on a monthly subscription to Foxtel.
The left hand column assumes a subscription without the IQ
PVR (A TIVO wannabe) and the right column, with.
|
|
Without Foxtel IQ |
With Foxtel IQ |
|
Programming hours |
720 |
720 |
|
Number of Tuners* |
1 |
2 |
|
Foxtel |
$ |
$53.00 |
|
Value per hour |
$ |
$ |
|
Value Per Minute |
$ |
$ |
|
Value of Program |
$ |
$ |
*Means that you can record two programs at once – doubling
the programming hours capable of being time shifted to 1440 hours.
We can see that the content value is either three or four cents.
In 1984, the US judicial system ruled in the Sony
Betamax case that time shifting for personal use is not illegal. Foxtel is using that judgement to distribute PVR's to its consumers.
There has not yet been a test case on Foxtel stealing time
from the subscribers via their advertising – which has meant increased
revenues and extraordinary profits to Foxtel, and has apparently not resulted in a drop in viewer subscriptions.
In the instance of this episode, Foxtel stole $1.50
cents of my leisure minutes from me – without my permission.
I have a number of choices. I could invoice them for my time,
but unfortunately, the proven cost of issuing an invoice is around $25.00 – leaving me with a net negative balance of $23.50 for every hour of Foxtel content that I am forced to do this with.
I could start keeping “book” on their advertising, but that
would require an administrative overhead equal to approximately 5 minutes per
hour of television that I analyzed and entered in the advertising record book.
Assuming that I could be bothered to do all of that, (and my
anger at Foxtel’s abuse of the original contract* between me and them is
getting close to taking me to that extreme); then I am sure that Foxtel who
could not afford to lose a precedent making case of this proportion would throw
everything and the kitchen sink at my legal team on the basis that sooner or
later they would bankrupt my prosecution.
* The original contract with Foxtel did not allow for
commercial advertising. In fact originally Foxtel marketing was exclusively based
on the promise that it did not have any advertising included, which naturally
lead to the premise that the reason for taking a Foxtel Subscription was that
more of your time could be spent watching “quality” content” than if you watched the Free to
Air Channels.
Fifty percent of Foxtel is owned by Telstra. Somewhere in the bowels of Telstra, there is a man in a room
full of legal books saying…. Yes, that “used” to be our advertising program but not presently. Then he will no doubt hasve a discussion with his point man at Mallesons who might say something like…..But is this the same Tom
Koltai that thrashed us three times in Federal court over
Telstra billing issues?
Ummm. Yes it is.
Which leads me to the Tom Koltai non prosecutorial resolution equalisation method.
Therefore, on the basis that
(A) Foxtel
have not offered a discount for “stealing” 15 minutes of my life for every 57
minutes of their programming (which 15 minutes constitutes revenue generating advertising),
and;
(B) Said
advertising is in direct contradiction to the my original agreement for the
subscription purchase of the Foxtel cable service (i.e.: no advertisements),and;
(C) It
is unreasonable of Foxtel to require me to remove the adverts they have
inserted illegally which reduces considerably my Hedonic value of the Foxtel experience,
which;
(D) Could
be ameliated by the analogue time shifting and videoredo extinction of the
advertising content, at an approximate time cost to me of 10 minutes of my
time.
I now proffer a thesis that as long as viewers are paying a
subscription service for the content, there is very little difference between:
Time shifting Method A
Recording it onto an IQ box, outputting it to an external
device via various methods – but lets say – analogue + TV-Capture card and
cleaning out the adverts via VideoRedo and then watching the resulting content.
Or
Time shifting Method B
Clicking here to download a clean version of next weeks
program.
Terminator
The Sarah Connor Chronicles – 2×07 – Brothers Of Nablus.avi (Providing you
are connected via an ED2K service).
N.B.: This option is not recommended for Foxtel Movie Channels as movies are licensed under a different schema for Free to Air Broadcast providers. (But that is a whole blog of its own.)
Downloading non Foxtel advertising supported content, does not carry with it the same potential legal (civil damage counter-suite) justifications.
Happy downloading Aussies. May your Hedonic Economic
enjoyment of Terminator be forever at its highest possible level.
Eventually, with everyone downloading the program, and no-one watching cable – the ratings will convince the advertising agencies that Foxtel is a losing proposition and they will focus their attention elsewhere, and Foxtel will hopefully return to its subscription based revenue model, with only a few community based advertisements and hopefully interesting info-mercials.
Sorry Nissan – but call me – perhaps we can discuss where
you should advertise.
Prior References
I blogged about the value of personal time here
And supplied a spreadsheet so users could calculate their
own leisure time here http://www.kovtr.com/leisuretime/ValueofLeisureTime.xls
And blogged about Foxtel previously here…
Interactive
TV Ratings – Internet –v- Foxtel
Foxtel in their subscriber drive – however, Foxtel guys,
whilst I am impressed with your
Is P2P
Partly a Pushback Against Advertising on Cable TV ?
Foxtel proudly advertise that their movies don’t have any
adverts. And ? My $100.00 a month
Fake EPG
Entries or is Foxtel dummying its Play lists ?
Foxtel Electronic Program Guide listed the Movie One
Timeslot on Monday night (5 th of Jan), as featuring
Foxtel, and on SkyB they have Player stats for sports
events. But somehow, the broadcast