But few could have imagined that it might also revive some of the creakiest movies and series ever committed to celluloid, including The Lone Ranger, McHale's Navy and The Addams Family.
Vintage reruns and other inexpensive shows are in vogue, though, as stations and programmers rush into a potentially important new business: multicast networks.
Executives at services such as MGM's This TV, Retro Television Network (RTN), VTV: The Variety Channel, .2 Network, NBC's Universal Sports and the Local AccuWeather Channel say that they can change the TV habits of millions of viewers — especially after Feb. 17, the federal deadline for stations to stop broadcasting analog signals and just offer digital.
"We're betting that it's a huge opportunity," says Howard Bolter, president of LATV, a bilingual entertainment service that targets young Latino viewers.
Multicast services piggyback on digital signals from local stations, including those offering HDTV versions of ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and PBS. Most stations also have room in the airwave spectrum the government has allocated to transmit two standard-definition channels. That could mean up to a dozen stations for a moderate-size market.'We're hitting the mother lode'
That means someone in, say, Savannah, Ga., who receives over-the-air digital signals and wants to watch Bachelor Father on RTN would punch 3.2 into the remote: That indicates it's subchannel Multicast services piggyback on digital signals from local stations, including those offering HDTV versions of ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and PBS. Most stations also have room in the airwave spectrum the government has allocated to transmit two standard-definition channels. That could mean up to a dozen stations for a moderate-size market.
'We're hitting the mother lode'
That means someone in, say, Savannah, Ga., who receives over-the-air digital signals and wants to watch Bachelor Father on RTN would punch 3.2 into the remote: That indicates it's subchannel 2 of channel 3. Cable and satellite services assign distinct channel numbers to multicast services.
Programmers say that their ventures will appeal to people who already feel overrun with TV options. "We're hitting the mother lode," says RTN Executive Vice President Mark Dvornik. "A lot of cable networks have drifted to first-run and reality shows. But there's an audience that wants classic shows."
Most should reach everyone in a community — not just cable and satellite subscribers. And local broadcasters have a strong incentive to promote them on their popular newscasts as well as syndicated and major network shows.
Stations typically get the multicast programming for free and sell five minutes an hour of ad time. The networks sell an additional five minutes to national advertisers.
Multicast network programmers say that they could have a big advantage over national cable channels if stations add their own shows to the mix.
"The future of digital multicast channels is to stay local," says Ken Reiner, vice president of programming for Newport Television, the backer of VTV, whose fare includes home and garden shows as well as chestnuts such as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and I Married Joan.
"Many stations with major network agreements have limitations on their ability to present local programming," Reiner says. The multicast "channels can become a social network in a community."
Weather could be a big draw
NBC and AccuWeather are counting on local weather to be a big draw. "The challenge stations have is to find content that will attract viewers, and one of the most obvious places to look is at content that's worked on their flagship stations," says Lee Rainey, vice president of marketing at AccuWeather.
Because multicast channels use the public airwaves, they must comply with Federal Communications Commission rules for broadcasters, including the requirements to offer closed captioning, kid-friendly shows and community service.
And because the networks will have few viewers initially, it may take awhile before ad sales cover even their low programming costs. That may force stations to reach out to small businesses, such as waterbed stores or kung fu trainers.
"We've out-priced those people," says MGM's John Bryan, who's overseeing This TV — a service that will feature the studio's 4,100 films and 10,000 hours of TV shows. "If you think about the (ad) inventory that can get moved that way, stations could see an 8% to 10% bump to their bottom line."
That's a key argument for programmers: Station owners also are weighing opportunities to use their extra airwave capacity for business data or to broadcast TV shows to cellphones.
Multicast network executives say that they aren't worried. Stations could have room for several additional channels and services as engineers find new ways to compress digital bits.
"It's a long-range business," Bolter says. "These channels require a financial and an emotional commitment. And people need to get those (digital) TVs. When they do, they'll be surprised at how much is out there already."
Channel 2 of channel 3. Cable and satellite services assign distinct channel numbers to multicast services.
Programmers say that their ventures will appeal to people who already feel overrun with TV options. "We're hitting the mother lode," says RTN Executive Vice President Mark Dvornik. "A lot of cable networks have drifted to first-run and reality shows. But there's an audience that wants classic shows."
Most should reach everyone in a community — not just cable and satellite subscribers. And local broadcasters have a strong incentive to promote them on their popular newscasts as well as syndicated and major network shows.
Stations typically get the multicast programming for free and sell five minutes an hour of ad time. The networks sell an additional five minutes to national advertisers.
Multicast network programmers say that they could have a big advantage over national cable channels if stations add their own shows to the mix.
"The future of digital multicast channels is to stay local," says Ken Reiner, vice president of programming for Newport Television, the backer of VTV, whose fare includes home and garden shows as well as chestnuts such as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and I Married Joan.
"Many stations with major network agreements have limitations on their ability to present local programming," Reiner says. The multicast "channels can become a social network in a community."
Weather could be a big draw
NBC and AccuWeather are counting on local weather to be a big draw. "The challenge stations have is to find content that will attract viewers, and one of the most obvious places to look is at content that's worked on their flagship stations," says Lee Rainey, vice president of marketing at AccuWeather.
Because multicast channels use the public airwaves, they must comply with Federal Communications Commission rules for broadcasters, including the requirements to offer closed captioning, kid-friendly shows and community service.
And because the networks will have few viewers initially, it may take awhile before ad sales cover even their low programming costs. That may force stations to reach out to small businesses, such as waterbed stores or kung fu trainers.
"We've out-priced those people," says MGM's John Bryan, who's overseeing This TV — a service that will feature the studio's 4,100 films and 10,000 hours of TV shows. "If you think about the (ad) inventory that can get moved that way, stations could see an 8% to 10% bump to their bottom line."
That's a key argument for programmers: Station owners also are weighing opportunities to use their extra airwave capacity for business data or to broadcast TV shows to cellphones.
Multicast network executives say that they aren't worried. Stations could have room for several additional channels and services as engineers find new ways to compress digital bits.
"It's a long-range business," Bolter says. "These channels require a financial and an emotional commitment. And people need to get those (digital) TVs. When they do, they'll be surprised at how much is out there already."
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Excerpts from an article By Gregory M. Lamb | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor / August 13, 2008 editionIncreasingly, Americans are watching video when they want to, and on the screen that suits them at the time. And more programming is from new sources that threaten to unlock Hollywood’s domination of content. Video is now delivered on displays and devices of every shape and size, from gigantic theater screens and ever-larger home projector screens, to flat-screen HDTVs, to desktop and laptop computer monitors, to tiny personal screens such as those found on iPods and mobile phones.
This spring and summer, deals to make video more ubiquitous across screens have popped up with more and more frequency:
• Netflix, the video rent-by-mail company, has struck several new agreements to deliver its content online. A new $100 box from Roku the size of a paperback book lets users stream any of about 10,000 movies from Netflix to their TVs (though the vast majority of Netflix’s library will still be available only through DVDs by mail). South Korea’s LG Electronics announced it will offer a high-definition (HD) disc player that also will be able to access HD-quality movies from Netflix via the Internet. And Microsoft will stream Netflix video to its Xbox 360 videogame consoles.
• Sony said it will offer a movie and TV show download option for its Playstation videogame console.
• Apple Corporation, which sells millions of videos online through its iTunes store, relaunched its Apple TV player, which can send that content to a TV set.
• Amazon, the online retailer, is offering Amazon Video on Demand, which will give users immediate streaming access to 40,000 movies and TV shows. This video is now available only on a computer.
• At least a half-dozen TV manufacturers, including Sony, Hewlett-Packard, and Samsung, have announced they will sell sets that are continuously connected to a broadband Internet network, allowing Web content, including video, to move easily to the biggest screen in the house.
• TiVo, the digital video recorder, will supply video from YouTube, the online video site famous for short, often amateur videos.
• In March, hulu.com went public. The website streams online free, high-quality video including a growing selection of TV shows and movies.
While these new services get video moving to new screens, none is a complete solution on its own, says the Wharton School’s Mr. Whitehouse. “There are a lot of different companies supporting different file formats,” he says. What you don’t have is the one device that can “get content from all the major services like hulu and Netflix and iTunes.”
There’s a kind of convergence between TV and Internet that’s happening, “but not really a friendly one [for consumers], I think,” says Bobby Tulsiani, an analyst who tracks developments in internet video for JupiterResearch.
TV networks, he says, have a time-tested model for making money through advertising and the fees cable TV companies pay to carry their programming. Online distribution presents potential new revenue sources, but also the danger that viewers will slide online, where profits are more uncertain.
YouTube has popularized video viewing online. But the conventional wisdom has been that people won’t watch anything longer than two or three minutes on a computer screen. That assumption has been proved wrong with the huge popularity of TV series online. “We’ve moved from TV on this biggest screen to TV on this middle screen,” the computer, says Mr. Tulsiani, which he calls “a critical change.” “That’s the fastest-growing segment of who’s watching TV content,” he says.
Nearly 80 million Americans (43 percent of those who go online) have watched a TV show on the Internet, according to a February survey by Solutions Research Group in Toronto. Just a year ago, the figure was 25 percent. Total video viewing will rise from about six hours a day today to a projected eight hours daily by 2013, Solutions forecasts, and fewer than four hours of that will be spent watching conventional TV.
The Internet is producing more and more polished original content. This summer Joss Whedon, creator of the critically acclaimed TV shows “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Angel,” and “Firefly,” produced “Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” (drhorrible.com), an Internet-only “TV series” that’s become an online viewing phenomenon. It’s also the kind of Internet video that viewers may wish they could easily shift to their TVs so they could watch it on their sofas.
But not everyone is convinced that Internet video and TV are about to converge. “It’s the most overrated, overhyped story in the tech world today,” says Phillip Swann, president and publisher of TVpredictions.com. “It’s simply not convenient yet.”
Mr. Swann also disputes the idea that network TV schedules are going out the window as people call up online video whenever they want it. “People like routine, they like to able to know what is going to be on at 8 o’clock,” he says.
Also standing in the way is the need for true HD-quality video to be available over the Web. “They’re a long ways from that,” Swann says.
But Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey, who declared “TV is dead” in a June white paper, says the new “video everywhere” era is just beginning to emerge. He foresees a “cocoon of video experiences that follow [people] from morning until night.” Video shipped to small devices we carry will be displayed on bigger screens that surround us, such on the table at a cafe. Portable devices will “talk with” nearby screens, such as one on the back of the airline seat in front of you, that will display your video.
By 2020, Mr. McQuivey says, video will become a kind of customized “white noise” behind users’ lives, as well as a companion “that will combine personal video, slide shows from your digital camera, music videos, and clips from favorite movies, sitcoms, and sporting events.”
While that may sound far out, just a couple of years ago users were marveling at being able to view tiny, grainy YouTube videos on their computers. Today’s online video quality already rivals that of old-fashioned analog TV. In a very short period of time, “the progress has been pretty striking,” Whitehouse says.
Although computers are rapidly becoming a mainstay of video viewing, the picture for mobile devices is less clear. According to The Nielsen Company, more than one-third of all mobile phone subscribers – some 91 million Americans – own a video-capable phone. And 6 percent of US cellphone subscribers (about 14 million) pay for a video plan.
“The jury is out on mobile, but it seems likely that some experience will emerge there,” Tulsiani says. People said consumers would never watch video on computers, but they do, he says. Now they’re saying they’ll never watch on a mobile phone. “We’ll find out if that’s true or not.”
