Television
Flash forward to tonight. When last night turned into tomorrow, Cablevision struck again and purged both WABC and WTNH from my cable dial. In 68 hours or so, when LOST comes on a large number of fanatics are going to be insanely upset at the two corporations who can't agree on how much to charge the individuals who sustain them. Instead the distributor has plugged the plug on the distributed and left us in the lurch.
In Danny DeVito's dark comedy classic The War of the Roses Michael Douglas' character, Oliver Rose, elects to unnecessarily antagonize his wife during their already contentious divorce. Notoriously at a dinner party his wife is hosting, Oliver arrives, inebriated and urinates on the fish that has just been extracted from the broiler. In that scenario Oliver's wife is the aggreived whose preparations have gone for naught thanks to the petulance of her soon to be ex-husband.
Oliver is Cablevision. His wife is Disney. We the viewers are the guests and the shows we pay cablevision to deliver to us are the fish.
Thanks, Cablevision. You suck.
And don't get me wrong, it's hard picking you as the villain when you are going up against the largest vertically integrate media conglomerate on planet earth. But clearly, you are. Scripps didn't have issues anywhere else. Disney, the owner of ABC, and content provider for both WABC and WTNH, clearly has no interest in losing the market for their flagship station in the largest media market in the US. Sure, they could concede, but so could you. All I know is that once again, one of the few reasons I still pay you for service will be denied me. Way to ensure I stay with you when the introductory offer ends in four months.
I have recourse in this instance, though.
I can stick an antenna out the window and get the ABC shows I want to watch.
I can download shows from iTunes.
I can do any number of things to get my programming. This is called disintermediation, and to you this is death.
This fight is one that Cablevision should not want. Niche programming that finds its way into maybe a million households nationwide cannot compare with a major broadcast network. Not just that, but a broadcast network that has whipped its largest fan base into a furor over the final ten episodes of one of its more successful dramas in recent history.
I gotta ask you, Cablevision, do you punks feel lucky?
Cablevision will be disintermediated quickly by its younger customers who are more flexible and willing to change. Underestimating that dynamic is lethal, but more than that it is unnecessarily foolish. Cablevision has rarely been accused of being smart. Their consistent refusal to carry the NFL Network has pushed more young men my age towards FIOS or a dish than anything Verizon or DirecTV has ever done. The decision to put the kibosh on ABC must be considered in the same vein of utterly colossal stupidity.
UPDATE: WTNH is back on the air. Last night when I typed this up, Channel 8 on Cablevision was a black screen, but programming is on now. Perhaps not as colossal a foul up as previously reported, but there still will be plenty of upset Cablevision customers.
no commentsIt occurred to me at this moment that Jack Shephard corresponds to the mystical number 23 on LOST because, "The LORD is my shepherd..." opens the 23rd Psalm.
Now everyone please take a moment to mock the slow-witted LOST geek.
no commentsThey easily could have avoided the problem by pulling back on their ad budget, focusing on understanding what customers actually wanted and adjusting their offerings to fit. Listening to the complaints before attempting to fix the perceived problems seems commonsensical. It's not. Too many firms focus on creating buzz or building message that they don't bother discovering if the message has a chance to be received. And it isn't just pizza that doesn't get delivered.
Take the now failed Jay Leno experiment. NBC - to cut costs - filled their 10pm weeknight slot with an early version of their late night talk shows. The ratings were poor. Affiliates were unhappy. But because production costs were low, the revenue, while reduced, was acceptable to the brain trust making decisions at NBC. It took a near revolt from the affiliates whose evening newscasts were seeing diminished ratings before NBC acknowledged the obvious, few wanted to buy the product they were selling. And while the HuffPo's Dan Abramson is joking a little when tells NBC he can hadle them slapping him in the face, the truth of his argument is undeniable. NBC built their prime time strategy around a product without listening to their audience to determine whether it was wanted. Investing in a product without understanding the market is not only foolish, it's wasteful as well.
Companies that are too big to fail might be able to survive such mistakes by relying on government largess. Domino's knew there was no pizza bailout coming to save them. They evaluated their product offering, listened to what people wanted and retooled their operation. NBC's niche also vanished. With cable and now internet delivery of entertainment more choices in the marketplace demands a greater fealty to what viewers want. NBC failed that simple task.
So too for the better part of the last decade have the Republican party. Despite holding majorities in both house of Congress and the Presidency for most of the last decade, spending grew, government grabbed more power and rather than listen to the constitution and the will of the people, Bush and company rubber stamped measures that infuriated their base and the potential voters who might have supported a policy plan that reflected their views. If the GOP listens to the people in whom power remains vested, they can restore their brand, but if instead they accept bribes from lobbyists to influence policy, they will remain in the minority perpetually. Listening works.
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