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Ariella
12/14/2016 10:05:29 AM
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SlovakTelekom
Very interesting to see whiche trends are virtually universal and which are location specific. It appears everyone appreciates the option of paying just for what they want and not having to shell out substantial sums for programming that has a lot of what they don't want. But I don't think Americans tend to value the very local stuff as much as the people over there. In fact, the only places I ever see really local channels playing are in business places tha keep on ch. 12 because -- as I've been told -- there's no extra charge for that.
Adi
12/15/2016 10:23:27 AM
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Re: SlovakTelekom
@Ariella - I guess it depends on what you define as local, i.e., how local local is. For Slovakia, anything that is Slovakian or even Czech qualifies as local content. I think you are defining local as the local DMA or city, ie., the Chicago NBC station, for example.
If we use Luana's definition, I would say demand in the US is very local -- in that most non-US content doesn't do very well with the mainstream audience. Even UK shows natively produced in English tend to get remade into US versions.
Ariella
12/15/2016 12:21:36 PM
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Re: SlovakTelekom
@Adi yes, that came up on another blog's discussion, too. I think it's more about some people's preference for American accents more than geographic frame of reference. Given that the US is so large, we consider local to be limited not just to a single state -- often bigger than many countries out there -- but to a more specific regional area. The cable channel I had in mind focuses on Long Island. There are NYC centered news stations on TV and radio, though they do also cover world news and often will not cover very localized stories beyond their own area.
mhhf1ve
12/15/2016 9:38:39 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: SlovakTelekom
I think there's an interesting trend in other countries where non-local content is growing significantly due to the vast improvement in translation services. There's an Asian market video service called Viki that tranlates an impressive number of scripted dramas into a variety of other languages, and despite various cultural differences, the content is hugely popular among similar demographics across different countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viki_(website)
So if Hollywood movies are a distant third in the importance of content, I'm going to guess that competition is going to come from high quality independent content that can cross cultural borders....
mhhf1ve
12/15/2016 10:09:21 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: SlovakTelekom
I think the expansion of what is considered a "sport" may be an interesting trend in the near future, too. Given how many kids these days watch other people playing video games, e-sports (or whatever you want to call it) could someday become as big as football/hockey. It's a nascent trend that I think has only growth potential. Perhaps it won't ever get as big as American football or global soccer, but it could rival the Olympics and get airtime all year round (assuming no one gets tired or bored of it).
JohnBarnes
12/21/2016 10:42:39 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: SlovakTelekom
mhhf1ve,
The problem with getting revenue streams out of virtual sports, I suspect, is that the supply is way too elastic. There aren't very many Beckhams and therefore people pay a lot to see someone bend it like Beckham; a handful of people can throw a baseball pitch at 100 mph or sink a dozen 3-pointers in a row, or keep a Formula 1 car on the road in a high speed turn, so you can charge people for the access to seeing those rare stars.
But virtual sports can have virtual players (in fact many already do) whose ability is just a matter of dialing it up or down, or enhancer packages (some sports will surely rely on them). To keep the prices up to an economically viable level, you need something that plays the role of rare talent and/or obsessive training, so that it remains amazing that a person can do the thing you're paying to see.
mhhf1ve
1/4/2017 8:48:39 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: SlovakTelekom
> "But virtual sports can have virtual players (in fact many already do) whose ability is just a matter of dialing it up or down.."
Hmm. I'm not so sure that the supply of talented gamers is as plentiful as you might think. There are tournaments that pit human players against other teams of human players, and AI bots would just get destroyed in that game because the skill necessary is so high. Sure, AI is catching up -- as evidenced by Google's AlphaGo that just beat a human expert at Go. But playing some strategy games isn't going to be a thing for AI for a while.
And by your argument, maybe F1 and Nascar's days are numbered if self-driving cars can make it around a track with other cars....?
JohnBarnes
12/17/2016 2:51:42 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: SlovakTelekom
Ariella, Adi, Mhhf1ve,
Speculatively, it might be that narrow-focus OTT is more appealing and interesting to a population whose entertainment consumption is closely tied to identity matters (and where the identity is more contested and feels like it needs more defending) than it is where entertainment is just background noise to multitasking. The people who read every line of a literary poetry magazine every month are different from the ones who leaf through People magazine while on hold on the phone; the people who have the radio on Adult Contemporary so the morning commute doesn't feel so lonely are consuming differently from the people who are at the folk coffeehouse three nights a week or hitting the alt venues to catch the new bands every weekend. Some venues are "the kind of person you are" and some are "something to have on." Not surprising that a small country whose language doesn't have that many outside speakers would have a lively, vigorous OTT with a tight focus.
Also, a bit like community radio was back before the Classical Music Imperialists seized power in so many states and turned local stations into NPR classical retransmitters, a lot of things end up there because their audiences are mainly local -- high school sports and hunting and fishing shows on community radio, musical instrument sales and service at the folk coffeehouse, so given the longstanding Slovak love of hockey, it's pretty much what you'd expect.
Ariella
12/17/2016 6:36:09 PM
User Rank Author
Re: SlovakTelekom
<Also, a bit like community radio was back before the Classical Music Imperialists seized power in so many states and turned local stations into NPR classical retransmitters,>
@JohnBarnes I just find that funny b/c classical music (which happens to be the only thing I listen to on the radio when driving when I'm not checking the news) has such a limited reach today. As far as I know, we're down to just one station in NY (which doesn't even have the wattage power to extend all over the state), WQXR, and it hits on the audience for donations all the time to keep it going.
mhhf1ve
12/18/2016 9:00:51 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: SlovakTelekom
> "a bit like community radio..."
I'm not so sure radio is a great analogy for OTT video? Pandora and other streaming radio services have a relatively limited amount of content to broadcast -- whereas video content seems to be a bit more varied. Podcasting might be making audio a bit more interesting, but the video market still seems entirely different to me in terms of both content and the value of it.
JohnBarnes
12/21/2016 10:35:05 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: SlovakTelekom
Ariella,
Out in the Big Square States, for a couple of generations many small towns and cities had independent NPR stations (down in the reserved low-FM band because they had to be priced below market), which would produce at least some local programming (things like local government meetings, maybe live local musicians, high school sports, etc.). Beginning in the 1990s, the large-city classical stations began a program of hostile takeovers, aided and abetted by NPR policies, in which the community stations were shut down and replaced by translators, i.e. robot FM stations, usually linked by microwave towers or landlines, that simply repeated the signal from the classical station in the big city. Most of the financing for doing this, often over the strenuous objection of local communities, was from fundraising efforts that described translatorization as "bringing classical music to the whole state."
Big bitter fight out here; there's a historic pattern in which Republicans try to shut down as much of public cultural stuff as they can, whereas Democrats fund it but direct the funding to distributing national material and suppress local production. So returning to Slovak OTT, one thing I think we may be seeing there is deployment of the new tech to create a niche where the local can grow and function. I can't imagine that Brussels will be any friendlier in the long run to local culture, though, than Washington/New York have been.
dcawrey
12/20/2016 7:31:43 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: SlovakTelekom
Local is one of the reasons why I think Netflix's plan for world domination may be problematic. The company can't possibly spend what it does in the US on original content all over the world. Small players like this are going to reap the benefits of following the Netflix OTT model with local flavor.
Ariella
12/20/2016 7:51:00 PM
User Rank Author
Re: SlovakTelekom
@dcawrey that's true, but perhaps it will be content just to be able to sell some programming abroad and not necessarily to displace local sources altogether.
dlr5288
12/30/2016 1:55:04 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: SlovakTelekom
I agree. I think Netflix in the US will remain popular and continue to grow, but the rest of the world...I just don't see it working.
clrmoney
12/14/2016 11:15:01 AM
User Rank Platinum
Slovac Local Markets
If they want to branch out into the local markerts to get more exposure then power to them because they have a lot to offer.
mhhf1ve
12/19/2016 5:25:17 PM
User Rank Platinum
When will OTT come to older people on fixed incomes?
> "not willing to subscribe to a full TV package..."
I'm wondering now if, beside Millennials, when other age brackets will start cord cutting and adopting OTT services. With more and more senior citizens getting iPads, it shouldn't be too long before they're wondering why they still need to pay their local cable operator for TV bundles for hundreds of channels that no one has time to watch.
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