
TV May Die Soon - __xjb__
http://www.shellypalmer.com/2017/04/tv-may-actually-die-soon-stay-tuned/?utm_source=Daily%20Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=170416
======
skrebbel
> _FANG is delivering actionable data to advertisers in ways that traditional
> broadcasters simply can’t._

The "N" in that weird acronym stands for Netflix. The day they start selling
my data to advertisers is the day I'm back to torrenting. I feel like the
author is so ad-focused that she doesn't even see this: the whole article is
about ads.

Netflix is showing that you can make fantastic, super expensive content, even
niche content, without advertising. To me that feels much more profound than
"Youtube has more data about you than ABC so advertisers will prefer that".

~~~
hackuser
Data about you is valuable. Netflix can sell it without displaying the ads
itself. I'd be surprised if they aren't tracking users and monetizing that
information, like seemingly every other business in the world.

But maybe someone knows ...

~~~
maxerickson
I thought Netflix had a whole bunch of product placement deals?

There can be advertising without breaking out of the content.

~~~
philfrasty
Watched Sense8 (over here in Germany) for the last couple of days on NF. Every
episode has a disclaimer at the beginning „This show contains product
placements“.

From first view: Ben & Jerrys, Pepsi (?), Sennheiser

------
DiabloD3
We keep getting "TV is dead/dying/will live forever" stories on HN.

tl;dr of all of them is essentially: TV, as a non-time-shifted non-live
broadcast medium, is dead: Netflix et al, Youtube, Torrent, and at the very
least, DVRs, killed it; people watch non-live content how they want, when they
want, frequently choosing to just "Netflix binge" it.

TV, as a live broadcast medium (eg, emergency news), will never die in that
sense: I can watch Presidential addresses via the White House's Youtube
channel via Youtube's Live feature as well as many local OTA broadcast
channels.

TV is both dead and will live forever depending on what you call TV.

~~~
coldtea
> _will never die in that sense: I can watch Presidential addresses via the
> White House 's Youtube channel via Youtube's Live feature as well as many
> local OTA broadcast channels._

If "presidential addresses" are what's supposed to keep a medium afloat, it's
doomed already.

Millenials don't even watch as much sports as older generations anymore...

~~~
Namrog84
They might not watch as much traditional sports. But there is a rapidly rising
amount of viewers watching esports and other streaming games. While a game
isn't a sport; a sport is a game.

This audience is growing rapidly and is already quite large too.

------
codingdave
"TV" has been undergoing changes for its entire history. Cable brought major
changes. The ability to play movies at home changed things. Streaming did,
too. And regulatory changes along the way had their impact. I also have to
take anyone who talk about "4 networks" a bit less seriously because for a
long time there were only 3, and Fox actually making a 4th was also a big deal
when it came along.

So, sure, if what you mean by "TV" is the original networks, yeah, that may be
concluding at some point. But "TV" itself just continues its ongoing
evolution.

------
dbcurtis
It would be interesting to see some data on recent prices for TV station
license transfers. The market value of AM radio station licenses has plummeted
in recent years. I suspect the same is happening to TV stations, in particular
the little independents that live off of syndicated feeds and Star Trek re-
runs. (I've seen TV control rooms far, far, less luxurious than the station in
Weird Al's movie "UHF"...)

------
scarface74
One thing that the article gets wrong is the difference between brand
advertising and direct response. Consumer products goods will always be about
brand awareness and not direct targeting. It's the difference between what
Snapchat is trying to do and what FB is trying to do. Coca Cola advertising is
never going to be about running an ad an expecting someone to go on a website
and buy a Coke right then. Neither is anything sold by companies like P&G.

Brand advertising is not about the level of targeting that FB is doing.

------
cwyers
AM radio hasn't died yet. Heck, books haven't died yet. New media doesn't
always kill old media.

~~~
Spooky23
AM is dead.

Listen to the ads, not the god awful programming sometime. There's only so
many prostate pills to be sold... I don't think it's a real business anymore,
IMO there are a few ultra conservative types supporting the whole thing.

~~~
rdiddly
If there are ads at all, somebody sold those & got paid.

~~~
Spooky23
True, but prostate pills are the equivalent of a strip-mall with a karate
studio and dollar store -- usually dying.

~~~
rdiddly
Had to laugh at the image. Yeah it's a market but probably not the juicy part
of the market.

------
nawitus
One problem with the TV discourse is that it mixes together different meanings
of "TV". One is the actual technology to broadcast video, second is the act of
broadcasting video to consumers, and the third is the actual receiver, e.g.
physical a television screen.

The first one will surely die, and has already died for most(?) young people
where I live. But that doesn't really matter much as content can be streamed
using the internet.

~~~
majewsky
Anecdote time: I'm nearly the only one in my group of friends who still has a
TV, and it's become a tradition for us to gather once a week to watch the
"heute-show" (a German copy of The Daily Show, but only broadcasted weekly) at
my place, and maybe have some political discussions afterwards. So in this
particular case, timeslotted broadcasting actually brings us together.

------
beatpanda
There's a huge opportunity for the attentive. Rock and roll got started
largely because the major broadcasters moved away from radio and into
television, and as a result operating an FM radio station got crazy cheap,
leaving lots of room for experimentation. I have had my fingers crossed for
years that the same thing is going to happen to terrestrial TV.

~~~
tener
Sorry to ruin your hopes: any free spectrum will be consumed by wireless data
transmission systems.

~~~
Symbiote
As one example, but a big one, that's the plan in the European Union.

[http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_IP-16-207_en.htm](http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_IP-16-207_en.htm)

------
Animats
Here are the SF Bay Area's current TV broadcast stations: [1] High power
stations get a channel for the entire area, while low-power stations share
channels. The FCC has a computerized model that takes into consideration
antenna height, power, frequency, and terrain to figure out what won't
interfere.

(There are a large number of low-power religious stations. For people thinking
about repurposing "white space" in the TV bands, they're going to have to get
rid of some of those Voice of God stations. One God Ministries alone has 17
stations licensed in the Bay Area.)

There's more space available now for TV stations because the tuners for
digital TV have much better adjacent channel rejection than analog TV tuners
did. There used to be restrictions to prevent harmonic interference and such.
That's mostly gone, and all the channel slots can be used. If you wanted to
set up a broadcast TV station in San Francisco, you probably could.

[1] [http://transition.fcc.gov/fcc-
bin/tvq?list=1&dist=100.000%20...](http://transition.fcc.gov/fcc-
bin/tvq?list=1&dist=100.000%20&dlat2=37&mlat2=45&slat2=35.571600&ns=N&dlon2=122&mlon2=26&slon2=14.612532&ew=W&size=9)

------
shalmanese
It's taken as a given that more targetability is always better for ads but
lately, I've come to believe that lack of targeting ability can, in and of
itself, be an asset.

The more coarse the targeting, the more humans are able to reason about ad
placement. If I see an tv ad on a program, I know that all the people in my
region watching the same program are also guaranteed to see the ad. Whereas if
I get an ad on Facebook, I have no idea who else might have seen the same ad.

I've been mulling this over because Podcasts, by some weird quirk of
technological path dependence, got locked early on into a state of extreme ad
unsophistication. Despite, or maybe because of this, podcasts have some of the
highest ad rates in the business. Take Mailchimp's sponsorship of Serial for
example, that sponsorship itself became somewhat of a mild media sensation
surrounding the discussion of the story. But that could only happen because of
the impossibility of ad targeting in podcasts. Because of that, you knew
everyone else listening to serial was hearing the exact same ad as you.

------
sumoboy
TV is declining, just like newspaper empires. Streaming is expanding as it's
own empire even though it smells and tastes like TV it's different. Google and
Facebook kill with ads so they'll continue to drive "innovation" for eyeballs
as again traditional TV attempts to stop the bleeding. Innovation is where
newspapers failed.

I'm streaming mlb right now and reading HN, TV can't offer that experience
easily.

------
Namrog84
As some have already stated. TV is the wrong word here.

"Television or TV is a telecommunication medium used for transmitting moving
images in monochrome (black-and-white), or in color, and in two or three
dimensions and sound. "

This sounds like everything from traditional broadcast TV to YouTube to twitch
to snapchat. You are remotely seeing something on a display. It's technically
TV is it not?

------
gumby
This is just an idea, not really even opinion piece, but has some good
insight.

I was interested that she coined the term FANG and not FANTA (Facebook,
Amazon, Netflix, youTube, Apple). I am a big fan of Apple but continue to be
dumfounded by how tone-deaf they are about the Internet. It's as if they have
Jim Sensenbrenner on their board.

------
madebysquares
I've been hearing this targeted audience and advertising for several years.
However for as long as I've been watching Hulu, YouTube etc I rarely see ads
that interest me. I wish they used that data better.

------
meddlepal
If Net Neutrality goes away TV will thrive. This battle is far from over.

~~~
randomdata
TV may thrive again if they improve the content. The biggest hurdle network TV
has right now is that people are leaving because there is nothing to watch.

~~~
ams6110
i kind of feel the same way about Netflix and Amazon too. I've watched most of
what I want to watch. Neflix has never been as good as when they had the Starz
deal.

~~~
randomdata
I agree. I may even suggest that mainstream-geared media is fundamentally
flawed, as it has to attract a wide audience, providing great appeal to
nobody. We accepted it in the past due to not knowing better, but now that we
have a taste of video content tailored to our very specific interests, where
producers are happy to have an audience of 1,000 people, it's hard to go back.

------
rmason
Television isn't dying. Over the air TV though is on life support. Just like
gas stations someday soon local TV stations will be ancient history.

~~~
Roedou
What's the story with gas stations in the US? Are they dying out / being
replaced by something else as well?

~~~
rdiddly
They're doing fine for now. Electric-car optimists think they'll be replaced
by charging stations. Apocalyptic doomsters think they'll be replaced by a
place to feed & water your horse (or by nothing at all). Both camps seem to
agree petroleum fuels are a temporary thing.

~~~
joelwilliamson
The number of gas stations declined 25% from 1994 to 2013. I'd hardly call
that doing fine.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2016/06/why...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_juice/2016/06/why_america_s_gas_stations_are_running_out_of_time.html)

------
taylodl
The networks take away FANG's bite with live sports, which are about the only
thing I care to watch anymore.

------
mnm1
I searched the article for "Hulu" and got zero hits. I assume the author
simply didn't do any research at all.

~~~
ascagnel_
That's interesting, since Hulu runs Nielsen tracking software. I'm not sure if
it's included in DVR+3/+7 ratings, though.

~~~
mnm1
I'm not sure either, but I do know it's included in the top four networks' and
their advertisers' future plans for TV and that an article discussing said
companies future without discussing Hulu is incomplete.

