The first question is whether the networks give up first, or if the station groups fail first. Both business models make no sense in a streaming world, but it's not clear which fuse is shorter.
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Media Companies Are Ready to Sell. Does Anyone Want to Buy?
- Thread starter davideduardo
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How old is your mom?
This brings up another generational difference with consumers: Brand awareness or brand loyalty. How many of our parents, or in the case on this site, ourselves, have been brand loyal to a specific vehicle, electronics, fast food, or radio and TV station branding?
The facts are that brand loyalty isn't a thing with modern, younger consumers. It's all about the individual experience or the content. If two favorite shows are on Paramount+, that doesn't mean a streaming viewer will put up with non-favorites just because of the Paramount brand. And with an entire seasonal series being only eight episodes, media consumers naturally jump around between services looking for another show to consume.
Most of us, but I think mostly ages ago. I grew up in a Ford family. Since 1934, most of the cars my parents, aunts and uncles bought were Fords. That ended with my '75, traded in '78 for a Toyota. I traded the Toyota for a Honda in '84. My mom (who would be 104 this year if she were alive) jumped ship to Honda in 1988, having babied her 1970 Mercury for 18 years.
My parents owned Zenith TVs. The first one I bought with my own money (1981) was a Sony. I bought its replacement---also a Sony---in 1993. For the last six years, I've owned a Samsung.
In broadcasting it really dates back to the battles between CBS and NBC for top talent in radio.
A lot of network TV loyalty was tied to the evening newscast and whether or not you had a remote control.
My parents watched Huntley-Brinkley on NBC. and generally left it there for the local news on KNBC, but I was the remote control ("Mike, change the channel"), so we watched stuff on every network.
As an adult, I might have had periods of time where I preferred one network newscast over another (Walter Cronkite at CBS over John Chancellor at NBC and Harry Reasoner at ABC----but Peter Jennings at ABC over Dan Rather at CBS and Tom Brokaw at NBC), but it was based on how strong I thought the product was, not any fandom.
As far as entertainment, any "signature" to a network show was usually a reflection of whoever was running programming at the network at the time. Jim Aubrey and Michael Dann at CBS gave us The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Green Acres and Mayberry, R.F.D. Fred Silverman blew those out and gave us Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, All in The Family and M*A*S*H.
And it was Silverman again at ABC, with a different strategy---Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, Welcome Back, Kotter.
Grant Tinker's fingerprints were all over NBC in the 80s---Hill Street Blues, St. Elsewhere, L.A. Law.
About the only remnant of that today is CBS, with multiple spin-offs of crime procedurals and Dick Wolf's Law & Order and Chicago franchises at NBC---all of which skew older.
I'll turn 68 in March. It's not a thing with me, either and I'm not alone. We're long past that as a mainstream thing.
Exactly. Which is why a well-timed schedule of debuts and season finales that overlap on the same streamer is key. That requires a big (or at the very least solid) stable of shows.
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Deceased several years ago. She would have been 70 this year.
Agreed. There's a reason why if you search a product class (say: air purifier) on Amazon, the results are "brands" that sound like something pulled from your Alpha-Bits cereal than a brand you might recognize from the last time you bought an air purifier.
I'm sorry. Lost mine in 2005.
And, as we've mentioned already is a big reason for allowing consolidation of streaming services and studios. More content under fewer umbrellas mean those companies have a better chance of survival.
Yep. We lost my mother-in-law three years ago, but she'd be 90 if she were alive and that was very close to her pattern when we'd visit---morning news show, straight to Turner Classic, back for local news, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune and then back to TCM.
And---not advocacy, just facts---fewer subscriptions required to see all the shows you want to see.
That said, there are other ways. Nothing says Paramount, Universal and Warners have to have their own platforms. They could cut their losses and go back to being tiers on a platform like Amazon, which tend to carry lower monthly subscription prices.
I know consolidation of various functions (among local TV stations) has been happening for a while, I was just speculating how OTA (ATSC 1.0 DTV) signals could be maintained while minimizing "overhead".
Maybe just 4 regional TV studios (1 for each USA time zone).
Perhaps the method the CBC used during the transition to DTV in Canada - only the CBC OTA transmitters in the larger cities were converted to (ATSC 1.0) DTV, the others were shut off (rural/remote TV viewers were told to subscribe to Satellite or Cable [streaming wasn't a thing at that time]).
Kirk Bayne
Maybe just 4 regional TV studios (1 for each USA time zone).
Perhaps the method the CBC used during the transition to DTV in Canada - only the CBC OTA transmitters in the larger cities were converted to (ATSC 1.0) DTV, the others were shut off (rural/remote TV viewers were told to subscribe to Satellite or Cable [streaming wasn't a thing at that time]).
Kirk Bayne
In some cases like Paramount and Peacock, there is some umbrella of knowing what you are going to get. CBS has a pretty solid brand and the Viacom stations under it all do as well, and even Showtime. In a way they "go together." Same with Peacock. I think people in general have an impression of a streaming service based on that impression. I liked the Turner stations, but have been surprised in years since Time Warner dissolved that HBO is actually related to them (for years they have not been run together--Turner used to run out of Atlanta) as their brands are quite different and "feel" quite different
I'm with Mr. Hagerty on this one. Maybe in the past there was brand loyalty to a network, but nowadays people watch shows, not networks. I also started with Netflix back when they were just DVD delivery, but dropped them a few years ago because they just didn't have any shows I wanted to watch. When I get done watching Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and the promotional discount ends, Paramount Plus goes bye bye, too.
Now, are there brands that I've stuck with? Sure. But it isn't always out of a sense of loyalty to the company. I have had Cox internet for a long time, but that's not out of a love of the company but rather that the only other option is even worse. I just got my car insurance renewal from USAA and while they have been very good, one thing that keeps me from shopping around is the rather hefty discount I get from being a customer for over 20 years.
Which gets me to thinking...
When I was home for the holidays (Detroit area) watching local TV and being bombarded with commercials, I was reminded that if you are an employee or family member and have that returning customer discount, you can get a pretty smoking lease deal on a new GM or Ford vehicle. Would I have ditched Netflix if they sent me a nice email saying "you've been with us since the old days, so don't you worry about that price increase."? Would I be so eager to ditch Cox if they didn't raise my rate every 6 months to a year because I've been a loyal customer? Hmm...
As a consumer, I get nothing for being loyal to Paramount. There's no reward for sticking it out with Time Warner. It's all about the content, or in the words of Janet Jackson, "what have you done for me lately?"
Thanks for the insights. We've managed to avoid Prime to this point; most of the time, we don't need next-day delivery. I once considered it for the discounts at Whole Foods, but then we moved to Denver. The nearest Whole Foods to us is in Glendale, the Emeryville of Denver (NorCal references there, sorry), which is a bit awkward for us. So we'd have to look at the other perks. We did have the DVD service from Netflix until about a year ago. Managing subscription services is something I find annoying, so it takes a lot to persuade me to add a new one.
Not much Apple in this household: an iPad and a couple of aging Macs. I turned away from OS X because Apple trashed what had been a very good operating system, loading it with bloat and trying to turn it into iOS in a clown suit. At this point, the newer Mac is actually slower than the old, PowerPC Mac running Tiger. That's how bad it had gotten. So it was back to Linux for me.
Even with all that, we probably will get something eventually. John Oliver might be the gateway drug for us in the wild west of streaming.
You're comparing two very different things. I went into a car dealer with cash thinking that would get me a better price, and was told that financing is where the wiggle room is. So paying the full amount doesn't give the cable company any room for discount.
Now car insurance is more like what you're talking about. There is a loyalty discount in car insurance.
Some of those brands are gone, too, or in considerably altered condition. Zenith is gone. Ford's not making sedans any more. Oldsmobile and Pontiac are gone. Sony is still around but isn't a dominant player these days. Samsung is on top right now, but Samsung software is hideous. Eventually it will lose out to someone who does a way better job integrating hardware and software.
I've got loads of road maps (yes, I collect them*) from Texaco, Standard/Amoco/Utoco, Derby, Shamrock, and other brands no longer extant. In cartography, H.M. Goushá and Thomas Brothers were absorbed into Rand McNally, which is a now shadow of its former self. Lovely maps and, later, CD-ROM products. Online maps killed that market.
(* I also have a small collection of Zenith AM/FM radios from the 1960s; most made on the west side of Chicago. I should have a display cabinet built for them.)
If you're going to do that then it's probably best to tell the dealer you are there to discuss price first before getting into the financing, so that you can make apples-to-apples price comparisons without muddling up the numbers with financing doublespeak. Once you've got your best price, only then tell him you're paying cash.
But...does anyone actually go into the dealership to talk to a car salesman anymore?
I went in with a specific car and a specific price in mind. Sort of like a pre-packaged bankruptcy.
Yeah you never, ever tell them up front that you're paying in cash. And financing is not where the "wiggle room" is. The finance office is where the real money is made.
As for the loyalty discount, I was just throwing it out there. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few content providers or services (Cox, Amazon, Netflix) who have raised their prices across the board and announced it to customers with an email that says - in the politest way possible - "if you don't like it, you can pound sand."
That does happen, but these days I don't think any of the machines work.
I only get the broadcast channels and when you add the landline, that's what I'm paying (that's after I told the phone company I'm paying too much). Also, the Internet is quite slow compared to what other people have.
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