Cord-Cutting: Wait, What?

Without prompting from moderatorSchmooze organizer Wil Richmond or fellow popular media analyst Bruce Leichtman Moffett raked a widelydistributed report where he was quoted to suggest cordcutting the drop of multichannel cable or satellite service was accelerating especially among Millennials As presented Moffett appeared to be on the side of pundits predicting wholesale retreat by cable and satellite customers in favor of total broadcast or online video consumptionThat Moffett left zero doubt was not his call quotThe math tells you otherwisequot he said quotCordcutting is decelerating not accelerating There39s not a torrent of people cutting the cord It39s a trickle There39s no speedingupquot The journalist got that view during Moffett39s session for the story and somehow the opposite came outWhat39s more Leichtman added there39s little research proving Millennials are mostly itching to cut their cable or satellite connection Indeed the research out lately his own and work by Nickelodeon and various third parties concludes that Millennials are watching more TV than a year ago So are their children according to the Nick report which came out before ThanksgivingquotIt39s much more about economics than the desire for a video alternative out therequot Leichtman said In short new affordable home formation where cable or satellite would be an essential service is not happening fast enough or cablesatellite service is itself unaffordable quotWhen the cord is cutquot mused Moffett quotpeople go for overtheair TV service instead of an online alternativequotThe bottom line from both Moffett and Leichtman Multichannel TV is not or anywhere near an imploding business at least from breaking cords Which leaves more than a few issues facing multichannel TV ahead Rising consumer prices advocacy for a la carteunbundling and virtual multichannel competition to name threeA few observations from the passing paradeEarly candidate for comeback story of 2014 Videoondemand A few speakers at UBS39 annual global media conference in NY last week invited cable and satellite operators to make VOD a high priority now that they have up to 30000 titles available each month and the ability to insert topical advertising messages in those programs on a dynamic basis quotThe big news the really good news is that the world39s going to VODquot declared Jeff Bewkes Time Warner39s chief executive officer He wants people to use ondemand with interfaces like Comcast39s X1 soon X2 home screen quotAs good as any experience developed by Silicon Valleyquot he said If made mustsee TV ondemand could trigger quotthe next wave of innovation in the media industryquot Bewkes added quotIf we don39t take this opportunity someone else will This is a gigantic opportunity It39s important everyone operators programmers content developers does thisquotFirst pledge on that front Time Warner Cable increasing its VOD catalogue to 75000 titles available for customers per month a year from now That39s the pledge from incoming chief executive officer Rob Marcus Maybe the days of VOD being low on the totem pole of cable system promotion despite growing viewer acceptance are coming to an endThe highlights of UBS39 conference beyond the virtual distributor prediction heard round the world from Viacom president and chief executive officer Philippe Dauman were thoughtful QampampA sessions with Discovery Communications AMC Networks Aereo and Legendary Entertainment the last with a good highlight reel The lowlight UBS39 cabletelco analyst name deliberately withheld on my part not asking the top people of Verizon and ATampampT CEOs Lowell McAdam and Randall Stephenson respectively a question about FIOS TV and Uverse their respective TV ventures Lots of wireless questions understandable none repeat none about TV These are ventures with millions of customers here and you can39t believe this UBS analyst wouldn39t want to know or let his audience know where they are going next year Also try this out Stephenson raised the subject of Internetprotocol TV deployment himself giving this analyst a place to ask and no go No pass hereNext time Early Jacks on the variety of newrelaunched channels during the second half of 2013Until the next time stay well and stay tunedThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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Cord-Cutting: Wait, What?

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Simon Applebaum

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