Netflix CEO Puts An Expiration Date On Traditional Broadcast Television: 2030
from the revolution-is-IP-televised dept
Netflix’s path of disruption has been nothing if not entertaining, whether it’s the company’s attempt to disrupt antiquated theater release windows with simultaneous theater and streaming releases, or its foray into original content. As Netflix passes the 53.1 million subscriber mark worldwide, it’s been equally entertaining to watch the global legacy TV industry stumbling around trying to thwart this inevitable progress, whether it’s AMC theaters refusing to carry Netflix’s “Crouching Dragon” sequel, the increasingly absurd shenanigans we’ve seen afoot on the ISP interconnection front, or Australia’s attempts to outlaw VPNs.
When it comes to measuring the transition to Internet video, viewer tracking firms like Nielsen have been very happy to ignore data illustrating Netflix’s rise — so broadcast and cable executives are more comfortable with their heads buried deeply in the sand. Speaking in Mexico to promote his company’s international expansion efforts, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings this week stated Nielsen’s recent announcement to finally track Netflix and Amazon viewers was “not very relevant,” since Nielsen still isn’t capable of tracking phone and tablet viewing specifically.
Hastings also took the opportunity to offer up his predicted expiration date for the legacy TV industry:
“It’s not very relevant,” he said. “There’s so much viewing that happens on a mobile phone or an iPad that [Nielsen won’t] capture.”…As for free-to-air TV, Hastings believes its days are numbered. “It’s kind of like the horse, you know, the horse was good until we had the car,” he said. “The age of broadcast TV will probably last until 2030.”
Maybe, maybe not. There have been significant strides in getting broadcasters to loosen up licensing rights for live TV streaming, and that’s going to result in a slew of standalone streaming services launching in 2015 from the likes of Dish Networks, HBO, Showtime, Sony and Verizon Wireless. Netflix, Amazon and company have also been making great strides in developing original content that doesn’t suck, from Netflix’s “House of Cards,” to Amazon’s “Transparent.” Even the industry analysts that used to mock and deny the cord cutting trend have finally, quietly, acknowledged the trend is real.
That said, the incumbent gatekeepers won’t magically disappear as IP television becomes the norm. Whether it’s the allegations they’re intentionally throttling interconnection points, attempts to regulate Netflix to death, or the use of usage caps to protect TV revenues, there’s every indication they’re not going to be taking the transition gracefully. The industry’s core strategy at the moment is to use regulatory to ride the legacy cash cow right into the ground with a series of endless rate hikes for massive channel bundles, then complain vocally when users fail to see the value in that equation.
Only when consumers begin to cut the cord en masse will the cable industry finally respond to consumer demands for things like cheaper, a la carte content — probably right around the year 2029.
Filed Under: broadcast tv, reed hastings, tv
Companies: netflix
Comments on “Netflix CEO Puts An Expiration Date On Traditional Broadcast Television: 2030”
¯_(ツ)_/¯
As convenient as Netflix is, it’s nice to be able to grab signals OTA without having my viewing history recorded and bound to my personal profile in perpetuity.
Not that’s there’s much worth watching anyway.
I haven’t watched broadcast TV in 7 years. I get everything through downloading/streaming.
Damn! 2030 used to look like such a futuristic utopian date back in the days, and now, well be there in another 15 years.
I feel so young now…..where’s my Flintstones car that flies like the Jetson’s one?
And my teleportation pods?
And my renewable energy for the whole planet?
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I’m far from young, but I too haven’t watched any broadcast TV (OTA or cable) in a decade or so.
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To paraphrase Lewis Black:
“When I was young, they said, ‘This sucks! But wait, in the future, things will be great!’ But now, this is my fucking future! And it blows chunks.”
I don’t really care. I cut the cord over a decade ago, not seeing value for my money spent. I no longer have any connection to broadcast tv nor cable. Because of that I no longer desire to know what idiot is doing in what show. Programming quality had already cratered back then and hasn’t gotten better.
Maybe one of the greatest benefits besides the time to spend on something else not wasted as a couch potato, is the relief of the continual commercial and product placement. If any advertisement manages to break my attention, next time I’m in the store, if that product did it, I will look for something else I don’t have to pay as much for them making commercials over it. That added cost does nothing for making the product better, which is why I will chose something that works over something more expensive that doesn’t or is so watered down that it isn’t worth getting.
I’m not holding my breath waiting on Neilson to capture that data either. I simply don’t care.
I’m not so sure. By similar logic, you could easily say that the radio was good up until we had the television. And hey, when was the last time you listened to such an antiquated device as the radio?
Oh, right. Just this morning, for me at least, even though television has been around (without destroying radio broadcasting) for far longer than streaming has.
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I think the horse is general broadcasting (radio or TV) rather than ala carte internet offerings. Streaming is eating into both markets. (I for one don’t use either conventional radio or TV at this point).
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You know what I miss? Radio plays and dramas. Screw music, forget news and sports, it was audiobooks before there were audiobooks, and superior in every way 😀
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is easily my favourite, and honestly, it saddens me that Radio Drama’s stopped being a thing before I was even born. Sometimes I just want something in the background while I work or do something else. Love Radio Drama’s for that.
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I take it you don’t listen to BBC Radio 4 then. HG2G was written for Radio 4 and they have dramas on all the time. A lot of it is available on podcast.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/programmes/genres/drama/player
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podcasts are your friend. there are so many great ones out now doing exactly what you want. take a look around, you’ll find some good stuff.
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Broadcast television is significantly more expensive to produce than radio, so I don’t expect it to last in the same way that radio has done.
At the same time, I haven’t listened to radio or had cable for over 15 years now. The ipod and now Spotify were great replacements for radio.
When Netflix starts airing The Walking Dead on Sunday at 9 on my 43″ screen, I’ll start taking them seriously. I have no desire to watch full-length movies on my cell phone. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of improvement to be made in the TV world. But Netflix has a ways to go before it makes me cut the cord.
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I used my game console (doesn’t matter which one, now) to watch Netflix on my TV. & I saw at least one website say Walking Dead is already on it. So, just boot up the gaming system around 9. Granted, this assumes you already have the 43″ TV.
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I have several Smart TV’s (which still sort of suck) and a couple of Chromecast’s.
I like the Chromecast’s – anything I can find on my android phone can pretty much just be cast up onto the TV.
Re: Done already.
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My family has been watching Netflix on a big screen TV for years, using an old Wii.
here’s mine PRE diction
1996
“..no desire to watch full-length movies on my cell phone”
Hmmm, this household’s mobile devices 345E all have higher resolution than the best TV.
And the new ones can output mini-HDMI or MHL to the TV if needed. And DLNA, Miracast etc.
So… how many more CSI spinoffs will that leave us?
Here’s my expiration date on Reed Hasting’s stock price: 86 days.
My prediction will be closer than his. That says it all.
I would actually like for the tech companies to re-embrace antenna TV. put that in our phones and computers, make it so we are once again able to get broadcast, not just cable/satellite tv.
I think if it was easier to get ‘free’ tv, more people would, and would be less likely to buy expensive tv packages from cable.
Over the Air TV to die in 16 years? Nope...
Given that while the numbers look a bit ‘rosy’ (low population sample for my tastes), it is still is not 100%…
http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2014/acs/acs-28.pdf
… so these sorts of predictions should be taken with a good degree salt.
Not everyone is a cord-cutter
Of course we’re saying we’re cutting the cord since this site is full of tech people. 😉
But how about your parents or grandparents who still watch Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, the evening news, and NCIS? Do you think they’ll want to give up the convenience of just turning on the TV and changing the channel? (And chances are good that they haven’t even heard of Game of Thrones or HBOGo).
So until someone can convince all these people that NetFlix or Amazon is an easier way to watch Wheel of Fortune, then there will always be corded TV.
Re: Not everyone is a cord-cutter
“Do you think they’ll want to give up the convenience of just turning on the TV and changing the channel?”
There are many inexpensive devices that give them just this level of convenience, so they don’t have to give it up at all.
Re: Not everyone is a cord-cutter
A lot of those people won’t be around in 2030.
OTA Second Wind
One of the biggest complaints about TV is the poor quality of current content. Well, a lot of the older content, often in monochrome, where actors/actresses could actually act and stories that were enjoyable, is becoming available on the “new” networks like RetroTV, MeTV etc. A number of these networks are available through digital sub-channels from the major OTA broadcasters. I will speculate that there will be a second-wind for OTA TV due to these networks. It wouldn’t surprise me if, in the not too distant future, the new networks brought in more cash to the OTA stations than the “main” network offerings.
Re: OTA Second Wind
And some of that stuff is on Netflix too – with no commercials and you can choose your which episode you want to watch (or binge on all of them). OTA is not superior in this regard.
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OTA is inferior, not just for the reasons that you correctly point out, but also because the quality of the video in OTA broadcasts (at least in the region I live in) has fallen to the point where it is very annoying to watch since the digital switchover happened. Broadcasters would have to do something about that, too.
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Where I live, broadcast TV has never looked better, nor have I ever had so many channels to choose from, but’s still not enough to get me to watch it with all its infernal commercials.
Re: Re: Re:2 OTA Second Wind
Yes, the broadcast quality is determined by the broadcasters themselves by how heavily they compress the signal. The more they subdivide the channel, the heavier the compression needs to be. Apparently, all the broadcasters around here have decided to maximize the subchannels and sacrifice video quality.
Of course, this is based on seeing OTA when I’m at friend’s houses. I maintain households in two different cities, and in neither of them can I actually get any usable OTA signals at all since the digital switchover happened.
The Future of Broadcasting is in Space
Well, myself, I unplugged back in 1991. Or, more precisely, I moved across the country, and didn’t think it worthwhile to get cable service again.
I expect that satellite broadcasting will continue to overwhelm both local terrestrial broadcasting, and broadcasting through cable networks. There will be more satellites, controlled from other countries. Many of them will not require decoders, or pay royalties for the material they transmit. They will be pirate satellites, in short. Satellite dish antennas will be replaced by phased-array antennas, with an angular resolution of a degree or so, allowing a very large number of satellites to fit overhead. Such antennae will become obligatory, as foreign satellites move to within five degrees or so of American satellites. The United States Government did not ask the Soviet Russian government whether it wanted Russians to be able to listen to Voice of America radio, and I anticipate that foreigners will return the compliment. The comparative advantage of terrestrial broadcasting over satellite broadcasting is local programming, only there isn’t very much local programming, and what there is, isn’t very good. I think that American satellite broadcasters will be forced to conform to the terms set by their foreign counterparts, and their transmissions will no longer require decoders either. I further anticipate that television audiences will use digital video recorders (DVR’s)– under their own control, and not that of the broadcast networks– to build up large personal video libraries at negligible expense. Both Comcast and Netflix will find it very difficult to compete with this flood of material.
The beauty of space is that it is a legal no-man’s land.
Once the illusion of video wealth is punctured, ComCast and AT&T will begin following the real money. The real money is in food, whether in the form of groceries or in the form of pizza. Unlike durable goods, food doesn’t stay bought. It gets consumed. The internet battles of the near future will not be fought over large quantities of data. They will be fought over shopping lists of a thousand bytes or so.
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