Opinion

One TV show, 20 providers

Peter MillerIn this guest post, AdStream boss Peter Miller warns that its not just content that’s fragmenting – content providers are too

Reading of Fetch TV’s game-breaking deal with Optus gave me a slight headache. Or is that Optus’ game-breaking deal with Fetch TV?

TV is just going wild isn’t it? It’s hard to keep up even when you’re planning on keeping up.  

Most people don’t know that LG have produced a smart fridge with a TV in the door. This is good news for everyone. You’ll never be far from a beer, and you’ll never miss you favourite ads whilst fetching one.

We can also watch television on our TV; via the TiVo and the Foxtel iQ; on the TBox; via the Play Station and the X Box; on your PC; on your iPad and iPhone and Blackberry.

And just when you thought you had acquired the maximum amount of hardware, along comes Fetch TV. Yep, it too comes with its own set top box which is great if your house rests on a concrete slab and you are a device glutton.

Now it’s pretty much bedrock theory that content drives demand. If you are at a debate and that’s the topic, you don’t want to be arguing in the negative.

But what happens when the same programmes are available from 20 different providers?

You might immediately think – price? If I can get the same re-runs of Get Smart at sixteen different price points, I’d choose the lowest? Where the lowest is usually free by fair means or foul the answer is usually ‘yup’.

So, all this proliferation is kind of bad news for Subscriber Television. No wonder Kim Williams has stumped up so big on the footy.

There is a different overlord kind of plays going on though, where entertainment drives bundled telecommunications purchasing.

The TBox isn’t much good to you if you aren’t doing business with Telstra and the Fetch TV Box isn’t going to be any good unless you are buying your broadband from Optus or iinet. Or something called Adam Internet which is in Adelaide. Oh, and Internode which started in Adelaide too. Oh, and something called Westnet which started in Geraldton and is really iinet.

But if you are active enough to want to shop around, you might just give your Telco the heave ho in return for a reasonably equivalent broadband deal plus a hot entertainment package. So IPTV is shaping as the next theatre of operations for the broadband sales war.

It’s far simpler to change your ISP than your bank after all. I mean, we’re all motivated to shank our bank at some point and we still don’t do it.

There is one group of consumers who don’t play by the old rules. They are the same annoying people who want a pay rise in a bad year and demand more positive feedback than they deserve. Yep, the 20 something’s! They are going to be a real pain the neck for Telco’s and entertainment providers alike for a long time to come, under the general heading ‘churn’.

Peter Miller is the managing director of Adstream.

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