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Testing times for audience measurement

By Larry Gerbrandt Digital has been a decidedly mixed blessing for the television industry. Digital compression has led to the creation of hundreds of new channels, HDTV, IPTV, streaming media (from YouTube to Netflix), video-on-demand and digital video recorders. It has also made television viewing measurement a nightmare. While much of the recent growth in […]

December 22, 2015 GuestBlogger

OTT QoE: Who carries the can?

A couple of recent polls have revealed that Quality of Experience is an important factor in satisfaction and subscription renewal with OTT services. You may feel this falls into the ‘You don’t say?’ or even the ‘Do bears use wooded areas as lavatories?’ category of surveys. But behind the obvious are challenging technology questions and […]

November 18, 2015 Nick Snow

Fragmentation, friction and strong franchises

Audience fragmentation has been a feature – perhaps a dilemma – for channel owners, schedulers and advertisers for a long time. Everyday there is a new piece of research implying everything from ‘linear TV is so over’, to ‘chill, most viewers still want, and watch, most TV on a TV in a traditional way.’ It’s […]

October 13, 2015 Nick Snow

Apple: Still no TV awakening

There’s a lot of whooping at Apple product launches. As the analysts and reporters are unlikely culprits (though I do know some journos who are worryingly hard line Apple adherents), we have to assume the uncontained excitement belongs to staffers. I suppose it’s hard to not to drink the Kool-Aid when you’re on the payroll. […]

September 10, 2015 Nick Snow

Words are all I have

The English language is a beautiful thing and it is the lingua franca of this industry, and every other. I, for one, am unsurprisingly grateful for that. Because we’re in a relatively new industry a number of terms have been introduced that didn’t really exist before; digital, streaming, downloading, online, etc, and many other languages […]

August 19, 2015 Nick Snow

All boats sink

Business is about the numbers, right? Sentiment has no place in business, right? Wrong. Business floats, or sinks, on a whole sea of sentiment. A very slight change in numbers at one or two companies can change the weather in that sea. That means a whole sector can get caught up in a storm whether […]

August 7, 2015 Nick Snow

The inevitable BBC?

Everyone admires many things about the BBC, some go so far as to love everything about it, and some of those people don’t even work for it. Often, it seems, those that love it most are foreigners who compare its output with the fare provided by their national broadcasters. But even they are puzzled when, […]

July 20, 2015 Nick Snow

The sons also rise

Some people think that doing nothing, saying nothing, in the face of hard problems or trenchant criticism isn’t much of a choice. But, of course, it is. Keeping quiet, making no move, is as much a proactive choice as the alternatives. Rupert Murdoch has understood this well. Not an introvert, nor afraid of sharing his […]

June 17, 2015 Nick Snow

OTT drama, crisis?

If you are of a certain age, you know that a tiny number of TV dramas get remembered long after the vast majority have faded away like the disappearing dot on a switched-off antique TV. The Forsyth Saga and The Avengers were certainly ‘appointment to view’ and would, doubtless, have been big binge blockbusters had […]

May 11, 2015 Nick Snow

Hard lessons for OTT dealmakers

Larry Gerbrandt offers expert advice to anyone planning an OTT channel launch. Is there anyone who isn’t starting an online video channel for the OTT market? Having just wrapped up a consulting gig assisting a client to develop an economic and programming model for a start-up Over-The-Top online channel, some of the lessons (and battle […]

April 16, 2015 GuestBlogger