Digital Television Strategies Business

In Britain, America, and many other countries, television audiences and advertising revenues are declining. At the same time digital television and new models are emerging. This book looks at the reinvention of television, and answers many essential questions about the future of this fickle industry.

Alan Griffiths is managing partner of e-communications, the online consultancy division of Chime plc.

List of figures

ix

List of tables

x

Acknowledgements

xi

Interviewees

xii

Introduction Re-Inventing Television

1

(2)

What Is Digital Television, and Why Does It Matter?

3

(24)

Technology, communication and change

3

(9)

Sleeping with the enemy

12

(4)

The change it had to come

16

(11)

A View of the New Viewer

27

(15)

The fastest growing electronic medium of all time isn't television

27

(1)

Smart viewing

28

(2)

The four tribes

30

(8)

What does it mean?

38

(4)

Channel Wars

42

(15)

Slashing costs

42

(2)

Accounting gets in the way of theming

44

(2)

Grabbing a single big hit

46

(2)

Totally global is totally out of touch

48

(3)

Kellogg strategy

51

(3)

Channel pressures

54

(1)

Global vision, local management

55

(2)

The Peculiar Rise and Fall of the Platform Owners

57

(30)

What is a platform?

57

(2)

How a digital platform is built

59

(6)

Types of digital platform

65

(6)

What can go wrong?

71

(3)

What can go right?

74

(3)

Nothing is standard

77

(5)

The future of the set top box

82

(5)

Making Production Pay

87

(11)

Three-way impact

87

(2)

Hits

89

(3)

Genres and brands

92

(1)

Why bother with channels?

93

(5)

Watch Out America: You're Next!

98

(16)

New programmes for new audiences

98

(2)

How to get new audiences

100

(8)

The new audience: strong opinions, lightly held

108

(6)

The Commercial Breaks

114

(16)

Erosion

114

(2)

Grabbing niche eyeballs

116

(2)

Branding content

118

(5)

When is content `cool'?

123

(4)

The future of television advertising

127

(3)

Finding Business Models That Work

130

(25)

In the box

130

(1)

Out of the box

131

(2)

Working models

133

(22)

Killer Operators

155

(15)

Boxed in

155

(6)

Giving them exactly what they want - at a price

161

(2)

Two tuners and a disc

163

(5)

The death of the channel

168

(2)

The End of the Beginning

170

(14)

Politics

177

(1)

Viewers

177

(1)

Investors

178

(1)

Advertisers

179

(1)

Broadcasters

180

(4)

Appendix A Channels available in the $81.99 package offered by DirecTV, May 2002

184

(5)

Notes

189

(2)

Index

191

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Digital Television Strategies Business Challenges and Opportunities

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials