Food for thought: The spy who sold out
Forgiving a pretty face
Facebook to agencies: how will people share your story?
Is “The Pitch” an accurate reflection of our industry?
In the same way that the music industry was slow to embrace the open sharing of music, so too are the telcos in responding to the rise of streaming entertainment. Service providers like Netflix, iTunes, and TekSavvy have turned into serious contenders when it comes to TV and Internet offerings. And Rogers and Bell should prepare themselves for some major competition.
It’s no surprise that a recent comScore survey established that the amount of video content people are watching has exploded over the past three years. YouTube is at the head of that movement. With over 2 billion views per day it has been partly responsible for the shift in behaviour from watching TV on the tube to watching it online. Now users are willing to pay for that streaming entertainment.
Grip Group Account Director/Media Maven, Kristina, is one of those people. Kristina replaced her Rogers Internet and TV services with ones like TekSavvy, Netflix, and iTunes, and her yearly costs have dropped from over $2,400 a year to under $1,200. She did run into some challenges during the transition; for example, Netflix doesn’t always have the most recent TV series episodes available and she sometimes misses channel surfing. Regardless, Kristina’s consuming as much content as she was during her Rogers days (if not more). Only now she gets all the content she wants, along with some serious cost savings.
With the number of people like Kristina switching over to streaming entertainment, I’m waiting to see how, when, and if the telcos will respond. Rogers, for one, seems reluctant to adapt to new trends. With the number of calls and direct mail pieces I’ve received from Rogers pushing their home phone service, it’s clear they can react to a dying trend, but what they really need to do is react with as much gusto to a growing one.
My guess is the rise of streaming content will eventually force the telcos to make their pricing more competitive. Either that, or Rogers will simply buy up Netflix and TekSavvy and expand their properties on the Monopoly board. The latter seems more likely.
Matt Graham
April 7, 2011 @ 1:55 pm
Or they’ll keep increasing internet prices, and make it impossible to switch completely and save money.
Sylvie Chicoine
April 7, 2011 @ 2:40 pm
Or they’ll keep prices as is but reduce the amount of data we can download, also making it more difficult to switch and save.
Bernadette S
April 7, 2011 @ 3:45 pm
I don’t have cable… never had. I actually don’t even have a landline.
I’m dependent on streaming and downloading.
I have a subscription to a german TV recorder (€5), Netflix ($8) and watch Youtube.
we just rent the dry line ($9) for internet ($33.50) and IP phone (vbuzzer $4.50).
…that’s $60 / month for everything ($720 / year)
- including cheap calls to europe ($0.020) via a physical phone (not with headset).
I hope it stays that way!
S
April 7, 2011 @ 4:48 pm
I actually did the switch last summer; I cut my landline and cable and instead got a cellphone and the highest internet package there was. I don’t have much free time so I can never watch my shows when they first air, so I was stuck streaming when I had cable anyway.
I think into the next decade or two, once all the people who watch TV are no longer watching it, there won’t be many people left with cable subscriptions. The only person I honestly knows who has and watches cable is my mother and other people her age.
Trev Gourley
April 8, 2011 @ 8:57 am
This post’s content is made that much more relevant by Google’s very recent announcement that they are going to invest up to 100 million dollars to create original programming.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/224523/youtube_spending_100m_to_compete_with_broadcast_tv.html
Jacoub Bondre
April 8, 2011 @ 10:18 am
What blows my mind, is that Bell, Rogers, and the other telcos already have the hardware, and know how to switch their viewing models to mimic the likes of Apple TV and Hulu (I understand they are different in a lot of ways, but very similar in others. )
Think about the fact that Hulu has more viewers than Time Warner Cable. THAT is a significant change in viewing behavior, and the market has spoken with their feet.
Minimal investment (relative to revenue) would be needed to set Roger’s or Bell’s offerings in a way that would not only compete with the new competitors, but even beat them.
Hopefully someone at the helm over there realizes it before its too late.
Morgan Copeland
April 20, 2011 @ 10:00 am
I don’t know if telco’s do the same thing in Canada as they do in America, but…they put a data cap of 250gb on internet usage which doesn’t sound like a lot to me.
I do what you guys do, but I also play a lot of video games and download a lot of downloadable content (dlc) and demos in the process.
Data caps are strange to me because a lot pertinent information is going on line. data caps can change your access to that information.
There is no bandwidth or cap on tv. but they do on internet as well as phone usage. I think it is the lack of infrastructure for it, but It seems like a symptom of a bigger problem.
Price isn’t the issue as much as control. I watch a finite amount of content. I don’t need–nor should I pay for– an infinite amount of programming that I don’t find interesting or want to watch. AND I should be able to watch it on my time…that alone beats storage-probematic DVR’s.
Online is the logical step for control. Telco’s will have to become comfortable with being a data pipe rather than –what seems like– media companies. Until they do, the exodus from their tv screen to other screens will continue…