Pub Quiz Question

Yesterday I took part in a pub quiz where one of the questions (really it was the answer) did not seem believable.It maybe trivia but, I spent this this morning researching it and thought I's share the result

The question: What event in the UK was the first where the TV audience exceeded the Radio audience?

The answer: The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II

This "fact" is on several websites all with the same figures. Which makes me think there is a single source, which is always questionable.

The given wisdom is, that 20-million people watch it on TV and only 10-million listened on the radio (wireless).

The breakdown for the TV figure is 7.8-million watched it in their own home. 10.4-million watched it in other peoples homes and a further 1.5-million watched it in cinemas, halls and pubs. (19.7-million)

The case against

The BBC estimates that there were 2-million TV sets in the UK. Manufacturer figures show there were 2.957-million sets. By the end of 1935 BBC estimates there were 3.1-million set.

The population was 51-million so 21-million (40%) didn't watch or listen (according to the figures above) to this once in a lifetime national/patriotic event? It was a public holiday so what were they doing? 

An estimated 3-million lined the streets. so down to 18-million unaccounted for.

Some town halls and churches had TV sets with around 30 people watching. (from the photos I can find) . It would have been difficult to have more as the screen size was so small (around 14") plus you had to sit relatively close as the image lacked contrast and definition. As can be seen from the picture in the church below. The people at the back were effectively listening to radio, or am I biased. 

Apparently neighbours went into each others house to watch TV. 

I think this photo is not just posed but is a fake. The image on the screen is two contrasty, is at the wrong angle and given that this was taken with a flash and the curved nature of the screen there would have been at least one reflection. Finally the TV sets looks post WWII and maybe even American.

You also had to be relatively well off to own a TV. These people have even got books on a shelf! A TV would cost over £100 which was more than 12 time the average weekly wage and 40 times the most common weekly wage. So most working class people couldn't afford TV. 

In 1953 there were only 4 transmitters Alexander Palace (London), Sutton Coldfield (Birmingham), Holm Mose (Manchester), Kirk O'Shotts (Edinburgh and Glasgow) and Wenvo (Cardiff and Bristol) these had the potential for 11-million homes.

Many villages and even houses in large towns didn't have electricity. They couldn't power a TV. they would get batteries recharged regularly (usually a swap out of the discharged battery for a charged battery) regularly to power their radios.

The TV coverage was undoubtedly a great success as by the end of 1953 their were 3.2-million sets. I started out to disprove the TV audience size based on a lack of infrastructure but, all the other infrastructure was in place to make the TV audience the size claimed. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, while it might have been that 20-million watched the coronation on TV the other 31 million probably listened to it on the radio. My gut feel is this was hype at the time that has become fact and this wasn't when TV overtook Radio.

Internet Television Broadcasting - One CDN Winner

Internet Television Broadcasting

Radio stations have been “broadcasting” on the internet for some time and Hulu and a few others have been “broadcasting” TV over the internet for a while too. But to avoid any doubt the internet is not a broadcasting environment. The TV you get via you Ariel (antenna) or satellite dish (TVRO) is broadcast – that is, it is being sent once to a wide geographical area (footprint) and you simply need to turn on to receive it. Often referred to as “point to multipoint”. There is no return path and the broadcaster has only statistical surveys to confirm and calculate who, if anyone, is watching.

Move to the internet and (ignoring CDN’s for the time being) each computer watching the video has a separate and direct connection back to the source server. They may be watching the same content at the same time but each is watching a unique stream. This is “point-to-point”, even if there are lots of destinations.

So a broadcast digital channel (via an antenna or dish) transmitted at 1.5mbit/s it is using no more than 1.5mbit/s to reach 1 or 10million viewers (assuming a single footprint). 10million viewers over the internet and the bandwidth required 1.5mbit/s x 10million = 7,500 gbit/s. (7.5Tbit/s). The bandwidth used would be no different if each of the 10million viewers were each watching a different programme (content).

Your internet service provider (ISP) built their business model on the assumption of much lower bandwidth utilisation (hence those fair usage policies to limit your maximum use) from their view of the world around 2005 (give or take a few years).

Your ISP connects to the internet via a big “pipe”. They spread the cost of that connection amongst all their customers. They also have a deal with their service provider where they pay for bandwidth used. As more customers start to watch video, such as the BBC iPlayer the bandwidth used goes up, pushing up their costs. The BBC doesn’t pay your ISP and I’m sure, like me, you don’t want to pay any more too.

My view is I’ve paid for up to 8mbit/s 24/365 a year and unless I exceed that why should I pay more?

There is another problem too in that the internet backbone gets clogged up as all these video streams compete with each other to get across the internet. The result is the internet slows down, video IP packets get lost, the video stutters or freezes, or drops out completely.

What is the solution? CDN, or content distribution networks, have been around from 2000 or so. The solution then and now has changed very little. The content source (say Disney) would want the end user to get a reasonable experience and for Disney not to be blamed for bad, interrupted, jerky or lost steam. The CDN would take the video stream over a separate network, bypassing the internet, and store the video at the edge of the Internet. This involved putting lots of edge servers in. The result was that instead of getting the video from the Disney site (invisible to the consumer) the request was redirected to the CDN edge server avoiding internet congestion and giving Disney (or whoever) a quality of service that customers expected.

Since then consumer bandwidths, choice of video, choice of supplier, and customer expectations have all increased. It isn’t the odd event but an everyday demand for video that is swamping ISP’s. Customers expect a relatively TV type experience, and increasingly HD. ISP’s could ignore the odd event as over a month or so it would even out. The constant demand of consumers for video is growing.

Some even believe that customers will get all their video over the internet and antennas and dishes, will be a thing of the past. I have my doubts, but the opportunity to insert different adverts to each stream specifically based on your profile. It could use your browser history where you have been looking at new TV’s to insert adverts about new TV’s or local retailers. All clever stuff, but would I want it hummm! As long as it didn’t start using information from the “adult sites” I visited!

Whatever the future holds the problem is that the content provider is getting paid for their content (advertising, subscription, pay-per-view or licence fee/tax) they are (currently) paying the CDN to get it to the edge of the network and the “poor” ISP is then having to pay for it to get onto their network and to their consumers. As it has grown it is now too much for them to ignore so most have employed “traffic shaping”. Traffic shaping means that content coming from a particular source is restricted, effectively artificially re-introducing the problems that the CDN was bypassing.

This is interesting as there is no longer a technical problem with delivery video but almost purely about money and business. Here are some things to consider;

Your ISP is Sky and you have a fantastic video service of Sky content. Your friend it with TalkTalk and their video service is crap. Sky maybe £2/month more but if it’s worth it your friend changes ISP. What option does TalkTalk have if customers migrate away?

Sky content on the Sky ISP platform is great (as they own the content and want to push their content and their adverts that sit around it). Knowing sky there will be some value added up sale to try and extract a little more money out of you and increase the ARPU (average revenue per user). However, BBC and ITV content is not so good. BT ISP has good BBC, ITV and BT Vision content, but not Sky. Suddenly the ISP market is more differentiated (not just price) but also more confusing for the consumer.
One option the ISP’s can do is to look at how they can deliver the service the customer wants at a reduced cost. One option doing the rounds is by extending the CDN concept into the ISP’s networks e.g the CDN server sits in the local exchange. This reduces the cost of bandwidth connection into the Internet.

Who pays? The CDN’s can stump up some as they have reduced their costs. The broadcaster/content owners as they don’t need to the original CDN service.

How would this work? The each ISP pays for a CDN service and then charges each broadcaster for using it. Where is the competition in all this? Won’t the CDN providers and the ISP all have to charge the same? There is a lot more detail but that’s potentially solved the problem.

What if a broadcast/content owner doesn’t want to pay the ISP? They stop paying their CDN provider as the “traffic shaping” negates most of the benefits.

What happens if CBS decides to sell/deliver programmes direct to the UK consumer rather than a broadcaster? Who contracts with whom, and for what, revenue share?

The broadcaster is really a content aggregator, it could be argued that Google and other search engines, YouTube, Facebook or some new entrant, could take over that aggregation role. To be effective the CDN will need to collect the content from all the sources (certainly the big boys) too. The technical issues are minor compared to the commercial and rights issues and complicated web of relationships that could emerge. Then bung in fads and transient events, start-ups and the short attention span of internet users and this will be a dynamic market.

My point? There is a lot of jockeying going on behind the scenes and little new revenue is generated. Like the DTH satellite platforms in Europe there is probably only room for one CDN provider (for Video at least) in each territory, so expect a fierce battle to kick off soon.

Networks & Network Providers

I took part in a panel discussion today about networks. Over seventy industry leaders from across the UK. Was FTTH (fibre to the home) a good investment? Would FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) be cheaper and just as good? How do network operators reduce their costs?

I was surrounded by people all intensely interested in networks. One person (a Welsh MP) pointed out that the EU defined broadband as anything above 150kb/s and some other organisation had defined it is anything above 256kb/s (from memory). The UK government had so far not defined what it means by “broadband” and therefore the ambition to get broadband into every home by 2012 probably achievable simply by defining UK broadband as anything above 32kb/s.

However….During the discussion it was easy to get caught up in the hype and technology and how you could get 40Mb to the home. Would the customer pay for it, and how much?

Consumers don’t by broadband because they want broadband – sure early adopters and techys might get into a “my broadband is bigger than your broadband” type of discussion, but, as the actress said to the bishop, it isn’t about size its what you do with it.

Consumers buy broadband as a means of getting to content. In fact going back to the basic telephone service people wanted to talk to other people. The networks provided the connection and the consumers the content.

Technology and assets give companies a barrier to competition. Their ability to control and use the technology allow them to dictate the way it is used and who uses it.

The record industry is a good example – recording studios and vinyl pressing plants were expensive and inexcusable technologies for new companies to invest in and entre the market. They were certainly not in the reach of the consumer. But as new technologies came along so it eroded this control/power. Pressing plants were sold off as what differentiated one label from another was not how well the record was made but what was on it.

Broadcasters had technology but also had the benefit of limited radio spectrum. The licensing regimes of the UK and Europe, meant that it was difficult for new entrants to make the investment and take the risk to bid for a license. This additional barrier (lower in radio broadcasting) kept them in control and complacent, beyond the natural life of their business models.

Anyway back to networks… These too are starting to lose their power as one network (fixed line or mobile) starts to look very much like the other. Why chose one over another: –

1. Does it work?
2. Is there a cheaper one that works just as good?
3. Is it hassle to get/maintain?

What has changed for the network operators is that the desirable/compelling/valuable content that customers want to get to, is not user generated, point to point of voice and data.

So what do network operators (service providers) need to do? Do they want to simply survive or do they want to transform?

Railway operators never got into air transport. Yet they were wealthy organisations at the time and could have easily expanded. Enormous synergies in scheduling time tables, selling tickets, reservations, engineering operations, logistics of rolling stock/planes, and staff roles. But they were rail operators, stuck with the technology and not the transport market need they serviced.

Networks operators follow the same route, married to providing networks and not the fulfilment of the consumers’ demand for content access.

So how do I see the network providers evolving, as apposed to becoming a low cost commodity utility? One thought…

The telephone directory was a way of customers finding out information about what (or in this case who) was on the network. As the internet grows (around 5,000 pages/second in 2008) it is increasingly difficult for the consumer to find what they want. Google (fast as it is) is throwing up a mountain of information to sort through. How many pages am I going to visit before I find the information I was after?  You Tube. Very funny clips, but if I have to spend 50-minutes watch dross, to find a 3-minute gem, I’m going to start to rely on my friends sending me a link in an email. Much more efficient!

As content (quality, professional production) gets onto the internet, how does the consumer no it even exists, let alone where to find it.  Is there a role for the network provider to be trusted recommender or aggregator of content? Is that worth paying for? Collect information on what I like and sell it on, but let me see some benefit. And not just in the adverts

I think it is almost impossible to predict what the consequences will be if 40+Mb/s is delivered to the home but some indicators now are not good.

Of the population that can get broadband, the take-up is way less than 50%. So not the “must have” technology.

Of the people that do have broadband around 50% get less than 1Mb/s download speed. Assuming that they are putting up with this (as they continue to pay) if not delighted, then 4Mb/s would probably fit their current needs not 40Mbit. “What about HDTV?” I hear you cry. Does anyone want to stream live HDTV over the internet?

• If it’s a film or recorded programme = download it
• If its news = why HD
• If its sports = why are you not watching in on a broadcast channel

Take the scenario that there are two adults and two teenagers, each simultaneously watching a streamed HDTV programme. 10,000 lines in an exchange area x 4 40,000 video streams. Will the backbone cope –

“Some will be watching the same programme?” Even if they are if two people watch the same if they start at different times they are different streams.

“Cache the content in the local exchange!” for how long? 3 hours of HDTV per person adds up to a lot of storage.

I’m sure 40Mbit to the home will come. It could enable social change (maybe even a revolution) with people working from home and a growth in cottage industries, a reduction in travel and CO2 emissions. Our kids are already used to interacting and socialising and would probably be easy to adapt and adopt this working environment. But will we look at the society that creates with pride?

ITV results are bad news, but what are they going to do about it?

ITV results are bad news, but what are they going to do about it?

Well it seems blame the regulator, the economic conditions, the growth in digital TV and the internet.

Have blamed everything it seems tat they are going to cut cost and look at revenue generation.

Cutting costs is what Charles Allan did for several years. Outside observers could say that this drove out creativity, drove away viewers and eventually led to where they are today.

Carolyn Fairbairn (ITV’s group strategy director) says that the TV advertising model is broken. That advertising rates in the UK are the lowest in Europe. She was speaking at the London Business School (3rd March 09) in a debate titled “Future of UK PSB Television”

Is the advertising model broken? There are lots of commercially funded TV channels in the UK that seem to be doing OK. Sure its harder but ITV has failed to adapt so from their perspective it is broken.

Who cares? No one really ITV is not delivering the audiances that the advertisers want or the programming the viewers want. Michael Grade, in an interview today (BBC Radio 4) when questioned about his strategy of using content creativity, to grow the business, said, that ITV were creating content for which they could generate a return on investment for their shareholders. The interviewer queried, “So what about the viewers?” To which Micheal Grade had a long pause (almost “I hadn’t thought about that” moment) before claiming that the content was attracting audience. NOT ENOUGH OF THE RIGHT ONES MICHAEL.

The denial of what is going on is what happens in many industries where the dynamics change and the incumbent/dominant players are unable/willing to make the changes necessary. Example the British Motorcycle industry when the Japanese arrived. The mechanical digger industry when hydraulics came along and the computer industry as generic PC’s took over from mainframes and narrow word processing systems.

ITV strategy must be to get cheaper home grown talent and innovative content. Don’t pay through the nose for Ant and Dec for Simon Cowell.

Use ITV 3 and 4 - try an Opendoor slot for independent producers, armature groups and University media departments (maybe even consumers) to showcase programmes. A talent slot rather than a talent show. Themed so that it isn’t random what consumers will see – Comedy, Drama, Music etc This may not be right but try something other than blaming everything else.

Put your viewers first and if they come back so will the advertisers.