Task:
Recall that the main article(s) for each of your blog entries must be no older than 4 months old. If you use an older article as your primary focal article, you will be asked to redo the assignment. You may, of course, use older sources to support your discussion but the article serving as the main focus of your paper must be recent.
This final blog entry will be related to your case assignment in that it will deal with Comcast. For this assignment consider the short news article related to Verizon by Albanesius (2014) and the Nakashima (2014) article that discusses a deal made between Disney and the Dish Network. The articles deal with plans to provide video content on mobile devices and on home televisions in an a la carte manner. As you know, Cable companies tend to bundle programming to cause customers to want to buy more premium packages to accommodate their home entertainment desires. The players in the industry have been avoiding the a la carte approach to programming in order to cause customers to pay more through the bundling strategy.
Your assignment will be to present to your blog reading audience an argument as to whether you believe that Comcast is strategically poised to compete with upcoming changes in the environment related to providing an a la carte approach to programming. What should large cable companies like Comcast be doing now so as not to go the way of Kodak?
Ensure you provide at least two very recent articles to support your main points (no older than 4 months old).
Case scenario:
Verizon is looking to roll out its Internet TV service by mid-2015, with an offering that will allow viewers to pick and choose the channels they want.
During a Thursday appearance at a Goldman Sachs technology conference, Verizon Communications chief Lowell McAdam said the service will likely include access to the "big four" broadcast networks, as well as "custom channels."
"No one wants to have 300 channels on your wireless device," McAdam said. "And I think everyone understands. It will go to a la carte."
Major cable and pay TV services have long resisted an "a la carte" approach that would let customers pick and choose the channels they want to pay for rather than pay for a bundle of 300+ channels. For about a decade , they have argued that a la carte would result in increased pricing and less channel diversity.
And while that probably won't change for traditional cable customers anytime soon, McAdam acknowledged that when it comes to the Web and mobile, a different approach is necessary.
"We do see that the millennials really want to look at...content over the iPads and other tablet devices and their smartphones," McAdam said. Attitudes in the industry about accessing content online is "changing dramatically," he said, and execs are more open to the idea now than they were two years ago.
"I don't think there is any one that would stand up here and say the only way it's going to be offered five years from now is linear and it's going to be tied to your TV set because frankly they will miss the market and they will be the ones left behind," McAdam said.
In January, Verizon Communications bought Intel's TV business for an undisclosed sum, picking up the intellectual property rights and other assets that powered Intel's OnCue Cloud TV platform. At the time, Verizon said it planned to integrate IP-based TV services with FiOS video as well as expand its mobile video offerings.
As for what type of custom channels viewers can expect, McAdam pointed to AwesomenessTV, which DreamWorks acquired last year, but didn't delve too much more into possible partners, except to say that they will probably be "out of the West Coast, where a lot of this is more home grown content."
Case scenario:
LOS ANGELES * Dish Network and Disney have reached a landmark deal that envisions the day when Dish will offer a Netflix-like TV service to people who'd rather stream TV over the Internet than put a satellite receiver on their roof.
The deal announced late Monday paves the way for Dish to offer live local broadcasts from ABC TV stations and programming from ABC Family, Disney Channel, ESPN and ESPN2 over mobile devices, set-top boxes and other means, similar to how Netflix's video streams are delivered today.
No start date for such a service was announced. It is likely that Dish will have to cut similar deals with other programmers to make such a service attractive. A Dish spokesman refused to speculate on what the offering would cost.
As part of the new rights deal, Dish Network Corp. agreed to disable for three days after the initial broadcast a function on its Hopper digital video recorders that allows people to automatically record and strip out commercials from prime-time weeknight programming. But that's only for programs on ABC, which is owned by the Walt Disney Co.
With the deal, both sides are dropping a legal battle between them over the so-called AutoHop function, which had threatened to cut into the revenue of media companies like Disney by stripping out ads. Dish hasn't made public how many of its 14 million subscribers use the Hopper.
Dish customers will also gain access for the first time to Disney's WatchESPN, Watch Disney, Watch ABC Family and Watch ABC apps, which allow for live and on-demand viewing on mobile devices.
Dish is also picking up a slew of new channels including Disney Junior, Fusion, ESPN Goal Line, Longhorn Network and the upcoming SEC ESPN Network when it launches sometime this fall.
The companies said they would work together on new advertising models. Last month, Dish announced a technology partnership with rival satellite TV company DirecTV to launch a system that helps target political ads to viewers based on where they live.