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Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

Do these people realize that there are a lot of pirates that pay for their ability to pirate things? Between seedboxes, or usenet, or a faster internet connection, or extra disk space...some of these people are paying as much to download this stuff illegally as they would if they just bought a cable subscription.

And, honestly, the lack of ads is a bonus, it's not the sole reason pirates pirate.

How the hell the media companies continue to screw this up is baffling. They've got a product that people want really bad. And yet...they don't really want to give it to people?

Huh?

If people were banging down my door to use a product that I had created, I think I would probably be working my ass off to facilitate their ability to pay me for it.

For places like FX, which carries several shows that I like: why on earth can't I just stream FX from your website?

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I pay about $15/month for my legitimate newsgroups access and search engine. I think that's more than we pay for Netflix and Hulu, combined.

But my cable/Hulu/Netflix streaming bill isn't where Fox's revenue comes from - it comes from their advertisers. If they sell me their shows in a convenient .avi format, they're gaining me at $10/month, but they're losing every single company that pays for me to watch their commercials.

How much are you worth to Fox's advertisers on a monthly basis, then?

A 30-second time slot in a medium-sized market will cost roughly $5 per 1000 viewers (http://www.gaebler.com/Television-Advertising-Costs.htm )

This means each user is worth $0.01 per minute of commercials. The average American watches ~4 hours per day, 25% of which is commercial advertising, which comes out to 30 hours per month of commercials. That's 1800 minutes of commercials.

Answer: $18/month, average. Roughly.

But aren't there special events for which the broadcasters can extract a higher per viewer fee, the Superbowl comes to mind, also any 'final' of a sports or other competition. I wonder how much they make on those events compared to normal 'prime time' broadcasting.

Then charge me $20 a month for immediate, commercial free delivery to any device of my choosing.

Keep in mind that the $18/month is for one channel - not for every channel you watch

No, it's for your total month's viewing.

I am in this business. The CPM (cost per thousand impressions) actually varies quite a bit by daypart (time of day) and channel (broadcast, syndicated or cable). Primetime CPM is around $20-30. For daytime or cable TV it can be less than $10.

And then CPM for online video like Hulu is totally different as well - due to a number of factors, such as the smaller number of spots, the difference in attention paid, the quirks of Nielsen ratings on the web, and the clickthru opportunity.

There was some hubbub a while back about how CPMs for a 30s spot in the Simpsons on Hulu was actually going for more than a new episode of the Simpsons on Fox (something like $60 vs $30).

Most of the TV you watch on Hulu is prime content and even though it is online, you can expect a CPM of $25-50.

Very interesting. If I were to want to read up on this type of info (advertising, new media versus old, etc.) with actual dollar examples, are there any sites in particular you'd recommend?

The rate card can change as often as the ratings are released. From an "old media" perspective, pricing is pretty volatile.

I understand, but I was curious if there was any leading site for such news? Not necessarily like HN or reddit, but, an industry blog that does a good job of keeping people informed.

Selling content below cost sounds good at first, because right now The Man is getting nothing at all from pirates. Something — however small — has gotta be better than nothing, right?

But the Internet treats price discrimination as damage. Pretty soon everybody will be paying "pirate prices" and Fox will only be able to afford to produce reality TV. Perhaps such a new equilibrium is inevitable, but every year they can delay it is another year before the executives have to find new jobs.

Who said anything about selling it for nothing? Keep national ads in there, I don't care.

In fact, how many HN hackers do you think would dive at the chance to display localized ads in a stream from FX/TBS/USA/TNT/Comedy Central/etc./etc.

I think the point is market segmentation and ancient distribution channels/agreements are holding them back. This is why things like Hulu end up being US-only. Why they can't get this stuff right even within the same market? Well for one, they are struggling even with what they have. E.g. a number of episodes of The Big Bang Theory would crash the browser at the third (final) commercial segment consistently (even after restarting the browser and attempting to skip to the that commercial segment). They can't even get the tech to do the limited amount that they do now right.

So what is needed is a world wide network that can automatically insert relevant regional/local ads into popular shows so that they can be streamed online with no region restrictions.

Sounds like a good startup idea for a seasoned founder, since they're more likely to get 'color' levels of funding required to do this at scale from the get go. As unfortunately I don't see this kind of startup getting traction in a limited market, hence go big or go home levles of funding.

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