VOD is on the rise but cable industry consensus on other platforms isn’t
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A $30-million-dollar campaign hyping video-on-demand (VOD) is paying off, according to a senior industry executive.
Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group, said the movie studio has seen a 35% increase in buy rates of movies on VOD since the cable industry and several major studios teamed up on the marketing effort. Tsujihara made the remarks during a session at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association convention in Los Angeles Tuesday.
‘This is a meaningful contributor to the profitability of the movies,’ Tsujihara said.
The importance of growing VOD was one of the few things a panel composed of cable operators, programmers, a studio executive and a video gamer could agree on.
Though lots of cable programmers want to put their content online, Discovery Communications Chief Executive David Zaslav still isn’t convinced that is such a smart move.
‘This jump to put long-form content on all these platforms doesn’t make business sense or common sense,’ Zaslav said, adding that putting episodes of shows on Hulu or elsewhere ‘diminishes the overall value’ of cable TV to viewers. He got a round of applause from the audience of cable executives for that one.
The presidents of cable operators Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications both stressed the need to make content available on broadband -- provided they don’t have to pay programmers extra to do that.
‘Consumers would like to pay once for things,’ said Time Warner Cable’s Glenn Britt. Cable operators would also like to pay once for things. But not all cable programmers feel that way. Walt Disney Co., parent of ESPN, Disney Channel and ABC Family, has made some waves for hinting that it wants cable operators to pay extra to offer its channels on broadband.
Britt also warned of getting too excited about the potential of the latest gadgets.
‘We have a way of over-complicating things ... Every time we see a new screen or technology we think it’s a new business.’
-- Joe Flint
