You said it.  I think I mentioned it in my first bullets as well.  I want the shows I am interested in available at the time I am interested in viewing them, and presented on the medium that I choose to display them.  I want simple clean interfaces that get the job done.  It doesn't have to be free, albeit I wouldn't complain much about that unless it was ringed with ads like free internet service used to be, I am willing to pay for such a service, perhaps even a bit of a premium to help jumpstart the innovation into the mainstream.

I mentioned ZillionTV a few times.  I was accepted into the beta, which hasn't started, and am eargerly awaiting to participate and provide feedback.  There isn't much about it yet but here is the article that sparked my interest as well as a link to the product itself:

• ZillionTV
• Venture Beat Article

Anyone, including Vaenco, has a tough road ahead of them getting providers to bite off on anywhere anytime concepts for programming.  I just hope that one of them gets it right (or buys all the little ones that do and makes a big one) and then gives it to the consumer in a usable form (my experience with SageTV vs. Tivo won't ever be repeated – Tivo wins hands down – hell…it wins even without hands).

Your point is certainly understood.  I don't think any program like this would succeed without a significant amount of adoption.  I don't have skeptitism toward it though and think that the service providers could benefit from offering a variety of options including traditional service offering.

As for channels, shows, and the like being bundled that might be one of the more significant challenges to solve.  I think one solution would be to take a few interim steps and go from the current offerings to more of the current, instead of six offerings you break them into meaningful or potentially related groups.  Of hand I could see groups by high-level genre applicable to most, it would certainly, initially, address my irritation:

• Broadcast (Fox, NBC, ABC, etc..)
• Local Broadcast (PBS, Local Weather, etc..)
• Government (CSPAN1-3,
• Kids Programming (Disney, Sprout, Noggin, Nik, etc..)
• Science and Nature (Discovery Specialty channels, Nat Geo, etc..)
• Science Reality (Discovery, History, Outdoor Network, etc..)
• Shopping (HSN, etc..)
• Sports (ESPN, Golf, Tennis, etc..)
• Broadcast Movies (Encore, FX, TBS, AMC, etc..)
• Music (MTV, VH1, etc..)
• Lifestyles (Food, Travel, HGTV, etc..)
• News and Information (Bloomberg, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, etc..)
• Womens Interest (Oxygen, Lifetime)
• Mens Interest (Spike,
• Science Fiction (Sci-Fi)
• Religion
• Cultural Interests (BET, African Inspriation, etc..)
• Premium (I see there being a few of these related to each type of premium channel like HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc…)
• Adult (Playboy, Spice, Penthouse)
• Streaming Digital Music

Today if I could carve my cable subscription up into even just the above categories and pay appropriately so that I get what i want and the provider still makes a buck, both parties would be happy.  For the time being I would even pay a premium to help get the techology started – even with the knowledge that I could just “hide” the channels and such I like the idea that I am getting exactly what I want and don't have to mess with the rest – ever. 

Again – I do agree with your assessment though and it will take a bit more time, and some serious poking from other sources like the internet, and ZillionTV to get cable and satellite to review their subscription presentation models.

Out of curiousity, and putting aside the notion that it isn't likely to happen anytime soon, what, in addition to the list I have started would you change about or add to the way you get your service?  How would change it through innovation to make it different and better for not only yourself but the masses?

Cable and Satellite television companies have a lot to learn.  I have been going through the process of trimming down what I subscribe to, not being a huge TV watcher, outside of the various shows that Tivo grabs for me, I know specifically what I want to be available.  What I have found, and this is nothing new, is that I don’t like to pay for channels and/or shows that I don’t watch.  More often I find myself thinking about ditching cable altogether and using various online services to scratch the itch.  This sounds appealing but adds various complications to getting my various subscriptions to appear on the medium that I want to view them which is not my computer monitor, no matter how much I love it, but my high definition TV.

Current Inefficiencies:

As a cable or satellite customers I am only given a small number of choices about what program plans I can choose.  These packages are predefined, pre-priced, and inflexible in their offerings.  After deciding to use a certain company, Comcast in my case, love it or leave it, is the only option I have vs. broadcast thanks to an obstructed southern skyline at the appropriate angle from anywhere in my yard or on my roof.  Comcast offers a small number of packages that each add onto each other until you can subscribe to everything they offer.  I do not have a need for everything they offer but I do have an interest in a specific selection of channels.  My problem, or issue, is that to get the channels that I want I have to subscribe to a mid-range package just below the premium offerings, paying a premium price for content that I don’t use.  Satellite services such as Dish and Directv offer packages as well with no customization outside of the different options in each package.

Streaming Options

An alternative medium for me to cable is online.  I watch the same shows, at the time of my choosing, with basic time-shifting built in, via sites like Hulu or OVGuide.  I find this refreshing in that I can usually find what I am looking for and watch it on my own schedule.  This is great for a missed episode or a recommendation from a friend or absent minded viewing while I work, but not for my primary shows where I want to relax in front of the television and not a computer screen.  Options are starting to come out that stream web content directly to the TV but the technology is still immature and the user interfaces typically focus on specific features but miss the principles of K.I.S.S interface design.  A recent option that is gaining momentum is ZillionTV – they plan and might actually succeed in bring the streaming content of the web to our living rooms – they get it – just like Tivo gets time-shifting for the masses.

À La Carte

If the cable and satellite companies will not give me any options there is someone out there that will.  More often I am willing to find my show a few days after it airs via OVGuide, and ignore any commercials that might get in the way, my irritation to this is that I usually have to watch it on my computer.  Advertisers have to understand the potential lose of revenue this leads to in scale – the cancellation of the Jericho series is a prime example of how time-shifting and online content can scare away funding from advertisers for a show that is loved by its fans.  I however would be more than willing to watch commercials if they were relevant to the programs that I watched or preferences that I specified, or better, that I could train my set-top box to understand – the Tivo style thumbs up / thumbs down applied to commercials could tailor advertising content directly to me – in such cases I would be apt to actually watch them vs. time-shift around them when such an option is available.

Wish List – Listen Up Service Provider

I would like to see the following:

• A basic, simple fee, to support the generic infrastructure of providing service.
• The ability to subscribe to specific channel for a fixed price per channel and a discounting price, or sliding scale as I add channels to my account.  I am uncertain what a single channel should cost but it should scale to reward those customers that subscribe to more channels or specific packages or recommend combinations.  Channel prices could vary as well as there is no reason why premium content should cost the same as broadcast content, but the service provider should be cautious about overpricing – as an example I would be willing to pay fifty cents for each broadcast channel or a standard definition cable channel, one dollar for each high definition cable channel and two dollars for each premium channel such as HBO or Showtime.
• The ability to subscribe to a particular program on a particular channel at a particular time, but not to the channel itself.  This might require an additional service such as having DVR access added to the account, as an additional fee, so that should you use a provider supplied or personal DVR, the show is made available to your signal at the specified time, or after normal broadcasting time potentially for a discount, for viewing either in real time or via a DVR.
• The ability to have commercials tailored to my preferences.  Taking this option a step further training of commercial would be ideal.  In practice of defining preferences I should have the ability to opt out of certain categories of commercials that are not applicable to my purchasing needs, desires, or habits.  Applicable to a training technique I would like the ability to start fresh and tell the service what I like and dislike.  To do this would require that I actually watch commercials, which I am okay with, but after a period of time I would expect the advertising content to begin to tailor to my liking and applied bias.  Once advertisers understand that viewers don’t mind watching most commercials and would likely be happy to do so should the content be somewhat personally tailored, all involved parties would win – I might even be more opt to use the Tivo “Press thumbs up now to learn more…” feature.

Infrastructure

Asking for a upgrade in service from the service providers is easy but what would such an infrastructure upgrade entail.  In most cases the connectivity to the market from the provider is already established.  There would be the need for innovation on the side of the provider to add the above functionality to their content management and distribution systems.  The technology seems to be close to some of the ideas already in that Comcast at least offers a significant amount of content on demand and I see much of the services I mentioned as an extension from that base with an added layer of management that understands more about my personalized preferences vs. a presentation layer to the masses.

In addition to the content providers’ themselves there would be a new market waiting to be tapped by set-top box manufacturers to add in the new features and take advantage of a new way of providing the same content to the same defined market in a new way.  Advertisers would need to rethink how they market.  They could take a given product and market it to defined groups of like minded viewers in different ways tailoring the presentation where it made sense.  They would need to understand that some viewers are not appropriate audiences for certain products and they would have to respect our preferences to get us to agree to and honor a potential new partnership where time-shifting became a technique of the past.

Outside of the proposed benefits to Advertisers I was curious to see what my new cable bill would be assuming that the at a minimum the discreet channel subscription was made available.  With a basic fee of $10.00, 6 standard definition channels at $0.50 each, 19 high definition channels at $1.00 each, and 5 premium channels at $2.00 each, my monthly bill would be (10+3+19+10) or $42.00 – Normally my bill for my cable package is $74.00 monthly with about three-fourths of the content not wanted and not viewed.  This approach would continue, I am assuming, to pay the providers bill, and it would make me a happy, satisfied customers knowing that I am paying for precisely what I asked for and nothing more – wrap the service with a convenient, easy to use, subscription management system accessible via the web or the set-top box and bill me monthly for the either the high water mark of channels I subscribed to for the month or offer me a range where I can pay a set price for a specific number of channels but limit my options to change them to a few times a month to minimize abuse.

I certainly won’t hold my breath but I would love to see the cable and satellite content providers implement even one of the above ideas.  If I had my choice the discreet channel subscription would be a great start and likely the easiest to implement in scale.