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Where does your entertainment dollar go?December 1, 2006 on 10:11 am | In Bitmunk, Industry, Music, Television, Movies and Video |Collaborative Content Distribution Collaborative Content Distribution ensures that all parties are treated fairly - something that is lacking in today’s current environment. This is where we get down to the nitty-gritty and for that we will need to compare and contrast a traditional distribution channel with a distribution channel that uses Collaborative Content Distribution, such as Bitmunk. Basic cable television is a classic example of a traditional distribution channel. A large television network acquires and produces content. This content is streamed to affiliates and then broadcast to viewers. This is a very uni-directional process - it is corporation to affiliate to consumer. Let us start looking at some numbers. As of October 2005, there are 92 million homes in the USA that subscribe to expanded television of some sort (cable or satellite)[5]. A ballpark average monthly basic cable bill for television content is around $50[6]. This means that the cable industry makes around $55.2 billion dollars a year on basic cable packages alone. The advertising industry dumps close to $36.8 billion dollars a year into cable and network television[7]. Combined, that is $92 billion dollars per year to deliver basic cable television content to the United States of America. That means that each cable TV household spends roughly $1000 per year on television. That figure includes advertising subsidies. When you buy a bottle of shampoo, part of that money is going back into selling you more shampoo via television advertisements. The average American spends 2.58 hours per day watching television[8], the average American household contains 2.55 people [9], so the average number of hours viewed per household per day is around 6.58. All those numbers are great, but what does it mean? If you are the average American household, you are paying roughly $392 per person, per year for television ($1000 per household per year on television/2.55 people per household = $392 per person per year). Breaking that down further, you spend about $0.42 per hour of entertainment ((2.58 hours per day x 365 days per year) / $392 per person per year). Paying $0.42 per entertainment hour sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Let’s really see where that money goes… 3 Comments »RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment |
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This is an extremely wonderful and well thought out essay. I would love for everything to happen like that, and to tell you the truth–if we are ever able to build this model I will GLADLY pay $20-$30 more to keep commercials out of my life.
On the other hand, I don’t see this happening. I hope I am wrong. What you are proposing is to cut out the middle man, who gets at least $92 Billion a year to provide us with "entertainment". With this much money on the line, I really don’t see the big telecom just "giving up" their content. They will surely put up a hell of a fight to preserve the old model. Just look to what they did to "a-la-carte" model that was just floating around a couple of years ago.(ability to buy only cable channels that you want). This had an overwhelming support among the Congress and the General Public who is sick of paying $100 a month to basically watch their 3 or 4 favorite channels. There were even hearings on the Hill scheduled. And what happened? Poof! GONE! Not even a peep.
Comment by BrooklynNY — December 12, 2006 #
It’s not so much the networks that control the conent of our favorite entertianment shows on tv as much it is the companies that advertise. It’s sort of scary that a cat food or plastic company has a lot of control over our favorite sitcom or reality show!
Comment by Luke Schmucker — January 23, 2008 #
Hi,
I am looking for an open source solution that I could install on my own server so I can distribute my music my self without giving away precious % to middle sites, plus getting paid in 60 plus days…
Anyone knows of something like that?
Thanks in advance,
Thierry Deruelle
http://www.dztd.ca
Comment by Thierry Deruelle — May 23, 2009 #