Convenience Tax
Disney's trial of Internet-available shows netted 3M downloads in the first two weeks. The shows were free, though the article says they're experimenting with business models and some shows "may" be charged for. Of course they'll be charged for! iTunes is making $2/show off the same episodes, so Disney wants to know how many of the people behind the 3M downloads will stick around (remember, you don't know the number of downloaders, only the number of shows they downloaded). Of course, BitTorrent users know that you can get those shows, and many more, from tvtorrent.info within hours of broadcast for free, stripped of ads, and often in the original HD broadcast format. Disney and iTunes are charging the convenience tax: you don't get sued (whatever the actual risk of that might be, it's perceived as a big risk by most civilians) and you just click in an application you already use and it's right there waiting for you. Disney's downloads already have ads in them. How much lower will the demand be if you have to pay and get ads? And what will happen to the iTunes deals if Disney and other broadcasters decide there's money to be made in selling the episodes through their own site? I'd love to know the Disney download figures as they experiment with pricing: watch hitwise and comscore over the coming months. It's inconceivable they wouldn't have a report on this.
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Comments: 4
Nat & Tim on "Convenience Tax"
I would have liked this to be offline, as it must be anonymous to avoid complications.
Seems like you need to be careful here. I'm sure you did not realize it but
stripping Adverts is violating copyright, which is a criminal offense and
telling people where to go to where they can do damage to a public company borders an action that may be actionable.
I'm sure as O'Reilly is a very responsible organization and you will not facilitate a criminal act.
As Members of the Litigation Dept. of Disney have done me a favour in the past,and I have got to know them so I'm sure that dropping you this unofficial note is all that they would expect me to do, after all I'm neither a lawyer or other officer of the court, or in any way affiliated with them.
Isn't the question of Adverts and paying for download a question of cost.
Perhaps you could help with a formulae.
Could O'Reilly provide costs for downloading costs ?
Then how much is each person/adminute worth to Disney.
As a totally rough guide.
Given that the Superbowl is $5M / Minute for an audience of over 100 M.
Then it is $.05/person/ad_minute or $1 /person/viewing_hour.
Or lost at $880K for 17M gives about $2.
Given that a 1 hour episode usually requires about 2-500 people 1 week to produce. Assuming these are at least reasonably skilled at $50K plus per year that is $200 to $500K in salary add in overhead 25%, cost of sales 50%,(low) and equipment 25%, we get to $400K-$1M.
However a little research shows than episodes can cost over $10 M, so my figures need some work.
Anyway it seems that over 1-10 million people must watch a show for TV to be self sustaining.
Food for thought.
Taking your numbers, that would suggest that 5000 people is optimal per person. That suggests if I can draw in that number of people that I can make the national average way for 25 cents per 1 hour episode. Make that a dollar and you can spend a month per "episode". Interesting thought. Question is, what can one person do in those time frames that generates 1 hour of must see "TV" that would encourage 5000 people to watch...
It would be pretty funny if the clowns at Disney were clever enough to realize they could retaliate against ORLY for this blog post by publicly telling people where to go to get pirated copies of ORLY books...
But seriously: How the fsck do you justify linking to torrent sites that track pirated content, when your own company is selling PDF files?!
