Pissing off consumers: Fox and ABC
July 2nd, 2009 by ftobiaI am glad that nowadays I don’t need to download TV shows illegally in order to catch up when I miss an episode. To my knowledge most shows are available streaming online from whoever is lucky enough to own their respective distribution rights. Not only is firing up a web browser easier than torrenting, but I feel good that I’m doing The Right Thing. Studios can make some money from advertising, and the ads are shorter than commercials. And I can watch whenever I want. Nice and easy.
Except studios don’t want to make my life easy. Fox and ABC are not interested in making me happy. I used to be a die-hard fanatic of House and Grey’s Anatomy. I did not miss an episode until my senior year class schedule got really crazy, when the opportunity cost of my time became too much. “I will catch up on these shows later,” I thought. “After all, they are available for free online from the good folks over at Fox and ABC.”
No. Never bank on the goodness of TV studios. They are self-interested profit-maximizing vampires. After I realized that the episodes available for both House and Grey’s were restricted to the first in season five, and the last few of the same season, my dreams of catching up were defenestrated. I guess I’ll have to go back to illegal downloads, or wait until I have Netflix to catch up.
Why would pissing me off be in any studio’s best interest? It can’t be because of technical issues, since the previous episodes must have been taped and posted earlier, but then taken down. The issue must be economic. Studios are trying to get me to substitute TV-over-internets for a more lucrative medium, like TV-over-TV or TV-over-DVD. I hope they did their cost-benefit analysis carefully. Weighing foregone internet ad revenue against 1) the number of people who would then download the shows and 2) the number of people who would buy DVDs or watch it on reruns on TV, I guess they decided that they’d make more money making peoples’ lives difficult. My inclination is that they’re wrong: those watching TV online are disproportionately young, who are probably more likely to download illegally rather than have the money to spend on DVDs.
Well, good for them. As it stands I probably won’t be catching up on House or Grey’s any time soon, which means next season they’ll both have one fewer viewer (hehe, inadvertant rhyming). Pissing off your customers probably isn’t the best business model.
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