Those who have
been reading my musings over the years know that I have often opined on the
changing electronic media landscape. The
announcement last week that Sesame Street
would be moving to HBO may well be the tipping point that will accelerate
sweeping changes in what we watch and how and where we watch it.
If you missed the
announcement, it related that new episodes of the iconic children’s TV program
would first be released on pay TV, i.e. HBO, and after a period of time be
released to PBS for free broadcast. As
one would imagine, many media pundits have been lamenting this development as
taking away the birthright of millions of American kids unable to access
HBO. While this observation may be
valid, the switch by the producers of Sesame
Street is also about a shift in how most of us will consume our daily fix
of TV.
A closer look at
the TV industry, especially the broadcast TV segment, shows that over the air
and cable, once the mainstays of the business, are flagging. Some of the most watched and critically
acclaimed programs never get broadcast.
Rather, they are streamed on Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Plus. Appointment viewing, i.e. waiting for the
time the broadcaster decides to show a certain program, runs contrary to having
the “what we want, when we want it” mentality.
In the
announcement regarding Sesame Street
it was made clear that among the reasons that they were moving to HBO was to
take advantage of the streaming capabilities.
Children’s programs like Sesame
Street are ideal for online on demand delivery as parents look for suitable
fare to offer their young children unwilling to wait for the time slot chosen
by the local PBS stations
We are just
beginning to see the ramifications of this sea change. The economic models for local TV stations
(both commercial and public TV) have changed.
Once immensely profitable, running a local TV station in the black is
now very difficult. Stations in Ohio
and other swing states have been buoyed by political ad spending, but that is
not going to be enough to sustain stations in the long term.
So Big Bird may
well be that canary in the mine.
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