With subjects ranging from video-on-demand, to digital video recording, IP television and portable and mobile media, showgoers might have believed that they had stumbled into a conference that majors in widgets and technology.
But such was not the case in July at the annual CTAM Summit in Philadelphia, which drew record-breaking attendance of 3,376. Although new and emerging cable services served as primary discussion points, the panels, true to the aim of CTAM, covered their marketing and operational impact, rather than just the nuts and bolts of the technology behind them.
VOD business models still evolving
Although video-on-demand (VOD) deployments and libraries continue to expand, the burgeoning service still lacks a definitive business model.
That was the consensus among panelists during a Multichannel News/B&C-hosted panel discussion.
For Time Warner Cable, growth is expected to come from all three VOD categories: "free" on-demand, subscription-VOD and more traditional "transactional" VOD, according to MSO Senior Vice President Bob Benya. No one category will serve as the "killer model," he added, noting that VOD continues to play an important role in the value of digital cable.
While the business models behind transactional and SVOD are fairly straightforward, much more contention exists between operators and programmers in the "free" category.
Programmers pay big bucks for content, so the economic foundation of that content and the VOD business must be supported, explained Ron Lamprecht, vice president of new media at NBC Universal.
Although Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. owes its growth in the VOD arena to MSOs such as Comcast Cable, a flee-on-demand pioneer, the content supplier initially was leery about the model, said Jamie McCabe, Twentieth Century's SVP of Worldwide Pay-Per-View. But that position has changed, he added, as it became clear over time that free content helped customers become more comfortable with the …
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