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Originally Posted by harry_hitch
Lets say we drop to 3 ads per show. Would you agree that becomes 3 companies who are able to advertise per show? I would hope you do, it seems very logical to me.
What do you think will be the outcome if this ever happened? Big companies will spend massive amounts of money to get the rights to show the ads ahead of the most popular shows on TV - Eastenders, Corrie, GBBO, X factor, Broadchurch etc. With these shows now on-demand, there will be no limit to how many shows they can put their ads on, because we will only watch one show at a time. Please don't tell we will start regulating who can advertise and on what shows, that will never work.
Ironically, I reckon companies will spend much more money on adverts because they will still want to advertise on the best shows. Imagine how much money Tesco or Asda will need to spend to get their "we are cheaper than Tesco/Asda" adverts out. It will be an all out bidding war between huge companies with massive pockets for the top shows, and the cost will then filter down to the cost of the products.
Whilst we are on the topic of adverts, what happens to the current sponsors of the shows now? Do they still get to sponsor the show? If they do, does their mini sponsor ad count as one of the three ads you think will be acceptable, if so, we now only have two other spaces for companies per show, and I refer you back to my point about bidding wars for the limited advertising space. If it does not count as one of the three, are there now 4 ads per show and is that acceptable?
Lets also say you right and the BBC loses the license fee too and millions of families can still only afford a limited budget the same as the old license fee.
Lets say an average family watches Pointless (or any other daily weekday show) and it becomes pay per view and I have to watch adverts before it starts. Firstly, I am already hacked off cos I have to watch adverts. Secondly, how much does one episode cost? 99p? Lets say it is shown 22 times a month (30 days minus 8 days for the weekends.) that will cost a hard up family £21.78 - just for one show. Even if it only costs 49p, it is still £10.78. That is almost the cost of the monthly licence now, and they still can't afford Netflix either. Do you really think the tv companies will want to limit the amount of shows people can watch to one show per day? Surely that will not help them sell advertising space on the lesser watched shows.
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Regarding the advertisements, who knows how this will pan out in the future. There is a similar argument you can apply to newspapers, and everyone must realise by now that the printed version of newspapers now has a limited time span and that online news is where we are all going. So where do the newspapers get their income from if no-one is paying and printed ads no longer appear? Solutions are already forthcoming - some papers like The Times charge for their content. Others are supported by on line advertising.
The TV industry has some big changes to think about and I believe their income in future is likely to come from advertising on their web sites, a small number of ads prior to programmes, placement advertising, targeted advertising, sponsorship of programmes, sales of content and so on.
I agree with you that lower income households will not be in a position to spend money on pay per view programmes - this is not the cheapest way of accessing content! However a Netflix subscription of £6.99 per month and a further outlay for the on demand websites operated by BBC, Channel 4 and 5 is not going to be any more than the existing TV licence, which is extortionate and resented by many.
once again, although I am wedded to the idea of video streaming as my preferred way of watching TV, I have no problem with the linear channels continuing as now. I just can't see that it will continue like this for much longer as people work out for themselves that there is a better way and technology continues to improve.
By the way, as far as broadband coverage is concerned, I heard on the radio today that Virgin Media have announced a major expansion covering three quarters of the country. This, together with the BT contract for extending super fast broadband across the country within five years, will overcome some of the issues preventing the withdrawal of linear channels by the next decade.