Ok, I know I said I was sick, but I ran across this, and as the implications of the price point seeped in, I went, “Holy packet loss, Batman!” and tripped out. I’ve known about “Video on Demand” (VOD) for some time, and it’s seeped into my awareness in the last few days (while I had nothing better to do than surf) that it was even available over the internet. I figured, yes, if you have a huge hard drive, a broadband connection, are geeky enough to hook your TV to your computer, and are willing to blow $20 for 30 minutes of programming, sure.
Boy was I wrong. Way wrong. The following excerpted news article (after the break) was posted over at the Anime News Network today:
Akimbo, an Internet Video on Demand service, announced today at NATPE that The Anime Network (TAN) would be offered on the service shortly; although no official date has been announced, they are expecting TAN to be available in mid-February.
Akimbo is an Video on Demand service that operated over the Internet, but connects to your TV. Focusing on the TV market, Akimbo is available in two flavors, as a set-top box that connects to your TV, or for Windows Media Center. Akimbo is not available for regular Windows PCs (or any other operating system).
Currently Akimbo offers anime via Adult Swim, AnimeOne (A CPM offering) and other program offerings. Akimbo CEO Josh Goldman told ANN that Anime is the third most watched category on Akimbo (after TV show archives and music videos), outperforming even sports. And when Akimbo asked its subscribers what they wanted to see more of, anime was consistently the most requested feature.
Goldman says, “Because of prior experiments and reactions, we decided to make anime a real focus.” Saying that they were pleasantly surprised at the demand for anime on their service, Goldman states that they approached TAN five months ago. “We found that a lot of existing users were downloading anime, but also that a lot of new users joined because of the anime offerings.”
As with other channels on Akimbo, TAN will be split between “Free for all” content, which is free with the monthly Akimbo subscription, and “Premium” content, which involves its own monthly subscription for the channel. Like other channels, such as Turner Classic Movies, Goldman expects roughly one third of the TAN content to be free. Access to TAN’s premium content will cost $9.99 a month.
Now most of my readers could care less about anime, but how many special interest channels are stuck up in the high-end “premium services?” You have to pay extra for the digital service, and then you have to pay more for the enhanced package with all the channels bundled, just to get that one elusive channel…. Cable companies have a great scheme going, charging you for 20 channels you could care less about just so you can get the one you do. Akimbo is allowing the user to bypass that entirely, essentially by allowing the user to select a program to watch, and then downloading it to view at his or her leisure later. And it’s ungodly cheap. The hardware to attach to your TV is $199.99 normally, but it’s currently “on special” for only $69.99.
In short, for the cost of a low-end DVD player and one chinese buffet a month, you can get access to programming that would cost you upwards of $80-90 a month on cable–if it were available. The real power of this offering is that it essentially obsoletes cable networks. Because so many of the current cable channels are themselves owned (sometimes at third or fourth remove) by the cable companies themselves (nice racket), the effects will be slow to develop, but if you want an idea of where this is going to go, look at what’s happened with the blogsphere and podcasting growing up around the efforts of mainstream media to alternately ignore and attack it.
Pajamas media talked about forming a network of blogger/reporters that would operate alongside the traditional mainstream media (well, they did before things got weird at the top). Thus newcomers with far less capital than, say, a Ted Turner, could challenge the legacy news media by creating an independant route from the beginning to the end of the news cycle. The implications of this technology are that someone can now do the same to the entertainment industry. Video podcasting is already in its infancy. How long will it be before creative minds pull together to make media that will only be distributed by Akimbo-like services?
“I remember back when there weren’t 10,000 channels…” Anyone recognize that line? Perhaps they weren’t imaginative enough….
Update: I just read that CBS and Warner Brothers are combining their UPN and WB networks to form a new entity called The CW. Using it as an example of what I’m talking about, what if you wanted to form a new network with lots of programming–but didn’t own 20-30 TV stations? This service, should it become a bit more widespread, makes it possible to bypass the infrastructure of the networks, stations, and cable companies (other than their broadband connection) in order to sell programming direct to the consumer. The lower the bar to entry, the more variety we, the consumer, have to chose from. And that’s a good thing.
