Week of February 3, 2006

The Economics Of TV Downloading

Monday, January 30, 2006

From paidcontent.org:

"According to JPMorgan Chase analyst Spencer Wang, one-episode of a hit show on network TV would generate about $12 million in gross ad revenue (assuming 17 million viewers). By comparison, even in the worst-case scenario -- with 20% of TV viewers opting for downloads, 100% of which overlap with existing programs -- downloaded episodes of such popular series can generate an estimated $15 million in revenue. The main reason is that the $1.44 in download revenue per user (or 70% of the $1.99 per download) is greater than the estimated 57 cents in advertising revenue per user generated under the current model.

The content owners take from downloading is nearly the same that a commercial-fee TV series episode generates from a DVD boxed set."

2000 to 2005 Trends

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

•  Film admissions down 1,400,000,000 to 1,300,000,000 (variety estimate)

•  Six TV network's broadcast share down 63% to 55% (Nielsen)

•  Album sales down 785,000,000 to 602,000,000 (Soundscan thru 12/25, includes digital downloads).

2002 to 2005 Trends

Wednesday, February 1, 2006

•  Film attendance down 14%, average cost of ticket up 10%

•  Total revenue from sales of iPod players=$5,000,000,000 (Northwestern U school of law)

2005 Media Stats

Thursday, February 2, 2006

•  US cell phone ownership = 67% (CTIA.org)

•  Those who text with cell phones = 37% (CTIA.org)

•  Total income for ringtones = $3,500,000,000 (textually.org)

•  Video game software sales = $6,700,000,000 (Cowen & Co)

•  Those with high-def TVs = 17% (Nielsen)

•  Owners of DVD players = 79% (Nielsen)

•  Those with TiVo or other DVR device = 17% (Nielsen)

The average American spends 30% of waking hours devoted exclusively to consuming media, and 30% of those hours are spent consuming more than one medium at a time (Ball State U. study of people in Indianapolis & Muncie, Ind.)

Bubble And Collapsing Windows

Friday, February 3, 2006

The First big experiment in simultaneous day and date release of a movie and DVD recently occurred with Steven Soderbergh's movie Bubble. While it's too early to get a detailed analysis as to how successful the experiment was, Mark Cuban told Rafat Ali at paidcontent.org that he felt the early results were "Good, very good."