Comments for Outside the Herd

Comment on Battle for $500 billion TV market is going to be more entertaining than most shows on air by First Kill All of the Video Distributors…Paramount Runs Doomed Experiment | Outside the Herd

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 21:11:42 +0000

[...] another interesting salvo in the $500 billion television battle. LD_AddCustomAttr("AdOpt", "1"); LD_AddCustomAttr("Origin", "other"); [...]

Comment on TV disruption is a $500 billion fight by First Kill All of the Video Distributors…Paramount Runs Doomed Experiment | Outside the Herd

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 21:11:35 +0000

[...] Comments Dish Bids $1.9 billi… on TV disruption is a $500 billio…edaciuk on Another Crack in Sirius Busine…Saul on Another Crack in Sirius [...]

Comment on TV disruption is a $500 billion fight by Dish Bids $1.9 billion for Hulu, Google: $4 billion | Outside the Herd

Dish Bids $1.9 billion for Hulu, Google: $4 billion | Outside the Herd — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:35:00 +0000

[...] I’ve mentioned before, TV is the next huge battleground for Google at $500 billion. So $4 billion is peanuts to make Google’s content issues go away. But it’s not that [...]

Comment on Another Crack in Sirius Business Model by edaciuk

edaciuk — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 02:31:17 +0000

I think of all of the companies on the planet that know how to soak customer wallets based on flat base fees then overages, it’s the telcos. They did it with minutes. This is just substituting gigabytes. They’ll figure how to keep everyone paying $50 per person per month.

Comment on Another Crack in Sirius Business Model by Saul

Saul — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 23:58:19 +0000

Verizon and Metro PCS have dropped their “unlimited data plan” options. How do you expect data charges to trump subscription services?

Comment on It’s Official, Google Wallet Will Survive and Probably Win by Altgate (@altgate)

Altgate (@altgate) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 00:58:50 +0000

I’ll give you 2 to 1 against Google Wallet.

Comment on Battle for $500 billion TV market is going to be more entertaining than most shows on air by Brandon

Brandon — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 18:07:51 +0000

I think this will definitely be interesting to watch. I think an interesting trend you missed actually came to light earlier this year from Nielsen:

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/media_entertainment/nielsen-estimates-number-of-u-s-television-homes-to-be-114-7-million/

This year marks the first time since 1992 that we’ve seen a drop off in the estimated number of homes with a television. In 1992 we saw an drop after Nielsen adjusted for the 1990 census. This year there has also been an adjustment for the 2010 census. In 1992, after dropping, TV ownership saw a great period of growth.

Another factor this time is that any people with TVs who did not undergo the digital conversion would no longer be counted. So it’s possible there was a drop due to that.

It remains to be seen if this is just an issue with the census and digital conversion. Nielsen does point out that this could also be in part because younger viewers are going without a paid subscription to television for the first time. If that really is a factor, I expect next year we’ll see a drop as well.

It will certainly be interesting.

Comment on Slacker and Pandora portable radio to finally put a bullet in Sirius by Mij

Mij — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 02:29:02 +0000

Interesting how people get kind of offensive when something they like is threatened. Comparing Sirius to Slacker, or vice versa is not really fair since what they offer is different. Clearly the content on Sirius is superior, but you can’t really tailor Sirius the way you can Slacker. I absolutely love Slacker because I can configure it to play the music I want to hear and only the music I want to hear. And I snagged a couple three of their first gen portables for like $69 on Amazon and my boys and I just love them. The article is right about the business model of Sirius, but it will survive in some form no doubt. The world will continue without Howard no problem.

Comment on Slacker and Pandora portable radio to finally put a bullet in Sirius by edaciuk

edaciuk — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 09:24:59 +0000

Two notes:
1) I haven’t really poured through their financials but it looks like Sirius has never made money and losing ~$300 million a year with $380 million in cash not sure of their future. I could be wrong but that’s from just a quick glance at their 10-k: http://google.brand.edgar-online.com/displayfilinginfo.aspx?FilingID=6469359-147779-371057&type=sect&TabIndex=2&companyid=1133&ppu=%252fdefault.aspx%253fsym%253dSIRI.

2) I agree that the Slacker/Pandora format alone is probably not as content rich as Sirius XM. That alone is not going to kill them. The thought is that a single dedicated, walled-off, expensive and inefficient communications platform won’t be able compete with the open internet on content long term. Whether it’s Slacker or last.fm or iTunes or online radio. See newspapers.

Comment on Slacker and Pandora portable radio to finally put a bullet in Sirius by edaciuk

edaciuk — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 09:16:44 +0000

That’s a good point about Howard Stern. Exclusive content can be a great business. Look at Bloomberg or HBO. Not sure if it’s justifies a global dedicated hardware and communications network though. That was a good move on XM’s part. But not enough to save it.