I'm having a hard time trying to figure out say at 7-8pm near prime time how much money they are paying for the programming itself and not the network. I read that it costs about $350,000 for a 30 second commercial on national t.v. So ten minutes of advertisements would be roughly $14 million in revenue right? But I have a really freaking difficult time imagining that the people actually involved in the original 60's star trek episode are getting any reasonable fraction of that for every hour? I doubt content creators or anyone even involved in making the original episode at all are seeing more than $100 grand. But that's the number I'm having a hard time actually finding and would appreciate someone making that clear for me.
So what are advertisers actually paying for? Viewing audience. Lets be generous and say that every time SciFy airs a re-run of Star Trek somebody somewhere gets a check for One million for that expressed purpose. And assume an average viewing population of 500,000 people - then the cost should be $2 per person and not the money the network is losing $14 million.
This is what gets me in all of this 'how to fund media' stuff. We're also being forced to fund the mediums! All of the bogus numbers seem to be like the fact the network station is losing 14 million not that the show cost for 500,000 people to watch is losing 1 million.
Forgive my numbers being way off- but some of them I couldn't find but I am guessing they are reasonable approximations. We need to find a way to fund the media and not the medium. But what way? I think for starters finding out exactly what a show costs to air divided by the number of viewers would be a good starting point for the real world cost of piracy. In this example 500,000 people cost that Star Trek episode in and only in itself potentially $2 a piece. And cost the network $13 million.
In my idealistic Utopia (or at least the one currently in fashion with me) we don't individually pay per view, we pay per view in groups. So 100 views of Charlies' Angels reruns would be on the same reasonable scale as 100,000 views of the same show. Networks would choose to pay for 100,000 views packages with some 'reasonable' discount for bulk purchases and individuals may not only choose to buy a pack of 100 views but also they may choose to 'SHARE' them. Why is this idea of sharing automatically bad? If there is a fixed number of views to a DVD of 1,000 why can't I elect to put some on my facebook profile for my friends to share? Or better on Google+ and make them circle dependent so I can myself measure if someone is abusing it or not? This makes sense? What geographical limitation should there even be? If I mail a DVD I own to a friend why shouldn't they also be allowed to log into my computer to watch it? If we start putting number of views in rather than questionable ownership, AND make it a large number to begin with- that seems like a good compromise.
But wait - there is more. Why not further give people the ability to add in their own advertisers? Why should it make a difference if NBC is paid to air a vacuum commercial, Hulu, or just myself? I pay $10 for 1,000 views. I keep 100 for my own personal use, and put the other 900 encrypted link codes up my Google circle for people I choose to share my movie collection with. If the media companies really want to be bitches say it's only 100 plays for $10 and then I keep 10 and put 90 up online. The whole problem here is with putting it up online and what difference should that make? Television is sharing, I see a car commercial and I'm thrust into a social group that is defined by some percentage of people likely to buy one where the person who actually buys the car is in fact sharing with those of us who do not. Isn't that actually the case? A radio commercial comes on and all those persons who run out and buy the new shampoo are sharing the song with me.
Turn everyone into a media content provider. Makes sense to reclaim costs early on so most people will be third-run media providers with big players sharing the content for the first few weeks and eventually trickle down into social-networks. But why not turn file sharers into content providers? What algorithms for targeting advertisements would work better then a human operator? In fact people would do this for fake money.
You can 'buy' programming credits for either real cash or virtual currency you earn by embedding advertising into what content you choose to share. There can be a bonus for someone who buys a product as the result. Think homemade Etsy advertisements that you know at least one of your friends is likely to want? Or any small scale business that can suddenly be given advertising space, an audience, by the grace of their file sharer?
Medium has always been about sharing. We don't live in a day where a single King is ordering a play be created on his behalf and paying the total cost himself. I would like to believe that embracing people as mediums would eventually translate into realistic costs for actually creating high quality new content as someone can figure out ways of connecting directly with a target audience and have that bill be paid without needing to rely on mass audiences, majorities, and network broadcasts.
A bit off subject but close enough since it concerns piracy. It's not just that the pirates get something for free, they actually get a better product!
There are probably many people out there who would be more than happy to pay for music, movies, etc but with it comes the burden of limited playback options or the burden of removing the copy encryption.
I don't pirate for several reasons but, when I have to place a game disk into my computer with a large HDD, when I can't just import my itunes songs into my MP3 player, when I can't take a dvd and convert it into the format that works with my cell phone, when I have to sit through 5 minutes of anti-piracy warnings or worse- advertisements that won't let me skip them; it makes me fully support the pirates. Why? Because they actually get a better product in the end than those of us who pay for it.
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?$ for network to play Star Trek off prime-time?
I'm having a hard time trying to figure out say at 7-8pm near prime time how much money they are paying for the programming itself and not the network. I read that it costs about $350,000 for a 30 second commercial on national t.v. So ten minutes of advertisements would be roughly $14 million in revenue right? But I have a really freaking difficult time imagining that the people actually involved in the original 60's star trek episode are getting any reasonable fraction of that for every hour? I doubt content creators or anyone even involved in making the original episode at all are seeing more than $100 grand. But that's the number I'm having a hard time actually finding and would appreciate someone making that clear for me.
So what are advertisers actually paying for? Viewing audience. Lets be generous and say that every time SciFy airs a re-run of Star Trek somebody somewhere gets a check for One million for that expressed purpose. And assume an average viewing population of 500,000 people - then the cost should be $2 per person and not the money the network is losing $14 million.
This is what gets me in all of this 'how to fund media' stuff. We're also being forced to fund the mediums! All of the bogus numbers seem to be like the fact the network station is losing 14 million not that the show cost for 500,000 people to watch is losing 1 million.
Forgive my numbers being way off- but some of them I couldn't find but I am guessing they are reasonable approximations. We need to find a way to fund the media and not the medium. But what way? I think for starters finding out exactly what a show costs to air divided by the number of viewers would be a good starting point for the real world cost of piracy. In this example 500,000 people cost that Star Trek episode in and only in itself potentially $2 a piece. And cost the network $13 million.
In my idealistic Utopia (or at least the one currently in fashion with me) we don't individually pay per view, we pay per view in groups. So 100 views of Charlies' Angels reruns would be on the same reasonable scale as 100,000 views of the same show. Networks would choose to pay for 100,000 views packages with some 'reasonable' discount for bulk purchases and individuals may not only choose to buy a pack of 100 views but also they may choose to 'SHARE' them. Why is this idea of sharing automatically bad? If there is a fixed number of views to a DVD of 1,000 why can't I elect to put some on my facebook profile for my friends to share? Or better on Google+ and make them circle dependent so I can myself measure if someone is abusing it or not? This makes sense? What geographical limitation should there even be? If I mail a DVD I own to a friend why shouldn't they also be allowed to log into my computer to watch it? If we start putting number of views in rather than questionable ownership, AND make it a large number to begin with- that seems like a good compromise.
But wait - there is more. Why not further give people the ability to add in their own advertisers? Why should it make a difference if NBC is paid to air a vacuum commercial, Hulu, or just myself? I pay $10 for 1,000 views. I keep 100 for my own personal use, and put the other 900 encrypted link codes up my Google circle for people I choose to share my movie collection with. If the media companies really want to be bitches say it's only 100 plays for $10 and then I keep 10 and put 90 up online. The whole problem here is with putting it up online and what difference should that make? Television is sharing, I see a car commercial and I'm thrust into a social group that is defined by some percentage of people likely to buy one where the person who actually buys the car is in fact sharing with those of us who do not. Isn't that actually the case? A radio commercial comes on and all those persons who run out and buy the new shampoo are sharing the song with me.
Turn everyone into a media content provider. Makes sense to reclaim costs early on so most people will be third-run media providers with big players sharing the content for the first few weeks and eventually trickle down into social-networks. But why not turn file sharers into content providers? What algorithms for targeting advertisements would work better then a human operator? In fact people would do this for fake money.
You can 'buy' programming credits for either real cash or virtual currency you earn by embedding advertising into what content you choose to share. There can be a bonus for someone who buys a product as the result. Think homemade Etsy advertisements that you know at least one of your friends is likely to want? Or any small scale business that can suddenly be given advertising space, an audience, by the grace of their file sharer?
Medium has always been about sharing. We don't live in a day where a single King is ordering a play be created on his behalf and paying the total cost himself. I would like to believe that embracing people as mediums would eventually translate into realistic costs for actually creating high quality new content as someone can figure out ways of connecting directly with a target audience and have that bill be paid without needing to rely on mass audiences, majorities, and network broadcasts.
It's not just getting it for free
A bit off subject but close enough since it concerns piracy. It's not just that the pirates get something for free, they actually get a better product!
There are probably many people out there who would be more than happy to pay for music, movies, etc but with it comes the burden of limited playback options or the burden of removing the copy encryption.
I don't pirate for several reasons but, when I have to place a game disk into my computer with a large HDD, when I can't just import my itunes songs into my MP3 player, when I can't take a dvd and convert it into the format that works with my cell phone, when I have to sit through 5 minutes of anti-piracy warnings or worse- advertisements that won't let me skip them; it makes me fully support the pirates. Why? Because they actually get a better product in the end than those of us who pay for it.