Ann: Change of Director's Interest Notice, page-6

I'm still not sure I've got this 100% right, but things are playing out so far as I'd imagined.
The way I see it, as the method of data transportation improves, the cost and ease with which consumers can view content also improves - however, the content itself remains the same. As you know Netflix/Stan have arrived in Australia, and a lot of the Beyond content is already licensed on these platforms. As the method of transporting data is superior to that of Foxtel (cheaper, on-demand) the factors mentioned initially have also improved.

What I'm not sure of, however, is if this opens up the production market to smaller players, as cost of entry may be smaller. Foxtel had limited airtime for their products (as with many other cable providers) as the TV guide was fixed. However, Netflix allows you to choose whatever content you like, meaning their only limitation of licensing costs. If some start up provider wants to become known, they could provide their content for free, meaning increased competition.

Another factor to consider is the increased supervision by content owners to ensure illegal downloads are slowed. Given the awareness that the Dallas Buyer's Club law suit has provided, it could go two ways:
- consumers sign up to VPN services, eliminating the ISPs ability to monitor their online activities (only the client and the VPN provider have the encryption keys)
- consumers sign up to these on-demand providers (Netflix, Stan, Presto)

From what I can tell, the latter is the more prominent of the two, simply because the cost difference is minimal, and given the choice between legal and illegal with minimal cost difference (as opposed to a full Foxtel package), most will choose the legal route. If this continues to be the case, then content providers should be able to access consumers far more easily, but with increased competition as mentioned earlier.


I could be wrong on the above, but the margin of safety in the purchase price (I have an average of ~$1.05) should soften the blow if I am.