the driver in the u.s. market is a reality and happening now....

the driver in the u.s. market is a reality and happening now.
here's an article...
PRIME time as traditionally understood by the broadcast industry has been on life support for several years, but the decision by NBC Universal and CBS to allow US television viewers to watch top-rating shows whenever they like for US99c ($1.36) cents a pop looks as if it will finally pull the plug.

In concert with the recent decision by Disney's ABC network to package some of its programming for download to Apple's iPod portable video devices, the moves mark a major shift in the networks' thinking and business model.
Rather than attempting to orchestrate huge mass audiences around a handful of programs to enhance their subsequent economic value as reruns and on DVD, and provide blanket reach to advertisers, the TV networks are instead accepting the changes in their market and audience that technology is driving.
Digitisation and the internet give TV viewers vastly more choices. They have splintered other mass markets for media and entertainment content, and at the same time enabled aggregation of many new niche markets by overcoming geographic and informational barriers.
Devices such as TiVo and the personal digital video recorders increasingly shipped as a standard part of satellite or digital cable subscriptions already allow viewers to watch what they want when they want - if they can figure out how to use them.




These changes had already been accepted enthusiastically by the carriers of much US TV content - the dominant cable and satellite companies, which will now also distribute on-demand network programming.
Cable companies such as Comcast have already generated substantial audience interest in on-demand delivery models, even where these involve additional cost. On-demand programming delivered in this way appears to attract broader acceptance than the more complex, hands-on DVR or TiVo approach.
Like Apple's iTunes song pricing, the US99c pricing is low enough to represent an inconvenience rather than a deterrent, but high enough to amount to significant revenue for the networks and the distributors over time.
While the steps so far are modest compared to the entirely on-demand content delivery model envisaged by technology companies such as Microsoft or Sony, they show that broadcasters have learned from the expensive lesson played out for them by the recorded music industry.
Music companies resisted the impact of emerging technology at almost every stage until the past two years, attempting instead to preserve their traditional economic and product delivery models.
In doing so, they frustrated consumers, encouraged piracy, alienated much of the talent that created their products, and left themselves in a position in which lengthy resort to the courts was their only option to win back control.
Like the Hollywood studios, broadcast television is in the fortunate position of selling a product which involves the transmission of far larger streams of information than music, deferring the point in time when it could be easily distributed to end users over inexpensive pubic networks rather than dedicated cable.
With the rollout of broadband and improved caching and compression technologies, video is now almost at that point, so the more flexible stance of the networks is timely.
The major US TV networks have also had a long time to contemplate how they would operate in the emerging world of dozens of shifting "mass audiences" which are only fleetingly addressable when an occasional commonality of interest aggregates them.
The long decline for prime time - and for the networks' share of overall US television viewing - started with the proliferation of narrowly focused national cable networks during the 1980s, when the likes of CNN and MTV emerged.
These days the few remaining flickers of life in the concept of a national media audience happen on Superbowl Sunday or during infrequent high-profile news events.
Although audience desegregation has more recently been accelerated by satellite TV and the internet, cable remains the strongest driver. Of course, many of the cable networks are now owned by the same big media firms as the TV networks; Disney operates ESPN as well as ABC, for instance.
By embracing desegregation of their once-monolithic national audience and personalisation of television rather than resisting, the major networks may actually enhance their overall reach and economic returns, according to some observers.