Why we should Kill the Networks

(and maybe take a big chunk out of the cable companies while we are at it.)

Here’s what I want to do. I want to turn on the TV and watch whatever the hell I want to watch whenever the hell I want to watch it and I’m willing to pay for the privilege (but not too much)

Most of you probably feel the same way.

A few years ago, this would have been completely impossible but today the technological roadblocks have been solved. Unfortunately, the powerful corporations which run our media system are too myopic, inflexible and, often times, too greedy to change.

Well run companies use advances in technology to make their products better, cheaper and more efficient. Poorly run companies cling to outdated ideas while calmly denying all the evidence of their own imminent demise.

The American auto industry is an excellent example of this. For decades they used their considerable political and economic power to make big inefficient cars. While this policy led to huge profits in the short term, their failure to adapt to changes in technology and the market led them to near collapse in 2008.

The same can be said of the music industry who saw digital distribution, not as an opportunity to deliver their product more efficiently, but as a threat to their status quo. The result has been more than a decade of instability.

Hollywood today faces many of the same issues and yet they seem to be even more deeply entrenched within a labyrinthian system that is inefficient, often counter productive and completely outmoded.

One of the objections to a purely online TV system is that consumers don’t want to pay for their content. What we fail to bring in to this equation is that we are already paying for content. In fact, we are paying quite a bit.

The American consumer, pays an average of $58 per month for cable or satellite TV (not including fees for Broadband internet access) And, frighteningly enough, that average consumer watches approximately 26 hours of TV per week. If we round off the numbers that works out to around fifty cents per hour.

Of course, that’s not really all we’re paying because the vast majority of television we watch is, so-called, “free TV”. Free TV means that the costs of the shows themselves are paid for by advertisers. During the Golden Age of TV that worked out to about 5 minutes of commercials per hour. Today, we see somewhere between 16 and 22 minutes of commercials per hour.

In other words, we are spending fifty cents to buy around forty minutes of programming and twenty minutes of commercials.

The question is, “Is it possible to spend the same money (or even less) to get better content delivered in a more efficient manner?”

Most media experts today would tell you that the answer is “no”. However, they are basing that conclusion on the way that Hollywood is run today, rather than on how it could be run tomorrow.

What if it were possible to streamline (even a little bit) the morass of bureaucracies, lawyers and red tape of the studios, networks, agents, managers, sponsors, cable & Satellite companies, local affiliates and production companies that make up the television system.

To do so we must first distill this complex system down to the essential service it is supposed to provide. That service, as I see it, is this:

(and yes, I know this model is over simplified)

There is a product, “The Show”. A method of distribution, “The Pipe” and a consumer, “The Viewer”. As in any industry, the variables of success are the quality of the product and the cost at which it can be produced and delivered to the consumer. The only thing left after that is for the consumer to decide if the product is desirable.

Here is what actually happens (and this too is vastly over-simplified) A filmmaker wants to make a show. He takes it to his agent who tells him how to mold the show to what a studio might want. After reworking the show he takes it to the studio (who will produce the show) and enters the development process. In development the studio tries to shape the show into one they can sell to a particular network.

Frequently, shaping the show to sell, also means making it better. There are some absolutely fantastic development executives in the industry who are committed to producing great television. They are, however, in the minority and all development executives know that a great show that doesn’t sell is worthless.

“Sell” is the key word here but we are not talking about selling a product to a consumer. We are a long way from that. Junior executives must sell to senior executives. Producers must sell to the studios. Studios to the Networks and the Networks to advertisers and local affiliates. Only after passing through this incredibly complex and expensive crucible does the show have a chance to sell to us, the consumers.

By this point, the number of people commenting on a project, from marketing consultants, to product placement experts and even toy manufacturers is absolutely mind boggling and naturally all those cooks have offices, lawyers, assistants and benefits packages. In other words, they cost money.

Dozens of scripts are bought but most are never made into pilots. Of the pilots that are made only a handful are ever actually aired. Of the shows that get picked up, half of them will not make it to a second season and many don’t make it to the second episode.

Maybe the project wasn’t marketed well, or maybe it was placed in a terrible time slot. Maybe the show needed more time to hit it’s stride or maybe it just plain sucked. The problem is, that in a system as complex as the one used to create TV shows it’s almost impossible to go back and trace what exactly went wrong, which means there is no guarantee that the network wont make the same mistake next season or even over and over again.

What we do know is that this system is extremely inefficient and expensive making it even more difficult to succeed in a market which is already incredibly speculative.

It is this wasteful and inefficient system which costs you, the consumer, 50 cents and 20 minutes of commercials an hour.

If you could eliminate, or at least reduce, a few of the middlemen you could also reduce the cost of the show and, in my opinion, improve the quality.

Let’s start with the network.

These are the guys who really run the television industry. They take the biggest slice of the money and exercise the largest share of control over what you see.

There is a reason for this. Back when everyone got their content over the air you needed a network because the only way to distribute a program nationally was through a network of local affiliates who had access to the big broadcast towers in every major market. In fact, that’s where the term “Network” comes from.

Today, however, only 13% of American’s get their content over the air from local affiliates. The rest of us pay cable and Satellite providers. In other words 87% of Americans do not need a network of local affiliates to get their content. So, why are we giving the lions share of both creative control and profits to the big networks?

The other middlemen are the cable and satellite companies. As I said earlier, the average American watches about 26 hours of television a month but they are actually paying for thousands more. Today, our cable and satellite systems are clogged with 100s of channels we never actually watch. Why? I don’t want to pay for the golf channel or the home shopping network. Maybe you don’t want to pay for comedy central or Sci Fi. Is this an efficient system?

Efficient or not, it is a system which you have little choice in as most US markets are serviced by only one or two providers.

Compare this Network/Cable model to a simple broadband system.

More than 58% of Americans have a broadband connection capable of streaming HIDef video directly to their TV. This number is growing every year. Why then are we still paying a cable company and a network of local affiliates to deliver content to us?

Why don’t we just pay the people who make the content and have them deliver that content over our broadband connection? Why can’t those people make deals directly with advertisers if they want to distribute that product for free or at a reduced cost?

Remember that fifty cents an hour? Remember those twenty minutes of commercials? Both of those represent big money and without the networks and cable companies taking a huge slice out of that pie, I believe that all the TV in the world you want could be delivered for that much money or even less.

A fringe benefit of the online model is that it eliminates the power of the time slot. Today, if a show gets put up against a juggernaut like American Idol or Dancing with the Stars, it is almost certainly doomed no matter how good it might be. Why are we still doing this?

I also believe that by eliminating at least a few of the cooks involved in deciding what gets made and what gets broadcast we can improve both the quality and the variety of content.

The networks will claim that the American people aren’t ready for a truly digital distribution system but I believe that is changing before our eyes. Netflix and HuluPlus both deliver unlimited content for $7.99 a month. Netflix Instant is particularly successful. In fact, they are so successful that Comcast is about to sue them.

The AppleTV and Roku box are other examples of how eager we are to change the television viewing experience. Both of them have sold over a million units this holiday season.

The point is, it can be done. In fact, it’s being done right now. The main obstacles are the powers that be, particularly the Studios, networks, and cable companies who are so desperate not to change a system that is failing that they are willing to bring the whole industry down around their ears. It is also why they are currently pressuring congress to break Net Neutrality.

We often speak of “Show Business” as a world where art and commerce are perpetually at odds. However, this is an instance where I believe the goals of art and commerce are perfectly aligned. By making the system more efficient we both create greater creative opportunities for artists and more cost effective and profitable products for everyone.

The Worst Kind of Criminal

There is a certain class of criminals we hate above all others, a certain kind of deviant that we, as society, have always united to destroy.

It isn’t enough to decry them in public or mock them in private. It isn’t enough to imprison. It isn’t enough to torture or even kill them. They must be stamped out, eliminated, lest their ideas fester and spread.

No other group, not drug traffickers, sweat shop owners or even war criminals have been so consistently and tenaciously persecuted.

And yet no matter how many of them we threaten or imprison, no matter how many of their lives we destroy, no matter how many of them we kill, whether by assassin’s bullet or state sponsored execution, their ideas, like some malicious form of cancer, keep coming back to haunt us.

Who are these villains that seem to frighten us so much?

They are the lovers of peace, tolerance, forgiveness and compassion. They are the heroes of our highest ideals and they are the ones we, as a society, have united, over and over again, to destroy.

You don’t believe me? Compare the death of Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King to those of Stalin, Mau or even Hitler.

Read the transcripts of the Nuremberg trial and see how carefully the charge of “War Criminal” is prosecuted and how relatively merciful the sentences. Then compare those trials and sentences to those of Nelson Mandela, Steven Biko, Lech Walesa or thousands of other peacemakers throughout history.

You might say that miscarriages of justice like that only occur under evil regimes like Soviet Dominated Poland or South Africa under apartheid but, to do so you would have to ignore HUAC under McCarthy, Nixon’s “enemies list”, the treatment of civil rights activists in the South and literally dozens of other miscarriages of American justice.

Most people when asked about things like peace, compassion, freedom and justice would say that they are for them. Just as most people decry war, poverty, and injustice on principle.

However, in reality, it often works out to be just the opposite.

It is those who march for peace who must face the fire-hoses. It is those who refuse, on principal, to kill that are labeled traitors and imprisoned. While those who fight for the poor are called communists or worse, “Community organizer”.

What does it say about a nation when rallies are held to save the taxes of a billionaire while millions fall below the poverty line?

What does it say about a nation that defends their right to wage pre-emptive war, while ignoring the battle scarred veterans who fought that war?

What does it say about a planet where men of peace like Martin Luther King, Jesus, and Gandhi and hundreds of other peace makers die violently or in prison, while dictators like the Shah of Iran, Fernando Marcos and Pol Pot die of natural causes?

How is it possible that a church, founded on the life of a peaceful man who was tortured to death could, in turn, torture non-believers and go to war in his name?

How is it possible for Gandhi to unite a nation through non-violence then watch that same nation fall apart in racial slaughter before being assassinated himself?

What does it say when the values that most of the world’s population hold dear, compassion, peace and forgiveness are constantly under siege while greed, aggression and vengeance are defended as if they were virtues?

It says that there is a great chasm in the human heart between what we claim to believe and the real motivations which drive us.

We might decry aggression, violence and revenge but we are still inexplicably drawn to them.

Turn on the TV, watch a movie or play a video game and the odds are you will see some form of violence. We romanticize violent struggle over just about everything else and our great heroes whether real or fictional are often people of violence.

Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Genghis Khan.

There is no question that these were great men. Great in the sense that they literally changed the face of history.

But they were also conquerors, killers, men who repeatedly chose war over peace.

They were great, but that did not make them good.

The good people, the ones who stood up against the conquerors, the ones who fought for peace were probably called traitors and their names have been lost in the mists of history while the characters of those who conquered have been whitewashed by time and elevated to the status of heroes.

Like millions of others, I have spent much of my life fascinated by the martial arts and there are tens of thousands of martial arts schools around the world to teach me martial ways.

Where are the schools for the peaceful arts?

Most of us understand that a world in which all the resources are controlled by a tiny minority, while the vast majority descends further and further into poverty is not only an unjust world but an unstable one and yet that is the world that we live in.

To make matters worse, those champions of greed are canonized in our libraries and magazines. We admire their private jets and opulent mansions. Where are the stories about those who work hard and live simply? If we idolized frugality and charity instead of extravagance and selfishness, our world would be a much better place.

Most of us believe that racism, and intolerance are wrong but we cannot help dividing ourselves into groups, teams, nations and religions and for some reason, all of us feel that the team we are on is the “good guys”.

If our world is to survive, all of this must change. We have become far too powerful to endure much longer the discrepancy between what we claim to believe and how we actually live our lives.

It is, in fact, time to side with the great criminals of history, with Gandhi, and Jesus and Martin Luther King.

It is time to put down the sword and become a criminal, a deviant...

A peacemaker.