Eight Years Later and I Can’t Buy Entourage over the Internet

On the 8th anniversary of the broadcast.com IPO, I can’t help but wondering, what is HBO thinking about? You can’t even buy a four pack of Entourage episodes on iTunes for $8.00. I believe the $1.99 pricing would work out for HBO, it just needs to price stuff where if you subscribe to more than 2 things, it’d be a better deal just subscribing to HBO. I know, HBO like all the Time Warner schmoes on the music business side that came before it are worried about cannibalization. But there are a few ways around worrying about cannibalizing the HBO subscription service and the DVDs. Update: 7:35am, according to Cuban, it's the 9th anniversary of the IPO and the 8th anniversary of closing the broadcast.com deal, a special day for Mr. Cuban no matter how you look at it!

Does HBO think in 10 years the fate of the DVD is going to be any better than the CD? The DVDs purpose in life at that point will be very cheap media you can cram a lot of stuff on. Otherwise most people will be buying their content digitally already. And since that’s the way content will be sold anyway, why not get in ahead of the curve for a change? Otherwise you just encourage the countless sites up and available on the Internet aimed at providing immediate (and free) access to Entourage, the Sopranos, John in Cincinnati. I can understand not wanting to deal with Apple and although I think it’s dumb to fight that trend, I think Time Warner has a chance to sell its HBO content via its AOL arm. None of that synergy stuff seems to be playing out and it rankles me.

You don’t even have to do this in a way that cannibalizes the mothership or the DVDs. First, make it something that would be high quality on the iPod or iPhone but not so great on the TV. Or make the video high quality anyway – it’s not like iTunes includes any of the director’s or actor’s commentary tracks. There will still be a reason to buy the DVDs until all the content providers have thrown in the towel and realize digital distribution is going to win and they have to even include the good stuff digitally. For now though, that is a ways off.

I don’t know if there’s a penalty for HBO and others not being first movers here. It seems like the penalty is that people who might otherwise buy it wind up stealing it because it’s the fastest way to go. I have to be honest, I pay for HBO and various DVRs and record Entourage. I still find downloading the free torrent is faster than converting the huge file on my DVR into a format for my iPhone (mp4 or m4v) So, I’d already be willing to pay HBO or Comcast a small extra fee for access to “optimized for iPhone/iPod” files of shows I have already paid for in high definition.

The question for me is does HBO think about this at all and decide it’s not right for them or are they just not even thinking about it? A real decision not to do it I couldn’t find fault with, but if HBO isn’t even thinking about it, that’s another story.

I understand as well that the various producers of content may have different deals in terms of digital distribution and I think HBO not necessarily owning those rights right now isn’t a big deal if that’s the case. But I think such things will be a fairly huge deal in the 5-10 year time range.

Some have suggested via the comments under Cuban’s blog entry that perhaps Cubes has broadcast.com II up his sleeves. I hope so, but I think his focus is on owning sports franchises now and judging from the content I can download via hd.net, Cuban has become a content owner now and doesn’t want to cannibalize his content either. The only thing available for streaming/download from hd.net is 2 hours of Dan Rather content that is decidedly NOT in high definition. It’s good enough to look at and watch, but if my whole brand was based on high definition, I don’t know if I’d release much lower than HD quality content to the internet, even in consideration of bandwidth constraints. The file wasn’t so big that even doubling the file size and breaking it up into 2 pieces would’ve curtailed my desire to download it. My only point with this is that unless Cuban is deliberately trying to look “backwards compatible” with what’s available on HD.Net, he’s not looking to do “Broadcast II, and this time we mean it!”

The latest Dan Rather episode (from July 10th) is available for streaming via the Google Video player, and the production value isn’t nearly as good as some shorter stuff, like “Will it Blend: iPhone" via YouTube.

Another Update: 7:40a: In the credit where credit is due, much as this pains me, credit goes to Major League Baseball (MLB!). For $4.99 via iTunes I was able to buy all the coverage of the All Star Week festivities here in San Francisco (the rookie game, celebrity softball game, the Home Run Derby and the All Star Game itself). I thought it was a good value so I downloaded it. I was disappointed (come on, you knew I would be disappointed with something!)it was in 4:3 format instead of 16:9 widescreen, but it's optimized for the iPod, not my big screen. Still a good value for $4.99

Die Paulie, Die!!!

Regardless of my personal feelings that not only was the Sopranos series finale lacking and the last few years weren't really very interesting to me either, I give David Chase the tip of the cap for being a creative genius. According to the Internet people are split down the middle. Me and my friend Bill G. are on opposite sides -- even Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon disagreed on Pardon the Interruption. Interesting to me is how much smarter ABC is here than Time Warner itself -- the actual distributor of the show. ABC was all over capitalizing on the Sopranos sensation wherever it could. Even ESPN. PTI, a show about what's up in the sports world spent 10% of its air-time discussing (or arguing about) the Sopranos finale.

Time Warner, coroporate home of HBO on the other hand, had no mention of the finale AT ALL in its own Time Magazine. Perhaps they will capitalize with the next issue. The episode did seem to leave people wanting more, and sticking Tony's mug on the cover of Time should sell a few more copies. Maybe they were smarter than I was all along and wanted to rake it in on the aftermath instead of the "pre-finale hoopla". We'll know soon enough.

For me personally, only one change would've made a huge difference. I needed Paulie "Walnuts" Gualtieri offed to be fulfilled. It didn't work out that way so I wasn't.

Why Time Warner Needs NEW Management RIGHT NOW

I find it shocking and outrageous that companies created to leverage synergy, don't. I'm not too surprised here because the guy who runs the joint has seemed out of sorts lately. Check out: Time Warner Chief Hallucinates at Cable Show, Speaks Truth.

I would have had a field day with that if I had been publishing on May 11... but alas, it's June 10 and I can still kvetch with authority. Here's the current cover of Time Magazine:



In about an hour, as I write this, most of the state of New Jersey will be shut down and transixed on the series finale of the Sopranos. Ok, so they didn't put the Sopranos on the cover and that was dumb. They didn't put it one of the little cut boxes either, and that was dumber, and even dumber still: no mention of the finale of the series -- which runs on Time Warner's HBO -- ANYWHERE IN THE MAGAZINE! You may remember Time Warner as also being the parent company of Time Magazine. .

The Sopranos is certainly culturaly relevant. Why didn't TW capitalize on the synergy. Mr. Parsons, how do you account for that? You can worry about Google all you want, but today, you should LOVE Google because Google is giving more exposure to the Sopranos than Time Warner.

Smart. Very smart. Excellent leveraging of synergy.

Things I Ponder: Would HBO Care if I Streamed Entourage to the World...

...but only on a 2" display screen? The capabilities to do this now are easy and I guess what I am thinking about is this: is there any value in HBO giving away their content on a tiny display? I can already stream from my ORB to a myspace or blog page the entire contents of my digital media library to a small display.

I do NOT recommend it as a way to watch Entourage. But, I think if I wasn't the media whore that I am and didn't have HBO already and wound up seeing Entourage on a 2" screen -- it would encourage me to BUY HBO so I could get the "full screen" version for my television.

A 2" screen is NOT the best way to watch Entourage so I don't believe there is any threat to the revenue stream from this. It doesn't hold up everywhere though -- I did the experiement with Family Guy and Family Guy is completely watchable on a 2" display and it didn't leave me thinking, "I need to see that on the big screen!"

One service I would pay $3 extra for a month from HBO is the ability to download the content I already paid for in a format that will work in my iPod. HBO can get a jump-start on Comcast and other competitors who will vie for my additional $3/here, $3 there, and one of the things I think people will wind up paying $3 here and there for is the ability to somehow broadcast what they are watching. Who gets my $3 here and there...I don't care whether it's Comcast, HBO, Tivo, Orb Networks, Apple, some company not in existence yet....