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Broadcast Engineering March 2000
DTV Answerbook
DTV business models
Question:
There have been plenty of discussions about the business models for DTV. Just where are the opportunities with DTV from a business standpoint?
By Wayne Ruting
Wayne Ruting is CEO of Columbine JDS Systems, Denver, CO.
DTV business opportunities, as they pertain to terrestrial DTV in the U.S., are still more theoretical than real. Obviously the increased available bandwidth will allow broadcasters to do more, if they so choose. And herein lies the challenge that broadcasters have been wrestling with for the past year or so ? with the ability to offer viewers more choices, broadcasters also face the danger of fragmenting their own market. In essence, every additional programming option can become a threat to the broadcaster?s existing programming. That is, say for instance a broadcaster decides to offer a pay-per-view movie channel. Will added revenues from the new channel justify stealing viewers from the broadcaster?s existing channel? I think that right now no one really has good answers for these types of issues, and that the answers will actually vary in different locations depending on market conditions. But, given this caution, one thing that DTV certainly offers is flexibility, and I think there are a number of interesting business opportunities, that, while still untested, seem to be very promising.
************************************************************One of the most promising opportunities lies in the ability for broadcasters to do more precision demographic targeting.********************************************* With the added bandwidth and the ability to transmit a number of channels, different programming streams can be directed at subsets of what had previously been a single large audience, which should allow broadcasters to be able to charge a premium for advertising spots. With sophisticated automation and management technology, this type of service could be implemented without significantly increasing existing operational costs beyond those of a basic service.
A second interesting opportunity is in datacasting and any number of specialty subscription services. Even after increasing the number of channels for programming, broadcasters should have bandwidth capacity to offer these types of community information services. These could be anything from specialty classified advertising or real estate listings to financial updates. Local newspapers, for instance, could partner with broadcasters to offer classified advertising services or news update services.
Some of the most interesting opportunities are in the area of sports broadcasting. For instance, sporting events could utilize the DTV bandwidth to transmit multiple camera angles, allowing viewers to select the camera angels which they would like to view and switch between cameras at will. Experiments with these types of offerings have already been tried by some of the satellite broadcasters in Europe, with much popular success.
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