Also from the 10-Q, unrelated to the compensation plan:
The first commercial digital application of Individualized
Television will be a subscription television network that presents regional sports programming. We plan to launch the network in the region served by FOX Sports Southwest. FOX Sports Southwest distributes programming to more than 5 million households in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and nine New Mexico counties. The regional network will feature individualized telecasts of professional sports programming, along with college sporting events from the Big
12, Southeastern, Southland and Western Athletic Conferences. We have an agreement with ATT Broadband (formerly Tele-Communications Inc.), to distribute and market our regional network...
1) Where's the date?!
2) I could piece it together by saying that TVGuide is using this technology and will roll it out Q3, so if the sports stuff is to be "first" it would have to occur on or before Q3, which puts Sep 30 as the latest possible date. But I don't think that the person who wrote this report was thinking that clearly...
3) No mention of TV Guide Interactive.
4) No mention of any HyperTV implementations other than E-School.
5) They definitely say "subscription based," not pay-per-view. So the fixed dollar amount per household model should hold, at least at the beginning. 1% purchase rate would be 50,000 households, which would be roughly $250K/month (at "IATV takes half" of the income), 10% purchase rate would be $2.5Million/month. A really really interesting stat to try to predict this rate - what percentage of cable-ready households pay for a premium sports package? In my area (Northern Virginina) ESPN and ESPN2 come in basic cable, but Home Team Sports and ESPN News are an additional fee. Figure people who are willing to pay an extra $10/month for HTS and ESPNews are those same people who are willing to pay an extra $10/month for IATV-enabled sports (won't be perfectly accurate, but would be close...) if a household doesn't ever buy a PPV sporting event now or buy the extra sports options, don't count on them buying this new sports option (although some will). If we could get this percentage from the cable industry somehow, we could get a rough estimate of how many folks would buy IATV?
Also, it's quite possible that the cable company would package it in as part of a deal... for example:
Basic Cable includes ESPN/ESPN2
IATV alone = $9.95/month extra
HTS = $9.95/month extra
ESPNews = $7.50/month extra
All 3 = $20/month extra
So you get a discount somehow... this is what is done now... nobody every buys a single channel, they buy the packages, right? Well, how does this affect IATV's revenue? Probably means more subscribers, but how many subscribers will pay the full $9.95 price?
[And yeah, I know my example stinks because you need Fox Sports to get IATV-enabled programming, but there is no Fox Sports in my area yet and it's real late.]
Anyway, if anyone can shed more insight here, I would appreciate it.
-Mike |
