CBS May Be Making Online TV Even Cheaper

In a move that could spell even lower value perception by consumers for online media content, Mashable reports that CBS's Les Moonves is hinting that the price point for television programs may be lowered to $0.99 saying, "There are certain shows that will be sold on Apple for 99 cents."

The question is whether this shift, which Apple's iTunes has been pushing for, will be followed by other TV content providers. If so, as consumers shift more to watching content online and the value of commercials on traditional cable and network outlets becomes less and less, where will the money to create this content come from? And where will this democratization of content creaton lead the industry? How will we ever be able to produce such quality content such as Survivor and Fear Factor on 99 cents an episode?

YouTube Viewing Not So High?

I saw this article recently, which claims that folks may overstate their time on YouTube:

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=107231

"The project, which cost $3.5 million to field, directly observed how people spent their day using media, found that while growing rapidly, online video and mobile video still account for a small fraction of the amount of time Americans spend watching all forms of video content, including live TV programming, time-shifted television, DVDs, video games, etc."

I don't think this would change the trend towards spending on online marketing, though. I wonder, sometimes, if marketers' move toward online spending is as much because of the data available in that form as the actual impact it has.

Scripps, the Long Tail, and Wall Street Love

AdAge has an interesting article discussing how old media company Scripps, which started in newspapers, has become the 16th most visited online property. Seeing the possibilities of the Long Tail is one main reason:

Scripps was also ahead of Wired Editor Chris Anderson's Long Tail theory, recognizing that it could slice its food, garden and home programming to appeal to niche audiences. But most importantly, Scripps encouraged a culture that was not afraid to embrace new media that were likely to cannibalize the lucrative properties it already owned.

Also important, however, seems to be a company culture that has for decades embraced new distribution:

Scripps early on embraced a multimedia approach, buying radio stations in the '30s, TV stations in the '40s and '50s, and cable systems in the '80s before becoming a cable programmer in the '90s. Today, Scripps' newspaper division represents just a fraction of the company's total revenue.