That kind of thing helps tremendously for a young network. It puts it in a much stronger negotiating position.
There are incentives, but in the U.S. -- with 85 percent of people subscribing to paid TV services -- it's hard to see direct over-the-air TV service having much impact in the future.
This will mean that they cannot imagine life without consumer-electronics devices.
It underscores how critical it is to have scale in this business.
Microsoft is a very good software company. They are not a distribution company or a content-creation company. NBC is better at television.
You still have to have Lifetime, because that viewer base is a lot more established and committed. Dropping an established channel is more of a weakness than not having an emerging channel.
This maps onto Yankee Group research. We, too, have found that men are heavier users of these technologies than women, and better educated people tend to have more consumer-electronic devices than other segments.
Installation is potentially a massive sinkhole for all the players in this space,
At a minimum, you need to have a dataset that is easily comparable with traditional media.
The media business is increasingly difficult to compete in effectively if you're not a media conglomerate. They've taken it as far as they can and it's time to move on.