I agree this is perhaps the main factor against such a proposal.
However, the main targets for sales are still Europe and the US for much
of the content produced in those markets. As such, distribution systems
are likely (rightly or wrongly) to be established for these areas first.
Much of my email mentioned how video may be funded almost solely by
advertising in any case. As it would be possible to try and price
adverts per download, a token price of $0.10 or something worldwide
should not be a barrier to acquiring the programmes for all but the very
poorest areas (which are unlikely to have the bandwidth requirements for
online distribution anyway, at least at any scale). The advertising
would cover the majority of the production costs, with much of the
distribution costs minimised by using p2p to obtain bandwidth from the
population at large... the more popular a programme, the more likely it
is to reduce bandwidth costs through sharing in this way.
I realise the asian markets in particular are beginning to become larger
consumers of western programmes, and the target audiences are huge.
However, again, much/most of the cost should be obtainable through
advertising, which should make the actual cost of obtaining the show
negligible.
I guess a system would need to be set up that would be kind of
adsense-ish for online television distribution, perhaps so advertising
can be targeted (maybe on the fly?) at the consumer in the market that
is downloading the programme. As such, advertising could be bought per
area and paid per download in that area.
Of course, it all depends on how future shows end up being paid for, I
just feel that it could be economical to fund a lot of programmes in
this way given the advertising market potential available on a worldwide
scale, without the need for variable (or high) pricing depending on the
GDP/capita of the areas. As such, individual sites per market would not
be required, and a single site could scale with on the fly advertising
to cope with any new area on the same system.
J.P.Knight wrote:
On Thu, 1 Feb 2007, Stephen Miller wrote:
[...] If content is available at a fair price globally and
simultaneously, the advertising markets and audiences should greatly
expand.
That could be a sticking point, until we have a single global currency
and economy. What might be a fair price in, say, Russia, might be
ridiculously cheap here and unbearaby expensive in Vietnam. And as
its a global market place for digital media, the consumer can buy from
where ever they like. Should the content producers target the average
(mode? mean? median?) price point and hope that they get loads of
takers from the rich countries, some from the middle ranks and not
much from the poor areas (where copyright infringement will no doubt
be rife as the media is priced out of a normal person's reach?). Or
should they price according to local market needs and hope most folk
don't buy from out side their area.
The trouble with the global market is that it isn't really. Its just
a load of really well connected local markets.
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