Hi Marshall,
- the largest channel has 1.8% of the audience
- 50% of the audience is in the largest 2700 channels
- the least watched channel has ~ 10 simultaneous viewers
- the multicast bandwidth usage would be 3% of the unicast.
I'm a bit skeptic for future of channels. For making money from the long
tail, you have to have to adapt your distribution to user's needs. It is not
only format, codec ... but also time frame. You can organise your programs
in channels, but they will not run simultaneously for all the users. I want
to control my TV, I don't want to my TV jockey my life.
For the distribution, you as content owner have to help the ISP find the
right way to distribute your content. In example: having distribution center
in Tier1 ISP network will make money from Tier2 ISP connected directly to
Tier1. Probably, having CDN (your own or pay for service) will be the only
one way for large scale non synchronous programing.
Regards
Michal
