Subscription television providers should relax: Americans are not moving away from watching television on television sets.  Nielsen’s Three Screen Report, issued today, finds most Americans are not fundamentally changing the way they watch TV — they are simply taking advantage of more convenient ways to watch.

The report shows considerable year over year growth in terms of time spent for Digital Video Recorder viewing (up 21.1%) and online video (up 34.9%) since the fall of 2008. Given the consistent spike in usage among the three screens of television, Internet and mobile, consumers are clearly adding video platforms to their schedule, rather than replacing them.

“Americans today have an insatiable appetite for not only content, but also choice,” says Nic Covey, director of cross-platform insights at Nielsen. “Across all age groups, we see consumers adding the Internet and mobile devices to their media diet — consuming media anytime and anywhere possible.”

Nearly 99% of television viewing is spent watching it on a television set, according to Nielsen’s findings.  But consumers are also discovering broadband and mobile viewing can add convenient new options, and are taking advantage of them:

• In 3Q09, the average American watched 31 hours of TV per week, with 31 minutes spent in playback mode with their DVR.
• In addition, each week the average consumer spent 4 hours on the Internet and 22 minutes watching online video.
• The average consumer spent 3 minutes watching mobile video each week.

The biggest fans of mobile video are teenagers, some spending just over seven hours per month watching video on their phones.  Watching television on a broadband connection is a popular trend among those aged 18-44, one noticed by Comcast chief operating officer Steve Burke.  Burke spoke about the trend at the recent Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing’s three day conference in Denver.  He noted his own children now prefer to watch their shows on a laptop from one of the free online services and not on the family television.

Allowing young viewers to grow up assuming they can watch anything, anywhere, for potentially no charge is a very dangerous proposition for people in Burke’s business.

“An entire generation is growing up with that preference,” Burke said. “If we don’t do something to change that behavior so they respect copyrights on the side of content provider, and cable subscriptions or satellite subscriptions or telco subscriptions on the side of the distributors, we are going to wake up with a lot of ingrained habits going the wrong way and we will see cord-cutting.”

Comcast has two ways to make sure viewers learn their lessons about paying for what they watch:

1. The formalized introduction of the forthcoming usage meter, better enforcing Comcast’s 250GB monthly limit for their broadband service.  Watching a lot of online video will take a major bite out of your broadband usage allowance.
2. The launch of Comcast’s Fancast Xfinity TV, a service that will allow only existing Comcast cable-TV package subscribers access to many of their favorite shows online, on demand, for no additional charge.  That new name comes courtesy of Comcast’s marketing gurus, to replace what readers better know as: TV Everywhere.
   

The usage meter and “authenticated subscribers-only” pay wall are Comcast’s one-two punch to keep subscribers from eventually dropping their cable-TV package to watch television exclusively over their broadband connection.

Cable operators already treat companies like Netflix, which use broadband to deliver an increasing number of movies and TV shows on-demand to subscribers, as a major threat.  Insight Communications CEO Jamie Howard called Netflix the equivalent of the third largest cable operator in the country in terms of content delivered.  That’s content not owned or directly managed by Insight or other cable providers.

Some in the industry believe who owns and controls online video will eventually decide the winners and losers in the subscription television business.  Derrick Frost, founder and CEO of Invision.TV, an Internet video search engine, warned the outcome of the battle can’t come soon enough.  Otherwise, consumers “will find other ways — legally or illegally — to access it.”

Comcast's new usage gauge is being tested in Oregon

Comcast’s long promised “usage gauge” has arrived.  The company promised to provide one to customers more than a year ago when it imposed a 250GB monthly usage limit on its residential broadband accounts.  Although generous in comparison to some other providers that limit customers to as little as 1-5GB of usage per month, Comcast’s allowance and the meter re-emphasizing it has created controversy among customers concerned about usage caps, potential overlimit fees or speed throttles.

Stop the Cap! reader “bones” sent along word of the measurement tool beta test in the Portland, Oregon area, and reviewing the accompanying data exposes some inconvenient facts such usage limits will have on customers.

Comcast’s version of the ‘gas gauge’ depicts usage on a bar graph and is updated monthly.  Company officials claim the average user consumes just 2-4 gigabytes per month, a debatable figure.  Comcast claims about 1% of their subscribers exceed 250GB of usage per month, but does not indicate whether that number has been on the increase as the company unveils new premium speed, premium priced broadband tiers.

Comcast hired NetForecast to “independently” verify the accuracy of the meter, which they claim produces results within 0.5% accuracy.

The company’s report concludes with praise for Comcast’s new meter, claiming it “will shine a new light on a previously unknown and misunderstood aspect of the digital age. NetForecast believes that this information will allow consumers to become better informed, and better informed consumers will help positively shape the Internet’s future.”

It also increases resentment towards a company that makes them check a meter to be sure they are within their “allowance” for the month, particularly when that company makes loads of money on broadband service.

NetForecast’s tests do reveal several new pieces of information to the “net meter” controversy:

1. The company found up to 1GB of traffic per month represented “background traffic associated with modem management.”  That’s a considerable amount of data counted against a customer’s usage, especially for customers stuck on lower consumption usage plans;
2. The increasing complexity of some web pages and their underlying structure can contribute to additional traffic associated with “protocol overhead”;
3. Poorer line quality can result in increased traffic due to retransmission requests;
4. “Unexpected” traffic is so substantial, it warranted its own section in the NetForecast report:

Traffic can be generated by more than just PCs. Any device that has access to the wireless router is a potential Internet traffic generator—including smart phones, game consoles, digital video recorders, printers, cameras, etc. Many non-PC devices “phone home” to a manufacturer or supporting service. These automated connections are transparent to the user as a convenience so the user is unaware of the traffic generated.

The most likely source of unexpected traffic, however, is from software running on PCs throughout the home. The Windows operating system and most popular software have automated update programs. These updates often download and are installed automatically without the need for user intervention. The automation is generally designed for the convenience and protection of the consumer, but the traffic it generates may come as a surprise.

Each program update download may be modest in size, however, when you multiply a modest download by the number of programs calling for updates and the number of PCs in the house, the traffic attributable to updates can be substantial. Furthermore, in some cases the vendor default update settings are very aggressive, with some default settings checking each hour and downloading every possible option even though they are not all needed. For example, a software program may load its interface in a dozen languages even though all household members only know how to read English.

That’s just the beginning.  The company also documented “surprise usage” from smartphones downloading updates, photo sharing sites, online backup, and other online applications.  Perhaps most important are online video services:

A large volume of traffic may be going to digital video recorders such as TiVo. A user in the home may have rented a movie from Amazon, Netflix. Blockbuster, etc. Renting the movie will be a known traffic-generating event, however, many services also preload the start of other movies as well as trailers to make them instantly available should they be called for. As in other situations described above, traffic is consumed for the consumer’s convenience but without his or her knowledge.

If Comcast’s meter results showing your usage doesn’t make sense and you don’t believe or understand the numbers, wait until you read how it is your responsibility, as a customer, to do all the sleuthing.

NetForecast’s prescription for “rogue traffic” requires the customer to shut off their computers and other connected devices for a “digitally silent” period (overnight or on a weekend when traveling).  Then, the customer gets to follow this routine:

At the end of the digital silence turn on one PC and log back into the Comcast meter portal, or you can check from an Internet cafe or other means while you are away. If true digital silence was achieved, the meter should not have incremented by more than 1GB. If there is more than 1GB use over even several days, then there is certainly some other traffic consumer connected through the router.

If the digital silence experiment worked, then carefully add devices back to the home network while watching the meter. Note that the meter only increments once per hour, so it may take some time to find a rogue traffic source. On the other hand, the home may simply be a highly connected place that is leveraging many aspects of the Internet, and the traffic may be entirely due to legitimate use.

“I guess those of us who are Comcast customers get to add this to our ‘list of things to do’ when we are trying to enjoy our broadband service,” writes Stop the Cap! reader Karen in Portland.  “Can you imagine telling a customer whose wireless wi-fi was ‘borrowed’ by a neighbor that they have to do all this when half the time, those customers don’t even understand how to enable wi-fi security?”

Each and every byte gets counted.  Almost.

Exempt from the usage meter are Comcast’s digital phone service and on-demand video services sent to your television. That’s a nice benefit for Comcast, but not so nice for their competitors, such as voice-over-IP telephone services and the aforementioned Netflix, Amazon, and other on-demand broadband video services. Programming sent to your computer over Comcast’s forthcoming TV Everywhere service does count against your allowance, however.

With a 250GB allowance, it may be some time before most customers find themselves routinely having to limit their usage to avoid exceeding it.  But that assumes Comcast doesn’t follow some other providers into a limbo dance of lowered usage allowances.  With a meter in place, it’s as simple as lowering the cap and telling the customer to check before they use.

What do Comcast customers think?  Comcast’s blog amusingly illustrates some company employees love it, and most consumers hate it:

“Finally! This is great stuff, I cannot wait for this to roll out in our market. We’ve been waiting and customers have been asking for months. Keep up the good work out there, and let’s never stop being innovative. We ROCK!” — Ozzie Navarro, presumably the ‘we’ is this instance refers to an author employed by Comcast.

“How is it great that you’re capping a service I pay monthly for at great expense? Now I can see it in a meter, wow! Upgrade your damn infrastructure to support more bandwidth instead of cutting off customers.” — Jason

“Don’t think you are fooling people by saying, ‘Only x% of people use over 250gb/month, and 1-x% of people won’t have to worry.’ Would you outright deny that you are implementing this feature because you feel your TV industry is threatened by Netflix, Slingbox, Hulu.com, et al.? You say it is to provide all users with a better experience. You say that because some people are “hogging the internet”, grandma can’t look at photos of her grandchildren fast enough. Did it ever occur to you that more people are using more web-intensive programs everyday? It’s not like bandwidth is a finite resource. As much as you guys want to say it is, bandwidth is only limited by ISPs. You love to say that your “networks are overburdened.” Hate to point out the obvious, but you are the ones selling the service so you should plan accordingly for usage. You sell people an advertised rate of 10Mbps, knowing full well that unless everyone else in their neighborhood is offline, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell you’ll get these speeds.

Then you have the nerve to say because so many people are “abusing their privilege” you must implement a bandwidth cap to “maintain the integrity of our networks.” I pay $50/month just to access this wonderful series of tubes known as the internet. When I was sold this plan, I was told very specifically that it was UNLIMITED.  That meant, if I maxed out my possible internet consumption everyday — no big deal — that’s what unlimited means. It’s becoming more and more obvious that this whole thing is a money grab, much like overdraft fees from our favorite financial institutions. I love how in the last comment you preach about rolling out your DOCSIS 3.0 system, which will supposedly let people have higher speeds. You don’t plan on upgrading the amount we can use per month though do you? That was suspiciously left absent from your article. Basically you are giving us the power use the internet in more innovative ways, but punishing us for trying to take advantage of your speeds. Thanks for giving me the ability to hit the upper limit more easily and quickly!” — Matt

“So a service whose advertising mentions NOTHING about data caps is actually capped, eh? That’s nice. It’s also really nice that you’re rolling out a faster product, so people can use up their allotted internet EVEN FASTER. Comcast doesn’t want people not paying for their ridiculously overpriced TV service, so they cripple their internet so you don’t have a choice. Really nice.” — Comcast customer

Comcast Corporation has completed its offer for NBC-Universal and they accepted in an early morning press conference unveiling a deal that had been privately rumored for months.  Comcast will assume 51% control of NBC-Universal, with NBC-owner GE controlling the remaining 49% stake.

The combined entity, to be known as Comcast Entertainment Group, will bring Comcast-owned media into the home of every American, even those not served by Comcast Cable.

Although company officials said little would change immediately, Comcast has not ruled out dropping the legacy ‘NBC’ brand down the road.  Broadcasting & Cable noted the company may be hinting at its intentions through its domain name registrations.  The trade publication reported Comcast’s registrar locked ComcastNBCU.com and NBCUComcast.com in mid-October, but returned and registered ComcastEntertainment.com ten days later.

Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast Corporation, joked that NBC’s fourth place position among the major American broadcast networks might “get in the way” of recognizing NBC-Universal’s cable networks, which he characterized as “fantastic.”  Perhaps a change of NBC, which stands for the National Broadcasting Company, to Comcast Entertainment Network might change that perception?

Changes like that, and the implication of renaming a major American network after what most Americans recognize as a cable company has brought significant unease among some examining the scope of the transaction.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts

Comcast Entertainment Group will control a major American broadcast network, Telemundo – a major American Spanish-language broadcast network, Comcast Cable, the nation’s largest cable system operator, several cable networks, 27 GE-owned television stations in major American cities, a large number of regional sports networks, and more.  It also manages broadband service for nearly 16 million Comcast customers.

Stifel Nicolaus telcom analysts Rebecca Arbogast and David Kaut warned potential investors this deal has a lengthy and difficult regulatory review waiting for it in Washington, DC: “We would expect scrutiny of the transaction’s impact on program access, program carriage and retransmission consent, as well as local TV advertising, broadcast-network affiliate arrangements, program bundling, broadband/Internet video and network neutrality and possibly other issues, including cable pricing…broadband service, labor concerns, spectrum and privacy.”

The dealmakers recognized the challenges and started throwing voluntary concessions to concerned groups.  Unimpressed Comcast shareholders got a bone thrown their way — a surprise 40% increase in their dividend, in hopes that will quiet shareholder unease.

Comcast also sent letters to regulatory officials promising NBC will remain a free, over the air broadcast network and not be converted into a cable-only channel.

The cable operator will also add additional independently-owned cable networks to its lineup to quiet concerns it might favor its own cable networks.  Of course, whether customers want to watch and pay for those channels is another matter.

Finally, Spanish language services from Telemundo and other channels will receive enhanced free on-demand cable viewing options in cities where Telemundo is seen over-the-air.

For broadband users, the deal means Comcast gets a seat at the table of online video provider Hulu.  NBC-Universal was a major proponent of the online video service which gives broadband users free access to broadcast and cable programming.

That deeply concerns Andrew Schwartzman, president and CEO of Media Access Project.  He’s concerned about the enormous market power Comcast Entertainment will have.

“I am especially concerned about the effects the merger would have on evolving technologies for delivering video over the Internet….I also expect a great deal of opposition from the private sector, since the merger has anti-competitive implications for local TV stations, independent cable programmers, advertisers, internet video entrepreneurs and many other businesses,” he told The Hill.  Both Media Access Project and Free Press have called on regulators to reject the deal.

“The American public doesn’t want a media behemoth controlling the programming they watch and how they can access it,” said Josh Silver , executive director of Free Press. “If Washington allows this deal to go through, Comcast will have unprecedented control of marquee content and three major distribution platforms: Internet, broadcast and cable. We’ve never seen this kind of consolidated control.”

[flv width=”596″ height=”356″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/NBC Today Show Announces Comcast Deal 12-03-09.flv[/flv]

This morning’s Today show on NBC briefly reviewed the deal and what it means for consumers (1 minute)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNBC Parsing the Comcast NBC Deal Craig Moffett 12-03-09.flv[/flv]

Sanford Bernstein’s Craig Moffett talks with CNBC about why many telecom sector analysts are underwhelmed by the Comcast-NBC deal (3 minutes)

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GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt and Comcast CEO Craig Roberts join CNBC’s David Faber for an in-depth discussion about the transaction and the changing media business. (28 minutes)

Learn more about NBC’s broadcast operations impacted by this deal below.

… Continue Reading

Adam Lynn

Most people agree: They pay their cable company too much money. Not only is this view widely held, it’s also backed up by hard numbers.

Edward Wasserman

The Comcast-NBC deal that would bring one of the nation’s largest television networks under the control of the nation’s largest cable operator has not enjoyed the smoothest sailing since the deal was first rumored more than a month ago.

Consumer advocates oppose the deal because it would give Comcast too much control over the video content it would now own, and some industry leaders suggest the era of integration is over, warning bigger is not always better.

“The only beneficiaries of this deal are the industry titans who already enjoy too much market power,” said Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press.  Free Press is mounting a national campaign for consumers to become involved and help block the deal.

“If this deal goes through, Comcast would have control of marquee content and three major distribution platforms: Internet, broadcast and cable,” Silver said. “We’ve never seen this kind of consolidated control across so many platforms.”

Edward Wasserman, Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University, penned a scathing review of the proposed deal.  “Stop Comcast’s Power Grab” quotes a bitter Ted Turner, who saw his media empire fall from his control several years ago under the super-structured AOL-Time Warner deal:

“Big media today wants to own the faucet, pipeline, water and the reservoir. The rain clouds come next,” Turner wrote in a Washington Monthly article five years ago indicting big corporate media control.

The concept of vertical integration in media involves companies owning as much of the content and distribution as possible.  In a best case scenario, one company would control every element, from the production to the sales and distribution of that content.  The more you control in-house, the less you have to pay or answer to someone else.  Wasserman picks up the story:

And vertical integration is why Comcast, the country’s biggest owner of cable systems, the company that decides which networks reach one of every four U.S. homes, is drooling over NBC Universal. The deal, if it happens, would be a staggering one.

NBCU, in short, is a mammoth content machine. And, Comcast, though chiefly an immensely rich operator of cable pipes, isn’t just the $34 billion-a-year utility whose bill you bellyache about every month. It, too, covets content. It tried to buy Disney in 2004, and it owns all or part of 20 cable networks, including E! Entertainment Television, Style, G-4, the Golf Channel and a bunch of national and regional sports channels.

And now it wants NBCU. One analyst estimated that combining the content arms of the two companies would bring roughly one-quarter of the country’s TV programming under a single owner. Another said the merged entity would control one of every five hours of programming.

[…]

The usual objections to such deals have to do with the outsized economic clout the resulting colossus would wield. Scale emasculates market discipline. When you control access to 24 million homes, you aren’t ruled by prevailing prices, you set them. Recession? Comcast is squeezing $6 more per household now than it was a year ago, and its profits were up 22.5 percent last quarter.

Very nice, but when you own the programs, too, you can make sure your networks get delivered even when that means elbowing other producers aside. You can strong-arm your competitors — satellite companies, for instance — by threatening to withhold popular networks or forcing them to carry the dogs as well. You can cut deals with other distributors who want the shows they control flowing through your pipes. You get your way.

Naturally, you’ll resist innovation unless you control it. Comcast would get a 30-percent stake in Hulu, the upstart distributor of first-run Hollywood programming via the Internet — a huge potential threat to cable operators. Subscription cable is Comcast’s bread and butter, and a business that makes $944 million on quarterly revenue of $8.8 billion is some business. Comcast will make sure that online’s future doesn’t endanger its own.

[…]

The whole point of vertical integration is to secure unfair advantage, to unlevel the playing field. And besides, since when is avoiding the worst the best we can hope for? It has been longstanding public policy to encourage localism, diversity and competition in the media business. It’s time to dust off that policy and give it some teeth by blocking this ridiculous and dangerous deal.

CNBC’s John Faber got some industry insider perspective from Dr. John Malone, a power player in the cable television industry during his reign at Tele-Communications, Inc., which used to own cable systems now largely a part of the Comcast empire.

Dr. John Malone

As far as Malone is concerned, this deal could herald a radical transformation away from traditional broadcasting models and “free TV.”

Malone believes America could be on the verge of dumping traditional broadcast network-local affiliate distribution of programming and switching to a “cable-centric” model where television programming is no longer distributed for free over broadcast television, or perhaps a hybrid approach where half of today’s television networks become cable/broadband-only.

He believes the government could be persuaded to support such a model if it meant returning broadcast spectrum back to the government for resale to the highest bidder, presumably for wireless broadband applications.

Malone’s vision leaves big vertically-integrated players like the broadcast networks and cable operators as big winners, owning and controlling programming, distribution, and all of the advertising slots, and cutting local television stations out of the deal.

Losers?  Independent local television stations and viewers that eschew pay television services like cable and satellite and rely on free over-the-air broadcasting.  “Free” may be an unsupportable business model, at least in Malone’s world view.  As many television stations are independently owned and operated, their concern for future viability is also sure to be an issue in the deal, Malone tells Faber.

Malone’s remarks are nothing unusual for the controversial cable mogul.  Al Gore once referred to Malone as the “Darth Vadar” of cable, leading a cable Cosa-Nostra with an agenda of a monopolist bent on dominating the television marketplace.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNBC Faber Report John Malone 11-23-09.flv[/flv]

Dr. John Malone talks about the Comcast-NBC Universal deal in this CNBC Exclusive with John Faber, aired earlier today. (4 minutes)

For any deal to consummate, Comcast and NBC Universal need the consent of Vivendi, the French conglomerate which now finds itself in the catbird seat.  The Paris-based media concern is asking for several hundred million dollars more than NBC-owner General Electric is prepared to part with, sources tell today’s Wall Street Journal:

GE has offered Vivendi something in the neighborhood of $5 billion for its stake, according to people familiar with the matter. That is lower than the value implied by the deal GE has tentatively negotiated with Comcast. The GE-Comcast deal would value NBC Universal at about $30 billion. Allowing for debt that NBC Universal now carries, that value would imply Vivendi’s equity stake is worth somewhat less than $6 billion.

GE is offering Vivendi less than the value implied by its Comcast deal because it believes Vivendi wouldn’t be able to fetch as much through a public sale that it also has the right to pursue, according to people familiar with the talks.

Vivendi, meanwhile, has asked for a price somewhere from the “mid-five” billion dollars to closer to $6 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Two people familiar with the matter said GE and Vivendi were within about $500 million in price.

Vivendi has also asked for deal guarantees, according to people familiar with the matter. Those guarantees could include GE paying for at least part of its stake before any Comcast agreement closes. Vivendi doesn’t want to assume the risk that GE’s deal with Comcast could be blocked by regulators in Washington, or could otherwise fall apart, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Most deal-watchers predict Vivendi will eventually part with its stake after it gets what it wants.

One of the Journal‘s sources said it was unlikely those working out the deal would let “a few hundred million” stand in the way.