1. The NCTC’s Very Smart Bundle Play

The meltdown, or more accurately, the write-down, of the linear TV business has been making headlines in the mainstream media this week. They legitimately seem shocked, as if they’d just discovered that people liked those new horseless carriages, putting buggy manufacturers into freefall. Or, to put it more succinctly, it’s always been a matter of “when” rather than “if” this sort of financial firestorm would happen.

That said, linear TV is not disappearing any time soon. Maybe in five or ten years, but the tech press has long embarrassed itself by betting on linear television’s imminent demise.

Which is why it’s of note that the NCTC (National Content and Technology Cooperative), the organization representing the over 900 smaller cable operators in the US, is planning to roll out an inexpensive, streaming “skinny bundle” for its members, one the organization estimates will be priced in the $20/month range.

Why It Matters

While it probably seems that most everyone you know is only watching streaming, “everyone I know” is never a good sample of the overall US population.

Meaning people are still watching a lot of linear TV, broadcast networks in particular.

There are, for example, many live sporting events that are only available on broadcast, something that is not going to change any time soon given the decade-long contracts the NFL and NBA just agreed to.

And that is before we get to college sports.

Or all of the various MLB and NBA teams that are dropping their RSNs for broadcast, the Portland Trail Blazers being just the latest.

There’s also local news. Which is gradually relocating itself to the FASTs, but “gradually” is the operative word here—local news broadcasts are still important and people will gladly pay $20/month to have access to them, especially with a bunch of NFL and NBA games thrown in.

The new linear bundle also allows the NCTC’s members to do away with having to supply set top boxes, a seriously antiquated technology whose shrinking economics dictate that updates and improvements will become few and far between, and whose installation is a major pain point for cable companies and their subscribers alike.

A streaming app also allows consumers to sidestep the dreaded “input shuffle” wherein the TV remote must be located, the “input” button found, and the input switched from set top box to streaming device.

So there’s all that and it’s going to help to create greater stickiness for these smaller MVPDs, maybe even help them grow their audience.

My only question really, is what took so long?

I have a distinct memory of being at the Pay TV Show (now the StreamTV Show) in Denver back in 2018 or 2019 and being on stage with Jon Steinberg of Cheddar TV fame and discussing how smaller cable companies could really take the lead by launching just this type of service and wondering why no one had thought to put together such a package.

The story of what happened in the intervening five or six years to keep that idea from springing to life will make a good book one day, a reflection on the state of the television industrial complex in the waning days of linear.

What You Need To Do About It

If you are an NCTC member, remember that cable companies can offer bundles of broadband, something every household needs and video, which is something most of them do. So that immediately gives you an advantage. What you need to do is take that advantage one step further and create a bundle that includes various subscription services and FASTs and package it up with a single interface. 

Easier said than done, but it will give you a huge advantage.

If you are the NCTC, then creating the aforementioned bundle for your members, using your combined numbers to get better rates, would be a real power move. You’d be able to vastly increase stickiness while creating something consumers actually wanted, a distinct rarity in today’s market.

If you are going to be at The Independent Show in Nashville next week, be sure to check out the NCTC’s full unveiling of the new product. Details to come.

2. iSpot Gets JICced

A real (i)spot of bright news on the otherwise bleak streaming measurement front: iSpot has been fully certified by the Joint Industry Committee (“the JIC”) for age-gender person-level demographics, meaning it’s now certified as “national currency.”

The JIC also certified rivals Comscore and Videoamp but with asterisks.

The TL;DR is that iSpot is the first TV ad currency ready for transactions against the aforementioned "personified demos" as well as households and advanced audience segments

Comscore and VideoAmp OTOH, got the JIC seal of approval for household and advanced audience measurement, but were deemed “not yet transactional at scale on personified demos.”

For those of you scratching your heads, a "personified demo" is a demographic segment that is treated as a persona, so "females aged 18-34” in this case since iSpot is certified for age and gender. 

So good news for iSpot, which pulls out ahead of its competitors, but also a solid illustration of why the streaming measurement mess is taking so long to solve.

Why It Matters

It would be a massive understatement to say that measuring television is tricky. That’s because there’s no easy, one-size-fits-all way to do so.

A quick review: Nielsen’s linear TV measurement is based on representative panels of 40,000 actual humans whose viewing diaries, now largely automated, make up its data set.

Competitors like iSpot rely on ACR (automatic content recognition) data from smart TVs that get data from over 20 million smart TVs.

While neither is close to universal, the ACR data is pulling from a sample that is 500 times larger.

But (and you knew there would be a “but”) the ACR data only measures households—it knows what was being watched on a TV, but not who in the household was watching said TV. That data, known as “persons level” data is important to advertisers as it lets them know if their ad reached its intended target.

Which is why it’s such a big deal that iSpot is now approved for person-level measurement.

If only it were all that simple.

The JIC is in many ways a reaction to a group called the Media Ratings Council (MRC) that was originally formed to ensure that Nielsen had dotted its “i’s” and crossed its “t’s.”

All well and good, but the MRC’s process is quite thorough not to mention quite costly. And there was a feeling that they were slowing things down at a time when speed (or what passes for speed in this neck of the woods) was of the essence.

Hence, the JIC, which boasts most—but notably not all—of the major ad agencies, media companies and streaming services among its members.

The JIC’s mission is (among other things) to also do a very thorough evaluation of TV measurement companies, albeit in a more timely manner.

Which it has indeed done, and now the ball is yet again in the court of the agencies, brands and media companies who will be the ones choosing which measurement company(s) to base their transactions on.

What You Need To Do About It

First and foremost, if you are iSpot, take a bow. This level of accreditation was not an easy thing to accomplish, there were lots of boxes that needed to be checked, lots of rigor that needed to be implemented, but you passed with flying colors. Go STEM graduates!

If you are the aforementioned agencies, brands and media companies… I get it. It’s easier to keep on using Nielsen because at a time when the industry is in great flux and lots of people are getting fired, no one is going to fire you for continuing to rely on The Big N. And to be fair, they haven’t just been resting on their laurels, they’ve been starting to innovate too.

But here’s the deal, something I mentioned back in April: people are getting pissed. (The American “pissed”, not the British one.) 

They don’t understand why it’s taking so long for you all to figure out how to measure streaming. They don’t get why nothing seems to have changed in the past decade and why you keep showing up at conferences and saying the same things year after year. Or at least what sounds to them like the same things—I get that those of you in the weeds see these small nuances as major differences.

And they’re pissed because it’s stopping streaming TV from making the sort of money that it should be making. Stopping advertisers from shifting eight and nine-digit budgets. Making them reconsider YouTube and Instagram and TikTok.

So be the brave one. Be the one who says “iSpot is now fully accredited, let’s at least use them once.” Be the one who takes a chance because you know that competition leads to innovation and more efficient markets.

And that if you keep dragging your feet, all that money is eventually going to go to Google and Meta. And Amazon and TikTok.

Which would leave you even more vulnerable.

Think about it.