iPod’s Impact on TV

The article below is by far the best, most thorough explanation of the financials between television and the impact of the new video iPod (I still think they should have called it the eyePod) with Steve Job’s content download of TV series I’ve seen.

The Clicker: Television Physics and the $1.99 price point

One particularly interesting facet of information that I knew of in the back of my head, but never really added up the implications to is this:

Let?s see ? Desperate Housewives gets about $330,000 per 30-second slot. There are approximately 17 minutes of commercials per hour. That brings us to a little over 11 million dollars of ad revenue per episode of Desperate Housewives. Latest estimates show that 17 million of your closest friends are likewise indulging in that ever-increasing estrogen-fest. Do a little more math and you?ll see that advertisers are paying about 64 cents per hour per viewer.

$11M of ad revenue per episode of Desperate Housewives. That’s just amazing to me, and what’s even more amazing to me now that I think about it is that I still have commercials on cable TV, why do I still have to pay for all those other channels? I can understand paying a little bit more than free for each channel I want, but not that much.

It makes it even more clear to me now how the whole landscape will be changing. People want some of the channels in their basic cable setup, but not all of them. And just like this article went on to point out, we pay so much to continue paying for the ones that aren’t self supporting and profitable.

And with TiVo’s and other PVR’s, the tide is changing and putting even more control into the audience’s hand, literally! I’ll watch TV on my time, not when you say something is on. So, tonight when I’m done with my softball game, I’ll come home and enjoy Survivor, CSI, and Without A Trace. The best part, is given that most 1-hour episodes of shows have 17 minutes of commercials, I can watch all three of those programs in a little over 2 hours instead of 3.