Comment by dylan604
2 years ago
There's very little incentive for an OTA broadcast station to offer a stream. These stations are always claiming to work on constrained budgets (what company doesn't?). They can't just air the same ads on the stream they do OTA, so there's that loss of revenue on top of the additional cost of hosting the streams. Replacing the ads in the stream with streaming friendly ads comes at an additional tech cost too, plus you need to either hire people to run it or pay someone to manage it for you. Also, you can typically find all of the content via other streaming platforms, so the station may not even have streaming rights for the content they have broadcast rights for
>They can't just air the same ads on the stream they do OTA...
>Replacing the ads in the stream with streaming friendly ads...
I'm ignorant and genuinely curious - why can't they just live stream what's being broadcast OTA with the same ads?
> with the same ads?
Not sure if it's still the case but the AFTRA union made that somewhat difficult for many years. The ad itself needs to be cleared for digital streaming and use electronic reporting if it uses union talent. When we carry "network" programming, some of the ads slots belong to the network, and some to the local station. We have no visibility on network ads, so we had to assume they were not clear, and could never be streamed.
This was an issue in radio, too.
There are a couple issues. One is rights. It might be prohibited by contract.
Also, there’s money left on the table. Server side inserted ad solutions are available and monetize better.
And OTA ads are often hyper-local, because you know exactly the area they can be seen.
There's zero utility in seeing an ad for Big Bill Hell's cars outside of the Baltimore metro area.
> Replacing the ads in the stream with streaming friendly ads comes at an additional tech cost too
There are several ad exchanges which will manage this entirely for you.
> plus you need to either hire people to run it or pay someone to manage it for you.
You can do most of it with automation. You just need to create a "break in" and "break out" signal to send to the advertising platform.
> so the station may not even have streaming rights for the content they have broadcast rights for
This is most of the issue. CBS, NBC and ABC don't give you very much latitude with their national network content. So local news and sports are usually the only space you can sell into. I've seen a lot of broadcasters setup scheduled streams that have full programmatic replacement running on them that only exist when local sports are in season and for the few hours a week they're actively played.
> There are several ad exchanges which will manage this entirely for you.
sort of. there's still a lot to be done on the station's end to do this
> You can do most of it with automation.
Yes, I can, and do. However, not every you can. There are 3rd party companies that do this, but it's not what every station wants to do.
Your comment reads as if you're writing everything off except the part you like. It's one of those situations where the station mangers look at all of the pros/cons, adds it up, and then makes a decision. They all contribute
> there's still a lot
define "a lot."
> not every you can
I assumed you would use the already existing automation system. Almost all of them have a mechanism to easily do this.
> as if you're writing everything off except the part you like.
I have a point of view that is different than yours. I'm suggesting that the points you've raised do not all share equal value in the decision making process, and if I had to guess, were based off slightly outdated experiences in the industry.
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I imagine they have zero streaming rights to the vast majority of their content.