Thursday, January 30, 2014

How Are Your Customers and Clients Coping With Managed Dissatisfaction?

Ken Auletta is the best at walking the layman through the mine fields of our changing media scene.  This is from his Outside the Box: Netflix and the future of television in the current issue of The New Yorker:

"Hastings [Reed Hastings, CEO of Netfix] has succeeded, in large part, by taking advantage of what he calls viewers' "managed dissatisfaction" with traditional television: each hour of programming is crammed with about twenty minutes of commercials and promotional messages for other shows.  Netfix carries no commercials; its revenue drives entirely from subscription fees.  Viewers are happy to pay a set fee, now eight dollars a month, in order to watch, uninterrupted, their choice of films or shows, whenever they want, on whatever device they want."

Hastings saw the future of television as more like a book - you control a book and timing of reading much differently than an episode of the Simpsons.

The article pointed out that Blockbuster should also get the Kodak-What-Was-I-Thinking Award.  In 2000 Netflix offered to sell a 49% stake to Blockbuster.

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