1. The very clever bundle game of the NCTC

The collapse, or more accurately the write-off, of the linear TV business has made headlines in the mainstream media this week. They seem rightly shocked, as if they had just discovered that people liked these new horseless carriages, sending horse-drawn carriage manufacturers into freefall. Or, to put it more succinctly, it was always a question of “when” and not “if” such a financial firestorm would occur.

Nevertheless, linear television will not disappear anytime soon. Perhaps in five or ten years, but the trade press has long embarrassed itself by speculating on the imminent demise of linear television.

For this reason, it is noteworthy that the NCTC (National Content & Technology Cooperative), the organization that represents the more than 900 smaller cable operators in the United States, plans to introduce a low-cost streaming “skinny bundle” for its members, which the organization estimates will be in the range of $20 per month.

Why it is important

While it may seem like most people you know only use streaming services, “everyone I know” is never a good sample of the U.S. population as a whole.

This means that people still watch a lot of linear television, especially the broadcast networks.

For example, many sporting events are available live and exclusively on television. Given the recent decade-long deals with the NFL and NBA, this is not likely to change anytime soon.

And that’s before we even get to college sports.

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

There’s local news, too. It’s slowly moving to the FASTs, but “gradually” is the key word here – local newscasts are still important and people are happy to pay $20 a month to access them, especially when a lot of NFL and NBA games are added to the mix.

The new linear package also allows NCTC members to forgo the provision of set-top boxes, a severely outdated technology whose declining economics mean that updates and improvements are now rare and whose installation represents a major pain point for both cable companies and their subscribers.

Using a streaming app, consumers can also avoid the dreaded “input shuffle” where they must first find the TV remote, then find the “Input” button, and then switch the input from the set-top box to the streaming device.

All of this will help strengthen the loyalty of these smaller MVPDs and perhaps even help them grow their audience.

My only question really is why did it take so long?

I distinctly remember standing on stage with Jon Steinberg of Cheddar TV at the Pay TV Show (now StreamTV Show) in Denver in 2018 or 2019 discussing how smaller cable companies could really take the lead by introducing exactly this type of service and wondering why no one had thought of putting together such a package.

The story of what happened over the past five or six years to prevent that idea from becoming a reality will one day make a good book, a reflection on the state of the television industrial complex in the last days of linear television.

What you need to do about it

If you are an NCTC member, remember that cable companies can offer broadband packages that every household needs and video packages, which most of them do, so that gives you an immediate advantage. You need to take that advantage a step further and create a package that includes various subscription services and FASTs and bundle it with a single interface.

This is easier said than done, but it gives you a huge advantage.

If you’re the NCTC, putting together the above package for your members and leveraging your combined numbers to get better rates would be a real power move. You could significantly increase retention while creating something consumers actually want, which is a distinct rarity in today’s market.

If you’re at the Independent Show in Nashville next week, don’t miss the NCTC’s full unveiling of the new product. Details to follow.

2. iSpot is JICced

A real ray of hope on the otherwise gloomy streaming measurement front: iSpot has been fully certified by the Joint Industry Committee (“JIC”) for demographic tracking of individuals at age and gender level, making it now certified as a “national currency.”

The JIC has also certified competitors Comscore and Videoamp, but with asterisks.

In short, iSpot is the first TV advertising currency ready to transact with the aforementioned “personalized demos” as well as households and advanced audience segments.

Comscore and VideoAmp, on the other hand, received the JIC seal of approval for measuring household and expanded audiences, but were deemed “not yet transactable at scale in personalized demos.”

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

This is good news for iSpot, which sets it apart from the competition, but also a good example of why solving the streaming measurement chaos is taking so long.

Why it is important

To say that measuring television performance is difficult would be a massive understatement. That’s because there is no simple, one-size-fits-all method for doing it.

A quick review: Nielsen’s linear television measurement is based on representative panels of 40,000 real people, whose now largely automated television diaries form the data set.

Competitors like iSpot rely heavily on ACR (Automatic Content Recognition) data from smart TVs, which receive data from over 20 million smart TVs.

Although neither is anywhere near universal, the ACR data is based on a sample 500 times larger.

But (and you knew there was going to be a “but”) ACR data only tracks households – it knows what was watched on TV, but not who in the household watched said TV. This data, called “person-level” data, is important to advertisers because it tells them whether their ad achieved its intended goal.

That’s why it’s such a big deal that iSpot is now eligible for personalized demos, especially given that most TV shows are still bought based on age and gender demos.

If only it were that easy.

In many ways, the JIC is a response to a group called the Media Ratings Council (MRC), which was originally formed to make sure Nielsen was doing things right.

That’s all well and good, but the MRC’s process is quite thorough and quite costly, too, and it felt like they were slowing things down at a time when speed (or what passes for speed around here) was of the essence.

This is why the JIC exists, whose members include most – but by no means all – major advertising agencies and media companies.

The task of the JIC is (among other things) to evaluate the TV measurement companies very thoroughly, albeit more promptly.

And that’s what happened. And now the ball is back in the court of the agencies, brands and media companies, who have to decide which measurement companies they will base their transactions on.

What you need to do about it

First of all, if you’re iSpot, take a bow. This level of accreditation was not easy to achieve, there were a lot of boxes to tick, a lot of rigorous requirements to implement, but you passed with flying colors. Go for it, STEM graduates!

If you’re one of the agencies, brands, and media companies mentioned above… I get it. It’s easier to keep using Nielsen because at a time when the industry is in flux and a lot of people are getting fired, no one is going to fire you for continuing to trust The Big N. And to be fair, they haven’t just rested on their laurels, they’ve started innovating.

But that’s the thing, as I mentioned in April: people are getting angry. (The American “angry”, not the British one.)

You don’t understand why it takes all of you so long to figure out how to measure streaming. You don’t understand why nothing seems to have changed in the last decade and why you show up at conferences year after year and keep saying the same thing. Or at least what sounds like the same thing to you – I understand that those of you who are into the details see these little nuances as big differences.

And they’re pissed because it’s making streaming TV not as much money as it should. Advertisers can’t move eight- and nine-figure budgets anymore. They need to rethink YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

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

And if you keep hesitating, all the money will end up going to Google and Meta. And Amazon and TikTok.

This would make you even more vulnerable.

Think about it.

Alan Wolk is co-founder and principal analyst at the consulting firm TV(R)EV. He is the author of the industry guide, Over The Top: How the Internet is (Slowly but Surely) Changing the Television Industry. Wolk speaks frequently about changes in the television industry, both at conferences and to anyone who will listen.

Week in Review is an opinion column and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of StreamTV Insider.