NY TIMES TECH TIP

Hoping you read today's NY Times.  If so, you probably received the best Tech Tip, or more accurately e-mail etiquette.  Enjoy!

Why Wireless Headphones For Apple

Check out this Business Insider story on the possible iPhone 7 and "wireless earpods".  While good reasons to go wireless includes no tangling of wires, BI says that there may also be a marketing angle.  They point to the intro of the iPod with the "white wire" in Apple ads and other ad examples including the lime atop the Corona Light.  Advertising pushed the appeal and made it a must have item.  The same could be true for the iPhone 7.  Sold and marketed with an initial wireless earpod, the new iPhone 7 could become the next must have device.  It does sound appealing.

Can good marketing be the difference?  With the prospect of a new iPhone without a headphone jack, Apple needs to let us see just how different its new earbud will be.  That will include such physical attributes as freedom of movement, no tangling, and better sound quality.  Of course that must be balanced with how frequently we need to recharge the ear bud to make them work.  Just how many chargers do we have to own?  Hopefully the marketing helps consumers fully realize the full value of the next iPhone release. 

Apple Event September 7

Next Thursday, just 8 days from today, Apple will once again try to dazzle us with its next set of upgrades.  Just in time to have on the shelves for the Holiday Season, many expect the next iteration of the iPhone, as well as upgrades to its Apple Watch and mac computers.  Upgrades yes, a new product launch no.

Given the rumor mill that always precedes these events, none have included or hinted at a new product release.  No Amazon Echo clone, no Apple car, no Apple TV set.  No buzz means that we can expect to simply here how each product has been tweaked to encourage us to upgrade our own devices.  And don't expect that Apple announces plans to acquire any content companies.  As much as we would love to hear them make a play for Scripps or CBS or Netflix, that is also an unlikely scenario for the event on Thursday. 

Be careful though if you do decide to upgrade your iPhone when it comes out.  You may find that it no longer syncs with your older mac and iTunes program.  That means you can't back up on a computer and must do it online.  And cloud backups will cost you.  The more memory you use on the iPhone or iPad, the more storage it may cost you.  Given the need for more icloud storage, expect too that Apple will announce new service plans to support you and your family's devices.

It has been rumored that the iPhone 7 may no longer have a separate headphone jack.  All connections are made through the lightening adaptor or via bluetooth.  As to those folks that have a Beats Headset, now owned by Apple, you will have to decide whether to buy a new bluetooth headset or stick with your old iPhone.  For Apple, Beats was all about the music subscription service and not the products.

So get revved up for next Thursday.  Always fun to watch the announcement and see how the stock market immediately reacts to it.  Enjoy!

Does Moonves Have Say In Merging With Viacom

When Sumner Redstone decided to split his empire into two media companies, CBS and Viacom, the initial thought was likely that broadcast was holding back the cable side of the business.  But fast forward ten years and Les Moonves was able to take his portion, CBS Inc., and watch it grow and prosper while the cable arm called Viacom has not.  Can synergy now save Viacom?

Well, now that Shari Redstone, daughter of Sumner, has gotten control, many believe that her next is to merge the companies together.  Viacom certainly needs the help and perhaps an overhaul of talent making the current strategic decisions.  Paramount has lost its mojo, and the cable nets are no longer relevant.  Need proof, just watch the recent MTV VMA music awards.  Not many tuned in from last year and the numbers had a major decline.  It was a performance show, not an awards show, and the performances overall were meh.  Yes to spectacle, no to real singing.  Most seemed to be karaoke and less live. 

And while merging CBS and Viacom makes sense, it also requires the buy-in of CBS CEO Leslie Moonves.  If he is not onboard, then the odds against a positive synergistic combination seems low.  I suspect if Moonves had his say, he would buy just Paramount and sell off the cable nets.  Unfortunately, he may not have a choice and Redstone may force him to it.  As to his power to push back or leave if his back is against the wall.  That may also be an option. 

CBS's Newest Revenue Stream

The rise of streaming, the challenge to increase ad revenue as well as licensing of its network to cable companies all play into the strategic mix as CBS seeks revenue growth.  Certainly content matters and quality shows that generate buzz hope to find audiences that stay loyal to their plots.  And building new distribution outlets to grow as a business remain relevant.

In the case of CBS, they chose not to be a partner in the Hulu streaming business.  The other three broadcasters NBC, ABC, and Fox, and now Time Warner have ownership shares in the Hulu business.  Instead, CBS is trying something new, its own streaming subscription service called CBS All Access.  For a $5.99 monthly fee, subscribers get "more than 7,500 on-demand episodes from the current season and previous seasons of classic shows, as well as the ability to stream local CBS stations live in more than 150 markets across the U.S." according to Multichannel News.  And following the learning curve of other streaming services like Amazon and Netflix, CBS All Access will offer original productions too, "including Star Trek: Discovery, a spin-off of The Good Wife and a new digital edition of Big Brother."

The question this strategy hopes to answer, is it better to build a new service or partner with an existing one.  Is there enough content of interest to subscribers to entice them to join?  Can marketing sell the value of adding another streaming service charge to the entertainment household budget?  CBS is trying to make it easy to access its streaming service with Roku, Apple TV, Chromecast, XBox, Amazon Fire TV and more.  Accessibility does not seem to be a problem.

But I wonder if going it alone and not with Hulu, CBS studied whether a brand name associated with the broadcast network or one without a connection made more sense.  Will customers more likely embrace the subscription service because of the CBS name or feel that they should be getting this content already if they are current cable subscribers with on demand.  Would it have better suited the service to create a more unique name like Carousel or Tainment or StreamCity to compete in the streaming media landscape?  Was CBS All Access a better name choice to drive subscription revenue?  We will watch and see. 

What Will Viacom Do With Paramount

If you haven't guessed after reading my blogs, I am a huge fan of content.  But content does not live in a vacuum and the yin and yang between content and distribution, adding a dash of marketing to the mix, makes the difference between success and failure.  Good content can help distribution and good distribution can help bad content; ideally, great content, easily discoverable and accessed matters.

So today we have Viacom, a media company with an ailing CEO, infighting of the relatives, a changing board, and other leadership issues struggling to fix all the wholes, from falling ratings at their cable networks to poor movie making choices at Paramount.  Its latest box office dud being Ben Hur with very little box office hits to mention.  What should Viacom do with Paramount, where once The Godfather, Indiana Jones, and Titanic all were released?

There has been some speculation that Viacom should sell some if not all its ownership in Paramount.  But I love content and believe it is the driver to growth for Viacom.  I believe selling makes little sense unless the plan is to give up and sell all of Viacom.  Paramount, with the right talent on board, can make great content again.  And great movies are currency to be sold over and over again across different distribution windows. 

But what is in the pipeline of future Paramount releases following the awful Ben Hur film starts to question the internal leadership and the choices they are making.  October is the release of the next Jack Reacher with Tom Cruise, a possible hit, but they are also banking on a number of other sequels including Transformer, Friday the 13th, and Terminator.  What happened to originality?  Even their latest release of Star Trek Beyond felt like an overly long TV plot rehash.  If there is change to make at Paramount's film unit, it starts at the top.

As to their TV department, Paramount also produced Grease: Live,  Criminal Mind, NCIS, and others.  And hopefully they will have more upcoming hits to mention.  With so much demand for TV content in the streaming world from Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, Paramount should have no problem finding homes for their product, as long as the quality is there.  Like my concern with movies, rehashing old series and classic movies at the expense of originality does not seem like the best route to take. 

So what should Viacom do with Paramount?  I say keep it.  If your plan is to sell Viacom, it is more valuable as part of a bigger deal.  if the plan is to reinvigorate Viacom, Paramount is a perfect complement to their media empire. 

The Profit In Data - Storing And Streaming

I'm struck by an epiphany as I watch how much data I continue to acquire.  I don't mean bookshelves or albums or DVDs; they get less filled as my books, my music, my photos, my videos, my life are all now bits and bytes of data.  And I see too that the cost to store and stream continues to grow as I accumulate more stuff. 

Already, I have on my computer over 15,000 photos, the more recent ones requiring more memory than the ones taken in 2000.  My iTunes account includes more and more downloaded books, music, and videos and my computer's memory is nearly at capacity.  My Carbonite account helps safeguard these digital assets, at a cost, as I sense that I will need a new computer with more memory in the not too distant future.  And Apple is gracious enough (lol) to sell me more cloud backup space for my iPhone and iPad.  The costs to store will only continue to rise.

And then there are the costs to stream data.  Subscription fees from folks like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, help drive up the monthly costs.  One's love of music means monthly subscription plans from Pandora, Spotify, and Apple Music.  We no longer need to own when we can rent and stream as much as we want.  But the costs to access also extend to the companies that sell us data plans to receive these streaming signals.  The more we stream, the more we consume, the more data services we buy.  Of course, the speed to receive these streams can also come with a higher cost; the faster the stream, the more we pay. 

As we move further and further from physical media to digital media, the cost to access data, stream it, and receive it will only increase.  And the profits will only grow.  Data is our new gold and we are mining it at an ever increasing pace.  It is the business to be in. 

Viacom's Future

Did Sumner Redstone win back his own company?  Was former CEO Philippe Dauman not following the directions of its top shareholder?  Does the 93 year old billionaire know or even care what is going on?  And does forcing Dauman out give either Sumner or daughter Shari back the control they need?  Too many questions as we watch a company wrestle with under performing cable networks and a movie studio shooting blanks, including its latest release of the reboot of Ben Hur.  Is it possible to right this ship?

Of the many questions being asked, many wonder if this means that Viacom will combine with CBS again into one company.  Many believe that it is CBS and its CEO Les Moonves that want to stay clear of this merger although Redstone may have different plans.  The other more immediate question is whether to sell off pieces, especially Paramount, an idea said to be pushed by Dauman.  And then there is the more nuts and bolts questions surrounding each of their cable networks that require more hands on work to regroup and regrow.  Each channel, MTV, VH1, Comedy Central have lost sight of the adage that what gets you to the top doesn't keep you there.  Tastes, shows, hosts, technology, etc. all continue to change and networks need to constantly adapt to remain valuable to the cable line-up.  There is a lot to fix at these nets.

Certainly the leadership fighting at the top of Viacom may have led to a loss of focus at each business.  With that issue finally handled, the focus can be put back onto each business unit.  First things first, morale must be improved with all employees knowing that no jobs are at risk and that they are safe to suggest, challenge, confirm, and execute on strategic plans.  Innovation, experimentation, thinking out of the box, and staying open to new can possibly help Viacom re-emerge as an important media player.  Or it will all be merged with CBS and become another leader's problem. 

Cord Cutting Less Of A Worry

A CNBC story tells us that research from SNL Kagan indicates that "a flattening pace of cord-cutting and a projected broadband boost of 8 million subscribers over the next 10 years, media companies are quickly shifting the way their content gets delivered to consumers."  Truth is, the best way to stream is with broadband.  The cost of data from cellular, mainly because of plans that charge by the gigabyte, makes an impact on the household.  Households may not be buying higher packages of cable, but they are still getting the basic cable package and bundling broadband.  With a broadband package, consumers have wireless accessibility for tablets and smartphones.  And they get authenticated access to wireless outside the home.  In the Northeast Xfinity, Optimum, Time Warner Cable and others have been building out their wireless platforms to support their subscribers. 

Consumers have been moving toward streaming as a preferred way to view content.  Streaming both cable and OTT content to watch on all their devices.  NBC has just announced that they have already served over 1 billion streams of Olympic content.  Time Warner Inc. made a big investment in Hulu, a streaming subscription service.  And Disney/ESPN are finally looking at a streaming subscription package for their sports content. 

The success of broadband enables cable companies to drive bundling packages in a way to keep households connected to cable TV as they drive broadband subscription growth.  And per the report, the strategy has kept cord cutting from becoming a bigger issue.