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Posts Tagged ‘television’

What’s At Stake in the Aereo Case? Maybe the Future of the Cloud

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a major technology case, ABC v. Aereo. The case attracted a huge amount of attention – “Aereo” was the #1 Google search on Tuesday. And that isn’t really surprising. What the Court decides in Aereo could have profound effects on the future not only of television, but of the Internet as well.

Aereo’s business model is clever and, potentially, very disruptive. As they have done since the dawn of television, the major networks – ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX – broadcast their signals over the air. You can receive these signals with a digital antenna – the modern equivalent of rabbit ears – and millions of Americans who don’t subscribe to cable or satellite still do.

Aereo is nominally in the antenna business. Aereo owns thousands of tiny digital antennas – each about the size of a dime – on the roof of a building in Brooklyn. In exchange for a monthly fee that ranges from $8-$12, an Aereo subscriber can dial into one of these antennas to watch whatever she wants.


More Channels, More Specialization

There’s a story in the July 3 edition of The Australian about the Fox Footy (Australian Rules Football) Channel. That the channel exists illustrates how changing technology increases well-being.  With the plummeting cost of TV production and transmission has come a great growth in the number of specialized channels.  When I was a kid, the U.S. had three networks and a few independent channels in big cities. Today, things like the Fox Footy Channel have increased the ability of the medium to cater to specialized tastes. 

Since I’m not the only American who likes Australian football, or footy, I expect to see the channel on U.S. TVs soon — thus increasing variety, increasing my total utility.  Any thoughts on likely future channels that will cater to even more specific tastes?


Marlo's Monopoly

We are belatedly watching The Wire, nearing the end of Season V. [N.B.: see Sudhir Venkatesh‘s series of blog posts called “What Do Real Thugs Think of The Wire?”] By Episode 6, Marlo Stanfield has killed off the competing retail drug lords and also the chief wholesaler, Proposition Joe.  At the next meeting of Baltimore drug lords, Marlo allocates territories among his subordinates and announces to everyone a large rise in the wholesale price of drugs.  Not surprising—he has turned an oligopoly into a monopoly, with him as the monopolist. 

Marlo doesn’t realize it yet, but his monopoly status gives others a bigger incentive to attack him.  Don’t spoil the suspense for me, but I wouldn’t be surprised, although I would be pleased, if Marlo is bumped off by his own subordinates—it’s hard to maintain monopoly power.


How Money Is March Madness? (Ep. 119)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast is called “How Money Is March Madness?”  (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript below.)

The gist: the annual NCAA basketball tournament grabs a lot of eyeballs, but turning them into dollars hasn’t always been easy — even when the “talent” is playing for free.

Last year, March Madness reportedly earned its highest TV ratings in 18 years. This year’s Super Bowl, meanwhile, was the third most-watched broadcast in TV history (behind two earlier Super Bowls), despite (or because of?) an electrical blackout. Interestingly — to me, at least — these two premier TV sporting events are sold very differently: the Super Bowl rotates annually among one of three networks while the NCAA is in the midst of a 14-year contract with CBS and Turner Sports. How does that difference affect ad revenue?


Weird But True: Freakonomics-Flavored Cop Show Bought by NBC

A few months back, Levitt and I were asked help put together a TV cop show based on the concepts of Freakonomics. The gist: a big-city police force, in crisis, hires a rogue academic (sound familiar?) to help get crime under control.

It struck us as a totally crazy but also strangely appealing idea. The concept had been hatched by Brian Taylor, a  young exec at Kelsey Grammer‘s production company, Grammnet, which then partnered with Lionsgate; and the acclaimed writer Kevin Fox was brought on board. The show would be called Pariah.

A couple weeks ago, Levitt and I went to Los Angeles to help pitch the show to the TV networks. Since we know nothing about TV, we tried to not talk too much and let Kevin, Brian, and Kelsey do their thing. And they did! Here’s the news, from Deadline.com:


Religion, Crime, and Television

A new survey study by Amir Hetsroni (who has also studied the difference between real doctors and TV doctors) and Hila Levenstein looks at the relationship between TV viewing and crime perception. The study, to be published next year in Psychological Reports, found a difference between religious and non-religious participants. From Ynetnews:

Yet the data collected from the 778 residents of northern Israel who watched channels 2 and 10 during prime time viewing hours in 2009 revealed some unexpected information. 

It soon became clear that among secular viewers there was a certain connection between television viewing and fear of falling victim to a crime. Whereas a situation called Counter-Cultivation was diagnosed among religious viewers. This means that the more they watched television, the less they feared becoming a victim of a crime.


TV's Relationship to Mental Retardation and Autism

TV is bad for children.  Wait, no it’s not.  Yes, it is!   And it’s really bad for their hearts!

Here’s the latest paper on the topic, from Michael Waldman, Sean Nicholson, and Nodir Adilov.  Using a natural experiment to rule out the possibility of reverse causation, the authors find “a strong negative correlation between average county-level cable subscription rates when a birth cohort is below three and subsequent mental retardation diagnosis rates, but a strong positive correlation between the same cable subscription rates and subsequent autism diagnosis rates.”  


Less Work Time = More TV, Grooming Time

What would we do with our time if we suddenly didn’t have to work as much but were just as healthy and had the same income? This question is ages-old, was posed by Keynes in 1930, but is very hard to answer: sudden, permanent drops in work time that change nothing else are very rare. They did occur in Japan in the 1990s and Korea in the 2000s, when their governments induced employers to cut work hours. In a recent paper Jungmin Lee, Daiji Kawaguchi and I use time diaries from before and after the changes to see what happened. In Japan, almost half the free time was devoted to additional TV-watching, while in Korea, much was devoted to increased personal care, particularly grooming. But in neither was there any increase in home production — child care, cooking, gardening, etc. I like to think the same would occur in the U.S. — that we would use permanent cuts in work time to enjoy ourselves and take more care of ourselves. Regrettably in the workaholism champion of the Western world, these cuts don’t seem likely any time soon.


Introducing "Football Freakonomics" on the NFL Network

As readers of this blog know, I like the NFL quite a bit (although not, for whatever reason, college football). I have written about players from the past like John Unitas and Franco Harris; I also love to follow the modern NFL and all its tricky issues.

So I’m thrilled to be hosting a new segment on the NFL Network called “Football Freakonomics.” We did a short program together for the NFL Draft, called “The Quarterback Quandary,” and now we’re partnering up for an ongoing set of segments. The first Football Freakonomics feature will air this Sunday on the network’s “NFL GameDay Morning.” We’ll explore all kinds of issues — winning/losing, performance, salaries, etc. — and we’ll lean on original research as well as the insights of many brilliant people from sport, academia, and beyond.

The first segment is titled “Is Momentum a Myth?” (If you’ve read the fine book Scorecasting, you may know where we’re headed with this one.) I haven’t seen it yet but all the NFL folks I’ve been working with in production are absolutely top-notch, so I’m sure they’ve come up with something great.


Does HDTV Increase Demand for Make-up Artists?

A major technical change in TV has been the introduction of HD broadcasting and receivers. For the same price you get higher quality, so this can be viewed as a rightward change in supply. This change has affected a surprisingly related market—that for make-up artists.
Now if you’re on television, as I discovered, every single “flyaway hair” is visible. Most of my hair flew away many years ago, but what’s left might still stick out and need careful laying down by a specialist. A make-up artist tells me that demand for her services has been helped tremendously by the introduction of digital broadcasting and HD receivers.
[HT to NN]


The Economics of Gym-Going, Part 2

From a reader named Laura Brown:

I recently joined a gym in a low-income part of Baltimore. For $10 a month, a person has unlimited access to the equipment — including treadmills that have individual televisions with about 20 different channels. For $19.99 a month, they have unlimited access as well as unlimited guest privileges. I’ve only been to the gym twice since I signed up, but both times (in the evening), the gym has been almost to capacity. However, despite the fact that it is almost impossible to find an open treadmill, many patrons don’t seem to be there to workout — most of them are obese, and the majority of the treadmills seem to run on the minimum speed settings — .5 mph — not fast enough for anyone to even break a sweat. I was pondering this yesterday during my jog, and it occurred to me that it is entirely possible that many of these people are using a gym membership (and the subsequent treadmill-television access) as a substitute for cable.


Bad Combinations

I like Family Guy and I like watching TV with my kids, but I do not like watching Family Guy with my kids. What are your bad combinations?


I've Made a Huge Mistake

I cannot believe we posted a photo puzzler the other day about the pricing strategies at a banana stand and failed to acknowledge the most delicious fact about the situation: There’s always money in the banana stand!


One-Second Commercials

I remember as a kid growing up watching TV, every once in a while someone at the station would make a mistake and start the wrong commercial. It would run for a second or two, and then the person in charge would realize the mistake and immediately cut to some other commercial or to the actual show.


A Very Interesting Paragraph From …

Meantime, over the past two quarters, the number of U.S. households that subscribe to cable and other paid TV services fell for the first time since the dawn of cable – by about 335,000 households out of about 100 million, according to data provider SNL Kagan.


Here Is Your Mother

In a previous post, I asked why the writers of the TV show House chose for last week’s episode (“A Pox on our House”) to have a sick family composed of a recently married husband and wife who each bring to the marriage a child from a previous relationship.


A House Puzzler

Here’s a puzzler for people who have seen the latest episode of the TV show House.


Homer Simpson: A True Catholic?

This just in from the Vatican’s daily broadsheet: “Few people know it, and he does everything he can to hide it, but it is true: Homer J. Simpson is a Catholic.”


Time for That LCD TV?

A recent article from the Chicago Tribune reported “an enormous surplus of LCD panels that has accumulated over the first nine months of the year.” This surplus arose partly because prices of flat-screen TVs had not fallen throughout much of the year-and the quantity demanded had accordingly been constant.


The Prisoner's Dilemma Makes a Reality TV Appearance

Once in a while, something happens in the real world that brings a flurry of e-mail to the Freakonomics office. If, for instance, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, or at least a version thereof, makes an appearance on a network TV show.


Quotes Uncovered: TV Catchphrases

Two years ago, I asked for suggestions for the most memorable contemporary TV catchphrases of recent years, to help with the next edition of The Yale Book of Quotations. Let me repeat my “bleg” from that time, and ask again for suggestions.


Sesame Street, Nigerian Style

hildren in Nigeria will soon have a new TV option. Sesame Square, a local version of Sesame Street voiced and produced by Nigerians (and funded by a grant from USAID), will “focus on the same challenges faced by children in a country where many have to work instead of going to school: AIDS, malaria nets, gender equality – and yams, a staple of Nigerian meals.”


TV and Crime

An East Baltimore citizen suggests a freaky explanation for recent violence in the city.


What if TV Networks Aired All Their Pilots?

In Hollywood, a lot of people make a good living by making TV pilots that never end up on the air. (There’s also a strong market for writing film scripts that are never turned into films.) According to Variety, roughly one-third of pilots end up on the air; here’s a primer about the process. With each pilot costing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars, that’s a lot of money spent so that a handful of TV executives can give something a thumbs-down and consign it to the trash.


I've Been Paying for HGTV? Really?

In the New Yorker, James Surowiecki explains why it’s not just cable providers who like the current cable-TV system that bundles channels: “The appeal of bundling is partly that it reduces transaction costs: instead of having to figure out how much each part of a package is worth to you, you can make a blanket judgment.”


Pray for Me: I'm Going on The Daily Show Tonight

The first time I went on The Daily Show, nearly five years ago, I dreaded it for weeks in advance. I had a terrible fear of going on TV and had avoided it scrupulously, even in publicizing our first book. When Jon Stewart came knocking, however, it was impossible to come up with a credible reason to give the publisher as to why I couldn’t do it. I had no choice.