Kara Swisher is inteviewing Tom Rogers, CEO of TiVo (and CEO with the ideal pirate name).
Kara: Why not TiVo tech in Televisions, powering everything?
Rogers: Biggest reason is that Televisions already have little margins. Building them into Televisions makes it hard to drive the same pricing. What we’re finding is that the Television world is extremely commoditized so they need to do things to differentiate with things like ease of use, and those things are bringing us back front and center.
Kara: How do you move away from the rep of a content thief?
Roger: We got around it by saying that no matter what TiVo does, fast forwarding through commercials is here to stay. They have to deal with it. No way to turn the clock back on this. They need to figure out an ad model that works. Passive watching isn’t going to work against the measurability of the web medium. So that’s what we’re working on. Ads in menus, ads at the end of the show or doing pause. Somehow you have to get them to click into and measure an ad.
Rogers: Do something to catch someone’s eye. Maybe at the end of the show, which is effective because there’s no interruption. Not everyone will watch your ad, but no one really did before. People changed their channels, went to the kitchen, and it was a lie. We track it by seconds, and it’s astonishing the difference between what people thought watchers were doing with ads.
The broadcast industry has to state that once everyone has a DVR, they’ve to figure out a way to advertise, otherwise they don’t have a business model.
Rogers: The cable companies are interested in getting our software. The box still has a role, though, because we can talk to a customer without an intermediary. It helps us gain leverage on cable companies, because we don’t have to pitch it to them. We’re here as a customer option they can see and compare the boxes to.
Kara: How about the internet content?
Rogers says they do this.
Kara: And people want one box to do this all. But who can do that? You’re not in a power position to do this.
Rogers: That’s why the box is important to us.
Rogers also says that cable will be the ones he thinks will do the box, because they’re already in the position of delivering so much. (Over both broadcast and IP, these days—B.L.)
Rogers also thinks that TV networks have to avoid the same pitfalls that the newspaper guys are dealing with now versus the internet. They need to rethink their models now to avoid dark times.
Rogers on CableCard: There’s no reason in the world why a cable company can’t just mail it to you. The cable industry sends a guy out and goes into your house, and has a opportunity to sell you his box, but this hasn’t been worked out in a regulatory rules yet.
Rogers on the TiVo/Comcast deal’s delay so far: The actual development time was 18 months, plus 10 months of prep before that. It’s not the box or software, it’s the infrastructure that cable has that has not proven it can support advanced operations. (What’s that mean? Cable has TV and IP, what else do you need?)
Rogers on more video sources: There isn’t a video producing company that isn’t talking to TiVo this day. Amazon Unbox isn’t exclusive.
Rogers on getting content around the house: Right now you need additional TiVo boxes, but we’re looking at addressing this need.
[All Things D]
Via [Gizmodo]
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