The value of the television network is partly tradition, serving as a navigation device and as a brand. Research shows that people do know and understand ABC as a brand, like Disney.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Television is the original social network. Consumers love great television, but they also love talking about television. Sharing with friends the thrill of the last episode, debating what will happen next, working to enlist friends to watch the same shows that you love.
I have a deep respect for the fundamentals of television, the traditions of it, even, but I don't have any reverence for it.
Television offers a range and scope, and a degree of creativity and daring, that the bottom-line, global-audience-obsessed, brand-driven movie industry just can't compete with.
This whole thing about reality television to me is really indicative of America saying we're not satisfied just watching television, we want to star in our own TV shows. We want you to discover us and put us in your own TV show, and we want television to be about us, finally.
What TV is extremely good at - and realize that this is 'all it does' - is discerning what large numbers of people think they want, and supplying it.
As we've come along, we've educated our audience, getting them to understand that brands do not compromise entertainment. For us, they enhance it. They enable it.
I think where it's going is toward what the music industry is like, where channels will be considered more like labels that carry the type of TV show that you like, and then you'll consume them however you can. For example, I don't really watch Showtime, but I bought 'Homeland,' and I've been watching every episode on my iPad.
People go to Disney because they know its brand attributes. We believe we have an opportunity to go with our content directly to consumers.
When we started looking at the bigger television ecosystem, you see that there's not that many serialized TV shows being made for TV. The economics are lousy: They don't sell into syndication well; they're expensive to produce.
In day-to-day commerce, television is not so much interested in the business of communications as in the business of delivering audiences to advertisers. People are the merchandise, not the shows. The shows are merely the bait.