Daniel Roth of LinkedIn mentions a report on the television industry:
From Wikimedia
Joel Espelien, a senior analyst at The Diffusion Group, was mulling on this era of abundance recently and wrote a report for clients. The picture he used to highlight his analysis was surprising: a pile of dead fish. Today’s content frenzy, he said, is nothing more than overfishing — and will end just as predictably. As he explained it, the US TV audience is flat or declining, and not as accessible it seems. Adults watch 35-40 hours of TV a week, but probably 80% of this is news, sports and Law & Order reruns (or, as Epstein says, “shows that people already know and enjoy”). That leaves the entertainment world with 7 to 8 hours per week to fight over. And during those hours, consumers will try out only a tiny number of the 100+ new shows being offered this Fall alone. “Throwing this many new TV shows at an audience already saturated with video choices may cause many potential viewers to simply select ‘none of the above’,” he wrote.
I’m trying to understand how this analogy works. Overfishing is, to be technical, the harvesting of a particular species of fish (a fishery) beyond its carrying capacity in anticipation that the market will consume most of the catch. The unintended effect is the damage to, or destruction of, the fishery.
The analogy seems to be quite strained. While I can see a mapping from the catching, or production, of fish to the production of television shows, I don’t see a mapping from the consumption of fish to the consumption of the television shows. The harvest of the fish and the damage to, even destruction of, the fishery is unconnected to the appetite of the market for it, except that the resultant scarcity of the fish in following seasons may drive up the price of the fish – rendering it more valuable.
But the over-production of television shows merely results in overloading the consumer, not in the destructive exhaustion of the resource. Further, postulating that consumers, when faced with a plethora of shows, will simply turn off the TV and move on is a highly speculative assertion. There should be many services which will review these shows and tell the consumer the general content of the show, as well as its quality – and if there aren’t, then there’s a market opportunity.
Granted, I haven’t read the actual report – that costs money and time, neither of which I’m really willing to spend. Maybe I’m way off-base. Anyone see where I’m wrong?
