NAB: Top telcos want closer ties with broadcasters

LAS VEGAS--The top content executives at the top two telcos-turned-video-distributors would like to partner and cooperate more with broadcasters and content developers. Terry Denson, vice president of programming and marketing for Verizon FiOS TV, and Dan York, executive vice president of content for AT&T, both extolled the mutual benefits of greater cooperation with broadcasters in an IPTV panel discussion at the NAB show.

Denson said the early negotiations for content pricing were rough for Verizon because the company had no subscribers but needed to get the high-volume pricing that cable companies were afforded in order to compete and make money on FiOS TV. Eventually, the telecom giant was able to convince content owners of the value of working with Verizon. “I’m not saying we got the same prices that Comcast and Cox got, but we were able to get a better deal.”

The payoff for content owners has already come, Denson added. In every area where Verizon has rolled out FiOS and carried content that wasn’t previously available, the cable operator has responded by adding content of its own, “and that’s a benefit to content providers.”

By cooperating and partnering, instead of trying to squeeze every nickel in revenue, telcos, broadcasters and other content creators can expand the market for everyone, Denson said. Otherwise, he added, the market could resemble the opening sequence from “No Country For Old Men,” in which even the last man standing – and getting away with the cash – dies before he can get very far.

AT&T partnered with CBS Sports to distribute its video coverage of the Masters golf tournament last weekend and was rewarded by being the only company to offer live coverage of Ian Poulter’s hole-in-one on the first day, York said. “Only U-verse subscribers were able to see it live,” he said.

Greater cooperation between the telcos and their video services and local broadcasters is also possible in creating hyperlocal news and information channels, which are possible on FiOS because it is not bandwidth-constrained, Denson said.

“The top DMAs [designated market areas] are complex,” Denson said. “Perhaps none is more complex than New York. People who live in Long Island don’t care about what happens in New Jersey, but the local news has to cover the entire region.”

Using existing news footage that doesn’t make “the big broadcast,” broadcasters can create hyper-local news channels, which already exist in some markets, Denson added. In Tampa, for instance, Verizon ran into trouble trying to market FiOS when it didn’t carry Bay News 9, a hyperlocal station.

York and Denson agreed that the hardest part of their jobs was bridging the slower moving, more conservative world of the telecom industry with the faster pace of the media world. “We’ve had to be agents of change,” York said.