Niche programming

When Tom Brokaw retired last week from his post as anchor of the NBC Nightly News, there was a heavy dose of nostalgia as expected. But buried among the pieces about Brokaw's humble beginnings in South Dakota was the inescapable fact that national network news has become an increasingly segmented endeavor.

This fact was driven home yet again today when Sandvine announced that, during the week that enormously popular video game Halo II went live on Microsoft Xbox Live, traffic on service provider networks quadrupled. In raw numbers, a national broadcast obviously is going to draw more viewers than a video game launch, but there's a lesson in this for service providers contemplating video services.

In an increasingly fractured viewing market, niche programming in all its forms is growing. For vendors, the challenge is convincing large carriers to provide something that won't draw in massive numbers but collectively will be just as big.

Over the last several weeks--from the beginning of the USTA show and through the TelcoTV event--there's been a growing debate over video architectures and whether anyone will be able to justify the economics if they don't reach near 100% penetration rates. Perhaps it's time to take a breather for a moment and realize that no service is going to hit that level. Especially one that will be competing against at least one incumbent, and more likely two.

E-mail me at vvittore@primediabusiness.com.