A Little Peep at the Future of Pay-Per-View
To: Brandon Tartikoff, Soon-To-Be Chief, Paramount Pictures
Steven J. Ross, Chairman, Time Warner Inc.
John C. Malone, Tele-Communications Inc.
From: Mickey the Hollywood Agent
Like you guys, I thought that pay-per-view was the cash cow of the future. Not any more. Somewhere in the 10th round of the Holyfield-Foreman fight, the vision of television’s true future hit me like a cheap shot in the solar plexus. It felt good. You’ll love it. Trust me.
Yeah, pay-per-view is a nice little business, but it’s both a technological and financial underachiever. Any schnook can charge $29.95 for a one-shot video event. The real trick isn’t just to get people to sign up; it’s to get them so hooked that they keep on paying. You want to milk the event for everything it’s worth.
Consider the pornographic “pay-as-you-go” peep show (not that I’ve ever seen one, of course). That’s the model. Don’t let people pay only for the entire event, make them also pay for the moments that make the event worth watching. Television’s future isn’t pay-per-view alone; it’s pay-per-peep.
Take the Holyfield-Foreman fight (great fight; I made a killing). In addition to the basic charge, suppose that, just as the 10th round began, the screen had gone dark and you were told that, for another $5, you could watch the final two rounds? All you had to do was dial a special phone number, key in your personal access code, and your screen would instantaneously spring back to the fight.
What percent of the audience do you think would have paid? The better the fight, the more people would pay for the privilege to keep watching. (Sure, some events are dogs, but over the span of a season, there will be a bonanza of pay-per-peep moments.) The technological infrastructure for touch tone “impulse” pay-per-peep buys is slowly emerging. Only a fraction of the 17 million cable households today with pay-per-view capabilities has this option. But all the technology to cheaply bring this concept to market already exists.
Pay-per-peep would transform television even more dramatically than cable and the VCR combined. It would give new meaning to the phrase “interactive programming.” Of course, viewers would have to be trained to accept pay-per-peep interactions. But then, they’ve been successfully trained to pay for cable and pay-per-view.
Want to see the last three innings of that terrific baseball game? That’ll be $4, please. Want to see if Nicklaus sinks that 14-foot birdie putt on the 18th green? Please pay $2. Want to witness Hulk Hogan wiping out the Gravedigger? That’s a buck. Biting your fingernails over that sudden-death field goal with three seconds left on the clock? Stop biting long enough to dial in your access code or hit the special button on your converter box.
In the same way TV directors engineer sports coverage around the commercials, they will now engineer them around potential pay-per-peep moments.
But why stop with sports? Let’s design game shows and dramas around the pay-per-peep concept. Columbo solving a mystery? You can watch the entire crime for free, but you have to pay to see how he solves it. Your favorite soap opera actress about to be married for the 14th time? Don’t bring a gift, but please call up the number if you actually want to see the nuptials. These are the obvious ideas: I’m sure the Bochcos, Cannels and Creative Artists agencies can come up with lots of innovative pay-per-peep concepts.
To be honest with you, though, some people just don’t appreciate the simple brilliance of this idea. “I think it’s a dreadful idea,” Time Warner Sports President Seth Abraham told me, fresh off his pay-per-view success with Holyfield-Foreman. “If you change the normal rhythm, metabolism and chemistry of a (sports event), you would have a viewer revolt.”
Well, maybe not. Remember, guys, that’s what they said about pay-per-view a decade ago. Seth does acknowledge that pay-per-peep might work for drama: “There you might be able to get away with it. It’s not so bizarre because you’re already dealing with a viewer’s suspension of disbelief.”
“I don’t know if it’s crazy or not,” Capital Cities/ABC Video Enterprises President Herb Granath told me. As you know, Herb’s plan to put the opening night of Miss Saigon on pay-per-view was scotched by an Actors Equity dispute, but he’s hardly enthusiastic. However, he sees the growing acceptance of pay-per-view as a force that will change viewer expectations about the economics of television.
We’ll always need great programming, but this pay-per-peep technology offers us the opportunity to get more bucks for the bang. Now’s the time to capture the future. Think about it. Gotta run. Have to meet Don King for lunch.
