Cycling.TV's Green Parachute

by Chris... on Aug 9, 2007 2:01 PM EDT in News Comment 19 comments

Just saw this announcement that Cycling.TV is being acquired by Jump.TV for a cool $5 mil. Very few details besides the sales price and some other financials. C.TV was losing money in the six figure ranges... though I doubt that's remarkable considering the initial costs that surely go along with such enterprises, and the end-game payout ought to ease that pain considerably.

C.TV CEO Simon Brydon is staying on, so I gather the mission won't change much. As the article states, Cycling.TV holds exclusive, long-term internet broadcasting licenses (probably 80% of the company's value, I'll hazard to guess) for all the top races besides the Tour. By joining this plan with a more experienced network, perhaps we'll have the content we already love with a flawless system.

I know very little about Jump, but you can attempt to learn more at their Wikipedia page, humorously labeled "blatant advertising." Anyway, they're Canadian, so how bad can they be?

If anyone knows how we can bombard Jump with demands that they keep Anthony and Brian in the commentary box, let me/us know.

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Just checked the Jump-TV wikipedia page

and found this (you left this for me to find, didn't you?)

"So far, JumpTV supports the Windows Media format only. It also has no official Macintosh support, but some users have been able to connect and view programming through Flip4Mac and Quicktime in OS X. However, this seems to be limited to PowerPC based Macintoshes, as attempts at viewing with Intel-based Macs have been unsatisfactory."

I'm just speechless, I mean really . . . wtf?

by ianmcw on Aug 9, 2007 2:55 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Damn

What's the network equivalent of a good cockpunching?

Got a problem? Va fa Napoli!

by Chris... on Aug 9, 2007 3:09 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

A

CPU stomping?

"Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals ... except the weasel. "

by Drew on Aug 9, 2007 3:22 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Got it

we Mac people must make this happen.

Got a problem? Va fa Napoli!

by Chris... on Aug 9, 2007 3:28 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Totally.

Just say no to windows only.

Errrgh.

by gavia on Aug 9, 2007 5:43 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

looking through the line-up at jump.tv

I've come to the conclusion that we'll be paying a heck of a lot more for cycling coverage than we have.

the boobtube over IP is an expensive proposition...

by orangekick on Aug 9, 2007 3:04 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Might have to rely on

the Dutch video feed and Eurosport audio to get us through the spring classics.

"Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals ... except the weasel. "

by Drew on Aug 9, 2007 3:06 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I cant see

these free feeds lasting for long (remember the versus tdf scenario?) Perhaps now is the time to buy a CTV subscription at the current price.
And it doesn't fill me with confidence that Jumps FAQ page says (in effect) that mac users can get a refund at anytime after subscribing, merely by referring to the faq as a reason. Will have to try it out this evening. Egyptian football anyone?

by ianmcw on Aug 9, 2007 3:41 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Really?

I think the opposite. There seem to be more and more European tv streams popping up and they are always free. Probably has something to do with state-supported (at least partially) media. Anywho, it's increasingly the norm, it seems, for European tv to stream the races. I'm all for it.

I'd be a damn happy camper if I could always just log on to one of the European networks for free and be done with it.

by gavia on Aug 9, 2007 5:48 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Concerning buying a C.tv

subscription now to beat the inevitable price hike: I renewed my subscription this year in March, a few weeks before my old subscription expired. I was surprised to see that the effective date of my one-year subscription jumped to the earlier date. After inquiring via email, I was told something to the effect that "that's the way it works." Wasn't a big deal at the time, as I was out only a few weeks, but renewing now might cause the same thing to happen...

The Deutschland Tour was one of the big reasons for my subscription this year, so I'm bummed about them not showing it. Last year's was so excellent; I've watched it a couple of times on demand this year and it never fails to excite! I could also use an A&B fix.

by Ruthann on Aug 9, 2007 11:09 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Oh agreed, Happy camping all round, sing songs

around the old campfire etc. But I think the a) blacking out to non host country ip addresses, (of which there's already a lot - I was quite surprised at the dutch tdf stream) will only increase and b) if the race organizers can sell the rights for internet distribution for more elsewhere (ie to a ctv/jump/wcsn) you know they will.

by ianmcw on Aug 9, 2007 6:57 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

The sums really don't look good

18,000 signed up over 139 countries comes to a less than 150 per country on a straight division. OK they're not evenly spread but even so that isn't a lot of people. Even the crowds in Friday Night Lights look bigger than that. And I bet they spend more than £19 per head. Per game.

Add to that losses twice receipts, then I reckon that the only chance they might have is if they signed really long contracts and the original broadcasters want to buy the rights back to sell themselves.

The big problem is that here in Europe, where the grassroots support for cycling is probably the greatest, you can pick up just about everything for free by screwing a satellite dish to the wall. And in much better quality than the internet streams. Who is going to pay for what I guess is YouTube quality. And that is before you even get to the commercials.

by Monty. on Aug 9, 2007 7:24 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Yep

This is why I think the free streams will stay open too. Streaming is a poor substitute for watching it on regular television, which most will do given the choice. The European streams appear to be most heavily used during working hours. On the weekday stages for ex., they always buffer like crazy right around 5km to go, right around 20 km to go, or if there's a climb somewhere during the stage. I'm guessing there are a whole lot of office people following the text tickers, who log on when something interesting happens, like a climb, then log off. Then jump on quickly to watch the finish. Those peeps aren't likely to pay for stream. The weekend streams from Europe that I've watched buffer significantly less than weekdays, suggesting more people are in front of the tv, than watching online.

by gavia on Aug 9, 2007 7:38 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

The 1200 kbps streams

from Versus (illicitly) and cycling.tv (legitimately) were SDTV quality--no chance in hell for HDTV any time soon, but they were watchable.

Internet streaming is just too hard for these little companies--it requires some technical sophistication to scale into the 10s of thousands of users. I think it's beyond the grasp of most of these small companies to do the sales/marketing/customer/legal part and the networking/technical part.

I'm not sure what the jump tv business plan is, but I don't think it's working. financials.
The tough thing is you need to build a network that requires hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment, and operate it for thousands a month. It's not realistic to do that for a single group of viewers.

Unfortunately, I think it's going to boil down to building a private network and getting our fix on the down-low.

Something that might work--finding a sponsor for an event (e.g. Vespa for the Giro) who will bankroll a portal site and pay for the rights for North-America. Turn it into a big splashy event. That could work.

-K-

by KevinK on Aug 9, 2007 8:55 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Windows Media part of the cost

A short rant on techie stuff. As a person who was in the field (slightly, I used to spec the hardware). Not to bash MS too badly - their solution kind of works and is the easiest to set up. It doesn't scale well however and the admin costs are high. The problem is the cycling.tv and jump TV aren't technical, they are (were) content, and they made the easy and wrong decision to lock to MS. Yes, most people have Windows, but you know as Apple has known for years - the people with Apple's are very much more likely to pony up the cash for a premium service. And premium service is where you would make your money.

cycling.tv was a big deal for cycling - many thousands of people got to see the spring classics live than ever before, also the Giro and Vuelta. I hope that coverage continues in a format better than mms. v.264 or whatever youtube is going to would be good. it would cost more server power to encode it, but we are talking one encoding, you can spend a few 10's of thousands on some machines to do that. You could even watch it on cell phones then. This is a classic area where you have to spend more upfront to reap very much larger benefit on the back end. The new flash format might be ok too, don't really know enough about it.

by Markk on Aug 9, 2007 9:30 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

It's a really really

really tough business.

Did I say it was tough?

As noted, the biggest assets of any online event broadcasting outlet are its exclusive rights agreements. And those are almost always overpriced - the original rightsholders are still used to dealing with the (virtually) bottomless pockets of national terrestrial broadcast networks, and negotiate with online broadcasters from that perspective. Then consider the fact that every additional viewer represents an actual increase in operational costs, which are just barely covered (if they actually are) by the subscription rates. And then add, on top of that, the negligible advertising revenues an online channel can count on.

I've had clients with some really amazing assets (i.e., exclusive internet rights for some very popular broadcast sources) who couldn't come close to making a go of it, despite doing everything right (from the consumer's perspective). So I imagine that it'll be really difficult to make cycling.tv into a going concern.

The trick, I think, is to be able to hang on until 1) rightsholders take a more reasonable approach to licensing fees and 2) someone devises a commercially reliable way to share the bandwidth burden of these broadcasts.

by Sui Juris on Aug 9, 2007 10:38 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

it's really difficult techincally

To do live "broadcasts" on the internet.

You have to have some sort of distributed network with servers all over the world.

Take a 1 megabit program as an example, 1000 users x 1 megabit = 1 gigabit. That's not a big deal. 10,000 users, though start to max out the backbone of fairly large ISPs.

The solution (with current technology) is to have a server per thousand users or so located at strategic points in the Internet. Akamai does that--that's who was distributing that sweet Versus feed.

It must be fairly expensive. I don't think cycling.tv used that service---I'm not as familiar with narrowstep.

Still, it's interesting to see what will happen. It's a bummer that cycling.tv wasn't making any money--I don't think that bodes well for the future of cycling broadcasts on the Internet.

-K-

by KevinK on Aug 10, 2007 6:40 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Cycling TV / JUMP TV

Dear Podium Cafe User,

Yes, it is true, JUMP TV has acquired Cycling TV. Why? Well simple, we can now offer our users a better service, more products and more content. By integrating with JUMP's capability we go from no internal web application / design resources to over 30 people, we have round the clock customer services, more technical resources, more marketing, more sales and all so we can make the product for the users better. Anthony and Brian will remain as commentators.

We'll integrate multi language options for users also. Customers are fearful of price rises? I think what we'll see is better pricing options...more quarterly or monthly options rather than one off up front payments. These are all about offering consumers choice.

Let's look at a few issues raised. Cycling TV currently offers Flash highlights and this will continue. Flash can not stream live at present so live will stay on Windows but and will continue at an astounding 1200 kbs live for subscribers and 400 kbs for free to air users and 1800 kbs archive.

We'll also be offering users a host of other choices of where, how and when they can watch Cycling TV.

In short, the only changes at Cycling TV will be for the better and better for the users and fans.

by Cycling TV on Aug 13, 2007 5:28 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs