Got the Newest Model of TV? You Have No Privacy Anymore! Your Data is Being Sent to Third Parties With Your Permission!

Been telling people for years to trash their TV sets. Few listen. First wrote about it in Lew Rockwell in an article entitled: "The Plug-in Drug."

My favorite dig at parents who, they themselves say they think TV is bad (but do nothing about it):

"People always say that they love their children and that they will do anything for them. But, for the most part, and from what I’ve seen, it’s not true. There is one thing that they will not do for their children: They haven’t the courage to throw the TV out."

Yep! Parents, often more than children, need the TV because they use it as a baby-sitter or - even though they won't admit it - they are hooked themselves (sports, etc.)

Now, today, here's something I picked up from Karl Denninger (I've paraphrased it for you):

"....I just bought a new TV.  

I am now the owner of a new “smart” TV, which delivers streaming, games, apps, social media, and Internet browsing. Oh, and TV too.

The only problem is that I’m afraid to use it. You would be too — if you read through the 46-page privacy policy.

The amount of data this thing collects is staggering. It logs and records everything you do with the unit. It can even turn on while the set is off and record what's going on in your living room.

The unit comes with a warning: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.” 

Got that? Don’t say personal or sensitive stuff in front of the TV."

I don't have a TV in my home and have no intention of ever allowing one in the home... 

Ever wonder why digital TV was/is touted to be such a great thing? 

1) They can sell you more crap you don't need (to watch the very same crap that was on your analogue TV; 

2) You can be tracked and spied upon.

And, no, this isn't illegal. A third party can turn on your microphone and record you from outside. Why? Because it is stated in the Users Agreement and the moment you turned on the set, you approved of it. You approved of this invasion of your privacy, so it isn't illegal.

Whose fault is it if you didn't read the Users Agreement? 

Enjoying your time at home now, in front of the TV?

I sure hope so.

Japanese Terrestrial TV Stations Commit Suicide

Yesterday, an era in broadcasting ended for Japan. Terrestrial TV has now gone static and digital broadcasting has begun.


As I have written before, this strikes the death knell for the major Japanese broadcasting stations in Japan. Their ratings and viewership were already at all-time lows. With this conversion, they lose 20 ~ 30% of their audience.


Digital TV subscriptions and tuners are not cheap. In 2011, people with disposable income do not watch TV anymore. As I pointed out in Why the Digital Conversion Will Kill TV Tokyo and TBS:


It seems obvious to me that there's no doubt about it...  Basically:

1) People with money do not watch TV
2) The only people who do watch a lot of TV have either no money or too much time on their hands; they are not active
3) Advertising to people with no money and who are not active is a waste of money.
4) When digital goes online fully, then the only people who don't have the digital equipment are poor people
5) Poor people are the only ones who watch TV Tokyo and TBS now (see #2 above)

The countdown has begun. The digital TV conversion will kill TV Tokyo and TBS.


I also hammered the point home in


The end of analogue TV broadcasting happened yesterday. Kyodo reports:


TOKYO, July 24 (AP) - (Kyodo)—Japanese broadcasters completely digitalized their terrestrial TV broadcasting noon Sunday, ending the analog transmission that began more than a half century ago, except in areas hit hard by March's earthquake and tsunami.

But the telecom ministry estimates some people nationwide have yet to prepare for the analog-to-digital shift and has increased staff for the last-minute campaign to provide people with technical help before analog TVs turn grainy by midnight Sunday.

The broadcasting industry estimates 100,000 households failed to buy essential equipment such as digital tuners and antennas as of Saturday.

In my opinion, those estimates are way off. Even NHK surveys and surveys by Yomiuri newspaper show a 70% ~ 80% rate which definitely repudiates those rosy numbers. 

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications exempted viewers in Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima prefectures from the nationwide start of the land-based digital TV broadcasting, putting off the project there until March next year.
Japan's analog television service began in 1953.

Japanese broadcasters digitalized their transmission of programs in stages after the relevant law passed parliament in 2001. The digital broadcasting, along with the traditional analog transmission, began inTokyo and two other major cities of Osaka and Nagoya in 2003 and spread nationwide in 2006.

The video talks about the end of analogue TV and how they are getting massive amounts of complaints and inquiries from people about it.... I imagine many people will not be too happy when they find out that they cannot watch TV anymore unless they cough up a few thousand dollars to watch it.

So, it's the beginning of the end. TV is sliding into irrelevance and oblivion. Good riddance.

Terrestrial TV Stations Getting Cold Feet?

All the major TV stations in Japan were supposed to stop broadcasting in analogue on July 24, 2011. There was one piece of information that wasn't made public until now, and that is that the Japanese government wanted the TV stations to stop broadcasting regular programming on June 30, 2011.

The government plan called for the TV stations to air only a notice that TV sets that cannot pick up Digital would only receive "snow."

As Yomiuri reports:

Commercial TV stations are likely to continue analog TV broadcasts until noon on July 24, deviating from a government plan to phase in terrestrial digital broadcasts and end regular analog service by the end of June, sources said.

This means the TV stations will not participate in a planned June 30 to July 24 transition period during which the government hopes analog broadcasts will be reduced only to a notice saying terrestrial TV broadcasting will go exclusively digital at noon on July 24.

After the changeover is complete, TV sets incapable of digital reception will display only "snow" on their screens. TV stations plan to start broadcasting an image of a snow-filled screen repeatedly in announcements to begin as early as this month to avoid confusion among TV viewers after the full transition.

The government is so unorganized that it is not even funny. Here we are 7 months from D-Day for these foolish TV stations that agreed to go into huge debt to go digital and the government - as is par for the course - hasn't got their ducks in order.

Hell, they stopped giving people so-called eco-point discounts on these digital ready TV sets already! (Now, don't get me wrong, I think these eco-points discounts, are a sham and the government has no business offering people discounts for products on the free market...) But if they are going to do it anyway, you'd think they would continue to allow credits to people to buy a digital set for at least a year after conversion... But no!

The government can't fill in a pothole in the road on time and on budget; who thinks they can control and run an entire country switchover to digital smoothly?

Let me make a prediction right here. When the stations stop broadcasting in analogue, they will lose viewers in huge numbers and they will receive a massive amount of complaints. This will affect their sales. I predict that the government and the broadcasters will start to quarrel and, before April 2012, some of the TV stations will request that they be allowed to broadcast in analogue also.

This will cause even more confusion and complaints amongst the people, manufacturers, broadcasters and the government. And that will, in turn, make TV an ever more undesirable method of advertising. This will also hurt TV viewership ratings.

The Japanese government will realize that they made a mistake by making digital broadcasting mandatory and then they will try all sorts of "fix-it" remedies - all of which will fail.

These sorts of events will help lead to TV Tokyo and TBS's bankruptcy by 2015.

Cable TV Stations Lose Over 500,000 Subscribers

This article is not about Japan, but I think it points to what is going to happen here very shortly concerning major television stations .

I have written extensively about how the digital conversion in Japan on July 24, 2011 is going to destroy TV Tokyo, TBS, and then TV Asahi. In that order. This is because these stations are last in ratings and losing money now. When the digital conversion happens, they will lose another 30% of their audience.

They aren't making ends meet today. It is inconceivable that they will do better when their audience shrinks by 30% overnight. I wrote about that here and here.

In an article that came across my desk today, I see that Cable TV stations in the USA lost over 500,000 subscribers in the 3rd quarter of 2010. They, too, cannot survive this kind of bleeding of audience.

The Daily Tech reports:

Cable companies have traditionally increased the cost of their TV services each year, often with no improvement in the offerings. As people start looking to save money, many are leaving cable providers. Gigaom reports that it has cobbled together the number of cable subscribers lost for four of the top five cable companies around the country for Q3 2010 and the number of folks leaving cable is growing.

However, Gigaom reports that over the last few quarters the number of subscribers lost from cable and gained at satellite and IPTV firms is not matching up. Many people are just walking away from paying for TV. This is getting easier to do with most major networks offering their programs online free and services like Hulu offering old shows for fans to watch.

What is written here is true but I think the writer is missing out on something else that is going on. There are now services popping up all over the world that offer satellite TV for a one time fee. Here's one called Satellite Direct.

How does that song go? "3,500 channels and nothing on..."

Satellite Direct sells their service for a one-time fee of $49.95 (Ask for a discount and they'll sell it to you for $24).... These sorts of services offer you a download to your computer and give you thousands of channels. Of course, I am not selling this to you. I think TV is brain damage and a complete waste of time, so I don't recommend it. My point here is to illustrate how these pay TV services have a business model that is now broken.

The moral of the story is that this is what is going on now and this also shows why these huge TV stations like TV Tokyo with over 1,000 employees (and the overhead that goes with that) are dead.... How in the world will they compete with a music only - or a fashion channel, sports channel, etc, TV stations that only have 20 ~ 40 employees?

They won't. They are dead.

Read more at Daily Tech.

Thanks to What Really Happened.

Facebook is sidelined in Japan as social network battle heats up

By AKKY AKIMOTO / Japan Times

In July, the number of active users on social networking site Facebook worldwide surpassed 500 million. More than 60 percent of Internet users in the United States have signed up with the site, and its presence has reached into almost every country on Earth. You might think that Facebook is taking over the world . . . if you speak English.

There are, however, a few regions where Facebook has not been able to penetrate the market as it has in the West. China, Russia and South Korea have all developed their own popular variants of the idea. Japan also has its own social networking sites and the top three: Gree, Mixi and Mobage Town, are currently in a battle that has become so fierce that Facebook might not even stand a chance.

Both Mixi and Gree began in February 2004, when tech-savvy Japanese were discovering social networking site Orkut. Both Mixi and Gree aimed to come up with a Japanese version of the popular social networks sweeping the West.

Mixi was thought of as Japan's response to Friendster. It came about when Web startup E-Mercury took one of its engineers off their employment- search service Find Job and assigned him to creating Mixi. To everyone's amazement, the site grew quickly and now boasts 21 million users in its network. Also similar to Facebook, Mixi depends on advertising sales for profit — while its main competitors do not.

Mixi continues to be innovative. Last week, the company announced two new features: Mixi Check and Mixi Check-In. Mixi Check is similar to Facebook's Share feature, while Check-In is similar to Foursquare, geo-tagging a user's physical location on the site.

For five years, Mixi sat comfortably at the top of the social networking tree, but last month Gree announced it had 21.25 million registered users. That number made Gree Japan's No. 1 social network.

Gree's success indicates a particular quality of Japan's market. Mixi was the only site among the top three to have established its fame on PCs. But in July 2007, the number of page views on cell phones topped those coming from PCs, essentially moving the battlefield for social network supremacy. Gree's success on a mobile platform is seen as one of the reasons it topped Mixi. After losing to Mixi initially in 2004, many had thought Gree would disappear. Its comeback started in late 2006 after the site pretty much abandoned its unpopular PC version (it still exists but traffic is at 1 percent of its mobile version). Gree inked a deal with Japan's No. 2 cell-phone carrier, KDDI au, and created a mobile version of the site complete with what the Japanese call kajuaru gemu (casual games), simple games for cell phones, and avatars.

Gree CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka said he studied Hangame, a South Korean online game portal, for inspiration when designing Gree's mobile reincarnation. The new Gree has been hooking new users with games such as fishing and virtual pets, all of which can be played for free (but which also have content available for sale to expand the scope of the games). The gaming strategy (and a TV ad campaign) resonated with Web surfers pushed Gree to the top. Recently, the site has started adding third-party social games in addition to expanding its long list of casual games.

The game strategy is being used by Japan's No. 3 social networking site Mobage Town. The site is run by DeNA, who also run successful online auction service Bidders, and was started up in 2006. DeNA also looked to Hangame as a model for Mobage Town. Despite its late start, Mobage Town has increased its user base to 20.48 million. One key factor in its success was enabling users to earn virtual money if they clicked on advertisers' websites. The social networking service provides their own casual games as well as third-party games. The most popular game it has at the moment, "Kaitou Royal," is similar to Facebook's popular "Mafia Wars."

Similar to the characters in "Mafia Wars," Japan's social networking sites are in a fierce competition for turf. DeNA is working with Japan's biggest website, Yahoo! Japan, to open Yahoo! Mobage, which is set to bring Mobage Town to Yahoo! Japan users. Both Mobage Town and Gree are spending copious amounts of money on TV advertising, even outdoing Toyota and Coca-Cola. The companies behind the two sites are also involved in a hiring competition, providing some workers with a maximum ¥2 million one-time bonus.

Where is all this cash coming from? While Mixi's prime source of income is advertising revenues, Gree and Mobage Town directly sell virtual items to their users. Their way of selling such items is different to the way Apple's App Store works. When purchasing something for the iPhone, customers are billed separately, which means they are able to see the charges on their credit card bill. With Gree and Mobage Town, most purchases made are folded into the user's telephone bills — essentially making them less noticeable. This approach has paid off, literally, for both companies and they have been able to lower their advertising prices in response, putting more pressure on Mixi.

However, a DeNA employee appeared at a Mixi conference last week saying Mobage Town and Mixi's services don't overlap and that some cooperation is possible. DeNA CEO Tomoko Namba has also set her target on Sony and Nintendo, hinting that they were old news. DeNA seems to be adapting a line of "you're with us or you're against us," and has reportedly told video-game developers that if they want to sell on Mobage Town, they shouldn't try to sell on Gree as well. The company has not confirmed this.

At its conference, Mixi also announced a partnership with China's Renren and South Korea's Cyworld. Initially, the three will standardize their platforms to allow third-party application providers (which Mixi calls SAPs) to run on the three social networking sites. This strategy is primarily against Facebook. It would be surprising if something big, such as a merger or an inter-platform networking feature, comes of it. This kind of thing, though, does appeal to domestic users. Facebook's global reach has been impressive, but its localization (especially in Asian countries) has been subpar. If Asia's social networking sites can step in and give the image of being able to network internationally, that could be enough to get users interested. However, seeing the approaching ceiling of the Japanese market must have Mixi, DeNA and Gree looking to expand. Indeed, DeNA and Gree could use their profits to grow overseas. With Facebook retaining a possible monopoly in the West, it could be that Japan's social networks see Asia as their best bet to form a challenge against the online behemoth.

Akky Akimoto writes for Asiajin.com, which is planning readers meetups in Singapore on Sept. 25, and Tokyo on Oct. 9. For details, visit asiajin.com. A Japanese version of this article is available on Akky Akimoto's blog at akimoto.jp


From Japan Times

Why the Digital Conversion Will Destroy TV Tokyo and TBS

Yesterday I wrote about why the conversion in Japan by television stations from analogue to digital is going to wipe out a bunch of FM radio stations. Today I will write about why this will also kill off some of the poorly rated TV stations too (good riddance!).

The digital conversion that is scheduled to occur on July 24, 2011, is going to kill off a bunch of FM radio stations in this country (especially Tokyo) because you will no longer be able to hear FM radio in your Toyota or Nissan without special equipment. The digital sets are not compatible with analogue.

Also, the economic consideration that analogue equipment is not manufactured in Japan anymore plays a big part. It may not be so much a matter of what the consumer wants, but what the manufacturer wants.

From that blog:

After July 2011, on your dashboard, you will have a digital GPS, Internet, digital TV and digital radio. Want to do Social Media, YouTube, Twitter, U-Stream, blog? Got you covered. Need to Google or Yahoo search? Sure. When you need traffic conditions, just a click on your GPS will give you up to the minute details on traffic and road conditions. All the TV channels? No problem. Throw on top of that 6 digital radio channels and, of course, a CD player and probably an iPod connection, and you have the next generation of car entertainment system. 

Read that entire blog here.

Today's blog will show you why I think this digital conversion is going to kill off TV stations like TV Tokyo and TBS who are consistently last in ratings.

It is important that you good folks have an understanding of the Long Tail to fully grasp this. For a brief explanation of what the Long Tail is, read here and here.

When the digital conversion happens in July of 2011, suddenly there is going to be massive choice on your television. The playing field will be evened quite a bit. Instead of being able to receive just 4 ~ 6 channels like today's analogue TV does, your system will be able to receive hundreds of TV channels.

Now, what happens to people when they are given a choice? Do they stick with watching the same 4 channels, or do they TV zap and try many channels?

History shows us that when people are offered a choice, they will let their own personal tastes dictate what they decide to consume whether we are talking about TV programs, restaurants, clothes, or even  jams and jellies for toast.

Let's use jam and jelly for our example.

Go to any convenience store where shelf space is limited. How many jams and jellies do they offer? 4? 5? Go to any grocery store. How many jams and jellies do they offer? 18? 20? Go to Amazon.com, how many jams and jellies do they offer? Over 1,300.

Now it makes sense that if Joe-blow is buying the lemon-tangerine marmalade made in Holland, that is one less purchase of the generic brand "STRAWBERRY JAM" that he is going to make, right?

Get it? Having more choice doesn't mean that people will buy more jam; it means that people will diversify their tastes. The more people are offered, the more wide-spread their choice becomes, the more dispersed their spending will be. More choices will result in a displacement of time and money from the old choices that were dictated simply due to lack of choice (caused by limitations due to time, money and space).

When people have wide choices they will exercise more discretion 

and more personal taste and freedom of choice

It is the same with TV.

When there are 300 TV channels competing for your attention and sponsor's money - both of these critical factors to the survival of TV (audience and money) will be more widely dispersed.

Think of it this way: You are the maker of, say, outdoor goods like tents, bicycles and barbeques. Say, the price for 25 TV ads on a TV station like TV Tokyo is about $150,000 (USD). The price of 35 TV ads on the sports channel is $14,000. Sure there are more viewers on TV Tokyo, but Sports TV offers a targeted audience of men who like sports (and, by the way, many are probably are married, have families, and like the outdoors).... TV Tokyo's audience ranges from 10-year-olds to 80-year-olds; Sports TV target audience is mainly 30 ~ 50-year-old men.

Now, where would you spend the money if you were the sponsor?

It is obvious that you would go for the Sports TV. It will be the same for all manufacturers whether they make diapers or women's fashion brand shoes. The diaspora of audience will make targeting even more important as time goes by.

But there will still be a place for the catch-all, wide audience accepted platform to advertise hit products; say the new Hollywood Blockbuster or the new Disney Park attraction that appeals to the entire family. Those will still be handled by the old style TV stations. The old style TV station thats target a wide audience will be amply served by today's #1 rated (by far) TV stations: Fuji TV and Nihon TV (at #2)... The stations like TV Tokyo and TBS, who fight it out for last place, will find it more and more difficult to find buyers for their ad space and are headed for very tough times and difficult decisions.

Sports TV can sell TV ads for 1/10th the price of TV Tokyo because they only have about 60 employees... TV Tokyo has over 700! TV Tokyo group has over 1,000!

Guess what? When the playing field is evened, then everyone will have to tighten their belts, but guess who is going to have to fire 50 ~ 70% of their employees and probably merge with another company? TBS and TV Tokyo.

While today, the stations like TV Tokyo and TBS are all crowing about their new digital channel... The content is still the same. Only the broadcasting platform has changed. What makes them think that just by changing platforms that their ratings and income are going to increase? Good question. If anything, their viewership is going to decline due to more choices being offered and some people opting out of buying an expensive new TV (at my home, we opted out of TV over seven years ago and haven't missed it once. I wrote about not having a TV and the benefits of that here and here.)

Today, TV Tokyo's ratings are dead last and they are losing millions of dollars a year and having to borrow massive amounts of money from banks to stay afloat. How long will banks keep lending them money? (Their FM radio subsidiary, InterFM alone is losing somewhere in the neighborhood of one million dollars a year!) What makes TV Tokyo management think that, when digital goes online, and the competition increases one-hundred fold, that their fortunes will get better?

Fuji TV consistently #1 in ratings by far.  

Strong on branding and image and logo is the same each and every time.

I think that they are in for a quite rude awakening, in spite of their current bravado and high hopes that digital is going to save them from their current conundrum... (I've mentioned before that "hope" is a very poor business plan).

I also think that their poorly designed Digital 7 TV logo is a sign of things to come for them. Of course my opinion here is very subjective but I think this logo looks old-fashioned, cheaply designed and not "cool" at all. It looks old-fashioned but not "retro" and looks like a design that wasn't made by a world-class professional. Like I said, it looks very poorly thought out and very cheap. Also, in typical TV Tokyo fashion, every time you see it it is a bit different.... Why don't these guys take classes in Marketing and Branding 101?

This is TV Tokyo's Digital Logo. 

Sorry, guys but this looks really cheap. 

How about some shadows or gradation? 

Why don't you hire a professional designer?

Let me get cute here and say that, I think, in this case, "7", for TV Tokyo is not lucky. In this case, 7 is their second number (on analogue they were channel 12) and if you've ever played Craps, you know that 7 on your second number means, "Loser."

This is why I say that the times they are a changin'... Look for no TV Tokyo and no TBS TV by 2030!

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