首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
The Future of Television: What’s on Next? Bosses in the television industry have been keeping a nervous eye on two Scandinav
The Future of Television: What’s on Next? Bosses in the television industry have been keeping a nervous eye on two Scandinav
admin
2012-02-02
37
问题
The Future of Television: What’s on Next?
Bosses in the television industry have been keeping a nervous eye on two Scandinavians (斯堪的纳维亚人) with a reputation for causing trouble. In recent years Niklas Zennstrom, a Swede, and Janus Friis, a Dane, have frightened the music industry by inventing KaZaA, a "peer-to-peer" (P2P) file-sharing program that was widely used to download music without paying for it. Then they horrified the mighty telecoms industry by inventing Skype, another P2P program, which lets Internet users make free telephone calls between computers, and very cheap calls to ordinary phones. Their next move was to found yet another start-up — this time, one that threatened to devastate (毁坏) the television industry.
It may do the opposite, as it turns out. The new service, called Joost and now in advanced testing, is based on P2P software that runs on people’s computers, just like Skype and KaZaA. And it does indeed promise to transform the experience of watching television by combining what people like about old-fashioned TV with the exciting possibilities of the Internet. "But unlike KaZaA and Skype," says Fredrik de Wahl, a Swede whom Mr. Zennstrom and Friis have hired as Joost’s boss, "Joost does not disrupt the industry that it is entering. Instead, rather than undercutting television networks and producers, Joost might, as it were, give them new juice."
That is because Mr. de Wahl and his Joost team, working mostly in the Netherlands, have bravely ignored the totems (图腾) of the Internet-video boom. Chief among these fashions is letting users upload anything they want to a video service — which might include clips of themselves doing odd things ("user-generated content") or, more questionably, videos pirated from other sources. The celebrated example of this approach is YouTube, which is now part of Google, the leader in Internet search. Its big problem, however, is that it can be illegal (if copyright is violated) and terribly hard to turn into a business.
On February 2nd Viacom, an American media giant, became the latest company to demand that YouTube remove copyright-infringing (侵犯版权的) clips from its website. YouTube has struck deals with some media firms, including NBC and CBS, to allow their material to appear on its site, and had been trying to thrash out a similar agreement with Viacom. Many observers regard Viacom’s move as a negotiating tactic. But whether YouTube can make money is unclear. Last month Chad Hurley, YouTube’s chief executive, sketched out plans for generating advertising revenues and sharing them with content providers, but so far his firm has none to speak of.
The Innovation of Joost
Joost is also ignoring the two business models seen as the most respectable alternatives to advertising. One is to make users pay for each television show or film they download, but then to let them keep it. This is the tack chosen by Apple, an electronics firm that sells videos on iTunes, its popular online store; by Amazon, the largest online retailer; and by Wal-Mart, the largest traditional retailer, which launched a video-download service this week. The other approach is to let users subscribe to what is, in effect, an all-you-can-eat buffet of videos, and then to "stream" video to their computers without leaving a permanent copy. This is the approach taken by, for instance, Netflix, a Californian firm that mostly delivers DVDs to its subscribers by post, but now also streams films.
The reason that Joost is ignoring all of these methods, says Mr. de Wahl, is that none has much to do with the experience of simply watching TV, which most people enjoy. "Unlike the download or streaming approaches," he says, "TV is not about buying today what you want to watch tomorrow. It’s about turning it on and watching." And in contrast to the "lean-forward" context of "snacking" on a YouTube clip in one’s cubicle while the boss has stepped out, TV is a longer and more relaxed "lean-backward" experience.
Hence Joost’s most shocking innovation, which is not to change the practices that TV adopted decades ago. It will be free, with advertising breaks — no more than three minutes per hour — either before, during or after a show, depending on the market. "Americans," says Mr. de Wahl, "are more tolerant of interruptions."
Joost has "channels", like ordinary TV, but these are now playlists of videos that start whenever it is convenient to the viewer. Viewers can import their instant-messaging buddy lists and chat online with friends while watching the same program. For advertisers, such engagement is worth something, because the activity proves that somebody is watching, rather than being asleep or out of the room. Combined with other information, such as the computer’s IP address and hence its location, advertisers will be able to target their spots much more accurately — all "Desperate Housewives" fans in a particular neighborhood, for example — and thus ought to pay a premium.
The Combination of Television and the Internet
The thing that is missing in this new vision of television, however, is the set itself. Beaming video from a computer to a television is possible: Apple and other firms are starting to sell the necessary gadgets. But until it becomes much easier to connect televisions to the Internet, big media companies are likely to "wait and see" before committing to Joost, says Jeremy Allaire, the boss of Brightcove, a rival Internet-video firm based in Massachusetts. In the meantime, Mr. Allaire thinks, media firms are mainly interested in building their own brands, so Brightcove provides content owners with technology to show television on their own websites, syndicate their shows to other websites, track audiences and collect advertising revenue.
There is, in short, no consensus about the best way to combine television with the Internet. Instead, there are a variety of experiments, of which Joost is the latest example and YouTube the best-known. But with telephony, the Internet is unpicking (拆开) service delivery from network ownership. Joost, YouTube, iTunes and Netflix do not need their own networks to supply their video services: they can rely on fast Internet links provided by others.
According to iSuppli, a market-research firm, Internet downloads will claim more than one-third of the market for on-demand video by 2010. So just as Internet telephony has been bad for traditional phone companies, this "Internet bypass" could be bad for the "on demand" video services being offered by cable-TV and telecoms firms over their networks. But by bringing television to more screens, this could provide new models for program-makers to finance their productions and offer advertisers new ways to reach constraints. And so Joost and rival services could end up rejuvenating (使变得年轻) the 75-year-old medium.
According to Mr. de Wahl, why is Joost ignoring the two business models?
选项
A、All people are not fond of simply watching TV.
B、They are irrelated with pleasures derived from watching TV.
C、They are the same as the practices that TV has long been using.
D、Joost wants an innovative business model different from YouTube.
答案
B
解析
第一句开头就表明,该段讲述的是Joost弃用那些商业模式的原因(reason),第一句中的表语从句描述了原因:那些商业模式与多数人喜欢的简简单单看电视的体验不大相干(none has much to do with…),故答案为[B],are irrelated with对应原文中的none has much to do with。注意其中否定词的对应关系,原文中是none,选项中是前缀ir-。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/zbE7777K
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
PartⅡReadingComprehension(SkimmingandScanning)Directions:Inthispart,youwillhave15minutestogooverthepassageq
Thecomputervirusisanoutcomeofthecomputerovergrowthinthe1980s.Thecauseofthistermisthelikenessbetweenthebio
Technically,anysubstanceotherthanfoodthataltersourbodilyormentalfunctioningisadrug.Manypeoplemistakenbelieve
A、Presentanewtheorytotheclass.B、Readmorethanonearticle.C、Readthebookmorethoroughly.D、Writeabetterarticlefor
A、EarningaLivingB、CorrectAttitudeonJob-huntingC、HowtoChooseaJob?D、WhatCanaGoodJobOffer?B由选项概括性强可知,本题考查文章主旨或文章标
Peopledonotanalyzeeveryproblemtheymeet.Sometimestheytrytoremembera【B1】______fromthelasttimetheyhadasimilar
A、Humanbeingscannotbeabletoadaptphysicalandculturalchanges.B、Humanbeingsareingenious,imaginativeandhavestrong
SheisSogoodatplayingtable-tennisthat___________________(她可以把球打在她想要的地方).
随机试题
A.胸椎内鳞状细胞癌B.乳腺导管内癌C.胃溃疡癌变累及深肌层D.卵巢交界性浆液性囊腺瘤介于良、恶性之间的肿瘤
签发工程暂停令或复工令是监理工程师在()方面的职责。
某办公楼地上7层,建筑高度为23.8m,每层建筑面积为945m2,为“L”形外廊式建筑,“L”形建筑长边为45.6m,短边为22.2m,均采用不燃烧材料装修,办公场所设有计算机、复印机等办公用电子设备。办公楼内设有室内消火栓系统,每层作为一个灭火器配置的计
Word2003程序启动后就自动打开一个名为()的文档。
某项目预计投产第一年年初流动资产需用额为160万元,预计第一年流动负债需用额为55万元,投产第二年年初流动资产需用额为300万元,预计第二年流动负债需用额为140万元,则该项目流动资金投资总额为()万元。
“产”、“学”、“研”联盟的主要优点是()。
折中府
家庭的功能包括()
Althoughonlyof______intelligencehespeaksfourlanguagesfluently.
MonaLisa’spaintingisaworkofartthathasfascinatedpeoplearoundtheworldfordecades.Manyhaveoftenwonderedaboutth
最新回复
(
0
)