电视平台的生财之道源于它的节目质量吗？

 　　JUDY WOODRUFF: The major broadcast television networks have something to celebrate. Each has at least one new prime-time entertainment series that's drawn¹ at least 10 million viewers. This comes as cable networks like AMC are drawing comparable or better ratings with series like "Breaking Bad" and "The Walking Dead."But there's another important trend. The latest data show growing numbers of viewers watching shows on a delayed timeline through their video recorder or computer. Tonight, we look at the role of viewers, as seen by a pair of writers who have long chronicled the media business.Hari Sreenivasan has the latest conversation in our series on the future of TV.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: So far in this series, we have heard from a disrupter named Aereo and we have heard from one of the established players, Comcast.Today, for a perhaps 10,000-, 20,000-foot view, we're joined by Ken² Auletta from The New Yorker and David Carr from The New York Times.So, is this period now a transformative time for the viewer when it comes to television?

　　KEN AULETTA, The New Yorker: I think television is now going through what newspapers, magazines and book publishing, print world has gone through, the digital disruption. And that has a profound impact on the viewer, because the viewer today, because of technology, can watch what they want when they want to watch it and on what device they want to watch it for.The questions in the future become, will you have enough advertising³ or other revenue to sustain quality production?

　　DAVID CARR, The New York Times: I think it's easiest to understand how the changes move through media by looking at it file size. So a print file is really small, right?

　　And, so, print got disrupted first, then music files, little fatter, little harder to move around. Television has been protected to some degree by the fact that they have big bad files. But as broadband's come along, as stuff comes not just through the cable, but over the top, over the Web, we have gone from five channels to 50 to 500 to an infinite number.And I agree with Ken in that for the longest time, everybody said, the sky is falling, the sky is falling, over and over. This is the year it's going to happen. This feels like the time. Seems like big chunks⁴ of the sky are falling.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: So is this, for example, on the content side a change in what we consider episodic television? Obviously, we see these anomalous⁵ events like the end of a show like "Breaking Bad," et cetera, et cetera, but five years ago, 10 years ago, if I didn't know about that or if I came in late to it, I probably wouldn't go back and try to buy the DVD set.Now it seems like there are folks enabled by Netflix and other services to, oh, OK, fine, let me go watch the entire five seasons.

　　KEN AULETTA: If you are a CBS or you're a broadcaster, right, or a cable network, you have lots of platform. If you think cable of a platform or satellite TV as a platform, you now have Apple, iTunes, and Amazon and Netflix and YouTube and game consoles, et cetera. So, you have a lot of different platforms."Breaking Bad" is very expensive to produce episodes of that or "The Good Wife" on CBS. And as the audience spreads and as platforms spread, will you have a mass of money to pay for let's say $3 or $3 million an episode of quality drama?

　　DAVID CARR: Well, a couple of things about that. Ken is right in that new windows are opening up all the time, and that each of them represents -- for the makers⁶ of content, content still remains⁷ the raining monarch⁸, the king, right?

　　And each platform represents a window. The danger is that you're going to end up spread across so many platforms, opening up so many windows, that you fall out of one of them. You can still create mass. Keep in mind, the last episode of "Breaking Bad," nine million people watched.

　　I mean, that's still -- they built a campfire, everybody came. Part of the reason people were able to show up is because they were able to get there very quickly by bingeing on programming. Everything that we're looking at is what happens when you put not just the remote, but the programming ability in the hands of the consumer.And they are able to create their own mediated⁹ universe, and, yes, watch what they want went they want. But media companies are going to have to be extremely nimble in terms of navigating¹⁰, staying ahead of them.

　　KEN AULETTA: Take a look at what dish, the dish TV, the satellite TV is doing with something called Hopper. There is $60 billion worth of advertising dollars today. Hopper allows you to basically skip all the ads in the programs you're watching.

　　Well, what happens to the TV model, revenue model then? Free television is based on advertisers paying for it.

　　DAVID CARR: Not all of it, though.If you saw in the retrans fight, the retransmission fight, CBS has two pedals to push on. One is advertising and one is retransmission. I do think that the ad revenue is an interesting one. I sat down to watch NFL an NFL football game, and I was like, whoa, there are a lot of ads. I think they have switched the ad loads on NFL games. There's more ads than there used to be.

　　KEN AULETTA: And I think so too.

　　DAVID CARR: What I realized, I haven't seen an ad since last NFL season, because everything I'm watching is on DVR. Everything is on pay-per-view.And these days, if you end up watching a commercial, you're a loser, right? You have failed as a consumer.

　　KEN AULETTA: Right.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: So how does it change the distribution model? If we don't have money to create content because the ad revenue base is diminishing, where do the Comcasts and the CBSes of the world get the money?

　　DAVID CARR: One of the things you need -- I think we all need to think about is, so, when we pay Comcast, we might be nuts about AMC and we want to see "Breaking Bad" and we want to see "Walking Dead," and we have to be there for all this stuff.

　　I'm not a person who watches ESPN, even though I watch football, but I pay $5 a month for it because it's part of the bundle. If television starts to go over the top, in other words, come over the Web, and we're able to pull apart the bundle that Ken and others have talked about, that takes a lot of the inefficiency¹¹ out.Think of music. I only want the one song. I don't want the, what, other 11 crappy songs.

　　KEN AULETTA: Again, that's the consumer is king, the viewer is king.

　　DAVID CARR: Think of newspapers. I don't want every article. I just want the one.So it pulls all of the inefficiency out of the system. But media companies have another name for that inefficiency. It's called profits.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Right.But if you are a savvy¹² consumer enough, if it goes over the top, you can pick a couple of songs, but the bulk of American consuming audiences are -- are we going to see a state where the bundle that Time Warner or Comcast, one of these intermediaries, decides to provide for us, that could be our limited choice?

　　DAVID CARR: I think that the cable carriers, you have to distinguish them from the channels.It's interesting to watch. I know you had Chet from Aereo on here. They kind of like the idea, because they are being held hostage. What does network still have? Network still has live, still has NFL, still has big events. And that gives them leverage¹³ in negotiations¹⁴.If the consumers had other options, right, they would be able to begin to unbundle. It doesn't really matter what Congress decides, what the cable company decides. If we have learned anything, I think we could agree on this, in the last 20 years of covering media, once the consumer decides, it's only a matter of time.Once they have the ability, it's -- industry will move, government will move, and we will put the hands, the control in the hands of consumers.

　　KEN AULETTA: So, if you pick up on what David is saying -- and I do -- if you climbed inside the head of Brian Roberts, the head of Comcast, or inside the head of Les Moonves, the head of CBS, or inside the head of satellite people, they're scared, because they see this world changing before them.And they say, oh, my God, I got big choices here. And I don't know what the right choice is. It is a classic innovator's dilemma¹⁵. And I think they're all scared, and they should be.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, David Carr, Ken Auletta, thanks so much for joining us.

1 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

2 ken   

n.视野，知识领域

参考例句：

• Such things are beyond my ken.我可不懂这些事。
• Abstract words are beyond the ken of children.抽象的言辞超出小孩所理解的范围.

3 advertising   

n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的

参考例句：

• Can you give me any advice on getting into advertising? 你能指点我如何涉足广告业吗?
• The advertising campaign is aimed primarily at young people. 这个广告宣传运动主要是针对年轻人的。

4 chunks   

厚厚的一块( chunk的名词复数 )； （某物）相当大的数量或部分

参考例句：

• a tin of pineapple chunks 一罐菠萝块
• Those chunks of meat are rather large—could you chop them up a bIt'smaller? 这些肉块相当大，还能再切小一点吗？

5 anomalous   

adj.反常的；不规则的

参考例句：

• For years this anomalous behaviour has baffled scientists.几年来这种反常行为让科学家们很困惑。
• The mechanism of this anomalous vascular response is unknown.此种不规则的血管反应的机制尚不清楚。

6 makers   

n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式）

参考例句：

• The makers of the product assured us that there had been no sacrifice of quality. 这一产品的制造商向我们保证说他们没有牺牲质量。
• The makers are about to launch out a new product. 制造商们马上要生产一种新产品。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

8 monarch   

n.帝王，君主，最高统治者

参考例句：

• The monarch's role is purely ceremonial.君主纯粹是个礼仪职位。
• I think myself happier now than the greatest monarch upon earth.我觉得这个时候比世界上什么帝王都快乐。

9 mediated   

调停，调解，斡旋( mediate的过去式和过去分词 )； 居间促成； 影响…的发生； 使…可能发生

参考例句：

• He mediated in the quarrel between the two boys. 他调解两个孩子之间的争吵。
• The government mediated between the workers and the employers. 政府在工人与雇主间搞调和。

10 navigating   

v.给（船舶、飞机等）引航，导航( navigate的现在分词 )；（从海上、空中等）横越；横渡；飞跃

参考例句：

• These can also be very useful when navigating time-based documents, such as video and audio. 它对于和时间有关的文档非常有用，比如视频和音频文档。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓
• Vehicles slowed to a crawl on city roads, navigating slushy snow. 汽车在市区路上行驶缓慢，穿越泥泞的雪地。 来自互联网

11 inefficiency   

n.无效率，无能；无效率事例

参考例句：

• Conflict between management and workers makes for inefficiency in the workplace. 资方与工人之间的冲突使得工厂生产效率很低。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• This type of inefficiency arises because workers and management are ill-equipped. 出现此种低效率是因为工人与管理层都能力不足。 来自《简明英汉词典》

12 savvy   

v.知道，了解；n.理解能力，机智，悟性；adj.有见识的，懂实际知识的，通情达理的

参考例句：

• She was a pretty savvy woman.她是个见过世面的漂亮女人。
• Where's your savvy?你的常识到哪里去了？

13 leverage   

n.力量，影响；杠杆作用，杠杆的力量

参考例句：

• We'll have to use leverage to move this huge rock.我们不得不借助杠杆之力来移动这块巨石。
• He failed in the project because he could gain no leverage. 因为他没有影响力，他的计划失败了。

14 negotiations   

协商( negotiation的名词复数 )； 谈判； 完成（难事）； 通过

参考例句：

• negotiations for a durable peace 为持久和平而进行的谈判
• Negotiations have failed to establish any middle ground. 谈判未能达成任何妥协。

15 dilemma   

n.困境，进退两难的局面

参考例句：

• I am on the horns of a dilemma about the matter.这件事使我进退两难。
• He was thrown into a dilemma.他陷入困境。