Expertise

Digital Signage

From Jimmy Schaeffler’s new book, which publishes and is available on April 10 from NAB/Focal Press, entitled, “Digital signage – Software, Networks, Advertising and Displays: A Primer For Understanding the Business,” he uses this description of digital signage:

The description of modern digital signage contains a handful of key ingredients. Most who follow the industry agree these which generally include at least:

“Digital hardware displaying digital software (in the form of both on-screen content and software control systems), featured on screens that are thin and come in many sizes, offering constantly changing and refreshed content, often shown on many regions of a single screen, capable of delivery instantaneously via satellite and the Internet, from a server or personal computer (PC), close by or on the other side of the globe, intended to be particularly relevant and helpful to consumers aimed largely at out-of-home audiences who are frequently moving from place to place, yet are often held “captive” by a particular situation, event, or environment.”

Take a look at the article about digital signage on The Carmel Group’s website (if you haven’t yet, go to http://www.carmelgroup.com, on home page, click to article titled “Broadcasters and Digital Signage: A New Business Model”). That is some of the message we wish to convey at the 2008 NAB show. We also will be looking at a lot of what I try to convey in the book, “Digital Signage – Software, Networks, Advertising and Displays: A Primer For Understanding the Business,” which are challenges, opportunities, stakeholders and where and how digital signage gets deployed. In short, we are trying to point out, in this time of changing assets and advertising challenges, why digital signage might be an answer.  Also, reader should check out the digital signage super session description on the NAB Show website (http://www.nab.org).

Panelists for the Wednesday, April 16, 2008 NAB Digital Signage Super Session include the following, each at the top of the list of professionals in the digital signage field:
Lyle Bunn, principal, Bunn Company, panelist
Joe Amor, president, Microspace, panelist
Mike Tippetts, CEO, Helius/HughesNet, panelist
Michael Hudes, Director, Clear Channel Outdoor, panelist

Satellite TV

The earliest roots of The Carmel Group are tied to its place as a spin-off of the Kagan organization, and a focus on the burgeoning Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) multichannel subsector. In fact, the “coming out party” of The Carmel Group was its inaugural conference, entitled “DBS: The 5 Burning Questions.” This event was held in early February 1996, in Woodland Hills, CA, just north of downtown L..A. Inaugural participants included USSB’s Stanley E. and Stanley S. Hubbard, PrimeStar’s Jim Gray, AlphaStar’s Murray Klippenstein, EchoStar’s Charlie Ergen and “The Father of U.S. DBS” DirecTV’s Eddy Hartenstein. The keynote address that day was from FCC Commissioner Andrew Barrett. Just this past June, The Carmel Group, in association with Hannover Fairs USA conducted its 12th Annual “DBS: The 5 Burning Qs” event. The 13th Annual “DBS: The 5 Burning Qs” event is scheduled for San Jose, CA, in September of 2008. More recent conferences center on the broader multichannel industry, especially “hybrid networks,” such as those involving distribution of cable, telco, satellite and broadcast entities and their related industry partners. 

Beyond events, The Carmel Group’s DBS expertise extends to a deep knowledge of the individuals and companies that make up the industry, both on a domestic U.S. and global scale, where The Carmel Group’s staff deal regularly with the industry’s top players, as well as many more former and existing presidents and chairmen of the best-of-class companies in the business. 

In the area of studies and analyses, The Carmel Group has studied the DBS industry from every imaginable angle, with projects looking at the old and new, and the competitive and growth oriented. Former and existing clients range from small start-ups looking for market assessments, to the largest players, looking at new business models and competitive understandings. 

Satellite Radio

In 1998, several years before the 9/2001 launch of XM, The Carmel Group was asked to moderate one of the first industry financial conferences looking at the new subsector called satellite radio. This was in New York City at an early Bear Stearns event. In September 2001, when satellite radio’s actual deployment was in its infancy, The Carmel Group was hired by a major provider to assess the build-out of the industry in several key geographic areas. This 100-page report help to define the later retail growth of the satellite radio industry in America.

Since that time, The Carmel Group has done numerous additional studies built around a better knowledge of the duopolistic U.S. satellite radio industry, and has gotten to know the existing management at both XM and Sirius just that much better. This, in turn, has allowed The Carmel Group to stay at the forefront of knowledgeable analysts constantly following and studying this soon-to-be-ubiquitous national service.

Cable

Despite incredibly strong threats during the past twelve years from competitor DBS, cable – through a $100 bil. investment in its infrastructure during the past seven or eight years – has turned the tide and is back in the U.S. telecom driver’s seat. Building a bigger pipe into the home has meant unique access to video consumers who can then be offered telephone, 2-way Internet broadband and, one day, wireless services in cable’s version of the “4-way Bundle.”

Yet the cable industry must continually keep its eyes and concentration on those approaching from a new direction: In this case, especially the telcos. By 2008, lead especially by AT&T and Verizon, the telephone industry will begin delivering, en masse, its own versions of “bundles to the home (and business),” which stand the chance of moving the U.S. telecom tectonic plates once again.

The Carmel Group remains poised to not only assist the telcos to achieve that goal, but concurrently to assist the cable operators in their efforts to not only maintain, but enhance, market shares, revenues and satisfied customers. A most-recent chore involved The Carmel Group doing two annual surveys of the thousands of members that make up the influential trade group. the American Cable Association.

DVR

More on the hardware side, as an example of its cutting-edge positioning, The Carmel Group was the first analyst and consulting entity globally to do extensive industry DVR forecasts back in the 1997-98 timeframe. More recently, a late 2004 study done for a content client focused on the relationship between the VOD and DVR sides of the industry. More recently, the study, “DVRs 2007: Time In A Magic Box,” continued the many years of surveying the U.S. DVR industry, in a 102-page, 37 chart presentation, available on this website. Finally, iTV and HDTV studies have also been prominent among the listings of projects by The Carmel Group, each aimed at giving its clients inside track information relative to competitive threats and new business opportunities. 

Advanced Services

Beyond the basics of voice, data and audio/video delivery, savvy multichannel providers are looking to new advanced services to please subscribers to the tune of hundreds of additional revenue and profit dollars per quarter. These burgeoning services are focused today on Video On Demand (VOD) and Subscription VOD (SVOD), as well as High Definition TV and Digital Video Recorders (DVRs). Coming around the corner (i.e., especially this fall and following the introduction of new consumer services tied to DirecTV’s “NFL Sunday Ticket” offering), will be amazing new Interactive TV (iTV) features. Cable and telcos are likely to follow such moves in ever quicker response times. 

Broadcast

The Carmel Group’s true expertise in broadcast dates back to the early 1970s, when Jimmy Schaeffler, the company’s founder and one of the company’s principals, closely assisted Peter Jennings, Roone Arledge and Jim McKay during ABC’s production of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, and nearly every other Olympics through Sarajevo in 1984. Numerous high-level TV executive positions, covering two decades, followed and were part of that service.

Since then, The Carmel Group has repeatedly studied and followed the U.S. and international broadcast realms, completing numerous reports, studies and analyses for private and public clients and trade groups alike. Additionally, The Carmel Group has been asked to attend and present at various broadcast seminars and conferences, which in 2005 included a presentation at the NAB Futures event, held annually in late March in Pebble Beach, CA, a presentation on “Audience Fragmentation” at the NAB 2005 annual show in Las Vegas during April 2005, and a NAB Super Session titled “THe Hybid Network” at the NAB 2006 show, again in Las Vegas, NV, during spring ‘06. Jimmy Schaeffler mdoerated the NAB 2007 SUper Session “IPTV,” in Las Vegas, before several hundred attendees and with participants from AT&T, OpenTV, Capital Broadcasting, SES Americom and Qualcomm.

On a smaller scale, The Carmel Group has made numerous “Future of Broadcasting” type presentations before small-to-medium-sized broadcast groups during annual meetings across the country and in Asia and Europe. One of The Carmel Group’s most notable presentations looked at the future of the telecom industry players, in a speech in Atlanta, GA during early 2004, wherein the broadcasters were labeled the “Wanderers”, the telcos were labeled the “Wannabees,” the cable operators were labeled the “Followers” and the satellite operators were labeled the “Innovators.” It is exactly this kind of thought-provoking presentation that places The Carmel Group in such high regard and demand for industry consulting, conferences and publishing projects. 

Telephony

An old adage has it, “Know Your Friends Well, Your Enemies Better.” Following that mantra, The Carmel Group’s early focus on satellite and cable was constantly buttressed via its understanding of competing industries, especially telephony. This dates back to the early 1990s and the attempted purchase of cable operator TCI by the then-telco, Bell Atlantic.

In fact, as a business, The Carmel Group’s first consulting job, way back in 1996, involved a study done for a major Asian telco operator, among the top three in the world, which was looking for an assessment of the competitive multichannel environment, and a “SWOT” analysis of various strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. That same operator had The Carmel Group return for an additional review and assessment of similar coverage during past couple of years.

Today, as operators on the telco side of the business take their third major march into the video and advanced services spaces, The Carmel Group is poised to assist them to finally succeed in their quest to bring telco, audio/video, two-way broadband Internet services and wireless to all Americans, thus significantly raising the future competitive bar for broadcasters, as well as cable, satellite and mobile operators. A publicly-issued report completed for AT&T, in fall 2005, entitled “Convergence In California’s Communications Marketplace: Its Impact on CA Jobs, Investment and the Economy,” is yet another example of The Carmel Group’s strength in the telephony side of the global telecom industry.

HDTV

Years before its build-out, The Carmel Group was asked to do an industry analysis of the potential for HDTV, involving consumer and industry executive views. That study then became to basis for several industry build-out strategies.

This is exactly the type of service where The Carmel Group excels: showing the preferred pathway to success for new products and services.

More recent studies have focused more on the consumer side, assessing the likes and dislikes of the masses as they rush into these new and dynamic telecom opportunities. 

VOD/SVOD

Rarely does the wired end of the multichannel pay TV industry business find itself on the edge of a new development that only it can implement, but VOD and the instant availability of thousands of programs is one of those once-in-a-decade technological feats that cable basks in today. Subscription VOD (SVOD) is being offered today on both cable and satellite services, and it, too, gives consumers with hard drives in their set-top boxes dozens and sometimes hundreds of programming hours and choices. Both ways, VOD and SVOD offer bold new steps for consumers looking to maximize the control and choices – and affordability – of TV today.

Having studied VOD, SVOD – and its current cousin, DVRs – since their late 1990s inception, The Carmel Group is in a unique position to tie together the past, the present and the future of these industry segments, in ways that make making money a whole lot more logical, convenient and easy to manage.

IPTV + VoIP

The burgeoning Internet Protocol TV and Voice over Internet Protocol sides of the telecom industry are poised to change communications as we know them. As bandwidth and access lines increase their premium, these technologies and infrastructures will bloom. As noted elsewhere in the website, The Carmel Group has already begun its review of and input into these subsectors, through meetings, conferences and writings.

Especially for the telephone side of the business, IPTV and VoIP offer unique opportunities relative to their entrenched competitors. 

Mobile Services

Along with IPTV, currently one of the two hottest of the so-called “killer applications” is content to mobile devices. Programmers and Hollywood studios are looking to build advertising and subscription pay models that monetize delivery to anything anytime to anyone anywhere. That is the new telecom mantra that is quickly becoming a new telecom standard.

Moreover, as the fourth leg in the group of “bundled services” offered by telecom and cable operators, mobile services gain more and more credibility within the multichannel space. Studies and analyses by The Carmel Group continue to delve into and dissect these complex relationships, aimed at better understanding and explaining the underlying fundamentals thye are being built upon.