when i was a kid, we got $2 in the mail. we were poor, so this was a big deal at the time.
the bills were really, really crisp- at first i assumed they were counterfeit. there was a stint of counterfeit $100s on cable news at the time, or maybe i was just too into heist movies- but Nielsen didn't know any of these Viewing Statistics about me, and promised to send $5 more for telling them. so we did.
Nielsen are a media research firm in the US that's been collecting and reporting demographic data of television viewership since the 50s, but this particular data gathering method relied upon poverty: getting $2 gets your attention, and being promised future money in exchange for 'just watching TV' and writing down what you watch- who wouldn't?
who wouldn't write down more information about themselves than the fucking census requires in exchange for a couple boxes of ramen?
for decades, data like this was used to decide if TV shows got to keep going.
surveys, direct interviews, and boxes they'd install in your home and plug into your TV; Nielsen would mix all of this to concoct an algorithm showing Who was watching What, Where, and When, then sell advertisers on the Why.
thus, what future Content Units and Time Slots were primed for placing advertisement on.
but we're now in the era of streaming. of ad blocking and piracy and passwords easily shared. where the best way to scrape someone's information is convincing them to give it up willingly on the internet- but those numbers aren't all that useful for television as a medium. even streaming shows that do well on computers aren't guaranteed for television numbers
times have changed!
to many right now, $2 and $5 are pretty much interchangeable amounts of 'free' money. either so little as to not matter, or not worth the extra labor of tracking your viewing habits for a week to get lunch for a day
people either don't want to bother with a box to plug into their screen, or can't afford a screen for it to be plugged into at all... wait a minute.
a demographic that's been barred systemically from what's considered "necessary" in today's society?! that's a lot of words to say 'untapped market'!
TELLY: It's a Free TV For You, Jim!
Two Screens, No Apps- It's Free!
i'm not carrying these ads around all day, its for YOUR house
i, like many chosters here i'm sure, was first made aware of the... dual-screen e-waste any% run known as Telly, by @atomicthumbs posting a pic the other day. the first thing i thought when i saw it was "oh it's like if the Nielsen Box was the TV itself"
looking into it, i was right on the concerningly-crisp money
a professional venture capitalist and occasional CEO of the concept of venture capital, business boy Ilya Pozin is best known for making Pluto- the Cable of internet streaming.
pluto reintroduced the structure of TV advertising breaks with the internet's fingerprint-tracking of customer behavior: creating a single platform that redefines itself as "media", as any shows that are broadcasting, allows for data harvesters and marketers to once again control the playing field. advertisements only make money if you, the corporation selling human attention to advertisers, can prove said people are actually responding to the ads, let alone looking at them
but pluto's got it sorted: with at least 80 million reported active users whose watch histories are recorded and searchable- could one ask for a better walled garden?
well, yes, actually: television. teevee, or telly if you're AB testing
the browser, operating system, and hardware are all user-owned products which allow for access to any website, such as pluto, to be altered. ads blocked, screens recorded- there's no way to guarantee the people on the website are behaving as the software requires when the user owns the hardware.
to follow that logic to its conclusion: the only way to ensure those 80 million active users are 80 million profitable users, whose data matches their whims and will spend on advertised product accordingly- is to trap them on hardware they cannot escape without paying. to make the very act of watching shows be, itself, data harvesting.
now here's the founder of Telly now with more threats:
“We know where you live, what your income bracket is— obviously it’s all anonymized—but we know what car you’re driving.
We know when your lease is up.
We know where you shop.
We know what your favorite sports teams are...”
-Ilya Pozin, CEO & Founder of Telly, to Fast Company, May 15th 2023
"obviously it's all anonymized" reads like "credit to the author" or "no copyright infringement intended"
telly looked at the problem of consumers not having the up-front capital to buy 'smart'-TVs conducive to impulse purchases, and concluded that the capital they do have could be better extracted by skipping the first step.
actual media is entirely second to the business model. literally:
“Oddly enough, Telly isn’t building any actual smart TV software into the television. Instead, Telly will ship with an Android TV streaming dongle, which users can plug into any of the TV’s three HDMI inputs.”
-Jared Newman for Fast Company, May 15th 2023
essentially, they are giving you an electronic billboard to install in your living room and throwing in a chromecast as an incentive.
still, it's free, isn't it? we're all already giving up our privacy to corps every waking hour anyways, so what's a little in-home panasonic, panoramic, panopticon?
just take this personality quiz where you explain exactly who you are and what to sell to you- before we even talk about getting you a TV:
“To receive the free TV, Telly users must submit detailed demographic info (such as age, gender and address), as well as purchasing behaviors, brand preferences and viewing habits, and they must agree to let their data be used for serving targeted ads.
Telly’s TVs include a sensor that detects how many people are in front of the screen at any given moment.”
-Todd Spangler for Variety, Jul 13th 2023
now now todd, don't be so closed-minded! the 24/7 monitoring is just a sweetener, the camera and microphone are there to allow for video calling and voice control, you see:
flappy bird needs to know how many observers it has, todd. he is the heartbeat of my living room, todd.
these are sacrifices we all must make to do video calls in the busiest room in our home, on the primary screen we use for watching movies.
i don't want to risk using another screen too often, after all, or i might get a $1000 fine.
“So what’s the catch? Telly users must agree
to several conditions under the company’s terms of service.
If someone doesn’t abide by the TOS, Telly reserves the right to demand the TV be
shipped back — otherwise, it will charge up to $1,000 to the credit card associated with a given account.
Among the Telly TV requirements: You must 'use the product as the primary television in
your household'; you must keep the TV connected to the internet at all times; and you are not allowed to use any ad-blocking software.”
-Todd Spangler for Variety, Jul 13th 2023
i cannot risk losing $1000 at any given time. i cannot risk going on vacation and not being seen doing my Regulated Watching Routine. i cannot risk my roommate installing some kind of traffic blocker VPN and getting an angry letter demanding the screen or 2 months rent.
the stress of that alone, to me, is disqualifying to telly as an "entertainment" medium.
crisse, what's in their terms of service, anyways?
hrm. maybe i need a second screen down there to read the rest?
the screens require you tune into them as expected, as reported- failure to do so is seen as a failure to be a profitable investment, and thus extracts fiscal compensation directly
these are billboards where the target demographic is somehow also the collateral
the problem is: the kind of consumer who is willing to accept a lot of bullshit for a free TV is also willing to accept a lot of bullshit to not spend money elsewhere, too. so armed with two screens and a dongle, what's to stop the end user from making one a media monitor and the other run doom or whatever? well, the same thing that would stop someone from screwing the TV to their apartment wall: you're renting, not owning
“In addition, users may not make 'physical modifications to the product or attach peripheral devices to the product not expressly approved by Telly,' the company says in its terms of service. 'Any attempt to open the product’s enclosure will be deemed an unauthorized modification.' ”
-Todd Spangler for Variety, Jul 13th 2023
and yes, they count 'throwing a towel over it' as being an "attach[ed] peripheral".
we don't have to sell the user a TV that turns them into a product to be sold to advertisers- when we can just can convince the user modern televisions are a prerequisite to society, and pressure them into signing a loan with dangerous terms
telly wants you to sell your identity, but then needs you to stick to the script. inconsistent behavior results in a fine.
it feels like nielsen's model on gear mixed with payday-loan style fintech to smooth it out
Because It's Literally Nielsen Mixed With Fintech
“As Telly TVs start to hit consumers the company has also pulled in a roster of partners across product, data and advertising. Those include Nielsen, Magnite, Microsoft, Spotify, Harman Kardon, and LiveOne.
Notably, the partnership with Nielsen is a data licensing agreement whereby the measurement company plans to license Telly data to collect and interpret both viewership and ad effectiveness for advertisers and TV programmers.”
-Bevin Fletcher for StreamTV Insider, July 13th 2023
nielsen wasn't capable of adapting to the times, so the times adapted to nielsen. startup founders sucker up to these dying industries by promising to invent a product that would nullify their obsolescence.
in the same way as looking at people who can't afford TVs to be advertised on and seeing opportunity, the vulture capitalists at telly looked at nielsen and saw a cashcow
"you want users watching TV with ads and sending accurate user data? we can make a product for that, and sell you the data"
i cannot help but recall Television Delivers People by Richard Serra from the 70s (which i can only assume was written in part about nielsen). i was first introduced by @E3KHatena, but it feels like something i might've written had i been around at the time- though i doubt i'd have been as efficiently verbose:
it's been decades since. corps have been allowed to control media to the point of abstracting away the concept of a display to be synonymous with advertiseable media space.
screens are seen as no different than newspaper: what percentage of the available space can we get away with making advertisements? can that percent go up by convincing viewers these things are necessary for the medium to exist?
can we get away with putting a billboard in people's living rooms if we disguise some of it as a television? can we get away with making them pay for the electricity, and for repairs if it gets damaged? how long before the bar of advertisement becomes the bar of media, as how every news publication is made unreadable by popups?
telly is what happens when Television Delivers People is read as instructions.
