Post AirL7ZRM1e95UGICxM by sexybenfranklin@smores.town
(DIR) More posts by sexybenfranklin@smores.town
(DIR) Post #Aiqz8GaIFe8X8z4k1Q by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T14:05:04Z
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It's time for me to talk about the economics of New Ellijay Television #NewEllijayTelevision #NETV and it's potential future! Let's go!
(DIR) Post #Air0026oHrYbt0vGwS by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T14:14:49Z
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Alright, let's start with the current state of the world. Our livestream usually has 12 - 15 people on it, with peaks as high as 100 concurrent viewers and a trough of 8 viewers over the last 6 months. (This only counts website viewers, people watching through our roku app are handled differently, and I'll share those as soon as Roku sends me my 2fa.)
(DIR) Post #Air0di5o7sRbOHNCue by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T14:21:54Z
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Our Video on Demand looks somewhat similar. Most of our on demand videos get seen between 30 and 50 times in the first month they're published. I'm doing a random sampling because peertube doesn't have a good metrics dashboard, so there's some guesswork involved. It's possible that some videos are extreme outliers in one direction or another, but I haven't encountered any. One of our concert videos, for example, has been watched for more than 500 hours (but it's over an hour long, so that might just be 300 people watching it once, or it might be 1000 people watching it for half an hour?)
(DIR) Post #Air0gdZVOKkMEneypc by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T14:22:00Z
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Again, this only counts web views and does not include roku stats, and I just don't trust peertubes stat counting, which does not in any meaningful way correlate with the amount of bandwidth the website consumes.
(DIR) Post #Air1BS5S8pBrazISno by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T14:28:04Z
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For Roku, in spite of the fact that they collect a TON of data on their viewers, I get even less granularity than I get out of peertube. I can see that we've had 64 new installs in the last 6 months, and that we currently have 300 installs, and that we see an average of 5 daily viewers. Over the last 6 months, we've been streamed for about 7,000 hours. I do not know the breakdown between VOD and livestream. This, importantly, does not include any hours streamed by roku devices logged in to our accounts. That means it does not count the 10 hours per day that the stream is running in our businesses, or me watching at home.
(DIR) Post #Air1XjUi6MxZxEjdOy by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T14:32:05Z
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Right now, we have a few sponsors who collectively give us about $200/month. (You can be a sponsor too: https://newellijay.tv/sponsor) I spend about $100/month on hosting, and about $3k/month on video production labor. Monday, I received a rate sheet for leased access cable from the local cable company. They have a little over 10k subscribers on their basic cable plan, and if we want to be included as a cable channel on their basic cable plan it will cost us about $3300/month (plus insurance. I don't know how much our insurance against FCC fees will be, but if it's more than $200/month I'll be absolutely shocked.) So our expenses will jump from roughly $3k/month to $6k/month, and all we get out of it is being able to say we're on cable. Why would we do that? (I'll tell you wny!)
(DIR) Post #Air1n3xcI6YVlzZ8Lo by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T14:34:53Z
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So what do we get out of being on cable? Well, first it means that 10,000+ people in our immediate area might just stumble across our channel, which is pretty cool. But it also means that every restaurant and business in town will have access to our channel through their existing cable package, without having to do anything special. That way, when we go to a business and say "Hey, run our networking on your TVs when there's not a ball game on and we'll give you three months of free advertising" we don't have to bring them specialized and fragile hardware that we have to maintain, they just tune to the right channel and everything works.
(DIR) Post #Air222NwQl0xEN1GDo by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T14:37:33Z
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Being on cable means we're likely to get more non-cable viewers in addition to cable viewers. Being on cable will also give us an air of legitimacy that our streaming network does not. It is a hell of a lot easier for me to convince someone that my press credentials have any significance when they are tied to a cable network than when they're tied to a website. This is just the built in old-media-bias that most folks have.
(DIR) Post #Air2TQboTX24B6ZJaK by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T14:42:30Z
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The biggest thing we get out of being on cable, though, is better access to potential advertisers. If I say to a potential advertiser "we have a streaming network, and a roku app" they're going to want to know detailed statistics (and they're probably not going to be happy with "our main website averages about 300 visitors per month, our videos average about 50 views in their first month, our live stream averages 15 viewers at a time, and we have ~300 roku installs. These aren't good numbers!)On the other hand, if I say to a potential advertiser "we have a new cable network that is specifically focused on Ellijay, is shown in businesses around town, and is rapidly growing" .... well, that's just an easier conversation, right?
(DIR) Post #Air369NIU93M1NF7nk by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T14:49:31Z
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So we gotta make $6k/month to break even, right? Assuming 30 days in a month, one programming block (6 hours) repeated 4 times per day, and 3 commercials + one station bumper every half hour, we'll run 36 billable commercials per day, or 1080 billable commercials per month. (That is to say, there are 36 slots we can sell in a day, and each of those slots is 4 plays, 6 hours apart. We don't charge a flat fee to be in the programming block so that we're not trying to sell off-peak advertising.) If we charge $3.50 per billable commercial, we cover the lease with a full schedule of 36 commercials a day. If we charge $7 per billable commercial, we cover 100% of our current expenses *and* the lease with a full schedule. If we charge $35 per billable commercial, we clear $35,000/month or 420,000/year (if we have a full schedule).
(DIR) Post #Air38uPKabHkTCVfDE by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T14:50:02Z
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(This is making some *BIG* assumptions and hand-waving a lot of important details, and "a full schedule" is not even the biggest handwave, so let's break those down.)
(DIR) Post #Air3p2u9O5wUzB19t2 by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T14:57:37Z
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First, $3.50 per billable commercial means that if your commercial airs once per 6 hour programming block (so 4x a day, but 2 of those would be way off peak hours), every day, for one month you'd be spending $105/month. At $7 per billable commercial, you're spending $210/month to run every day. At $35 per billable commercial, you're spending over $1000 to run this commercial for a month. Spending $1000/month to reach an audience with a rough maximum of 10,000 doesn't make sense (or... does it? We'll get to that.)
(DIR) Post #Air4KcGpwpu9eFgPRo by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T15:03:14Z
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On the other hand, a small billboard on riverstreet running in to town costs $450/month. On a busy weekend, it might be seen by 5,000 people. On a day like today, it might be seen by 100? The 3k people who live in town see it any time they leave the house. The 20,0000 people who live in the county see it any time they come down town. But the people who pay to advertise there aren't really advertising to those folks, they're advertising to the day trippers and vacationers. On an average weekend over the summer, there are 400 rental cabins full in town. On a busy weekend, that number could go as high as 800. Add to that hotels, Air BnBs, and the like and you get a few thousand couples or families visiting. According to the chamber of commerce, we also see about 5k day trippers who do not stay the night.
(DIR) Post #Air4lVpY05AjUdkAUK by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T15:08:12Z
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For an average June weekend over the last 4 years that meant about 9,000 extra people in town. For our big holiday weekends, Apple Festival and the like, things look a little different. Last October we had 1500 cabins booked (at an average of 3 people per cabin) plus another 5,000 day trippers. Plus every hotel in town, and every air bnb in town fully booked. Plus most cabins and hotels in the surrounding counties booked. According to the chamber of commerce, apple season averages about 25,000 extra people through town over each weekend.
(DIR) Post #Air7f6B8lA4Y3pTcvo by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T15:40:39Z
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What does that have to do with advertising budget? Well, we're working with the local cabin rental companies to get our channel (or perhaps a dedicated app) set as the default "home" channel for cabins in town. We're working with basically every restaurant in town to run our channel in their dining rooms. We'll be in the waiting rooms at the laundry and the dentist and the mechanic. You'll see our network everywhere. So maybe $1000/month isn't unreasonable.
(DIR) Post #Air8AjyxzJ0JeDCChs by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T15:46:22Z
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(sorry, got pulled away by the bookstore.)
(DIR) Post #Air8FwOzEt91c9qWy8 by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T15:47:20Z
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An increased budget from advertising means we can put more time and effort in to video production, it means we can license videos from other folks, and it means that we may be able to get more non-local viewers as well. At which point $500 or $1000 for 30 days of advertising seems much more reasonable.
(DIR) Post #Air8idTmfj25KClyvw by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T15:52:30Z
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Now, all of the numbers above were built around a full advertising schedule. We could get away with $10 per billable ad, or so, if we had a full advertising schedule and still turn a small profit or expand our offerings. But can we have a full advertising schedule?
(DIR) Post #Air8kMFdhGIOTJyhF2 by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T15:52:38Z
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(I'm going to grab lunch.)
(DIR) Post #AirAOWH3x0zD5xMGq8 by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T16:11:12Z
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A minimum full advertising schedule means 36 businesses paying at least $300/month to advertise with us (or fewer paying more or more paying less, but the upshot is the same. 36 ads per day, $10/ad/day minimum.) There are 78 restaurants and 67 retail stores in the local chamber of commerce, and more than 80 listings across "attractions", "events", and "agrotourism" and there are at least a dozen restaurants that aren't members. If we can't swing 36 advertisers out of that... what are we doing?
(DIR) Post #AirB5buQsMXX1XJvX6 by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T16:19:04Z
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But to kick things off, I don't need a full slate. I need to cover the lease. $3300. 11 advertisers at $10/day \\ $300/month. 10 advertisers at 11/330. 5 at 22/440 Or 2 advertisers at $42/day. Now, can I deliver $42/day in value? No, absolutely not. But by the time we're ready to launch I should be able to deliver $22/day in value without issue. That's less than the cost of a billboard in town, and I should be able to get at least a billboards worth of eyeballs.
(DIR) Post #AirBLbxwQum9pgajj6 by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T16:21:55Z
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(I'm using this thread as a thought experiment to figure out how much to charge.)
(DIR) Post #AirCiJ8ogkWk4144CO by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T16:37:14Z
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I'm gonna circle back to those roku numbers for a second. Roku is saying we averaged 5 daily viewers but streamed 7000 hours in 6 months. That means each of our average viewers was watching for more than 7 hours a day?? Either I'm misunderstanding how their metrics are counted or something fishy is happening here.
(DIR) Post #AirDY6gsE0goVUh6a8 by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T16:46:33Z
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@philvuchetich We already produce a monthly "upcoming events" program (which will move to weekly when we're on cable) so this makes sense.
(DIR) Post #AirElIaLPbXt7HUieW by mediageek@mastodon.social
2024-06-12T17:00:01Z
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@ajroach42 FWIW in my experience with college and community radio, that sell underwriting (advertising), they don't lean on metrics so much as community impact. It's sold on both good will and perception of the audience. A lot of local and niche media advertising is sold that way. So I wouldn't sweat the metrics so much as try to build a strong case as to why it's good to support New Elijay. The reach should be a secondary argument.
(DIR) Post #AirEp98GV25uxPCAZE by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T17:00:38Z
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@mediageek That's a really useful point. Thank you.
(DIR) Post #AirGUIee6InEJiWpO4 by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T17:19:31Z
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@pixx That's what I mean. Most folks are more willing to respect cable than streaming, even if they are more willing to pay for streaming than cable.
(DIR) Post #AirGieY1V0JmGuH6cy by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T17:22:08Z
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@pixx These days lots of people don't have cable at all. Less than half this county does, even though 85% has internet access.
(DIR) Post #AirJpjiuxCzWDIRL6G by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T17:57:04Z
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(This math is wrong. $22/day is $660/month. Not 440. This is what I get for typing while I eat.)
(DIR) Post #AirL7ZRM1e95UGICxM by sexybenfranklin@smores.town
2024-06-12T18:11:12Z
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@ajroach42 If you do a lot of your own production and editing in-house (and it seems like you do) you might be able to get some non-recurring funds by creating the ads for businesses that don't already have them. This is a cool thread, and it's cool you're doing this.
(DIR) Post #AirLAvP4p5uiTQpKHg by ajroach42@retro.social
2024-06-12T18:12:04Z
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@sexybenfranklin That's absolutely part of the plan, but the idea is to bundle the production of the video in to a 3 month advertising package. Buy 3 months of ads, get the ad for free.