电视流媒体||掐掉那根线
1
导读
本月的主题为流媒体对美国传统电视行业的影响，在这场以netflix为首以及传统传媒巨头们相继创立其流媒体平台为代表的新势力与传统有线电视服务提供商为代表的旧势力之间的对立中，哪一方势力会胜出？是符合新新人类当下潮流的netflix之流，亦或是有着庞大用户基数的有线电视之流？新的时代有新的需求，从长远来看，新势力必将取代旧势力，但是不可忽视的是在完成一方对另一方的完全取代之前，两者之间必定有一个互相竞争的过程，而这个过程必将是漫长的。
感谢思维导图作者Terri.Tan
Terri.Tan ,一个喜爱张杰的英语死忠粉
2
听力|精读|翻译|词组
Cutting the cord
摆脱束缚
英文部分选自经济学人20160716中Business版块
Cutting the cord
双关：表面上是剪断线缆，将家庭互联网业务和电视业务都转移到移动端，此外还更有摆脱束缚的深意。
The future of television
电视行业的未来
Television is at last having its digital-revolution moment
电视终将迎来数字革命
THE future of television was meant to have arrived by around now, in a bloodbath worthy of the most gore-flecked scenes from “Game of Thrones”. The high cost of cable TV in America, combined with dire customer service and the rise of appealing on-demand streaming services as inexpensive substitutes, would drive millions to “cut the cord” with their cable providers. Customers would receive their TV over the internet, and pay far less for it. Many obscure channels with small audiences, meanwhile, would perish suddenly.
电视的新时代已到来，这是一场浴血战，堪比《权力的游戏》（Game of Thrones）中最血腥的场面。美国有线电视高昂的成本、差劲的客户服务体验以及其替代品——物美价廉的流媒体点播服务的兴起，这些因素都促使数百万人抛弃有线电视。而观众只需支付更少的费用便可在互联网上进行观看。在此期间，许多不起眼且受众少的频道，会很快消失。
注：
①television: tele-=far; vis(vid)=to see, -ion为名词后缀，常见的有telegraph, telegram, telecommunication.
②substitute: sub-=under, 词根stitute为st(=stand)的异体，-ute也可看做是名词后缀，如appetite中的-ite，这里元音变化忽略不计。此外，可以看到词根与词缀组合后，与其词根的本义的意义相去甚远，这与汉语中的偏旁是类似的。
So, at least, many in the industry thought. Instead, the death of old television has been a slow bleed. American households have started to hack away at the cable cord, but the attrition rate is only about 1% a year. Television viewership is in decline, especially among younger viewers coveted by advertisers. Yet media firms are still raking it in, because ad rates have gone up, and the price of cable TV continues to rise every year. The use of Netflix and other streaming services has exploded—half of American households now subscribe to at least one—but usually as add-ons, not substitutes. Overall, Americans are paying more than ever for TV.
因此，很多业内人士认为，旧式电视频道的消亡是一个缓慢的过程。尽管一些美国用户已经开始放弃收看有线电视，但每年的流失率仅为1%左右。收看电视的观众也在逐渐减少，尤其是广告商青睐的年轻观众。然而，由于广告费用不断上升及有线电视的价格逐年上涨，传媒公司仍有利可图。Netflix及其他流媒体用户数呈爆炸式增长——现在有一半的美国家庭订阅了一种或多种流媒体服务——但这通常作为有线电视的附属品，并非替代品。总的来说，美国人花在电视上的钱比以往任何时候都多。
注：
go up: up本义是向上，这里是其常见的一个衍生义：增长、提高、上升等，在此义项下的介词短语还有：build up, jump up, speed up等。
This cannot last for much longer. The fat, pricey cable bundle of 200 channels is fast becoming antiquated as slimmer streaming options emerge. Now two tech giants, Amazon and YouTube (owned by Google), as well as Hulu, a video-streaming service that is jointly owned by Disney, Fox and NBC Universal, are negotiating to offer live television over the internet by the end of the year or early next year. They would offer America’s major broadcast networks and many popular sports and entertainment channels, at a price that would cut the typical monthly bill almost in half, to $40 or $50.
That threatens to upendwhat was, and still is, the best business model in media history. The media conglomerates delivered a package of something for everyone—at first, at a reasonable price. The audience kept on growing along with the number of channels, which was good for advertisers, for studios that produced shows, and for sports leagues that sold broadcast rights. Cable operators and networks enjoyed gross margins of 30-60% and merrily pushed new gear, such as digital video recorders, and still more channels towards their loyal customers.
这可能会颠覆传媒业过去的商业模式，但有线电视的商业模式仍然是传媒史上之最。起初，这些传媒集团以合理的价格为每位客户提供一系列服务。随着频道数量增加，观众人数也在持续增长，这对于广告商、制片工作室和出售转播权的体育联盟来说都是好事。除了赚取30%-60%的毛利润，有线电视运营商和网络公司还可以通过向忠实用户推出数字视频录像机等新设备且增加新频道来盈利。
注：
upend：up-=up, upward, 如uphold, uprise, up-还可以跟名词结合，如upstairs, upwind, 还可以跟形容词结合，如upstanding, upcoming.
They are becoming less loyal. The pace of cord-cutting has not been as fast as many expected, but it has begun to quicken. The number of people leaving cable each year outnumbers those joining, and has done so since 2013. For a while the losses were modest, at just over half a million households in total in 2013 and 2014, out of 101m subscribers. Last year, however, traditional pay TV suddenly lost 1.1m subscribers. Lots switched to an early internet “skinny bundle” from Sling TV, a new product from Dish Network, a satellite-TV provider. Investors panicked. When Bob Iger, chief executive of Disney, acknowledged last August that people were severing the cord even with ESPN, a sports network and the firm’s most profitable media property, a media rout ensued. Since then, shares in Disney and Fox have fallen by almost 20%.
然而观众对电视的忠诚度正在下降。放弃收看有线电视的进程虽不如预计那样迅速，但正在加速。从2013年起，每年放弃收看有线电视的人数超过新加入使用的。过去损失的客户数量并不多，在2013年和2014年这两年里，1.01亿有线电视用户仅流失50多万。然而，去年传统付费电视行业突然流失了110万用户。很多用户都转向了Sling TV——卫星电视供应商Dish Network的新产品，这是早期的互联网瘦身版套餐服务。投资者人心惶惶。去年八月，迪士尼首席执行官罗伯特·艾格（Bob Iger）表示，人们甚至不再愿意付费收看体育节目电视网（ESPN），这项服务曾经是该公司最赚钱的业务。传统媒体行业的溃败接踵而至，此后，迪士尼和福克斯的股份下跌了将近20％。
注：
outnumber：这里out-=more than, 类似的词有outlive, outsmart.
Those that do chop the cord almost never come back, joining the ranks of millennials who avoid signing up for cable in the first place, dubbed “cord-nevers” by media executives. They are lost to the world of subscription video-on-demand: Netflix, Amazon Prime video, Hulu, HBO Now and the like, services that cost around $10 to $15 a month each.
To stanch this flow, cable operators can offer “triple-play” packages that combine broadband, television and telephone service, which gives them a pricing advantage. They can also rely on older Americans. Older viewers watch more television than any other group, they watch more of it than they used to, and more are tuning in; and they are not going anywhere. Internet services may also blunder as they go into TV-streaming. An internet service from HBO, owned by Time Warner, a media conglomerate, recently suffered a blackout just as a much-anticipated episode of its “Game of Thrones” was about to begin, enraging customers. Early adopters will sign up; others will wait and see.
But over time the changes threaten to cripple several actors that now live off the big bundle: large media companies with weak programming, like Viacom (the firm may sell a large stake in its film studio to Dalian Wanda Group, a Chinese entertainment conglomerate, to raise cash); small independent channels that have benefited from being part of the “long tail”; and satellite operators, who have little to sell but TV. The winners and survivors will be media companies who provide the most “must-see” TV and the fewest unwanted channels. Coveted content will still be king, as seen in the recent sale of a niche martial-arts league for $4 billion. Cable firms can still earn their keep selling broadband internet and, perhaps, streaming services.
The clearest winners will be consumers. In 2008, cable subscribers had 129 channels to choose from, and they watched an average of 17 channels in a given week. Five years later, they had 189 channels, and were still watching only 17.5, or just under a tenth of the available offering. Their bills, unlike disposable incomes, have doubled in this century.
The fact that more TV viewers have not switched channel to a better model is mainly the result of two factors. The first is that customers are still addicted to live TV, especially sport, and fat, pricey bundles reliably give that to them. Media firms have bid up sports rights to fantastic sums. Disney’s ESPN, and TNT, owned by Time Warner, are paying a combined $24 billion for the rights to broadcast NBA basketball games for the next nine years, almost triple the amount they were paying under their former deal. The second factor is that customers have lacked reliable, cheaper options until now. That is changing with the arrival of services like Sling TV, which now has 700,000 subscribers, reckons Michael Nathanson of MoffettNathanson, a research firm. Another new “skinny”bundle, from Sony PlayStation Vue, recently passed 100,000 subscribers.
观众不换台有两大主要因素。第一，顾客仍然热衷于观看直播，特别是体育节目，而臃肿、昂贵的捆绑服务也带给了观众这种体验。媒体公司已将体育转播权的价格抬高到惊人的水平。为了得到未来九年后NBA比赛的播放权，迪士尼的ESPN和时代华纳公司的TNT联合支付了240亿美元，这几乎是他们之前成交价的三倍。第二，到目前为止消费者仍缺少既可靠又实惠的选择。Moffett Nathanson的迈克尔·纳森桑表示，这一情况正在随着类似Sling TV的服务到来而改变，Sling TV目前拥有70万用户。最近，索尼PlayStation Vue推出的另一款“瘦身”套餐的订阅用户数量超过了10万。
注：
bid up: bid为投标之意，与up的意义相结合不难理解，bid up为哄抬价格之意。
举个例子：the British passion for bidding up the price of each other's houses.
Many more may end up going to Hulu. Its old-media parents appear to have accepted the risks of disrupting the existing model in order to keep a stake in the future through younger viewers; channel negotiations are expected to go smoothly. And Hulu’s product at least continues the highly profitable concept of the bundle. One owner, NBC Universal, is owned by Comcast, a cable firm that could lose much from cord-cutting, but it has no say in the operations of Hulu, and would probably have little choice but to participate under competition terms set by the media regulator. Time Warner is also considering joining in.
Hulu is now testing channel combinations at various prices, including around $40 to $50 a month, close to similar packages from Sling TV and Sony PlayStation Vue. That would mean a slim margin, but its chief executive, Mike Hopkins, says getting people to cut the cord is all about price. It can profit from extra services, such as options to stream on multiple devices, to record and store shows in the cloud, and to subscribe to premium channels.
Hulu目前正在测试包括40至50美元的月供在内的不同价格的频道组合，类似Sling TV和索尼PlayStation Vue的套餐，这意味着利润将十分微薄。但该公司首席执行官迈克霍·普金斯(Mike Hopkins)表示，促使人们摆脱有线电视全依仗价格。公司可以从额外的服务中获利，如在多个设备上运行，在云端记录和存储节目，以及订阅付费频道。
Amazon and YouTube are sure to generate yet more buzz, although their plans are still under wraps. Traditional players know full well that the dominant pay-TV operators of the future could well be the internet giants. New competitors will not have things all their own way. Apple failed to launch its own live TV service last year, perhaps because it could not agree with local broadcast affiliate stations on how much they should be paid for retransmitting their feeds. But the cable networks are keenly aware of what happened to the music business after Apple’s iTunes and other streaming services disaggregated the album. They will do what they can to prevent TV from being Spotified.
亚马逊和youtube的计划尚未公布，不过它们必然在将来引发更多的议论。即将掌控付费电视领域的很可能是那些互联网巨头，这一点老玩家都心知肚明。新晋的竞争者不能够完全按照他们自己的方式行事。或许是因为苹果方面无法与地方附属电视台在转播费用上达成一致，去年他们未能推出自己的直播电视服务。但当itunes和其他流媒体将专辑中的单曲拿出来单独售卖时，有线电视界已经敏锐的意识到了音乐领域发生的变化。他们将竭力阻止流媒体向传统电视产业进军。
注：
spofify是一个正版流媒体音乐服务平台，2008年10月在瑞典首都斯德哥尔摩正式上线。Spotify提供免费和付费两种服务，免费用户在使用Spotify的服务时将被插播一定的广告，付费用户则没有广告，且拥有更好的音质。Spotify已经得到了华纳音乐、索尼、百代等全球几大唱片公司的支持，其所提供的音乐都是正版的，Spotify除了提供在线收听外，还能下载音乐到本地供离线收听。这款软件除了可以在电脑上使用外，也可以在手机上使用。苹果的iTunes使用的是付费下载模式，与其相比Spotify操作流畅、使用方式更加简便，可选择曲目也多出不少。以上解释来自百度百科。
翻译组：
Sigrid，英语爱好者，大四狗
carol Guo，雅思，痴迷柠檬烤鸭
Olivia，英专大四，财经翻译实习生
Zeppelin，背包客，英专，口语爱好者
Victoria，刚完成考研党，经济学人爱好者
Tracy，英专小姐姐，经济学人骨灰级fans
Evelyn，女，英专本科生，经济学人粉丝
Rachel，女，处女座翻译生，经济学人粉
Maggie，女， 外语翻译学生 经学崇拜粉
lance，冒牌美少女 认识几个字母的万年烤鸭
Emily，非英语专业，不久前完成托福GRE备考，英语爱好者
导读兼标注组：
Bruce,爱好英语，经济学人爱好者
校对组：
Carol，爱好英语，备考二笔中~
Bruce，爱好英语，经济学人爱好者
Sindy，英语专业，CATTI备考，工作党
lance，冒牌美少女，认识几个字母的万年烤鸭
3
观点|评论|思考
本次观点由Jocelyn独家奉献
Jocelyn，女，二次元造梦实验家，经济学人爱好者
这篇文章写于2016年7月，彼时，以Netflix为代表的流媒体巨头势如破竹，辉煌一时的HBO和美国有线电视业受到极大冲击：被称为cord -cutter（掐线族）的观众们，群起投向流媒体在线视频的怀抱。三年过去，有线电视的用户依然没有停下流失的步伐，而流媒体用户的增长还未有停息的迹象，截至2018年底，Netflix在全球的付费会员数已达到1.39亿。比起坐在家中打开电视机换着数量有限的频道，新一代观众越来越倾向于使用手机等便捷的终端设备，随时随地观看在线视频，以尽量小的成本获取最大化的视频内容。
虽然目前坐上了流媒体业界的头把交椅，Netflix若是想长久称霸江湖也并非易事。迪士尼凭借自身丰富的IP库存，即将于2019年上线自己的流媒体平台Disney+。华纳、环球不甘示弱，纷纷宣布建设流媒体平台的计划。苹果也摩拳擦掌，要在2019年上半年推出流媒体服务，而且并不带Netflix一起玩。在这个2019年，科技巨头与传媒集团们将大举进军流媒体视频领域，一场硬仗已在蓄势待发。
战场转移到了线上，但各大平台依然需要真刀真枪地拼内容。毕竟，用户的对流媒体平台的选择永远是最简单直接的：“哪里有我想看的剧，我就去哪里；哪里的好剧多，我的钱就没白花”。对于一个流媒体平台来说，真正吸引受众的还是差异化的内容，尤其是原创自制内容的开发能力，未来也必然将成为各大平台的竞争核心。
一直以来，Netflix的模式是“下血本打造优质内容以吸引付费用户、再用获得的收入投资优质内容回馈用户”，一言蔽之就是：烧钱、买剧、拉人、收钱、再烧钱。在这个模式中，付费用户成为最为关键的一环，只有在用户变现效率能追得上巨额的成本投入时，这个模式才能形成一个良性循环。
2017年Netflix买了当时大热的网剧《白夜追凶》，2019年初又在《流浪地球》爆红之后，高调购买了其全球流媒体版权，以这样的速度紧跟潮流又出手阔绰地购入大量原创内容，也无怪乎Netflix在2019年1月中旬第四次全面提高了在美国的订阅价格，以应对高负债增长的威胁。但从Netflix仍在增长的用户数量看来，似乎这四次提价并未影响到广大观众对追剧的热情。
类似的情况也在我国上演。由于相关政策的影响，与央视和各大卫视所播出的节目相比，网剧、网综、网络大电影在形式和内容上有着不小差异。网络视频内容有着（相对）更高的自由度，更丰富的题材和更多的剧集储备。所以当父母辈在晚饭后打开新闻联播的时候，更多年轻人选择拿出手机，用网剧和网综来下饭。
国内流媒体视频平台所采取的也是类似Netflix的模式，为争取更多用户，斥巨资投入内容生产。他们的思路更加直截了当：内容精品化生产，将更多的资源集中投入精品内容，打造爆款，再通过爆款剧集来吸引更多新用户入场。
这个思路成效也堪称显著。如今国内愿意为流媒体视频平台买单的付费群体不断增长，截至2018年12月底，中国视频会员规模已超过2.3亿。不少的年轻人都有爱优腾（爱奇艺、优酷、腾讯）的会员账号。又因为内容制作方与平台方的独家合作，部分用户若是想同时满足广泛的观剧（爬墙）需求，只能忍痛买下好几个平台的会员。哪怕一位观众只是想看看潘粤明主演的网剧，要回顾《白夜追凶》，只能上优酷，要追《怒晴湘西》和《逆流而上的你》，只能上腾讯视频。对哪个剧在哪个平台播了如指掌，也成了当代追剧青年的自我修养。
这么说来，“流媒体”这个术语听起来好像离日常很远，但在流媒体影响下诞生的每一个文化产品都与消费者们息息相关。2019年，各方巨头进入流媒体领域进行资本布局，一方面搭建自己的内容分发渠道，一方面为自己的渠道争取最优质的内容。相信在可期的未来，流媒体视频平台将成为最重要的内容整合平台和内容分发渠道之一，我们将会看到更多资本流向流媒体，而资本又带动更多优质内容的产出。作为各大平台都想争取的观众，我们只需要打开app选择自己想看的视频内容就好，但他们背后的角斗，是否也在某种程度上影响了我们的选择呢？
4
愿景
小组