Understanding Video on Demand

You may use this content, but please cite (c) 2005, Dr. Bruce Klopfenstein.

Pay-per-view television was the Holy Grail for the cable television industry for years, if not decades. Academic research on how audiences choose to use pay-per-view, and I invite comments from anyone who has knowledge of audience behavior in a pay-per-view environment.

There is another source of research on pay-per-view and that is the hotel ("lodging") industry. Hundreds of thousands of lodging rooms have offered movies first via appointment (users had to tune in when the movie was being played) and now video-on-demand (VOD). In essence, the hotel industry offers a fertile research field for how travelers, among others, actually behave in the VOD world.

LodgeNet Entertainment Corporation is a leading provider of television services to the lodging industry. The company also proveds broadband services and has moved into offering interactive television services. The relevance of this company is that it will offer a window of the possibilities for interactive television and do so before ITV is offered to home viewers.