Right off the bat, Ramsay confirms he is not leaving TiVo but will move into the Chairman role and cede his CEO role to free up more time to invent and innovate. Chris estimates that 90% of the DEMO audience are TiVo users and points out that "to TiVo" has become a common verb in our lexicon. Mike discusses the question of whether TiVo is a media company or a service. "Our business model in a lot different than people imagine - we're really not a box company.
"TiVo is approaching 3 million subscribers which, Ramsay points out, is not very big from an advertising market perspective. "We need to get to something like 10 million," he said, before TiVo's subscriber base becomes a real target for advertisers. Comparing the 100 million cable customers with TiVo's 3 million customers, Chris asks if there isn't a whole market segment being missed in the PVR market. "The real issue, Ramsay says is that the set top world is very proprietary and fragmented with so many different set top boxes in deployment and the switching costs and changing distribution channels providing friction for a lot of strategic deals.
Chris asks Ramsay about the balance between innovating and making distribution deals, suggesting that perhaps TiVo has been more (too?) focused on the latter at the expense of the former. Ramsay admits that there has been a strong orientation toward making the distribution deals but points out a number of new features the company has delivered and points out that there are 15 different TiVo platforms currently available to meet the needs of different customer groups.
"Ultimately, TiVo should be a multiple-platform company," Ramsay said, pointing to a future where TiVo runs not only on set top boxes but also on PCs and other platforms.Jason gets up and says that while he's a huge TiVo fan, he's concerned about the direction the company is going -wondering if TiVo isn't kowtowing to the media companies and stating his opinion that TiVo doesn't seem to be innovating anymore. Ramsay, after acknowledging that there were about 25 questions in Jason's comment, said that he felt a lot of the press coverage Jason cited wasn't particularly favorable to TiVo nor did he feel it was completely accurate or fair. He then tried to address a number of concerns Jason raised about the relationship TiVo has with Hollywood and pointed to innovations the company has announced.
Jason came back with a question about why he can't take content off the TiVo unit. Ramsay countered that TiVo-to-go does allow that and suggests that perhaps Jason shul dread the product literature more carefully. I'm stepping out of this one as I'm sure Jason will posting his thoughts on the exchange shortly.
