Rabbit TV — Now They Get It!
What a difference a year makes. Last week, as I have done many times in the past, I boarded a flight for Las Vegas to represent my company at an industry tradeshow. I’m a bit of a regular of these things, having attended the National Association of Broadcasters Show last year, and almost a dozen others like it since, so I was pretty sure I knew what to expect. Having spent the past two years promoting Rabbit TV, I’m now quite familiar with the usual set of questions from “How is that any different from Netflix” to “Can’t I just search for all those things myself?” and a personal favorite of mine: “what the heck is Rabbit TV?” The first iteration of our product was a USB device, sold through a partnership with Telebrands, the company behind the as-seen-on-TV branding. While this was a great way to get Rabbit TV into the hands of millions, our product has evolved since then, and I’ll admit that it’s created messaging challenges. The all new Rabbit TV Plus no longer requires the USB devices, and offers far more features than the original Rabbit TV ever did, but it’s still been hard to shake that image of a hard to believe product pitched on late night infomercials. So as NAB 2015 kicked off, I was sure I’d be fielding more of the same questions.
I couldn't have been more wrong. While the facilities, exhibitors, attendees, and other aspects of the show were all very much the same as last year, this NAB show turned out to be totally different. The questions that bombarded the humble Rabbit TV booth were no longer born from attempts to liken our unique offering to other more familiar products. Instead, to put it quite simply, people were starting to get it. Rather than questions of the “what is it and why should I want it?” variety that I was used to, this year’s comments suggested a different sentiment entirely: people were starting to get it, and they were amazed. “How did you guys think of this?” was a common one, but perhaps the most frequent was “Where can I get it?” With cord-cutting on the rise, frustration with cable TV growing, and new OTT products emerging every day, Rabbit TV is suddenly super relevant. All because we knew where the consumer was going, got there ahead of them, and set up shop so that when they arrived, we’d be ready.
Rabbit TV has come a long way since it first launched, and even since the launch of the all new Rabbit TV Plus last year. While new features have surely helped the growing appetite for the service, Rabbit TV’s evolution from a technical standpoint is surpassed by its evolution as an idea. As we’ve added content and features, it’s the concept that’s grown the most. It started as a simple idea: putting the vast amount of content available online together in one place for easy access. But as frustrations with the current pay-TV experience grew, we realized that the internet had the potential to replace it entirely, offering far more content for a near-zero price. Consumers soon came to know Rabbit TV, not as a mere media guide, but as a tool capable of saving them hundreds of dollars! And now, Rabbit TV Plus is reoriented not just as a guide or tool, but as a Media Aggregation Platform and marketplace for the multi-billion dollar entertainment industry to connect with customers directly, and easily monetize any type of content.
At first, we were frustrated that consumers, and many in the media, didn’t see the bigger picture of what we were doing with Rabbit TV. Perhaps that’s one of the small pitfalls to being ahead of the game. The problems that we set out to solve over a year ago are the very same ones that the big media companies and consumers are both now running into. Having started to work on them long before the rest of the market, it shouldn’t come as such a surprise that Rabbit TV offers many of the answers. People are now starting to realize the significance of what we’ve been doing. They’re starting to get it. Nowhere was that more evident than at NAB. Last year, we showed off a product that people didn’t know they needed. Now, just 12 months later, they know, and we’re ready for them.
Perhaps the greatest sign that the world is finally beginning to understand FreeCast’s corporate mission came not at the NAB show, but during it. On Wednesday, with the show ongoing on Las Vegas, Rabbit TV Plus was prominently mentioned in a Forbes article, heralding the product’s importance in the future of both television and online marketing, encouraging advertisers to take note. When a publication like Forbes is talking, not just about the same ideas as you, but about you, you know you’re onto something big. And as the rest of the market starts to realize that what we’ve been preaching is true, we gain a lot of credibility going forward.
That’s critical, and I invite all of our observers to stay tuned. After pioneering streaming video nearly a decade before YouTube or Netflix were doing so, I founded FreeCast to be a forward-thinking company, and a true leader in the industry. Our business is built on being ahead of industry trends, and in two short years, we’ve got an amazing record of doing just that. Now that the world has seen that we’ve been dead on these past few years, they’re starting to think a lot more seriously about what we’ll do next. The evidence of that has been the response we’ve received following the announcement of Select TV. Everyone’s watching now, and they won’t be disappointed. We’ve got amazing things in store that will blow you away, because we know that the revolutionary disruption of the entertainment industry has only just begun.
