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4oD opted to reduce the number of hours it made available and instead increase the rate of churn
4oD's latest TV ad depicts video-on-demand as being like a retail experience. It reminded me of some research that tested consumer decision-making in a supermarket. Shoppers offered a large selection of jams were less likely to buy than those presented with a smaller number. This is often referred to as the 'tyranny of choice' and prompted an examination of the size of broadcaster's VOD archives and how the scheduling of these libraries could improve the user experience.
In order to address this question we tracked channels in Virgin Media's archive, which is branded TV Choice On Demand, over the course of a year. It became apparent that there are a number of approaches to archive size and scheduling. Some channels simply dump content in there and leave it unchanged for long periods, while others appear to have developed churning strategies. It's worth noting that while catch-up typically means the last seven days, this simple timeframe doesn't exist for the archive. This presents us...