Executives at this year’s annual Cable Show are trying to figure out their industry’s future. The technology for delivering faster broadband is ready, but the business model of the future isn’t. Read more »
The chairman of Dish Networks toned down some of his recent rhetoric against broadcasters on today’s earnings call, and said he is in favor of a subscriber-advertising model for TV. Read more at paidContent »
In the fourth quarter, the traditional pay-TV industry began to show signs of severe internal stresses after having held off the immediate challenge of over-the-top video. Meanwhile the music industry fell into an internal battle over performance royalties. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
For the first time ever, the number of U.S. households paying for TV service will go down. The news comes as a tipping point in consumers’ struggles to break away from a TV industry that forces them to buy bundles of channels. Read more at paidContent »
Many of the biggest stories in the connected consumer space occurred mostly offstage in 2012, from Apple’s new media services to policymakers in Washington. Overall, the past 12 months have laid important groundwork for significant advances in the connected consumer space. The year 2013 should be eventful. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
TV broadcasters and programmers must embrace a new set of video-delivery techniques to reach consumers today. Online delivery to so many types of consumer devices means that video programmers must produce multiple internet-streaming formats that use different types of security and different ways of inserting ads. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The research group notes that even with $45 billion in cash on hand, Google probably doesn’t have the money to blanket the nation in its fiber. But it can cover enough ground to severely disrupt the pay TV business with a superior ISP/video solution. Read more at paidContent »
The multichannel business has incurred net subscriber losses in the second quarter for three years in a row — after never finishing a three-month period in the red before 2010. Bernstein Research’s Craig Moffett says this is simply a normal cyclical state for a maturing business. Read more at paidContent »
Tablets featured prominently in the connected consumer space, both as a product category and as a component of broader platform strategies by major OS providers Microsoft, Google and Apple. Meanwhile Facebook began laying the groundwork to add payment processing to its platform. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The adoption of tablets, social media and new interfaces and the changing nature of the TV itself mean the digital living room will continue on its path of rapid change, thanks to new ways of creating, viewing, bundling, distributing and selling content. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
A survey of the top 10 publicly traded cable, satellite and telco TV services providers reveals video subscriber growth of only around 494,000 in the first quarter. First-quarter subscriber growth among these companies was over 900,000 just four years ago. Read more at paidContent »
In the first quarter of 2012 all eyes were on the screen, both big and small. Apple’s new Retina display pushed video streaming, and broadcast-TV streaming service Aereo’s launch was quickly followed with litigation. These events and more are discussed in a new quarterly report. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
In just the past few weeks, Barry Diller-backed Aereo launched a subscriptions streaming service in New York City, Cisco bought NDS for $5 billion, word leaked of Intel’s plans to create a nationwide virtual cable TV service and Netflix began chatting up cable operators about addings ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
This week’s announcement from Apple indicates more clearly than ever that the company’s path to disrupting the pay-TV ecosystem runs not through the living room but through mobile devices and the ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Comcast is rolling out a new streaming on-demand offering called Xfinity Streampix, which will bring more library content to subscribers that pay for its high-end double- and triple-play packages. That could give subscribers less of a reason to also pay for Netflix or Hulu Plus. Read more »
Now that streaming broadcast startup Aereo is formally launching in New York, the litigation watch is on. From an operational perspective, the closest analogy to what Aereo is doing may be Slingbox’s model. And despite occasional threats, no broadcaster or content owner has ever sued Sling ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Boxee isn’t just marketing its live TV tuner as an alternative to cable; it is also fighting with cable companies about having access to their programming. The reason? Cable companies want to encrypt their basic cable tier, which Boxee and other CE makers oppose. Read more »
Apple is reportedly looking to partner with TV operators for the launch of its upcoming iTV product. Why would it? Because doing so would give it more content, enable it to offer a better user interface, and give it wider distribution. Read more »
Could Apple spend its $100 billion in cash to create a virtual cable operator to compete with Comcast and the like? Sure. But it would have a really hard time offering a competitively priced service and building a profitable business out of it. Read more »
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about how consumers will soon be buying more TVs, and upgrading them ever faster. After seeing the best that CE manufacturers had in store at CES, I’m even more convinced. But not for the reasons you might think. Read more »
Dish is betting big on the DVR to help it win over more customers and fight off competition. The satellite TV provider is coming out with new and improved recording devices that can be taken advantage of from up to four TVs throughout the home. Read more »
While cable operators and networks continue to downplay the effect of cord cutting, in Deloitte’s State of the Media Democracy survey, the firm reports that 9 percent of respondents have already canceled their cable subscriptions, with another 11 percent saying they are considering doing so. Read more »
Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu thinks Apple needs to get into the content game to make the iTV a winner when it launches. But the bigger opportunity might be where Apple plays best — in allowing content creators to develop their own apps on its iOS platform. Read more »
A couple of new videos from Verizon show that wireless technology will eventually replace coaxial cable for video distribution within the home. That’ll mean more TV content available on more devices, as well as huge potential cost savings for pay TV operators. Read more »
TV viewership is still on the rise, with the typical American watching five hours a day now, according to research by Nielsen. That hasn’t slowed the growth of online video: In fact, the amount of content streamed is accelerating, too. While it hasn’t yet made a ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Almost two years after HBO launched its on-demand streaming service HBO Go, the premium cable network has finally gotten the last two major holdouts to agree to offer it to their subscribers. The service will soon be available to 98 percent of all HBO subscribers. Read more »
Between the collapse of AT&T’s proposed $39 billion merger with T-Mobile and the death throes of a proposed wholesale 4G network created by a satellite company and now-broke hedge fund, the wireless industry has generated a lot of stories but no real change in the past ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The steep prices of the NFL’s new broadcast rights deals are likely to put pressure on rapidly growing fault lines within the pay-TV industry that could, ironically, accelerate the breakup of the broad bundle of channels at the core of the current business model — something ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
With the rollout of its massive Xbox Live update, Microsoft has made a strong bid for the pole position in the digital living room. And with dozens of new programming partners also included with the update, the company now offers perhaps the most comprehensive, versatile and ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
A weak economy is putting pressure on the pay TV industry, but a bigger issue is the number of young people opting for online services instead. That’s an issue faced by Dish Network, which is trying to figure out how to win over those possible subscribers. Read more »
Happy birthday to us: It’s been a year since we published the very first episode of Cord Cutters. In that time, we’ve not only released 35 additional episodes but also learned a whole lot about the future of TV, and the people who reinvent it. Read more »
For all the talk, there’s little evidence that cord cutting, to whatever extent it is actually happening, has loosened the grip of the networks or cable operators on the TV business. If anything, they’ve tightened their hold, as evidence from this last quarter shows. Read more »
Dreamworks is parting with HBO snd giving its movies to Netflix instead: Starting in 2013, Netflix customers will be able to stream both new and catalog titles of the animation studio. Netflix was apparently willing to pay significantly more than HBO currently does. Read more »
The fight for the TV audience is quickly moving online and to a growing number of mobile applications, with Apple’s iPad as the latest battleground. Over the last 18 months, a number of broadcasters and pay-TV operators have launched iPad apps that provide access to streaming ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
In the fight for new subscribers, cable companies are winning on broadband and telcos are winning over TV viewers. But while telcos are taking IPTV subs, they are losing the overall war on digital voice and broadband — so their TV victory may be a Pyrrhic one. Read more »
There’s nothing flashy about broadband services, but that won’t stop many operators from making those services a core focus as time goes on. Due to growing consumer adoption and better profit margins than traditional video services’, high-speed Internet is likely to be the future of the ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The majority of Time Warner Cable’s subscribers and most of its revenue still come from traditional pay TV services, but that’s changing — and fast. The company is betting on broadband for its future, due to wider adoption of Internet services while traditional TV subscriptions decline. Read more »
Time Warner Cable plans to buy Insight Communications, the nation’s ninth-largest cable company, in a deal worth $3 billion as the industry realizes it needs to streamline. The deal offers TWC greater scale as well as about $100 million in annual cost efficiencies. Read more »
More than 45,000 Verizon workers are striking this morning. People are concerned about what the strike could mean for telecom equipment vendors, but a better question is how much will Verizon’s legacy employees drag down the company as it competes against more modern IT companies? Read more »
DirecTV has admitted to taking a look at Hulu’s financials to see if it’s worth buying. While the satellite provider could accelerate its rollout of TV Everywhere services with such a buy, DirectTV’s CEO said a Hulu acquisition isn’t necessary to achieve its long-term vision. Read more »
