Posted on 01/26/2013 3:52:18 PM PST by PJ-Comix
Veteran programmer Rob Barnett recently attended a breakfast meeting of television executives where the talk turned, as it almost always does these days, to disruption, the industry buzzword for the way new technology is upsetting the TV applecart. From somewhere down the table, he heard a question: Has anybody here cut the cord? that is, dropped cable service in favor of just watching TV through the Internet? Barnett shrugged and raised his hand. Mine was the only one, he recalls. But when it went up, I saw beads of sweat break out on the foreheads of some of the guys across the table.
When Barnett and 5,000 or so others gather Monday for the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) convention at the Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach, there will be plenty of sweaty foreheads, some acquisitive smiles and perhaps most numerous blank looks of confusion. Not since cable turned the old three-channel TV universe on its head in the late 1970s has the industry been in such a state of disoriented befuddlement.
New technologies that give viewers more say in what they watch, where they watch and how much they pay for it are great for consumers. But theyre inducing a collective nervous breakdown among industry executives, who have to figure out new ways to make money in a business facing serious threats to its traditional sources of revenue advertising and cable-TV subscriptions.
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
You hear that COMCAST? Lower your rates or you will lose even more people including me!
Creative destruction, and less central control. What’s not to like?
My teens consider network TV like great-grandpa’s old Victrola.
A screen=internet to them.
That is a good thing
The big problem is that only a few ways to get internet so I am stuck with Comcast at least for that.
99% of TV content is pure crap, and no channel is family friendly these days either
When the day comes that I can get my favorite channels through the internet or airwaves or however, I dump the cable company. They have enjoyed a government-assisted monopoly for years, and I will gloat when they go out of business.
Find a channel that shows classic films, commercial free.
I could see a day where NBC goes the way of Time Magazine. Sold for a dollar.
I do watch a lot of subtitled Korean shows online, I find them better (broadcast TV in Korea has stricter content standards, so they actually have to have a story- imagine that) than anything on American TV.
I don’t get how this will ever be bad for cable companies. If they don’t sell enough cable tv subscriptions they’ll simply raise the cost of internet...it still has to come through their cable. Same with FIOS or other technologies. Or am I missing something?
Both COMCAST and Satellite TV have good deals at first but then after about 6 months they jack their prices way up. Anything that gives folks an option to get cheap TV is a plus and maybe COMCAST will be forced to lower their prices.
I want a day when I only have to pay for the channels I want.
I want it to be bad for TV production companies too. All they do is make crap these days.
Any cable drop outs here? I did, tried Apple TV, a waste of time. Any other alternatives out there?
Any cable drop outs here? I did, tried Apple TV, a waste of time. Any other alternatives out there?
Agreed. And the commercials go on, and on, and on . . . You would think with the lousy economy the commercials would decrease, but obviously not.
So when you dropped your cable, how did you connect to the Internet?
How about only paying for the shows you want? If a conservative outfit started producing a sitcom, a cop show and a science fiction show, how many conservatives would subscribe to watch online?
$99. Plug it in, 2 cables. Goodbye cable tv.
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