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 they’re 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 ...
Netflix: $8/mo, more to watch than I possibly could.
iTunes: $1-6/rental, pretty much any new must-see content.
Hulu: $9/mo, minimal ads, most TV slightly delayed.
There is plenty to see.
If you insist on certain content the moment it’s released, you’ll pay thru the nose. There’s far more out there for a lot less.
Love my ROKU. Cut the cable two years ago and haven’t looked back.
I have Comcast and they just socked me with a $12 general increase, bringing my tab for basic cable and internet to $130 per month.
I went in person to pay my bill and I told the rep this would be the last month I'm paying and will be switching to Dish plus DSL for internet. Immediately he said, "Wait a minute, let me see if I can help you".
He offered me the same channels plus about 20 more, internet included for $69 per month for 6 months, at which time it would increase to $89 per month. He said also, "come back in in 6 months and I'll see what else I can do for you to keep that bill down".
I felt like some what of a dumb ass for not complaining sooner. It seems that with the hint that you might go elsewhere, their rates become negotiable.
I really did not want to switch to Dish and DSL but was prepared to do so.
Got bored and disgusted with Netflix, didn’t find any rentals worth watching and Hulu+ was boring too. Probably just me as I get old and cranky but the garbage that passes for films today bores me.
I have seen a lot of positive comments on ROKU lately and no negative ones.
I have seen a lot of positive comments on ROKU lately and no negative ones.
They are not conditioned to only receiving and absorbing the input. Where have you seen a teen that is going to sit still to listen to or watch someone for hours if he can show and tell how it ought to be done? (They all know better, of course.) Lack of interaction kills the TV, not anything else. Internet offers an infinite number of "channels," and those channels have appeal to exactly the people who participate. If someone doesn't like anything that is out there, he can always make a new "channel," be it a blog, a YouTube video, or FB, or Twitter.
Modern teens don't want to dine on strict schedule in government-maintained mess halls where the menu hasn't changed for decades and where cooks don't care what the diners want and where they must stop eating whenever propaganda blares out of loudspeakers every few minutes. Modern teens prefer to eat whatever they want, whenever they want - and they can. Internet is freedom, and the network TV is history (IMO,) just a notch above the dead tree media that, in turn, replaced town criers. If TV journalists think that their stories are wanted, let them put them on YouTube and charge $0.01 per view. That will quickly tell them how much they are really needed in this world.
AppleTV is about as simple as “the old 5 channel days”. Includes Hulu dirt cheap.
Does anybody know if Netgear is a good system for watching TV?
I have a hard time remembering what was going on when they went to commercials 10 minutes ago.
So I just quit watching it. So visceral is my hatred, I do not even want to be in the room with a TV. No sports, no nothing. It is not that hard.
The free link sites are full of ads and pop-ups too, I doubt any of that revenue goes for copyright payments though I could be wrong. I don’t see those ads because I have a host manager and pop-up blocker.
But the original ads in the recorded show couldn’t be blocked, though one could advance through them.
And the networks could charge more since ads are priced, partly, by how many see them.
What constitutes “worth watching”?
For the price of a month of cable you can get pretty much what you want when you want ad free; if it costs more you’re watching too much.
That part jumped right off the page at me.
I dropped cable awhile ago. Now my phone and DSL run me less than my old phone bill alone.
The video sites I use are licensed. They are only available for the regions licensed too. It’s annoying when a show that sounds interesting is not licensed for my region, but North America rarely gets that. I guess those smaller countries like the attention this brings.
GLEE.... leftwing pigswill... blech
http://free-classic-tv-shows.com/
A well organized collection of classic TV.
At the bottom of the page are links to classic radio and movies.
This guy really has done a service organizing the huge number of public domain offerings.
I might pull that routine this week.
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