The Digital Media World Is in Flux. What Does This Mean for You?

Indeed everything about the old world of media from program inception to consumption is changing In the quotolden daysquot aka predigital programming came to us via overthe broadcast or cable But then came the internet a multidirectional infrastructure game changer which launched a deadly assault on cable39s fault line For years the industry kept raising rates using the justification of new but often lost in the shuffle networks The industry did this and continued to do it simply quotbecause it couldquotamp160 Thus cable which at one time had neighborhood residents chasing install vans down the street in order to watch HBO pissed off its customers until it finally reached a point where nobody except cable operators said anything nice about the industryAs the wholesaled that is the cable bundle packed by the operator started shifting to the retail model for streaming services the streamers packaged the internetdelivered and offpremises storage of a group of titles that could be accessed and watched at any time connected through the updated gatekeeper the settop box reenvisioned of a Roku Amazon or Apple TV packagerAs what at first what looked like a challenge as the packager led by Netflix and followed by a hoard of copycats skipped dealing with the operators it still had to ride the cables or fiber to the customer And the cable industry finds itself on both the wholesale and retail world at the same timeIn many ways the cable industry and I now include ViacomCBS and ATampampT39s WarnerMedia and even TMobile plus any other 5G or wireless system as a part of it has done very well with this conundrumAs the model shifted from the cable bundle to the a la carte streaming packager the business model found itself coping with the conundrum of having both wholesale and retail packages on the same internet And don39t count out overtheair broadcasters moving to ATSC 30 with multiple streams There39s a lot for operators to cope withMeanwhile some internet entrepreneurs FAANG is now MAANG built the strongest advertising sales behemoths that have managed to remake the entire ecosystem of how and why ads get consumed amp8230 without paying for the underlying infrastructure that delivers the adsKind of like making a product and not paying for distributionMeanwhile I wonder what we39re going to call the broader collection of individuals and companies that populate the broader marketplaceamp160 We39ve got writers producers actors packagers networks cable operators and telcos that really function the same as cable operators viewing devices TVs computers tablets smartphones as well as theaters advertisers printers digitizers etc ad infinitum amp8230 so think about itRandom NotesLet39s review what39s happened in the past few weeks President Biden finally nominated current Acting Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel as Chairwoman of the Federal Confusion Commission just as she was running out of time to serve thanks to that New Year39s Day deadline Biden also nominated Gigi Sohn sort of the ghost of former Chairman Tom Wheeler who served him as chief aid and has long been a network neutrality proponent to the empty commission seat which will give Democrats control of the FCC amp8230 if they get vetted by the Senate Alan Davidson was nominated to run the NTIAThe Consumer Technology Association and the NCTA wants the NAB to not get away with imposing fees on Big Tech to use unlicensed spectrumamp160amp160amp160Roku which pretty much invented the best early streamer quotsettop boxquot dumped YouTube TV and the ability to watch streaming local channels and a few throw insOur friend John Ourand of Sports Business Journal reports that fully 34 of the top 100 shows on TV this year were as you probably guessed it NFL live gamesFox jumped headlong into the adsupported app business with Fox Weather not a bad effort either by passing over TV sets for smart phonesAmazon39s Fire TV fired HBO MaxComcast married a settopstreamer box with a TV set that it sells via WalmartLots of other streamers such as Tubi Hulu and a dozen others have been making deals with TV manufacturers like LG Samsung and more tooSo who wins the race to control streaming with a management aggregation Probably only two or three of the current contenders Roku Amazon Fire and Apple Or make a few guesses I39m sure more are on the way For example Comcast39s TVs are merely a settop box substitute like the one now included with Comcast subscriptions connected to Comcast infrastructure which is what of course delivers internet access and streamers to the home office or computer or cell phoneIf you search for TVs within and Amazon browsers guess which TV set will appear first Can you think quotfavoritismquotA small number of cities with Chattanooga probably being the largest have built infrastructure for the city itself It delivers the internet and more More are being discussed every dayThink tank Local SelfReliance claims roughly 83 million Americans have only one choice for a home internet providerThat overlooks satellite providers a bit amp8230 but a lot of households like mine in Puget Sound have too many trees around for good access We buy Sunday Ticket over the internet not via satelliteSome local oncecalledcable internet providers are being overbuilt with some actually succeeding such as WOWOpen access providers are proliferating amp8230 UTOPIA in Utah is now expanding with competitor providers using its linesDes Moines Iowa plans to build a major conduit network with Google Fiber which stumbled a few times as a classic cable TVinternet provider paying the city for access amp8230 but local MSO Mediacom isn39t happy about thatCalifornia is building a stateowned openaccess intrastate network with 6 million in state funds amp8230 a project focused on making certain every populated area is interconnectedamp160 A missing mile approach to better connectivityOpen access networks are more common in Europe just ask LibertyThe idea is to share the infrastructure instead of overbuilding forever How many duplicate lines make any senseAxios39 Margaret Harding McGill in an October 27th edition reports Underline quota community infrastructure companyquot backed by AOL founder Steve Case and investor Laurene Powell is building an open fiber network in Colorado Springsamp160 McGill notes that Underline is spending more than 100 million in capital to build out 400 miles of fiber for the Springs39 55000 residencesA telling point Underline CEO Bob Thompson told Axios that it picked the Springs after looking at factors like how many households lacked access the number of existing fibers and tellingly quotthe number of existing provers and how angry customers were with their current internet optionsquotSomeday perhaps Congress will pass a couple of bills including the first bipartisan quotinfrastructure weekquot in a while and that actually is a month plus amp8230 maybe That could provide serious fiber installation amp8230 and some good news for customers The also once 35 trillion and now about 15 trillion social bill includes broadband outlays as wellClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writersamp160

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The Digital Media World Is in Flux. What Does This Mean for You?

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Paul S. Maxwell

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