Decline of Cable TV

 Quick question: do you have a cable TV subscription?

If so, you are one of a rapidly declining set of customers.

I cut the cord (a term for moving to internet-only, no cable TV) many years ago when my provider sent me a notice my monthly bill would be increasing by 39%  with no corresponding change in service.

That trend is accelerating. Cable TV is nearing end of life.

Here is a recent piece on that:

cord-cutting-all-time-high

Here is a snippet from that piece:

As streaming video continues its ascendancy, cable, satellite and internet TV providers in the U.S. turned in their worst subscriber losses to date in the first quarter of 2023 — collectively shedding 2.3 million customers in the period, according to analyst estimates.

Best Regards,

J.W. Gant

PS I watched a portion of the Celtics game 7 loss to the Heat last night at a friend's who has YouTube TV. Not bad. We "tuned in" TNT to watch it. Easy. I have a digital antenna at home for basic TV viewing and just skip events that aren't on the big channels.

PPS Thank you to arstechnica.com for pointing me to this story.

Streaming Passes Cable

 Hi!

In the pages of this blog I've been tracking all things technology related in various verticals including streaming video (including a post stating the newly declared Disney+ would become the new Netflix).

The recent news has spurred me to post again.  It has happened.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/18/streaming-viewership-surpassed-cable-tv-for-the-first-time-says-nielsen/

Streaming video has passed cable tv in viewership.  Wow!  How we have changed (or how far have we come? Have we?).

The milestone was reached in July this year, 2022.  Streaming held 34.8% while cable had merely 34.4% of viewers.  This may be as much about the decline in cable (I cut the cord years ago when my bill went up 39% with no additional services provided) as it is about the advent of streaming but new services being added every day such as Paramount +, Hulu, etc. mean more options in the modern preferred channel.

The next question to ask is, who is doing best at streaming? Netflix is on top and Amazon is #2 but those numbers are likely misleading.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/496011/usa-svod-to-tv-streaming-usage/

Is Amazon showing elevated streaming numbers because it is a service bundled with Prime, that offers many things as a possible priority to the subscriber over streaming video?  We may not fully know the answer to that yet.

Best,

J.W. Gant

BRotD - Entry 0259 Regulating Technology

Best Reading of the Day

"Robber Barons"

That's what they were called.

In the late 1800s they industrialists who used questionable methods to get rich came to be known as robbers. 

Here is a bit more on that subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)

That is the language now in use to describe Google, Facebook, Amazon and more who have convinced the masses of the population to hand over their valuable personal data for free.  Time for regulations of these giants in technology?  There is an argument to be made.

Read more here:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611425/its-time-to-rein-in-the-data-barons/

Here is a snippet from the piece:

When Mark Zuckerberg appeared before Congress earlier this year to discuss how the now-defunct political-data company Cambridge Analytica acquired data of up to 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge or consent, one of the few pointed questions came from Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina. “Who’s your biggest competitor?” Graham demanded. After Zuckerberg replied that Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft all had some overlap with various Facebook products, Graham chafed at the answer.

“If I buy a Ford and it doesn’t work well and I don’t like it,” pressed the senator, “I can buy a Chevy. If I’m upset with Facebook, what’s the equivalent product I can go sign up for?”

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant

BRotD - Entry 0231 The Megaupload Story and the Internet's Grey Areas

Best Reading of the Day

Great read over on Wired.com that exposes the grey areas of the internet.  Megaupload.com was a website for storing files and it stored a lot of files.  Fortune 100 companies used it, governments used it, private citizens used it ... and pirates used it to, to distribute ludicrous amounts of pirated media such as music, movies, and more.  The owner, "Kim Dotcom" is still waiting his fate in New Zealand but the case raises questions of privacy concerns, and all sorts of others.

Here is a snippet from the piece:

The DOJ claims Megaupload was anything but ignorant of the pirated material on its site. In fact, the indictment claims, Megaupload’s generals engaged in illegal file-sharing themselves, encouraged it with an incentive program that paid cash for popular content, and were slow and selective in complying with takedown notices, only pulling infringing content and dropping the incentive program when the company was at the peak of its power. Megaupload counters that policing the billions of files on its service would be both impossible and a violation of their customers’ privacy, that they did their best to comply with takedown notices as the law required, and that they had reasonable expectations of the same DMCA safe harbor afforded to YouTube.

But unlike the Viacom versus YouTube case, the charges against Megaupload are not civil but criminal; the key players aren’t being sued, they’re facing jail. Not for the first time, Kim finds himself embroiled in a criminal case based on uncertain tech precedent.

Here is the full story:

http://www.wired.com/2012/10/ff-kim-dotcom/

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant