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Sometimes it feels like everything we know about TV and music is changing. Well, it’s always been that way, just slower sometimes.

NYU researcher Finn Brunton says that the history of successful media formats “is not a history of teleological progress that ends up where we are, but a constant Cambrian explosion of different and diverse forms, most of which don’t make it.” And Joab Jackson of the IDG News service wrote a great article at NetworkWorld about Brunton’s presentation. So go read it! Afterwards, you’ll be comforted that, whatever bad choices you make, they couldn’t be worse than the BBC’s Domesday Book project.

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Bleak trees in SW ColoradoIn my continuing quest to gather first-hand information to answer the continuing question, I journeyed to southwest Colorado to see Mesa Verde National Park and its surrounding areas. The same digital tuner that picked up 62 channels outside Houston indicated that, in a second-floor room in Cortez CO, you can get exactly 0 over-the-air TV channels.

When I returned, I checked AntennaWeb, and it agreed completely. There’s a tiny set of repeater stations dozens of miles away, and that’s it.

On the way, I spent a night at the Movie Manor outside Monte Vista CO. Not only is it the only drive-in theater that I know of that still has a playground in front of the screen, all the motel rooms face the main screen and include a speaker for the movie. Highly recommended. But don’t bother with your OTA antenna, either; the same tuner also showed 0 channels here, too. Ditto about the distant repeaters.

So there you have it. In the middle of nowhere, where the land is gorgeous and desolate and sometimes as bleak as a forest of burned trees, maybe you can’t get any over-the-air TV channels very easily. Sounds like a great place for a satellite dish.

 

by ·Comments Off on Another company tries steaming OTA TV

TV Freedom picture from BamBoomHoo boy! Still another company is trying to solve the impenetrable problem of streaming live over-the-air TV to computers and mobile devices, legally.

The latest contender is Bamboom, which has worked out yet another permutation. It uses really tiny over-the-air antennas, “hundreds of thousands of them in a small space in a secure location” in a given city. Each subscriber gets an exclusive connection to one of those antennas to watch TV through the internet.

Two factors in favor of Bamboom’s survival: Only viewers in the same TV market will be allowed to watch, and it has a war chest of $4.5 million from investors. It will need that war chest because of the one huge factor that weighs against Bamboom and anyone else who tries to find a way around negotiating with OTA broadcasters – the huge corporations which own the networks and TV stations will sue or legislate it out of existence.

I haven’t checked to see whether someone from New York will be able to watch his local stations while visiting somewhere else, because it’s just a matter of time before someone gets a restraining order to shut down Bamboom. Considering FilmOn‘s history, that could be a month or less.

You see, there’s already a way to do all this. The big cable and pay-TV satellite companies are rolling out internet streaming of live TV, but only for their customers. So if you want to watch local TV on your computer, you just pay one of these providers, who turn around and pay retransmission fees to the local broadcaster. With all that money at stake, our corporate oligarchy will slap down anyone who tries to get around the system.

But just maybe, there might be one way out. With the support of the consumer electronics industry, the FCC is squeezing local TV broadcasters to free more bandwidth to be used for mobile internet access. The broadcasters are fighting back, but with the mobile communications companies against them, the outcome is completely uncertain.

Here’s my proposal for a deal between the internet/consumer electronics folks and the TV broadcasters. Local TV stations keep their spectrum, but in exchange, broadcasters agree to a standard royalty that any company could pay to stream OTA channels over the internet. Then the broadcasters could keep milking their cash cows, and viewers could choose from Bamboom, FilmOn, ivi.tv, or any other internet delivery system. How does that sound?

* You gotta love the folks at FilmOn. Even though it pretty much failed in its original idea to stream OTA channels, FilmOn has patched together a decent lineup of oddball channels for a decent price. But back when the networks sued to block FilmOn from streaming their content, founder Alki David and some friends sued CNET, a subsidiary of CBS, for facilitating “massive copyright infringement”. Because CNET had published stories about how peer-to-peer file sharing worked. Anyway, the judge in that case pressed David et al to detail exactly what copyrights were infringed. This week, the answer came: one movie and five songs.

* A couple of weeks ago, my favorite streaming service, ivi.tv, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FCC for all papers relating to ivi.tv and Commissioner Meredith Baker, who is leaving the FCC to join Comcast, whose merger with NBC she voted for in January. Meanwhile, ivi’s lineup has shrunk to two free channels as it fights to for the legal right to stream the marvelous banquet of OTA channels it used to provide. I’d really love to see ivi pick up some more freely available channels (NASA, Classic Arts Showcase, etc.), but what do you want for nothing?

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Sam Vasisht writes at Online Video Insider that Google TV and Apple TV were wrong to include “TV” in the name of their services. That statement is far from obvious, but Vasisht makes a good case for his theory. So go read it.

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Erwin G. Krasnow

Erwin G. Krasnow

There was a scary report issued this week by Erwin Krasnow, who is a former NAB General Counsel (according to Broadcasting & Cable’s John Eggerton) and/or former FCC General Counsel (according to AllAccess.com). In an opinion piece (PDF) released by the DC-based The Media Institute, Krasnow calls on the FCC to “(r)enounce the discredited concept of public ownership of the airwaves”.

(Important Aside: By an odd coincidence, I’ve been reading one of Krasnow’s books off and on for a few months. Profitably Buying and Selling Broadcast Stations seems to be an excellent guide for dealing with contracts and other necessary details as you’re working out a deal on a station. It’s also as dry as burnt toast. I’d love to have Krasnow in my corner should I ever negotiate a purchase. And I believe that my use of his promotional photo from his page on his firm’s site constitutes Fair Use. Please don’t hurt me, oh mighty lawyers!)

In particular, the paper seems to want to disprove FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, who said that “using the public airwaves is a privilege — a lucrative one and I fear that the FCC has not done enough to stand up for the public interest.” Quoting Ayn Rand and Dean Rusk, Krasnow builds an excellent prima facie case that claiming public ownership, and thereby inviting public regulation, is as absurd as requiring a license to use sunlight to grow crops.

But the paper gives little attention to the real problem: You can’t just stick an antenna on your roof and start broadcasting. It’s true that new technologies (such as blogs) give us alternatives, but that’s not the point. No other communication medium is as ubiquitous as over-the-air TV and radio. The number of simultaneous channels in any given location really is finite. Each broadcast station effectively prevents any number of possible competing stations from being heard by the thousands or millions of receivers within range. That’s why the public deserves a seat at the table as we discuss what responsibilities are included in each broadcast license.