The blog here has been pretty quiet, and that was true even before Covid. Yet some of you keep coming by, or at least your robots visit. Sorry that I haven’t been around here much for you.
Ku-band free-to-air satellite TV seems to have stabilized. About a decade ago, a report I criticized claimed that FTA was mostly religious channels and foreign-language programming. Today, the report would be more right than wrong.
On the other hand, the opportunities to watch free TV over the internet have exploded. Pluto TV, Peacock, Stirr, Tubi, Redbox, Fitzy TV, Airy TV, SPB TV, and so many other services together provide thousands of movies, TV shows, and live streams. Heck, even Sling offers a few free channels. (I also know a few tricks to stream out-of-market broadcasters.) Add in the gazillions hours of content available on YouTube and the Internet Archive.
So I just haven’t been prowling the FTA satellites as much as I used to. I still check and update the channels on FTAList periodically. On special occasions, I sniff around for some wild news or sports feeds. And every December 31, I enjoying ringing in the new year one time zone at a time from the Middle East, across Europe, then across the US.
I still follow industry news. A couple of weeks ago Channel Master announced it was hooking up with TiVo, and I read between the lines that it’s not a good sign for CM’s Stream+, a solid Android TV receiver with a built-in over-the-air tuner. When I find news like that, the kind you wouldn’t read elsewhere, I’ll really try to find time to let you know. If you see something fun that you’d like to share, feel free to drop me a line. I’m still around; I’m usually just busy with something else.
by Michael Kilgore·Comments Off on Grand Junction TV Stations Were On FTA Satellite
Update: They lasted for months, but the two Grand Junction stations are off Galaxy 17 now.
Original Post: For the first time in a very long while, a couple of over-the-air TV stations are broadcasting on FTA Ku-band satellite. Unlike the occasional weekend test, which I never bother to mention, this pair has been up for over three weeks, so there’s a chance they’ll still be there when you read this.
Sister stations KREX and KFQX, the CBS and Fox affiliates of Grand Junction CO, are loud and clear on Galaxy 17 (91° West). They remind me of the glory days of FTA, when plenty of stations carrying football games were in the clear. Now almost anyone who really wants to see more football can subscribe to a streaming package, but it’s nice to see out-of-market stations anyway.
If you want a taste of Grand Junction, you should try pointing your FTA dish at Galaxy 17 right away. There’s no telling how long these stations will remain available. As with all FTA channels, they’re fun while they last.
by Michael Kilgore·Comments Off on Stadium Wants To Be OTA Sports Champ
There was a nice story yesterday in The Washington Post about Stadium, the over-the-air TV sports network. It has ambitious goals and pockets deep enough to survive long enough to reach them.
Although it’s in a few pay-TV places (I love it on Sling TV), Stadium concentrates on its OTA audience. “Our end goal is to be the most widely distributed and available sports network in America, far surpassing the 85 million in cable,” Stadium CEO Jason Coyle said.
Stadium is part-owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, perhaps the most enthusiastic driver of ATSC 3.0. When that version of broadcast TV displaces the current ATSC 1, it will multiply the possible digital sub-channels in each market. The bouquet of OTA programming could top 300 channels, making cable unnecessary. “Listen, obviously some of these channels are going to suck,” Ehrlich said. “But the point is that what’s available over the air could be extraordinary.”
I’ve writtenbefore about Stadium, which fills the most obvious gap in OTA TV programming. Here in Denver, it’s on a sub-channel with a tiny dribble of bandwidth that restricts it to 4:3 standard definition and poor quality game coverage. On the other hand, it looks great on Sling and on Stirr, the recent Sinclair over-the-top launch that I really need to write more about one of these days.
Some regional sports networks are for sale as part of Disney’s divestiture of some Fox assets, and Sinclair has been reported to be in the bidding war for them. If Sinclair lands some rights to major sports broadcasts, my hope is that they plug some of them into Stadium as part of a freemium business model – if you like a team’s occasional appearance over-the-air, you may be interested in seeing every game on that team’s full network. That also goes along with my belief that some of those 300 sub-channels won’t be free. Perhaps Yourtown Stadium Plus will be available OTA to anyone who wants to buy a subscription.
Whatever Stadium’s end game, it’s well worth enjoying now. I just hope that it gets enough bandwidth over the air wherever you see it.
by Michael Kilgore·Comments Off on How Many New Pay-TV Virgins?
A press release from MRI-Simmons came out a couple of days ago, and several well-respected industry news sites dutifully reported its findings. Sorry, but I just don’t get it.
Here’s the lead: “The latest Cord Evolution insights reveal that roughly 31 million US consumers – 12% of the adult population – are Cord Nevers (CNs); that represents an increase over the 2017 level of 9%.” MRI-Simmons defined Cord Nevers as those who “have never paid for a traditional TV connection.”
Let’s do the math. Those numbers indicate that the total US viewing population is currently about 258 million, of which 227 million have bought pay-TV. The total US population grew by a bit more than 3 million from 2016 to 2018, so let’s say that two years ago the total viewing population was 255 million. Back then, about 232 million (91%) said they had ever paid for it. So how could there be about 5 million fewer pay-TV veterans now? Only 2.8 million Americans died in 2017. Was virtually every death a pay-TV viewer who was replaced by a young new viewer?
My guess, using only the info in the press release, is that MRI-Simmons would have been better off mentioning the margin of error in its survey using “roughly 24,000 in-person, in-home interviews”. That could account for differences in the sampled groups from 2017 and more recently. Or maybe MRI-Simmons nailed an amazing truth.
What I find funniest about this release is noting the outlets that uncritically repeated the story. Broadband TV News, Media Play News, Rapid TV News, and even Broadcasting & Cable reported the survey results without mentioning how unusual those numbers are. If every US funeral equals another Cord Never, then I’d say that ought to be the lead.
As young adults become heads of households and older adults pass away, I’m confident that there’s a true reduction in the percentage of current and former pay-TV subscribers. But I’m less confident that there were 5 million fewer of them in the past two years.
by Michael Kilgore·Comments Off on NAB 2019: When ATSC 3.0 Arrived?
Alan Alda accepting the 2019 NAB Distinguished Service Award
I’m back from the 2019 edition of the National Association of Broadcasters Show, which I’ve been attending since 2008. Back then, America was just about to switch to HDTV, satellite companies still enjoyed talking about the free-TV stations in their mixes, and the term over-the-top TV hadn’t even been coined yet. Now broadcasters are getting increasingly nervous about their online competitors even as many pin their hopes on yet another TV transition.
NAB President and CEO Gordon Smith provided the keynote, starting off the show with a touch of cognitive dissonance. He said, “My own NAB Show story began a decade ago – almost to this day, in fact – when I spoke at my first show as the new president and CEO.” Except that Smith was off by a year – his first NAB Show keynote was April 12, 2010, about seven months after he got the job. I expect that someone on his team confused his 10th year with a 10-year anniversary.
I truly enjoy Smith’s ability to state seemingly contradictory things without irony or shame. This year he praised TV localism while urging Congress to reduce ownership caps (which tends to reduce the number of locally based stations). And here’s an adjacent-sentence example: “First, modernize outdated broadcast regulations to allow us to compete on a level playing field … And second, increase regulation on the tech industry”. So the government should take a more active role, just not with broadcasters.
Again, Smith does all this with a pleasant speaking voice while making every sentence sound reasonable. He’s obviously a great builder of coalitions, keeping a diverse group of large and small station owners on his side. He puts a likable face on a business that was built on a promise of public service but usually seems more focused on its bottom line.
Alan Alda, this year’s recipient of the NAB Distinguished Service Award, soon followed Smith to the stage. Alda spoke at length about his career and was surprised at the audience applause for PBS’s “Scientific American Frontiers,” his second-longest running TV show. Surprisingly, he didn’t seem to have anything to promote, except perhaps his Clear+Vivid podcast. Maybe he was just promoting better techniques for communication, especially listening. As Alda put it, “I don’t think I’m really listening unless I’m willing to be changed by you.”
And from a viewer’s perspective, that was the best part of the show. Attendance was down a bit, and the show floor seemed a little smaller. Broadcasters seemed especially apprehensive about wireless companies’ upcoming 5G and were eager to get ATSC 3.0 adopted. (Excuse me, the current term is Next-Gen TV.)
A coalition of station groups announced its plans to begin to deploy Next-Gen by the end of 2020. Among the many station owners quoted, I found the Sinclair Broadcast Group’s president/CEO’s remarks the most telling. Chris Ripley said that the new system would give broadcasters a better product “while creating entirely new services to diversify revenue and better serve the public.” That’s the best validation I’ve found so far for my theory of the real goal of Next-Gen TV. I think that some broadcasters want viewers to pay for what they watch. Maybe it’ll be for the 4K version, maybe it’ll be a license to record programs on a DVR, but my guess is that the next broadcast standard will include digital rights management and a subscription mechanism unless Congress or the FCC steps in.
There was a smattering of Next-Gen equipment on display, but little that will be usable by typical viewers even when experimental TV stations get started. In general, there just wasn’t much viewer-focused news on the show floor. That makes a lot of sense; the NAB Show is to viewers what a zookeeper convention would be to the animals. The attendees are there to serve viewers, but viewers don’t contribute directly to the bottom line.
Gordon Smith’s reminiscence led me to look back at my longer history of NAB Show visits. Every time, the show staff have treated me as a welcome friend, but lately I’ve been finding fewer relevant needles in this haystack. If you’re a broadcaster or a filmmaker, or if you have something to sell to anyone in those categories, the NAB Show is a great party and wonderful opportunity. If you’re a TV viewer, or you want to learn what’s going to benefit viewers, not so much.
