by ·Comments Off on Here’s The Poster Child For My First Law Of TV

Paramount Network logoLast week, the Paramount Network debuted on pay TV services across the country. It has been through so many changes over the past 35 years that it’s the perfect example of Kilgore’s First Law of TV: Every channel, regardless of original niche, becomes like every other channel.

(There is one exception, thank goodness. Please hang in there, Turner Classic Movies!)

What was the road to the Paramount Network? Wikipedia says it started on March 7, 1983 as The Nashville Network (TNN) featuring country music and NASCAR events. Gaylord Entertainment Company bought TNN in 1987. After Gaylord bought Country Music Television in 1991, it shifted TNN’s music programming to CMT. In 1995, Westinghouse/CBS bought both TNN and CMT, and Viacom acquired them in 1999.

Under Viacom ownership, TNN began to target a broader audience with general entertainment programming, as well as roller derby and wrestling. These changes culminated with TNN being rebranded as The National Network in September 2000, coinciding with its acquisition of WWF Raw. The network continued its shift to general entertainment with subsequent acquisitions, such as CSI and the Star Trek franchise.

In August 2003, TNN relaunched as Spike TV — the “first network for men”. The new branding was marked by an increase in original programming targeting a young adult male audience. In June 2006, Spike repositioned its branding with a more explicit focus on the action genre. In 2010, Spike re-branded with a wider demographic reach and an increased focus on reality series. In 2015, the network re-branded again to emphasize gender-balanced series such as Lip Sync Battle and a return to original scripted programming.

And that brings us to last week, when Spike re-branded as Paramount Network as part of an effort by Viacom to give the company a general “flagship” outlet for original scripted series (positioning the network as a competitor to other “premium” basic cable networks such as AMC and FX).

Because of its predecessors’ long history and Viacom affiliation, Paramount launched with about 80% of US TV households, a number that would be impossible if it had launched from scratch. That shows the value of any beachhead on the cable lineup, and is one of the main reasons why my First Law should remain true for as long as there is televison.

by ·Comments Off on Tablo Beefs Up Its DVR Options

Table DVR recording option screenThe race isn’t over, but for now my favorite DVR for over-the-air TV is Tablo. At my household, it has replaced by Dish Hopper for OTA recording, thanks to Dish giving me a price break for getting my locals that way. And today, it just got better.

Tablo has added some of the advanced recording features for OTA that I have for satellite channels on my Hopper. Now it will let me adjust the start and end time on each recording, keep only a specified number of episodes of a show, and specify which channel I want to use to record an ongoing series.

(My Hopper still has problems with that last one, because sometimes I want to watch a CW show early from a superstation East Coast feed in standard definition and sometimes I don’t get around to it until later, when I want to see its full local HD glory. Although there aren’t many grandfathered Dish superstation subscribers left, and I get the feeling that the percentage of all Dish subscribers who watch OTA locals is still pretty small. But I digress.)

The new features roll out with the 2.2.18 firmware for all standalone 2- and 4-tuner Tablo boxes. I got to see what it looks like with a beta version, and it’s pretty much like the Hopper’s. The Tablo already was the best OTA DVR as of yesterday, and I’m glad to see that it’s not standing still.

by ·Comments Off on IA #8: Nothing Sacred (1937)

Nothing Sacred (1937) on IMDb

In this Technicolor screwball comedy, the first filmed in color, Carole Lombard stars as a woman who learns she is no longer dying of radium poisoning but doesn’t want to return the money she’d been paid for her story. Nothing Sacred is also the story of unscrupulous newspaper men, a theme from screenwriter Ben Hecht that was featured in another of his movies in the top ten of the Internet Archive Top 100.

Lombard was the screwball queen, and it’s nice that we got to see her at least once in color before her death in 1942 in an airplane crash while returning from a war bond tour. Enjoy her here in one of the best movies you can watch and download for free.

 

by ·Comments Off on Wednesday Notes

A wall of multi-colored sticky notesI’ve signed up to attend the NAB Show, probably the biggest convention for free TV, this April 9-12. Paul McLane at Radio World wrote yesterday that there will be some significant changes this year. For the first time since I started attending them nine years ago, the main keynote speech won’t be in the ballroom of the adjacent Hilton / LVH / Westgate Hotel but in “a 1,000-seat new Mainstage area of the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center”. There are also changes designed to make conference sessions easier to attend, so you should go read it! Also, Radio World is giving out free exhibits passes if you sign up before March 2.

Speaking of the NAB, Broadcasting & Cable’s John Eggerton, the hardest working man in Washington, reported that it had sold its headquarters. Under terms of the deal, NAB will be leasing the current building until its new headquarters, just a couple of blocks from the Washington Nationals’ baseball stadium, is ready in late 2019.

And over at FierceCable, Ben Munson interviewed Philo CEO Andrew McCollum, who said that his mostly sports-less streaming service hopes to add more channels but has trouble pulling them away when their owners also offer news and sports networks. I never root for failure, but I can’t see the benefit of live entertainment channels to millennials who are used to watching content on demand. In my opinion, any supplement to broadcast TV and Netflix requires what they don’t offer so much – live news and sports.

by ·Comments Off on Tegna Buys A Piece Of Mobi TV
The Tubi TV home screen on Android

The Tubi TV home screen on Android

Tegna, which I still think of as the old Gannett TV, today announced a strategic investment in Tubi TV. The press release said that Premion, Tegna’s local ad network for OTT content, will expand its existing relationship with Tubi. Therefore Tubi, which picked up $20 million in funding last May, probably has a better chance of staying around awhile.

I must confess that when I’ve done roundups of free, ad-supported streaming services, I haven’t given Tubi full credit. The press releases it sends out call it “the industry’s leading free streaming and TV movie network,” and its library covers a lot of genres. Tubi also has apps for most of the usual streaming suspects, though I wish it would roll out an Android TV app to go with its app for other Android devices.

That press release had a lot more, including the kind of quotes you’d never hear in conversation. “Tubi and Tegna share a vision of the future of digital advertising, based on superior technology, targeting and premium content,” said Farhad Massoudi, founder and CEO of Tubi, Inc. “Together, we provide innovative ad solutions within an unparalleled mix of premium content. I look forward to our broader collaboration with Tegna.”

It all reminds me of two recurring themes I’ve been reading lately from the some know-a-little pundits. One is that streaming services are losing money because they can’t possibly afford to pay for the content they’re using. In fact, the kind of precisely targeted ads they can offer make that revenue stream a lot larger than for typical network ads. The second is that cord-cutters don’t account for internet service provider fees when considering TV subscription costs. Well yeah, and they aren’t accounting for the price of electricity or heat for their viewing room either. For the vast majority of US households, broadband internet is an automatic purchase like running water. For all of these viewers, Tubi TV is a pretty decent free service.