Internet TV Is More Popular Than Cable TV in the US

The Internet Is Officially More Popular Than Cable in the U.S. | Business | WIRED: ".... Traditional TV as a format already is being engulfed by the open-endedness of the internet. From mainstream streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Instant Video to niche sites like Funny or Die to YouTube celebrities—to name just some of the options that fall under entertainment—the kinds of moving pictures available and the ways to consume them have never been greater. Within this broader spectrum, cable as a concept could become just another niche, one channel among many as the insatiable internet swallows everything it encounters." (read more at link above)

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Next Big Threat to Cable TV, Loss of Ad Dollars To YouTube, AOL

The video viewers are not on cable anymore --

Cable’s Next Big Threat: Loss of Ad Dollars To YouTube, AOL - Digits - WSJ: "It turns out that cord-cutting isn’t the only threat facing cable channels. Several of the big ad-supported online video outlets, including Google’s YouTube, AOL and others, plan this upfront season to target some of the ad dollars that currently flow to cable channels, industry executives say. The web video outlets see a vulnerability in second tier cable networks, and to a lesser extend in the local TV-station market, executives say. According to multiple media buyers and ad sellers in the Web video industry, digital media companies are looking to draw direct comparisons between their audiences and cable TV networks, a match-up Web video outlets think they can win. Buyers say Google is likely to be the most aggressive on this front, given YouTube’s massive size and its young demographics that don’t necessarily watch a lot of TV. The company has been selling directly against cable networks, with pitches like “X YouTube net reaches more women than E! or Awesomeness TV reaches more tweens than ABC Family.” In one pitch, for instance, YouTube cited Nielsen data from November showing that it reached 49% of all 18 to 34 year olds, versus 45% for FX, 44% for TBS’ comedies, 41% for Comedy Central and 40% for AMC...."

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Google out to replace cable TV?

Google, an advertising company at its core and which also owns YouTube,  has begun talks with major media companies about licensing TV channels, according to people with knowledge of the meetings--

Google Said to Weigh Supplying TV Channels - NYTimes.com: " . . . A future Apple service could include a user-friendly interface layered on top of Time Warner Cable or Cablevision’s channel lineup. “Apple’s working within our current ecosystem,” one of the people said. What Google and Intel, and probably others, have in mind is more disruptive and more difficult. One person involved in the talks with Google cautioned that the company might end up just selling a library of TV shows, the way Netflix, Amazon and Hulu already do. But others said that Google has pitched an easy-to-use subscription service that would stream a bundle of live channels as well as on-demand shows, replacing the cable bundles that most households now purchase. . . ."

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Digital on Demand TV vs Cable TV

"So, we haven't had cable TV in something like 5 years now. Today I got to see how that goes with a child who has NEVER had cable and only knows Netflix.. I was at the doctor with "J" and she was watching Spongebob on Nickelodeon. All the sudden she says "I don't want to watch this, I want to watch Dora, or no Diego" She grabs the TV remote and starts trying to figure out how to stop the show and pick something else. When I tell her this is the kind of TV that you can't change to a different Nick show, she looks at me like 0_o and says "Whaaaaat?" I have raised a digital, on demand child. To her, live cable TV is what black and white TV was to our generation" (from comment on Tech News Today shownotes archive #2)

Apple may want Yahoo to displace Google - CBS News: "According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the two companies are discussing potential deals that might include Yahoo delivering more of its Web content to Apple. That move shows two things about Apple's current situation. One is that management is as wary of, and maybe even as angry at, Google as it has ever been, absent a legendary Steve Jobs full-on rage. The other is that Apple has a major weakness that will require a major acquisition -- like Yahoo -- to bolster."

Judge to halt broadcast streaming service | Variety: "Los Angeles federal court is ordering a halt to a start up company’s service that offers streaming of broadcast signals to the Internet and mobile devices, delivering a victory to the networks as they seek to protect their revenue stream from retransmission fees. Alki David, the colorful entrepreneur who already has faced broadcasters when he offered digital streaming of broadcast signals via his company FilmOn, had launched a new service last summer, dubbed Aereokiller, that provided local stations via remote digital antennas. His company defended the service as legal given a decision by a New York federal court in July to allow startup Aereo to continue to offer digital broadcast signals in the New York market . . ."


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Cable TV Against the Open Internet

Cable television companies are distressed about how quickly they are losing customers to internet and mobile viewing-- Arming Cable Against the Open Internet - NYTimes.com: "Companies as diverse as Cisco Systems, known for enterprise networking equipment, and Adobe, with its origins in graphics, are working closely with cable companies and other broadcasters to deal with competition from Internet broadcasting. They don’t want people to stop watching video on their phones, or away from their living room boxes, but they do want to control it. “All the cable companies recognize that there is a fundamental shift in video consumption, driven by device proliferation and broadband over the air,” said Jeremy Helfand, vice president for video at Adobe. “They have gone from a fear of cannibalizing their business to looking for opportunities for revenue growth.”"


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Cable taking the fast train to oblivion

Cable is taking the fast train to oblivion: " . . . . And yet every sentient person in the media business not being directly paid to support this charade knows cable is on a fast train to oblivion. How fast is one question. . . . We all know, and are altering our habits accordingly, that vast portions of television content, current and past, are available through other outlets that bypass cable. The cable industry regularly rushes to announce that "cord-cutting" is a limited issue, when virtually everybody has cut it or is flirting with the possibility of cutting it or being harangued by their children to do so. What's more, habits, behavior, expectations and a fundamental sense of rights of the American media audience are going the opposite direction from the thing that most sustains the cable business: that you want a little but have to pay for everything. That's called bundling. The future is called à la carte — you buy what you want when you want it (and if it's not available with that sort of ease and reasonableness, you steal it). Oh, and cable technology stagnates, while digital technology ever improves. . . . Detroit saw foreign cars coming and did nothing. The music business saw its products being stolen and hardly blinked. No need to mention banks and bad mortgages. Such hubris is combined with, perhaps, a human inability to truly appreciate the pace of change — it will come, everyone can acknowledge, but not yet. And that complacency contributes to the belief that change is manageable. Time Warner has a notion called "television everywhere," in which, as a concession to the changing world, if you continue to pay it — that is, continue to do what you have always done — Time Warner will give you access to its shows on your other devices. This is negotiating with the inevitable — and accommodating the de facto. (And, by the way, whose HBO Go account are you using?) Money, of course, is one of humankind's greatest natural drugs. As long as the cash is coming you feel good and believe you have time to find a solution, even though, save for an extraordinary innovation which nobody has yet to quite get to work on, the end is preordained. The cable programming business — running, practically speaking, on consumer inertia — doesn't work anymore, and shouldn't. It's too costly and inefficient. It will die. This is easy: There will not be a cable business in five years, or at least not a healthy one. . . ."


Digital Diary: Are We Suffering From Mobile App Burnout?
" . . . This seems to correlate with a larger study by Nielsen, which found that the average number of applications per smartphone was rising, but that the amount of time people spent using apps had not changed much. The most heavily used apps were Facebook, YouTube, the Android Market, Google Search and Gmail. Onavo, a company that helps people monitor their data use, estimates that only about 1,000 applications have at least 50,000 users in the United States. The rest remain far from the mainstream. For the typical app, less than half the people who download it use it more than once, said Guy Rosen, the chief executive of Onavo. . . ."

Nielsen Agrees to Expand Definition of TV Viewing: " . . . . By September 2013, when the next TV season begins, Nielsen expects to have in place new hardware and software tools in the nearly 23,000 TV homes it samples. Those measurement systems will capture viewership not just from the 75 percent of homes that rely on cable, satellite and over the air broadcasts but also viewing via devices that deliver video from streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon, from so-called over-the-top services and from TV enabled game systems like the X-Box and PlayStation. While some use of iPads and other tablets that receive broadband in the home will be included in the first phase of measurement improvements, a second phase is envisioned to include such devices in a more comprehensive fashion. The second phase is envisioned to roll out on a slower timetable, according to sources, will the overall goal to attempt to capture video viewing of any kind from any source. Nielsen is said to have an internal goal of being able to measure video viewing on an iPad by the end of this year, a process in which the company will work closely with its clients. . . ."


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