1 big thing: 📺 Cable TV's slow, painful death

[BleedGopher]

per Axios Sports:

Cable TV is dying a slow death, and after years of mostly denying that reality, America's major media companies are beginning to hedge their bets and prepare for what comes next.

• By the numbers: 25 million homes have cut the cord since 2012, and another 25 million are expected to do so by 2025.
• Looking ahead: If projections hold and the number of households with traditional pay-TV bundles stabilizes at ~50 million, U.S. media companies would lose ~$25 billion in subscription revenue, plus any advertising losses.

The big picture: Partly due to the loss of live sports, the COVID-19 pandemic will drive cable and satellite TV providers to lose the most subscribers ever.


The state of play: This has created a "tectonic shift" in the industry, with Disney, NBCUniversal, WarnerMedia and ViacomCBS all announcing major reorganizations in the last four months with an eye towards streaming.

• Cable TV customers pay ESPN more than $9 per month, so the company has long been hesitant to cannibalize that deal by pivoting to streaming. But as cable subscriber numbers plummet, they clearly see the writing on the wall.
• In the last two weeks, ESPN laid off 300 people — many of them in TV production — and moved most of its premium written content behind the ESPN+ paywall in an attempt to drive subscriptions.

A bold prediction: Every league will eventually go direct-to-consumer, sacrificing big paychecks from networks but gaining a direct relationship with their fans — and data about their customers.

• In that scenario, the ESPNs of the world might start acquiring stakes in sports leagues, rather than paying for the rights to broadcast them.
• For example, ESPN is paying billions of dollars to stream UFC fights on ESPN+ through 2025. What if they had just bought the UFC instead?

Between the lines: Not only is cable dying, but what it represents — linear broadcasts, studio shows, content designed to appeal to the masses — is also becoming a thing of the past.

• With so many on-demand options, and a customized feed of information on social media, why would a teenager tune into ESPN or FS1 outside of live games?
• And here's a really scary thought for legacy media: What happens if that teenager can't even be swayed to tune into the live games?

Go Gophers!!

 

[MplsGopher]

Teenagers are a small segment of the population, with the attention span of woodpeckers.

Live sports broadcasts are probably consumed mostly by people in their 30's and over.

At most, Big Ten games will be on BTN only, at a subscription fee of $X/mo per subscriber. To me that's still closer to what we have now that what they're talking about above. But it's semantics at some point.


I get data utility/service to my house via USI fiber internet. And I get payTV sports access via YouTubeTV.

Comcast and CenturyLink are very much dead to me, already.

 

[short ornery norwegian]

I signed up for the Disney+ bundle for two main reasons - watching Marvel TV shows on Disney Plus, and watching Boxing on ESPN+. Tonight, ESPN+ showed almost 3 hours of undercard bouts before the Bud Crawford fight on the main ESPN channel.

I still have traditional cable t-v through a municipally-owned system. But, they are losing money on their video operation, so they want to drop the traditional cable TV system and replace it with a streaming service. covid has caused the project to be significantly delayed, but they hope to get it done next year. my municipal system does have very good internet. fiber-to-the home with high speeds. they are also rolling out a new in-home wi-fi system as part of a system upgrade.

 

[Spaulding!No!]

Gambling will pick up the slack. It will make sports x10 wealthier than they are today.

 

[Wally]

Wish I had another option for high speed internet, I would love to cancel Concast.

 

[MplsGopher]

Wish I had another option for high speed internet, I would love to cancel Concast.

The state and federal governments need to require developers to install fiber, like they install electrical, water, and sewer.

Data is a utility. Fact

 

[short ornery norwegian]

The state and federal governments need to require developers to install fiber, like they install electrical, water, and sewer.

Data is a utility. Fact

Fiber is pretty expensive to install. Costs can range from $1 to $6 per foot depending on the number of strands. A typical installation can run $10,000 to $12,000 a mile. That's just for the cost of the fiber and labor. then you have the cost of boring in drops, hooking up pedestals, terminals, etc.

So, if a developer is going to foot those expenses, they will want to get their investment back in some fashion - likely by passing those costs along to the buyer of the property.

That's why the big companies have an advantage. Lot easier to spread out the cost over a big company as opposed to a small company.

My local municipally-owned tele-comm provider applied for covid funding to expand service to an under-served community about 15 miles away. Word came back that the estimated cost of the project was too high and did not benefit enough people, so they were not considered likely to get a grant.

 

[MplsGopher]

Fiber is pretty expensive to install. Costs can range from $1 to $6 per foot depending on the number of strands. A typical installation can run $10,000 to $12,000 a mile. That's just for the cost of the fiber and labor. then you have the cost of boring in drops, hooking up pedestals, terminals, etc.

So, if a developer is going to foot those expenses, they will want to get their investment back in some fashion - likely by passing those costs along to the buyer of the property.

That's why the big companies have an advantage. Lot easier to spread out the cost over a big company as opposed to a small company.

My local municipally-owned tele-comm provider applied for covid funding to expand service to an under-served community about 15 miles away. Word came back that the estimated cost of the project was too high and did not benefit enough people, so they were not considered likely to get a grant.

Thanks for the info. State needs to kick in, then. Rural towns and counties need to kick in as well. At one time, rural electrification was just as costly, but it was made a priority. High speed, on technology more advanced than cable modem and DSL, needs to be just as much a priority.

Perhaps the dream is fiber to wireless access points, and the last mile or X thousand feet through the air. Just don't think that's going to be feasible for all. 5G is absolutely not the answer, to replace all landline data. Not any time soon. The price they will demand per GB would be extraordinary and not a solution.

 

[stocker08]

Thanks for the info. State needs to kick in, then. Rural towns and counties need to kick in as well. At one time, rural electrification was just as costly, but it was made a priority. High speed, on technology more advanced than cable modem and DSL, needs to be just as much a priority.

Perhaps the dream is fiber to wireless access points, and the last mile or X thousand feet through the air. Just don't think that's going to be feasible for all. 5G is absolutely not the answer, to replace all landline data. Not any time soon. The price they will demand per GB would be extraordinary and not a solution.

Interesting discussion here. Now....and I am not sure about this....but as far as I know wireless data doesn't cost the hosting company more for increased usage, does it? It's always been spendy for wireless cell providers because they could get away with charging those amounts.

But say that local municipality decided that rather than laying fiber, they could build out the wireless infrastructure at a much cheaper cost.....I was under the impression that actual wireless data costs are basically negligible.

 

[MplsGopher]

Interesting discussion here. Now....and I am not sure about this....but as far as I know wireless data doesn't cost the hosting company more for increased usage, does it? It's always been spendy for wireless cell providers because they could get away with charging those amounts.

But say that local municipality decided that rather than laying fiber, they could build out the wireless infrastructure at a much cheaper cost.....I was under the impression that actual wireless data costs are basically negligible.

I hear what you're saying. That was what I was trying to get at with my last mile/X thousand feet comment.

Say the city of Mpls builds a collection of "radio towers" that have fiber run to them, and then they basically act as "extended wifi" routers that blanket the city.

I think that could work well in a densely populated area. But for rural high speed data, I don't think those have the combination of range and speed that can match the 5G cell phone networks. Those can get away with it, and they will, charge $50/mo for 10GB of data, for example. That's nothing compared to what people and businesses use per month on landline.

 

[stocker08]

I hear what you're saying. That was what I was trying to get at with my last mile/X thousand feet comment.

Say the city of Mpls builds a collection of "radio towers" that have fiber run to them, and then they basically act as "extended wifi" routers that blanket the city.

I think that could work well in a densely populated area. But for rural high speed data, I don't think those have the combination of range and speed that can match the 5G cell phone networks. Those can get away with it, and they will, charge $50/mo for 10GB of data, for example. That's nothing compared to what people and businesses use per month on landline.

I'm not sure I agree with your last paragraph. From a small town/municipal standpoint....running fiber throughout a sparsely populated area would be COMPLETELY cost ineffective. So instead of running the fiber.....why wouldn't a high speed wireless network be considered? As I said....I don't think that wireless data costs the providers a significant amount as usage ramps up. Treating wireless like wired and charging a flat rate doesn't seem unreasonable.

 

[forever a gopher]

I hear what you're saying. That was what I was trying to get at with my last mile/X thousand feet comment.

Say the city of Mpls builds a collection of "radio towers" that have fiber run to them, and then they basically act as "extended wifi" routers that blanket the city.

I think that could work well in a densely populated area. But for rural high speed data, I don't think those have the combination of range and speed that can match the 5G cell phone networks. Those can get away with it, and they will, charge $50/mo for 10GB of data, for example. That's nothing compared to what people and businesses use per month on landline.

Isn't this what Mpls already has? We had the USI wireless wi-fi package when they first installed it. Being in a stucco/metal lathe house, our signal strength was abysmal, even though the router was pretty close to our house. When they installed fiber under ground, we got that and it was awesome. One of the biggest things I miss about not being in Mpls is now I have to deal with Comcast for my internet as they're the only show in town.

 

[MplsGopher]

Isn't this what Mpls already has? We had the USI wireless wi-fi package when they first installed it. Being in a stucco/metal lathe house, our signal strength was abysmal, even though the router was pretty close to our house. When they installed fiber under ground, we got that and it was awesome. One of the biggest things I miss about not being in Mpls is now I have to deal with Comcast for my internet as they're the only show in town.

We have USI fiber, have no looked back and hopefully never will. Yes, USI also runs a city-wide wifi network. It's not fast though, I think you can get 6Mbit service if you install an external fixed antenna to the side of your house? It was just an example.

 

[MplsGopher]

I'm not sure I agree with your last paragraph. From a small town/municipal standpoint....running fiber throughout a sparsely populated area would be COMPLETELY cost ineffective. So instead of running the fiber.....why wouldn't a high speed wireless network be considered? As I said....I don't think that wireless data costs the providers a significant amount as usage ramps up. Treating wireless like wired and charging a flat rate doesn't seem unreasonable.

Again, range and speed for the technologies. I also think you're conflating things when you say "high speed wireless network".

If you're proposing, for example, that a rural county buy its own 5G radios and put them on towers, just to be ISP for fixed homes ... I don't know the costs associated with that, but my guess is that would be more expensive than running fiber to every house, in initial costs, and guessing a lot more expensive to maintain.

Cell technology is designed to work with moving targets, and I think not servicing many users simultaneously, but I'm not as sure on that one.

Other types of wireless technology that achieve high speeds, are short range. So for rural counties, there wouldn't be any point of building a tower to service every two homes. You might as well just run the fiber to their residences.

 

[stocker08]

Again, range and speed for the technologies. I also think you're conflating things when you say "high speed wireless network".

If you're proposing, for example, that a rural county buy its own 5G radios and put them on towers, just to be ISP for fixed homes ... I don't know the costs associated with that, but my guess is that would be more expensive than running fiber to every house, in initial costs, and guessing a lot more expensive to maintain.

Cell technology is designed to work with moving targets, and I think not servicing many users simultaneously, but I'm not as sure on that one.

Other types of wireless technology that achieve high speeds, are short range. So for rural counties, there wouldn't be any point of building a tower to service every two homes. You might as well just run the fiber to their residences.

That is my entire question on the situation. We know that running fiber to houses that maybe have the sightline of one or two others is an expensive prospect. I don't know how something like that would compare to 5G capable towers in terms of cost.

But 5G has measured speeds in the gigabit+ range. Again...I don't know how that translates to a fixed home internet system....but that is faster than almost any person needs.

 

[stocker08]

And...while 25 megabits is slow...I just heard an ad on the radio for T-Mobile home internet. $50 a month, no data caps, uses their LTE network. Limited in areas right now.

So it may not be implausible to think wireless high speed internet could work in areas where running fiber is not cost effective. And again....who knows what a 5G setup would cost. LTE is old technology.

 

[MplsGopher]

The other thing I'm not sure about (besides the costs) is how many simultaneous users these types of systems are designed to support.

T-Mobile for example might be predicting that not a ton of people are going to jump onto its network just as an ISP, and therefore their system capacity can handle that much additional load.

But if lots of people wholesale switched? Not sure these technologies can handle that.

The other "negative" is that if most people got their data from wireless, it makes it very easy to blackout whole cities by attacking very few targets.



@stocker08, to be sure, I am not saying you are "wrong" or that I am "right". I don't know, just making some comments, that might be closer to right or closer to wrong. Just keep that in mind, is all.

 

[stocker08]

The other thing I'm not sure about (besides the costs) is how many simultaneous users these types of systems are designed to support.

T-Mobile for example might be predicting that not a ton of people are going to jump onto its network just as an ISP, and therefore their system capacity can handle that much additional load.

But if lots of people wholesale switched? Not sure these technologies can handle that.

The other "negative" is that if most people got their data from wireless, it makes it very easy to blackout whole cities by attacking very few targets.



@stocker08, to be sure, I am not saying you are "wrong" or that I am "right". I don't know, just making some comments, that might be closer to right or closer to wrong. Just keep that in mind, is all.

For sure. I know little about the topic, so it's interesting to think about. Obviously a hard wired connection is the best case scenario. Just having the infrastructure in place is a clear positive.

 

[MplsGopher]

Infrastructure is ultimately just a stimulus, anyway. You move money from taxpayers to companies that build tangible beneficial things, that money goes to their workers, who spend it.

I can think of none better societal benefiting stimulus than running fiber to every home in the country up to some X% coverage (say the cheapest 90% or 95% of homes ... Alaska might be out of luck).

Reliable, affordable, high speed ISP enables businesses, education, entertainment to flow to homes like never before in our history. Talking hundreds of MBit for $50/mo, total. No hassles, no fees, no promo rates, no rentals. All that typical capitalistic bulls__t in our current ISP and pay TV markets.


It is every much an essential utility as electricity and water, and should be regulated as such.

 

[stocker08]

Infrastructure is ultimately just a stimulus, anyway. You move money from taxpayers to companies that build tangible beneficial things, that money goes to their workers, who spend it.

I can think of none better societal benefiting stimulus than running fiber to every home in the country up to some X% coverage (say the cheapest 90% or 95% of homes ... Alaska might be out of luck).

Reliable, affordable, high speed ISP enables businesses, education, entertainment to flow to homes like never before in our history. Talking hundreds of MBit for $50/mo, total. No hassles, no fees, no promo rates, no rentals. All that typical capitalistic bulls__t in our current ISP and pay TV markets.


It is every much an essential utility as electricity and water, and should be regulated as such.

100% agree with this. Infrastructure spending is a fantastic way to boost the economy while also providing quality of life benefits for the greater population. It's a win/win. It's unfortunate that certain people need to experience the first hand/immediate benefits or they disparage the idea.

 

[short ornery norwegian]

the issue with a hybrid fiber-wireless system is that you don't have many companies that do both.
Fiber companies do fiber and wireless companies do wireless - and in rural areas, they are often in competition with each other for customers, so they are not inclined to do any favors for the competition.

I live in a city/town of about 4700 people. We have a fiber-to-the-home system with really good internet. As I said, there are other communities in the area who would love to be able to be connected to our system, but the cost of getting there is prohibitive without some type of governmental assistance. And with the state economy looking at a whopping deficit, grants are going to be hard to come by. The only way an expansion costs out is if you can hook up customers all along the route.

just doesn't work to run miles of fiber that doesn't produce any revenue.

 

[MplsGopher]

the issue with a hybrid fiber-wireless system is that you don't have many companies that do both.
Fiber companies do fiber and wireless companies do wireless - and in rural areas, they are often in competition with each other for customers, so they are not inclined to do any favors for the competition.

I live in a city/town of about 4700 people. We have a fiber-to-the-home system with really good internet. As I said, there are other communities in the area who would love to be able to be connected to our system, but the cost of getting there is prohibitive without some type of governmental assistance. And with the state economy looking at a whopping deficit, grants are going to be hard to come by. The only way an expansion costs out is if you can hook up customers all along the route.

just doesn't work to run miles of fiber that doesn't produce any revenue.

As soon as you run fiber, you should be gaining every single home on the route.

Who wants to pay $65/mo for horses__t DSL service, when you can get hundreds of MBit for $50/mo on fiber?

That said -- as I've said -- it should be government subsidized (fully if need be) for the initial capital cost of the installation. It's a stimulus and a massive benefit to rural America, to help keep them competitive in the future job market.

 

[Livingat45north]

Cable of any type including fiber to homes is dying fast, in a decade it'll be dead. It'd just be like the gov't to jump in and spend huge amounts of taxpayer dollars to implement a dying technology. 6G wireless networks will provide over 90GB speeds and you'll see it rolling out by 2030. You'd really have to be pushing some huge data sets for residential homes to run into limitations at that type of bandwidth.

 

[Wally]

Cable of any type including fiber to homes is dying fast, in a decade it'll be dead. It'd just be like the gov't to jump in and spend huge amounts of taxpayer dollars to implement a dying technology. 6G wireless networks will provide over 90GB speeds and you'll see it rolling out by 2030. You'd really have to be pushing some huge data sets for residential homes to run into limitations at that type of bandwidth.

The funny thing is, they always find a way to use up the new bandwidth. Kind of like processer speed and RAM, keeps growing but for some reason it's always full...

 

[MplsGopher]

LOL!

5G isn't even rolled out. There isn't even a published spec on 6G.

Peak speed, of a single user, means nothing. Total network bandwidth capacity is everything. Wireless would collapse if it had to deliver the total traffic that landlines handle every day. That's the entire point.

By the way, guess who is the only company even starting the process of research on 6G? Yep, you guessed it, your favorite: Huawei, the world leaders in wireless technology. No surprise, the Chinese have long yearned to lead the world in scientific research, and they fund it as such.

 

[Livingat45north]

LOL!

5G isn't even rolled out. There isn't even a published spec on 6G.

Peak speed, of a single user, means nothing. Total network bandwidth capacity is everything. Wireless would collapse if it had to deliver the total traffic that landlines handle every day. That's the entire point.

By the way, guess who is the only company even starting the process of research on 6G? Yep, you guessed it, your favorite: Huawei, the world leaders in wireless technology. No surprise, the Chinese have long yearned to lead the world in scientific research, and they fund it as such.

Get a clue. 5G is "rolled out". New phones have 5G chipsets. 5G towers are being built as fast as they can find crews to build them. There are already 6G satellites in orbit, so of course there are specs on 6G. And of course Huawei is investing in 6G, as is every major wireless firm. It's what will be deployed in the next decade. IMO let the markets figure out what's best, rather than the gov't trying to pick winners. When the gov't gets involved they end up funding a bunch of Solyndra's.

 

[short ornery norwegian]

5G is rolled out in larger cities.

It's going to take a while to get out into the hinterlands.

(warning - not an engineer). As I understand the technology, 5G antennas have a much smaller effective radius when compared to 4G. that means you need more antennas to cover the same amount of area. that means a butt-load of antennas to cover rural areas. otherwise, people who travel will (I assume) be switching from 5G to 4G as they move out of metro areas.

 

[MplsGopher]

"Rolled out" meant that it was widely available and what most people (in the world) use. Most people still use 4G.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-54852131

The telecoms industry is still several years away from agreeing on 6G's specifications, so it is not yet certain the tech being trialled will make it into the final standard.

 

[MplsGopher]

5G is rolled out in larger cities.

It's going to take a while to get out into the hinterlands.

(warning - not an engineer). As I understand the technology, 5G antennas have a much smaller effective radius when compared to 4G. that means you need more antennas to cover the same amount of area. that means a butt-load of antennas to cover rural areas. otherwise, people who travel will (I assume) be switching from 5G to 4G as they move out of metro areas.

Here is the 5G overall functional standard (not the technical specification for the waveforms, coding, etc.): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMT-2020

The practical considerations that this doesn't address are: what is the maximum number of simultaneous users that a tower can support, over what range, and what would be the landline (backbone) connection that would have to feed to tower to support that maximum with each receiving a peak download?


As you speculate, and what sounds believable to me, in order to achieve faster data rates you need a faster physical signal (Hz) and those don't travel as far or as well through physical barriers (walls and such).

Hence it really makes no sense to build so many expensive towers to serve sparse areas. Probably cheaper to just run the line righto the people's house. Not that doing that is cheap overall, just relatively cheaper than the density of high-speed towers it would take to give the same coverage.

 

[short ornery norwegian]

found this article in "Business Insider" magazine:

5G uses a totally different wavelength than the 4G standard your phone currently uses. The 5G standard uses millimeter waves, which are a lot shorter than the wavelengths 4G uses. The shorter wavelength means 5G can carry a lot of data much faster than 4G, but it also means a much shorter range. 4G wavelengths have a range of about 10 miles. 5G wavelengths have a range of about 1,000 feet, not even 2% of 4G's range. So to ensure a reliable 5G signal, there needs to be a lot of 5G cell towers and antennas everywhere. We're talking on every lamppost, traffic light, etc. because even trees can block 5G signals.