Once Again "We Have Invented Cable …" And, Hey! We Told You So …

That first line above quotes Doreen St. Felix in her The New Yorker(06/08-15)On Television column following a short listing of streaming services. She noted, "Subscribe to Apple TV+, Disney + and Hulu, Netflix, the ill-fated Quibi, and now HBO Max — the latest of the big-deal bundles to premiere, in late May — and find yourself participating in a bitter joke: we have invented cable."

Not quite, but maybe.

But just think, she can self-bundle now. And you can, too!

But, as so many of us predicted, your programming and connectivity bill went up … again.

While most iterations of what were once called cable operators will still sell you pre-packaged bundles of programming options, their main business has become the Internet … or, more specifically, many shades of broadband.

After all, today's most important "television" is brought to us via Zoom.

Random Notes:

• The issue that just won't die: Network Neutrality … or, any time there's a loophole, someone will find it. This time, the company that really should know better is trying to disguise what it is doing by trying to bury the self-favoritism in the parent company … so AT&T corporate is paying the additional distribution fees for HBO Max customers that would be data charges on AT&T own distribution outlets. Tsk, tsk.

• Programmers are also facing some new distribution problems besides carriage and retransmission cost fees from classic infrastructure companies … this time with newfound set-top-box sort of intermedia access companies like Roku and Amazon Prime. Revenue sharing fees can be interesting.

Click the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friends.
The opinions expressed here are the author's views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.com/MyersBizNet.

 

Paul S. Maxwell

In a 50-plus year career writing and reporting on media, MediaVillage columnist Paul S. Maxwell started and/or ran some 45-plus publications ranging from CATV Newsweekly to Colorado magazine to CableVision to Multichannel News to CableFAX and The BRIDGE Suit… read more