What’s a “Channel”? – What’s an “MVPD”? – What’s “TV”? – Are Business Models Under Siege? – Paul S. Maxwell

My new book, “The Revolutionary Evolution of the Media,” continues! Read the latest chapter here.

Comment: Does the Federal Confusion Commission know any answers to these questions? (Answer below.)

Free TV isn’t free anymore. Cable TV isn’t cable anymore. Cable can’t even call its own national show “cable.” Instead it is broadband ISP and a phone company (hello Title II!) and an MVPD (Multichannel Video Program Distributor or something). Satellite remains what it is though what it might be under AT&T is another question. Even broadcasting is multichannel, for now.

The FCC wants to take TV spectrum away from broadcasters and finance itself for a weekend while selling that spectrum off to make wireless broadband. Or something. Here comes robust mobile broadband.

The FCC also wants to redefine MVPD to include anything that moves.

The entire electronic eco-system of entertainment and information is under multidirectional pressures to change … now.

Maybe this is about time. It has certainly happened to print.

Watch most incumbents make mini-steps and lay off people … although not as fast as those in the oil patches. Or print.

Got to give DISH some credit for working to cannibalize itself while looking to the skies – well, spectrum – to construct a radically different future. Maybe some satellite downstream coupled with wireless upstream and interconnected?

Does the FCC know the answer to any of these questions? Duh, of course not … it just sees movement and wants to regulate it. That’s the wrong answer.

Going to be lots of lawyers taking nice vacations.

Sad.

In other happenings of note :

• Welcome back, Lack, good to see someone who actually knows what he’s doing. Best news for NBC News.

• Back to the FCC. Doesn’t bode well for forbearance in another FCC post the 2016 election … no matter what. Even this FCC wants to change some rules it used as recently as 2012 when it decided an MVPD needed a “distribution facility” to qualify. Think Netflix has one? Or Sling?

• Bill Roedy: With a resume almost too good to be true, Bill will enter the Cable Center Hall of Fame a little on the overdue side. (All that and more can be found here: http://bit.ly/1w7JSQ6 ) I first met Bill in Hawaii when he was still with HBO … we both were speaking at the – no kidding – Hawaii Cable Club. Really, a serious cable association; kind of. We enjoyed it, especially Perry Leff’s cocktail parties. Bill and I also shared a history of service in the US Army … he a little more successfully than I. He graduated from West Point (and Harvard) and I got drafted. We both had vacations of a sort in South Vietnam, though. Bill is joining the Hall of Fame because of his unique successes and widespread world travel in the cable business. He started, from scratch, even more cable channels than John Hendricks with 200. He planted the MTV flag in 200 countries. Not to mention Nickelodeon and Comedy. He recently joined the Council on Foreign Relations and is the author of “What Makes Business Rock” with a second book on the way. (Next week: Steve Simmons.)

• The 18^th Annual Cable Center Hall of Fame dinner is set for Tuesday, May 5^th at the Navy Pier (600 East Grand Avenue in Chicago) during the INTX (nee: The Cable Show) that week. Since 1998, some 108 men and women who were instrumental in making the cable industry (or whatever you might want to call it) what it was, is and will be.

In an almost 50-year career writing and reporting on media, 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 Suite of daily newsletters and research publications. In between publishing stints, Maxwell served as an advisor and/or consultant to a number of major media companies and media start-ups including running a unit of MCI and managing a partnership of TCI and McGraw-Hill.

Send any and all criticisms, suggestions, rants, threats, corrections, etc. to him at cablemax@mac.com. He has a new Web site coming soon!

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