4 ms·

If Net Neutrality goes away TV will thrive. This battle is far from over.

randomdata 10y ago
TV may thrive again if they improve the content. The biggest hurdle network TV has right now is that people are leaving because there is nothing to watch.
- ams6110 10y ago
  i kind of feel the same way about Netflix and Amazon too. I've watched most of what I want to watch. Neflix has never been as good as when they had the Starz deal.
  - randomdata 10y ago
    I agree. I may even suggest that mainstream-geared media is fundamentally flawed, as it has to attract a wide audience, providing great appeal to nobody. We accepted it in the past due to not knowing better, but now that we have a taste of video content tailored to our very specific interests, where producers are happy to have an audience of 1,000 people, it's hard to go back.
- gozur88 10y ago
  It's the classic death spiral. Fewer viewers means less money from advertisers, which in turn means less money for content.
rz2k 10y ago
I think you are absolutely right, and it has a lot to do with what is classified as television. Increasingly, television broadcasts are packet based digital content that is carried like other tcp/ip traffic. With adoption of DOCSIS 3.1, which will increase bandwidth for internet communications by dropping spectrum on coaxial cable devoted exclusively to streaming digital video, the definition of television will be further muddied. Conceptually, why should I have to choose a television package from Comcast or Cox based on which one is operating the cable? It makes some sense if my cablebox is parsing a stream available to everyone on the line, but it doesn't make sense if the box is requesting a stream that has not been multicast. I suspect that this threat to their television business has a lot to do with attacks on net neutrality, and that there is a belief that it is a slippery slope from net neutrality to deciding that they shouldn't have something like a favored provider status for anything that is packet-based.
- twoodfin 10y ago
  You are dead on. The fight over net neutrality was always about video. Some of the early legislation proposed when the Democrats were running Congress was scarily (for the cable companies at least) close to forcing just the kind of "television unbundling" you describe. As you say, they're all packets in the end.
wand3r 10y ago
As an optimist, I hope the NN disappears as a policy and creates the catalyst to enforce it technologically instead. It's a hard problem to solve but I think the pieces are there.

TV may thrive again if they improve the content. The biggest hurdle network TV has right now is that people are leaving because there is nothing to watch.

ams6110 10y ago
i kind of feel the same way about Netflix and Amazon too. I've watched most of what I want to watch. Neflix has never been as good as when they had the Starz deal.
- randomdata 10y ago
  I agree. I may even suggest that mainstream-geared media is fundamentally flawed, as it has to attract a wide audience, providing great appeal to nobody. We accepted it in the past due to not knowing better, but now that we have a taste of video content tailored to our very specific interests, where producers are happy to have an audience of 1,000 people, it's hard to go back.
gozur88 10y ago
It's the classic death spiral. Fewer viewers means less money from advertisers, which in turn means less money for content.

rz2k 10y ago

I think you are absolutely right, and it has a lot to do with what is classified as television. Increasingly, television broadcasts are packet based digital content that is carried like other tcp/ip traffic. With adoption of DOCSIS 3.1, which will increase bandwidth for internet communications by dropping spectrum on coaxial cable devoted exclusively to streaming digital video, the definition of television will be further muddied. Conceptually, why should I have to choose a television package from Comcast or Cox based on which one is operating the cable? It makes some sense if my cablebox is parsing a stream available to everyone on the line, but it doesn't make sense if the box is requesting a stream that has not been multicast. I suspect that this threat to their television business has a lot to do with attacks on net neutrality, and that there is a belief that it is a slippery slope from net neutrality to deciding that they shouldn't have something like a favored provider status for anything that is packet-based.

twoodfin 10y ago
You are dead on. The fight over net neutrality was always about video. Some of the early legislation proposed when the Democrats were running Congress was scarily (for the cable companies at least) close to forcing just the kind of "television unbundling" you describe. As you say, they're all packets in the end.

wand3r 10y ago

As an optimist, I hope the NN disappears as a policy and creates the catalyst to enforce it technologically instead. It's a hard problem to solve but I think the pieces are there.