It seems that every day I read a story about some big company who is working very hard to break the cable monopoly and to bring alternate programming packages to the market. Aereo is at the Supreme Court this week for trying just that – for bringing a small package of network channels to cell phones and tablets in major metropolitan areas.
Yesterday I read that Dish Networks expects to have a new service out by late this summer that is going to further chip away at the cable industry. They plan to offer a smaller package of programs over the web that are aimed at Millennials that will let them watch TV on smartphones and tablets for $20 – $30 per month. But I think a package like that is going to be appealing to a lot of households and is going to lead to a lot more cord cutters.
Dish has already signed up Disney, which brings them Disney, ESPN and ABC. They have reportedly been in negotiations with A&E, Turner, Comcast (which includes NBC) and CBS. The largest content providers have reportedly placed some contractual conditions on Dish getting such a package. They must include at least two of the major networks of ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC. They also must include at least ten of the highest-rated other networks in the package.
This concept is not new for Dish and they already sell packages on the web in fifteen different languages that they market under the name of DishWorld. This includes packages at $14.95 per month in Arabic, Hindi, Cantonese, Urdu, Filipino, Punjabi and many other languages and is a great way for emigrants to see programming from their home countries.
In another announcement that came out today, HBO, a division of Time Warner agreed to sell its library of original content to AmazonPrime. This is the first time that HBO or any cable network has made such a deal. This content has been made available on the web to people who subscribe to HBO at a major cable company like Comcast or Verizon. But the content has never been available to people who did not subscribe to HBO.
No one of these deals is going to break the cable industry. However, these two particular deals will chip away at the subscribers who buy traditional cable packages. These are deals that will let people get content on the web in a way they could not get it before. I think it is these sorts of deals that will chip away at the cable industry, and the industry won’t die in a big bang but will die from a thousand cuts.
Dish will lure away a pile of cord-cutters with this package. Verizon Wireless will lure away another pile. Google, or somebody non-traditional will get the rights to the NFL Sunday package and will lure away a pile. Somebody will make a deal with ESPN and the other key sports networks and take a pretty big pile. The Dish deal is the first major OTT deal but it will not be the last. As the programmers find a way to monetize their content over the web we are going to see more and more people dropping the giant packages. Virtually nobody is happy about paying for content they never watch.
Interestingly, not everybody sees the world in this same way. Here is one guy who sees a rebound for the traditional cable providers. He sees an increase in both customers and penetrations through 2019 for the cable industry. Nothing is impossible and we don’t have to wait long to see if he is right, but just about everybody else predicts that the large cable companies are going to keep losing customers and that the rate of loss will accelerate. Every little side deal made with Dish Networks or Verizon Wireless or Google is going to drag another pile of customers away from the big dollar, big-channel packages.
And at some point, the big line-up model starts breaking when programmers start getting less revenues for the less popular channels that are not being included in the new Internet-only alternatives. ESPN and Disney and the other popular networks are going to do just fine since they will probably be viewed by more people than ever. But the other 80% of networks have to be very worried about the trend towards OTT.