Tag Archives: OTT programming

Why I am Thankful – 2019

It’s Thanksgiving again and I pause every year to look at the positive events and trends for the small ISP industry. I found a number of things to be thankful for at the end of 2019.

FCC Finally Admits Its Maps Suck. The FCC has begrudgingly admitted that its broadband mapping sucks and is considering several proposals for improving the mapping. It looks like the proposals will fix the ‘edge’ problem, where today rural customers that live close to cities and towns are lumped in with the broadband available in those places. Sadly, I don’t believe there will ever be a good way to measure and map rural DSL and fixed wireless. But fixing the edge problem will be a great improvement.

FCC Released the CBRS Spectrum. The 3.65 GHz, (Citizens Band Radio Spectrum) should provide a boost to rural fixed broadband. There are some restrictions where there is existing government use and there will be frequency sharing rules, so the frequency is not fully unrestricted. The 80 MHz of free spectrum should prove to be powerful in many parts of the country. The FCC is considering other frequencies like white space, C Band, and 6 GHz that also will be a benefit to rural broadband.

States Are Reversing a Few Draconian Laws. Several states have removed barriers for electric cooperatives to get into the broadband business. Arkansas softened a prohibition against municipal broadband. Local politicians are now telling state legislators that broadband is the top priority in communities that don’t have access to good broadband. It’s been obvious for a long time that the best solutions to fix rural broadband are local – it makes no sense to restrict any entity that wants to invest in rural broadband.

The FCC Has Made it Easier for Indian Tribes to Provide Broadband. Various rule changes have streamlined the process of building and owning broadband infrastructure on tribal lands. Many tribes are exploring their options.

Local Broadband Activists Make a Difference. It seems like every community I visit now has a local broadband committee or group that is pushing local politicians to find a solution for poor broadband coverage. These folks make a difference and are prodding local governments to get serious about finding broadband solutions.

The FCC Announces a Monstrous Grant Program. I hope the RDOF grants that will award over $16 billion next year will make a real dent in the rural digital divide. Ideally, a lot of the grants will fund rural fiber, since any community with fiber has achieved a long-term broadband solution. However, I worry that much of the funding could go to slower technologies, or even to the satellite companies – so we’ll have to wait and see what happens in a massive reverse auction.

States Take the Lead on Net Neutrality. When the US Appeals Court ruled that the FCC had the authority to undo net neutrality, the court also rules that states have the authority to step into that regulatory void. Numerous states have enacted some version of net neutrality, but California and Washington have enacted laws as comprehensive as the old FCC rules. My guess at some point is that the big ISPs will decide that they would rather have one set of federal net neutrality rules than a host of different state ones.

The Proliferation of Online Programming. The riches of programming available online is amazing. I’m a Maryland sports fan and there are only three basketball or football games that I can’t watch this season even though I don’t live in the Maryland market. I don’t understand why there aren’t more cord cutters because there is far more entertainment available online than anybody can possibly watch. A decade ago, I didn’t even own a TV because there was nothing worth watching – today I keep a wish list of programming to watch later.

NC Broadband Matters. Finally, I’m thankful for NC Broadband Matters. This is a non-profit in North Carolina that is working to bring broadband to communities that don’t have it today. The group invited me to join their Board this year and I look forward to working with this talented group of dedicated folks to help find rural broadband solutions in the state.

The Resurgence of Rabbit Ears

rabbit earsThere is perhaps no better way to understand the cord cutting phenomenon than by looking at the booming sales of home TV antennas known as ‘rabbit ears’ used to receive local television off the airwaves. A study released by Park Associates shows that 15% of households now use rabbit ears, and that is a pretty amazing statistic. That is up from 8% of households from as recently as 2013. And I recall an earlier time when this had fallen below 5%.

For the longest time the TV-watching public was counted in three groups – those who had cable TV (including satellite), those that used rabbit ears to watch local TV only, and those with no TV. We now have a fourth category – those that only watch OTT programming such as Netflix.

I was once in the category of not watching TV at all. I remember twenty years ago I went to Circuit City (now gone) to consider buying a set of rabbit ears and the clerks there weren’t even sure if the store carried them. With some asking around they found that they had a few units of one brand that had been gathering dust.

But today there is a resurgence in rabbit ears and there are easily a dozen major brands. And there are new rabbit ear options coming on the market all of the time. For example, Sling TV just launched AirTV, a $99 box that integrates Sling TV, Netflix and high-quality rabbit ears together with a voice-activated remote control that makes it easy to cut the cord. This looks to be one of the better voice-activation systems around and lets you search programming options by using the name of shows, actors names or genres of types of programming.

Since most people have had cable TV for a long time many have no idea of what they can receive off air for free. The FCC has an interesting map that shows you the expected reception in your area. In my case the map shows that I can get a strong signal from every major network including CW and PBS along with signals from MyTV, Univision and a few independent local stations.

The Parks study also looks at other industry statistics. A few of the most interesting ones include:

  • Penetration of pay-TV was down to 81% in 2016 and has fallen every year since 2014. Parks cites the normal reasons for the decline including the growth of OTT programming, the increasing cost of a cable TV subscription and growing consumer awareness that there are viable alternatives to cable TV.
  • Satisfaction with pay-TV keeps dropping and only one-third of households now say that they are very satisfied with their pay-TV service.
  • OTT viewing continues to rise and 63% of US households now subscribe to at least one OTT offering like Netflix while 31% of households subscribe to more than one.
  • In 2016 12% of households downgraded their pay-TV service (meaning dropped it or went to a less expensive option). This was double the percentage (6%) who upgraded their pay-TV service in 2016.
  • Very few cord nevers (those who have never had cable TV) are deciding to buy pay-TV, with only 2% of them doing so in 2016. This is the statistic that scares the cable companies because cord nevers include new Millenial households. This generation is apparently not interested in being saddled with a pay-TV subscription. In past generations the percentage of new homes that bought pay-TV closely matched the overall penetration of the market – buying TV was something you automatically did when you moved to a new place.

These statistics show how much choice the OTT phenomenon has brought to the marketplace. Ten years ago there wouldn’t have been industry experts predicting the resurgence of rabbit ears. In fact, rabbit ears were associated with other obsolete technologies like buggy whips and were used as the butt of jokes to make fun of those who didn’t like the modern world. But this is no longer true and new rabbit ear homes are perhaps some of the most tech savvy, who know that they can craft an entertainment platform without sending a big check to a cable company.