Now Cable Firms Want To Harvest Online Business

My parents were one of the early adopters of cable television, choosing to go with the local cable provider in the late 1970s to see what the then newfangled way of watching television was all about. I’m not sure why we bothered because we lived in a close in New York City suburb which had access to all of the city channels as well as various ultra high frequency (UHF) stations above channel 13.

Cable? Wasn’t Worth It!

Even before CNN went live in 1980, I know my parents had tossed cable as all that they were getting was community news plus cooking and home decor channels. I doubt that they were paying all that much for the service, but since the t.v. had no problem with reception with this service, cable wasn’t necessary. Nor was it very good.

Fast forward to 1998 and my newlywed wife insisted that we have cable television in our home. By then, I owned my own home but spent very little time watching t.v. I’m still not a big television watcher, but I must admit that ten years of cable or satellite dish access has broadened things for me tremendously.

Cable Bills: Up, Up & Away!

But, I’m also getting tired of increasingly higher cable bills. We do bundle our phone, long distance and internet access with our cable television, but I still think that we pay too much. Plus, if we want to see something not on our 500 plus channels, we have to pay extra for it. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve scanned the directory and didn’t find a single decent show among the many channels — I kid you not!

Now the cable/satellite world is getting worried that the internet is threatening their business. Most shows can now be viewed online which means that you don’t need a television set to view your favorite shows. Instead, if you have a nice sized monitor, you can view many different shows on demand. Best of all, commercials are held to a minimum, making an hour long show fifty minutes or less.

Moving Programming Online

To fight back, cable television providers are considering putting a huge amount of their programming online, making it available to people who are cable subscribers. I know that I can view one of my favorite shows The Closer already on cable, but they’re about a week behind posting shows. Hulu.com, which has scads of shows and movies on its site, offers links to The Closer, but not the show itself.

Comcast and Time Warner, the two big cable companies are currently in talks with network owners such as Viacom and General Electric companies which also own several cable channels including MTV and TNT to launch a new service later this year where current shows would be shown to subscribers. In effect, this would halt the inroads being made by phone and satellite competitors who have been taking a larger piece of the pie from cable.

Billions Upon Billions Earned

Don’t think for a moment that cable isn’t a big business. According to research firm SNL Kagan, cable, satellite and telecom operators paid cable-network owners about $22.5 billion in subscription fees in 2008. Cable operators have placed limits on just how much free content is placed online in a bid to protect those fees.

Just like music which became easily accessible online and caused artists to lose money, content put on cable is costing cable operators money too. If all limits were removed, billions would be lost.

Streaming Shows To Your PC, Laptop Or Portable Device

The programming idea looks intriguing as it would stream the shows in and include ads, be accessible in and out of the home, and no extra fees would be charged to cable subscribers. But, given the increasingly higher cost of cable access, you’ll still be hit with high cable fees.

Clearly, this isn’t a situation where the consumer wins nor is it necessarily an area where the consumer loses. What I would like to do is buy a new computer with a big screen and see everything on it. Then, when we’re not watching the telly, we can surf the ‘net and do other fun online things.

Whee! What a world.