Mommy, what’s a channel?
The question probably won’t be as common as one about the birds and bees but sometime in the not-too-distant future, you’re going to refer to a TV, satellite, or cable channel, or to a “network” and your young kid is going to ask.
Why, you say? Hwhy? Because the basic need for a channel – its raison d'être1 – is as a mechanism for containing programming in order to deliver it to a viewer. And now, with new technologies, they’re really no longer necessary.
I’ll give you an example. Cable systems are trying to figure out ways to not have to deliver “ordinary” television. The reason is simple: they profit very little from it and that real estate (bandwidth) used by the “channels” occupied by standard commercial television is extremely valuable.
The value realization has already changed the topology of cable delivery. You may remember when that piece of coax carried every channel all the way from the head end to your home. Through lots of amplifiers and nodes and splitters along the way, but if you tapped into the cable at any point, everything was right there. Now, systems are adopting the same technology that the copper twisted pair (AT&T, etc.) use where only the channels you select get forwarded to you. That opens up a truckload of bandwidth to sell you other things – VOIP, Internet, VOD – ooooohhhhh do they love VOD!
So if cable wants out of basic program delivery, how are you going to watch your favorite NCIS series (how many are there now?). You immediately jump to “over the air.” Why’s that? Because you know that CBS distributes the franchise and it’s that CBS channel that delivers the show to you – even though your local cable system is picking it up locally and passing it along.
That should tell you that there’ll still be a channel. Maybe. Maybe not.
First, let’s better define a channel. Some would call it a distribution medium which gets content from one place to another. In the past, that’s involved dedicated radio frequency spectrum, about 6 Megahertz worth.2 By dedicated, it meant, for example, the band of frequencies between 54 and 60 MHz for TV channel 2. That band channeled the programming from the transmitter high atop something to homes in the signal area. Did you care? My favorite line is, “Nobody cares about what kind of car delivers their pizza. They just care about the taste of the pizza.”
The pendulum has swung so many times that Foucault (I’m on a French kick. Maybe I need to surrender to someone) is dizzy.
But there’s a new direction…that of streaming. Wait. Why is that a new direction? The world has been “streaming” since little Sammy Morse sent his dits and dahs through a pair of wires form one place to another. Probably because just about any individual can access content around the world and can receive it, save it and/or switch to something else instantly, and all on a pair of wires or even over the air.
What does that have to do with channels? Well, from my vantage point, everything. In the linear world of broadcast, someone’s pushing information to you through a dedicated pipeline. It may be a 6 Megahertz collection of frequencies in the air or over a cable but that content is being pushed in the order and at the time the “owner” chose. You have to take it that way. Sure, now you can now DVR it but it’s still coming to you in a specific order at a predetermined time – through a channel.
Streaming can certainly be thought of that way – as a channel – but the difference is that everyone has his/her own, instantly. And, more importantly, they can open that “channel” to all of the content available to them.
So, a content provider could provide an opening – go ahead, you know the word, a channel – directly to you. Bellisario Online could offer NCIS, LA, NO, Boise, whatever directly to you. First run3. If you think DVRs make it easy, a well-constructed VOD service blows DVRs back to the days of cave paintings. Yes, I know. If you’re reading this, you know that already. But when the Bellisarios of the world start doing that, the middle person won’t be needed. If you can connect your device directly to the content provider, who needs Channel 2 – or 3 or 4 or whatever? Who needs a transmitter sucking power and a channel hogging spectrum or a cable [satellite] delivering you specific programming. It just ain’t necessary. Forget the fight for ala carte cable. It’s moot.
Back in the early eighties, a major CBS executive predicted that cable viewing would never cume to more than 1 percent of total sets in use. It didn’t work out that way. Looks like we’re in for a similar evolution away from channels altogether.
What’s in the way of it all? Only a couple of minor hurdles.
First, promoting whatever new content is being offered. Networks and stations can self-promote. In fact, tune-in advertising is hard to escape, even in a dark, quiet scene of White Collar when USA Network pops a big, fat, bright, animated lower-third on the screen. That, however, is changing, too. Notice how CBS still promoted Thursday Night Football on NFL Network even after CBS had run its measly games? Tell me that wasn’t part of the negotiation.
So, slowly, networks will, either obsequiously or by force, bite their collective backsides out of business.
Second, Net Neutrality. The gummint is still trying to sort things out. It’s a tough topic to discuss but I still think the marketplace can manage it. Well, with a little antitrust “guidance” from that same gummint.
Third, Private Enterprise. About that antitrust issue, if a single company owns broadcast, cable, development, production, online and streaming services, isn’t that getting a little close to the edge? Now factor in the PCS folks like Verizon, Deutsche Telecom, Vodaphone and others, the pressure to give up channels becomes immense.
Anyone remember when the DC guys discovered that Eastman Kodak owned its own silver mines and paper mills? The justice department got interested. It’s possible that with a significant number of these so-called conglomerates offering these broad services, they’ll keep one another in check.
Sure. The media oligopoly will police itself. One raises rates and the others will lower theirs to steal more business. Ya think? Not gonna happen. But fewer and fewer entities are controlling more and more of the media world. And it’s not just controlling a corner, but from creative thought to viewer delivery. I’m not being political when I say the following: That kind of control is dangerous. Both content and pricing run amok.
But given the tenor of those involved – corporations battling for control and profit, gummint pushing for control and taxes, PCS folks screaming for bandwidth, and people having a “pay for it only if I can’t download it for free” mentality, it’s likely that channels will disappear. Some of us may become frustrated. Others, unemployed. But for a lot of “channel” jobs currently in existence, there’ll be lots more in the streaming world. It’s OK. Go to the light.
Now, quick. Teach your kids what a channel is, before they’re extinct.
1 I
structured the whole sentence just so I could use that little bit of
French. I can’t say which is more silly
– the phrase or me using it.The question probably won’t be as common as one about the birds and bees but sometime in the not-too-distant future, you’re going to refer to a TV, satellite, or cable channel, or to a “network” and your young kid is going to ask.
Why, you say? Hwhy? Because the basic need for a channel – its raison d'être1 – is as a mechanism for containing programming in order to deliver it to a viewer. And now, with new technologies, they’re really no longer necessary.
I’ll give you an example. Cable systems are trying to figure out ways to not have to deliver “ordinary” television. The reason is simple: they profit very little from it and that real estate (bandwidth) used by the “channels” occupied by standard commercial television is extremely valuable.
The value realization has already changed the topology of cable delivery. You may remember when that piece of coax carried every channel all the way from the head end to your home. Through lots of amplifiers and nodes and splitters along the way, but if you tapped into the cable at any point, everything was right there. Now, systems are adopting the same technology that the copper twisted pair (AT&T, etc.) use where only the channels you select get forwarded to you. That opens up a truckload of bandwidth to sell you other things – VOIP, Internet, VOD – ooooohhhhh do they love VOD!
So if cable wants out of basic program delivery, how are you going to watch your favorite NCIS series (how many are there now?). You immediately jump to “over the air.” Why’s that? Because you know that CBS distributes the franchise and it’s that CBS channel that delivers the show to you – even though your local cable system is picking it up locally and passing it along.
That should tell you that there’ll still be a channel. Maybe. Maybe not.
First, let’s better define a channel. Some would call it a distribution medium which gets content from one place to another. In the past, that’s involved dedicated radio frequency spectrum, about 6 Megahertz worth.2 By dedicated, it meant, for example, the band of frequencies between 54 and 60 MHz for TV channel 2. That band channeled the programming from the transmitter high atop something to homes in the signal area. Did you care? My favorite line is, “Nobody cares about what kind of car delivers their pizza. They just care about the taste of the pizza.”
The pendulum has swung so many times that Foucault (I’m on a French kick. Maybe I need to surrender to someone) is dizzy.
But there’s a new direction…that of streaming. Wait. Why is that a new direction? The world has been “streaming” since little Sammy Morse sent his dits and dahs through a pair of wires form one place to another. Probably because just about any individual can access content around the world and can receive it, save it and/or switch to something else instantly, and all on a pair of wires or even over the air.
What does that have to do with channels? Well, from my vantage point, everything. In the linear world of broadcast, someone’s pushing information to you through a dedicated pipeline. It may be a 6 Megahertz collection of frequencies in the air or over a cable but that content is being pushed in the order and at the time the “owner” chose. You have to take it that way. Sure, now you can now DVR it but it’s still coming to you in a specific order at a predetermined time – through a channel.
Streaming can certainly be thought of that way – as a channel – but the difference is that everyone has his/her own, instantly. And, more importantly, they can open that “channel” to all of the content available to them.
So, a content provider could provide an opening – go ahead, you know the word, a channel – directly to you. Bellisario Online could offer NCIS, LA, NO, Boise, whatever directly to you. First run3. If you think DVRs make it easy, a well-constructed VOD service blows DVRs back to the days of cave paintings. Yes, I know. If you’re reading this, you know that already. But when the Bellisarios of the world start doing that, the middle person won’t be needed. If you can connect your device directly to the content provider, who needs Channel 2 – or 3 or 4 or whatever? Who needs a transmitter sucking power and a channel hogging spectrum or a cable [satellite] delivering you specific programming. It just ain’t necessary. Forget the fight for ala carte cable. It’s moot.
Back in the early eighties, a major CBS executive predicted that cable viewing would never cume to more than 1 percent of total sets in use. It didn’t work out that way. Looks like we’re in for a similar evolution away from channels altogether.
What’s in the way of it all? Only a couple of minor hurdles.
First, promoting whatever new content is being offered. Networks and stations can self-promote. In fact, tune-in advertising is hard to escape, even in a dark, quiet scene of White Collar when USA Network pops a big, fat, bright, animated lower-third on the screen. That, however, is changing, too. Notice how CBS still promoted Thursday Night Football on NFL Network even after CBS had run its measly games? Tell me that wasn’t part of the negotiation.
So, slowly, networks will, either obsequiously or by force, bite their collective backsides out of business.
Second, Net Neutrality. The gummint is still trying to sort things out. It’s a tough topic to discuss but I still think the marketplace can manage it. Well, with a little antitrust “guidance” from that same gummint.
Third, Private Enterprise. About that antitrust issue, if a single company owns broadcast, cable, development, production, online and streaming services, isn’t that getting a little close to the edge? Now factor in the PCS folks like Verizon, Deutsche Telecom, Vodaphone and others, the pressure to give up channels becomes immense.
Anyone remember when the DC guys discovered that Eastman Kodak owned its own silver mines and paper mills? The justice department got interested. It’s possible that with a significant number of these so-called conglomerates offering these broad services, they’ll keep one another in check.
Sure. The media oligopoly will police itself. One raises rates and the others will lower theirs to steal more business. Ya think? Not gonna happen. But fewer and fewer entities are controlling more and more of the media world. And it’s not just controlling a corner, but from creative thought to viewer delivery. I’m not being political when I say the following: That kind of control is dangerous. Both content and pricing run amok.
But given the tenor of those involved – corporations battling for control and profit, gummint pushing for control and taxes, PCS folks screaming for bandwidth, and people having a “pay for it only if I can’t download it for free” mentality, it’s likely that channels will disappear. Some of us may become frustrated. Others, unemployed. But for a lot of “channel” jobs currently in existence, there’ll be lots more in the streaming world. It’s OK. Go to the light.
Now, quick. Teach your kids what a channel is, before they’re extinct.
2 In the
good old days, broadcasters and cable operators used the whole 6 MHz for a
single program; 8VSB digital made room for a lot more in that same channel over
the air. Other compression like QAM on
cable reduced bandwidth even further.
3 Which
only means originally making it available.
It doesn’t “run” until you “run” it.
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