Chaotic change -- involving billions of dollars -- is churning the waters of advertising, retail marketing, cablecasting and broadcasting.

Churning in particular are the traditional relationships between the ad side and the operational  side of these telecasting industries.

Yet, with ad models changing, it’s time to look beyond the home screen to reach the eyes of consumers. Now, cable operators and cablecasters must begin wedding their business to digital signage in order to better survive in the Brave New World of Giving Consumers Relevance.

Take the local cablecaster in New York City, Time Warner. Like most all broadcasters and cablecasters in many larger metro centers, TW in the Big Apple already has the pieces necessary to add a new revenue stream and a new business model, called digital signage, to its Triple Play collection of video,...Read More

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In the more than three years since April 2004, when Rupert Murdoch shut down the more than two million pirates attacking his newly-acquired DirecTV, the DirecTV system has remained “hack free.”

This is another way of saying no one has yet found a way to break into the system that secures the DirecTV boxes and signals.

Yet, like water that flows into and eventually around a dam, that most-effective 2004 DirecTV shutdown was the bane of rival EchoStar, because it meant pirate resources were consequently shifted from DirecTV to the now more vulnerable DISH Network.

Since 2004, there has been a large expansion in the number of pirates that target the Digital Broadcast Video (DVB) set-top box standard that supports the DISH Network programming.

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Coming off the Internet Protocol TV issue discussed and debated at length during NAB, and now heading into the National Cable & Telecommunications Association’s 56th show next week in Las Vegas (May 7-9), broadcasters have weighed in, along with small telco and small cable operators. But a dearth of larger cable operators have yet to clearly stake their claim in the IPTV dialogue and marketplace.

Together with DBS providers DirecTV and EchoStar, many on the IPTV side also see the larger cable operators as “enemies” when considering the new IPTV world. These views picture IPTV as an infrastructure that delivers channels of linear long-form content to traditional television screens by way of the Internet. (Which is not to be confused with Internet video, which represents indivi...Read More

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Video carried over the Internet, a.k.a. IPTV. Just what is it? Is it a Holy Grail, a logical transition, or a lot of hype for nothing?

As the 2007 National Association of Broadcasters confab wends its way toward Las Vegas, one of the sessions likely to attract a goodly sum of curiosity seekers, and perhaps some answers to these questions, will be held early Tuesday morning, April 17. Entitled “IPTV: Market Outlook 2010,” this 90-minute roundtable will grapple with the subscribers, sages and insanity facing content and bandwidth being delivered to millions -- indeed scores of millions -- of potential future users. Adds the event description, “But is it right for everyone or everywhere?”

Four of six panelists from the “IPTV Super Session” were approached recently to offer these early answers and insights into their bu...Read More

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After compiling data and developing arguments for the government review of EchoStar’s effort to purchase DirecTV during the 2002-03 time frame, I see many similarities -- and some notable differences -- comparing a possible merger between the satellite-radio duopolists, Sirius and XM. That said, it’s a good time to vent some ideas and analysis. This comes especially in light of recent company and government dialogues suggesting that the satellite-radio rivals want to combine to create a single U.S. satellite-radio monopoly.

One of the filings in the proposed EchoStar-DirecTV merger in 2002-03 involved a so-called ping-pong chart. This graphic indicated one of the party’s competitive responses to the other's when it came to things like retail promotions, customer incentives and many other marketing efforts to attain and retain subscribers.

Not unli...Read More

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Looking back over the past 12-and-a-half years, to the time on June 17, 1994, when Lemoyne Martin in Jackson, Miss., became the first subscriber nationwide to sign up for a direct-broadcast satellite service, this reviewer harks back repeatedly to the idea of a soap opera. That is because the idea of a regular story attended by remarkable developments and huge drama swings fits the story of DBS in America as well as it does any Days of Our Lives epic.

Yet at this stage in the drama, there’s a quirkiness to the repetitiveness of the story line. For instance, back in 1997, Rupert Murdoch, Charlie Ergen and Dr. John Malone were the key threesome that fought over the future of DBS, in the form of Malone trying to keep Murdoch from buying Charlie Ergen’s Dish Network. Flash forward almost a decade and the three are grappling yet again. This time, however, ...Read More

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Did former AT&T CEO Michael Armstrong have it right in 1998 when he risked his career on the idea of melding telephone voice services with the audio and video of cable TV and two-way high-speed Internet services?

Put another way, is modern-day digital phone service really such an awe-inspiring service and development? The answers are yes, yes (and, partly, no).

Voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) technology converts a voice into a digital signal that travels over the Internet. That makes it an easy service for mid- to large-sized cable operators (and large telcos) to deliver to residential and business customers.

Top cable-service provider Cablevision Systems leads the cable VoIP charge, with more than 24% of the homes it passes taking the service.

Interestingly, Comcast (the heir to Armstrong’s AT&T subscriber base) is close on Cabl...Read More

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At first glance, the recent U.S. district court decision on Oct. 20 that will require EchoStar Communications to cease delivering distant network signals (DNS) -- aka, local television signals to geographic markets for which they weren’t initially aimed --  to an estimated 800,000 subscribers to its Dish Network appears to be a simple battle. It looks like EchoStar versus the broadcasters, courts and Congress.

Yet closer examination reveals the real burr in Charlie Ergen’s saddle is his longtime nemesis, the Fox-like News Corp. chairman, Rupert Murdoch.   

Murdoch’s 25 owned-and-operated stations were the sole holdouts among hundreds of other broadcasters with whom EchoStar was able to reach a $100 million settlement with broadcasters in August, in a nine-year-long battle over its delivery of New York and Los...Read More

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