Mixed Signals
Jimmy Schaeffler, chairman and CSO of The Carmel Group, writes about the convergence of pay television and other industry developments.
With A Little Help From My Friends
At the 2011 CES in Las Vegas, I wrote for Multichannel News about four Ts: tablets, talks, travel, and thin TVs. The tablets and thin TVs topic was the obvious burgeoning development of these set of stunning new contraptions that bring dreams to life. Travel was a frustration with the difficulty getting from A to B in Sin City, and all the time wasted doing that. And the talks were a reminder of w ...... Read More
Comments (0)The Holy Alliance of Digital Signage and Pay TV: Near or Far Away?
Two digital signage conferences last month in New York City provided some fascinating observations about 1) the future of digital signage, and 2) digital signage’s future relative to the broadcast and pay TV business. Specifically, as it relates to the latter observation, is the idea that more and more broadcasters and pay TV operators dip a toe into the waters of digital signage, mostly lo ...... Read More
Comments (2)SatCon 2011: More Mixed Signals
‘Tis the season for conferences. Three weeks ago, it was the TV Next Conference in San Jose, with a core focus on Over-the Top (OTT) on line video models. This past week, in New York City, I attended the SatCon event of a couple days at the Javits Convention Center. The reason I titled this week’s review of SatCon “More Mixed Signals,” is because visit after visit to Sa ...... Read More
Comments (1)TV Next Conference 2011: The OTTs Are Coming, The OTTs Are Coming!
From Oct. 4-5, in San Jose, Calif., together with about 200 others, I attended a well run and very informative telecom conference called TV Next. TV Next is put on by Greg Fawson and his Jordan, Utah- and Berlin, Germany-based XMedia Research company. Its title replaces that of the same basic conference last year, called Set-Top Box 2010, which is quite fitting, because the real changes in TV toda ...... Read More
Comments (1)TV and The SFO International Airport: A Rare New Exhibit
In my TV consulting business, I travel a lot, I suppose, and that travel opens a lot of new things to me, for which I am grateful. Yet, on the other hand, I’ll always recall how my father used to lament the volume of his travel, noting “one hotel gets to looking just like another one.” The late Jim Croce could probably do something with the irony of this comparison. Recently, ...... Read More
Comments (0)MVPD+TV Change=OTT and The Third Perfect Storm
During the past 70 years of television, broadcasters have been challenged by new forms of distribution in two distinct time periods: the cable era of the 60s and 70s, and the satellite era of the 80s and 90s. These once-nascent distribution technologies, each one with one or two defining leaders using their legal strength to challenge the broadcasters, ended up dramatically changing the landscape ...... Read More
Comments (12)Thoughts on Rupert, Chase and 'Lisbeth: Learning From Mistakes
As good a businessman as Rupert Murdoch has almost always been, like all human beings, there are some clear and lamentable flaws that continue to vex him. These are the kinds of things you would have thought 80 years on this earth, and 65 or so years into the game, would have weeded from his soul, and long ago. My first true introduction to Rupert Murdoch was in 1995, through his daughter, Elisabe ...... Read More
Comments (1)Unresolved Issues: Finding That 8-Day Work Week
My friend and telecom colleague, iSuppli senior analyst Steve Mather, is a busy guy. He visits clients, he writes and researches, he coaches his sons’ athletic teams. Yet, like me, he sometimes bemoans the lack of time and opportunity to really study and understand today’s complex business issues. “Indeed, all executives and analysts alike are experiencing information overload ...... Read More
Comments (0)NCTA's The Park: New Ideas For New Telecom
Like a typical for-profit business, most non-profit industry trade groups must adapt to changing realities if they are to survive. That doesn’t just apply to general lobbying and related activities, it also applies to an annual trade show. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association is certainly no different, and 2011 will offer up some fascinating new communication forms as NCT ...... Read More
Comments (1)Photos and the U.S. Supreme Court: Nice Job, Judge Kennedy
Recently I read with much interest articles about broadcasting to mobile devices, and how it — as a trend — has been around for many decades. They just will not go away. After all, they help us all communicate better. I’m in stark agreement. Like that trend, another trend I like and see continuing is that of using everything you can — within reason — to better te ...... Read More
Comments (2)Geoff Mason: The Premier ABC/Disney/ESPN Storyteller
I always considered Fate to have been pretty good to me, especially when the first “TV” person I met - and worked for — was ABC Sports’ 1972 coordinating summer Olympics producer, Geoff Mason. The date was August 7, 1972, I was 20 years old, and the place was Munich, West Germany, in a large, warehouse-like facility north of downtown called Barnathan’s Bunglaow, ...... Read More
Comments (5)Cable Joins A Satellite Show: A Notable New Mixed Signal
My good friend and self-described latent curmudgeon, consultant Gary Arlen, has a remarkable mind. He engages things in ways quite unlike most others, and yet almost all the while keeps focused and amicable, despite an occasional flare-up of healthy cynicism. In short, I like being around him, and learn lots whenever I am. Thus, when he accepted my suggestion to return to the satellite conference ...... Read More
Comments (1)