The cable TV and satellite industry are in a bit of chaos these days. If you go back twenty to thirty years ago, they had it made. New channels were popping up left and right and there was limited space to house all of those channels, so the channels that wished to be aired would actually pay the cable/satellite companies to put them on their service. The cable/satellite companies were getting paid by both the producer of the content and the consumer of the content. It was the glory days of the industry. Most cable companies back then were locally owned and largely mom and pop operations. Prices were relatively low, consumers were generally satisfied and the future looked rosy. Consumers wanting satellite service actually bought and paid for the dish and receiers up front limiting the costs to DISH and DirectTV. If a consumer spent $400 upfront to buy a satellite setup they were going to stay loyal to that system.
Now things have turned. There are very few, if any new "must have" channels for consumers, so the cable industry is limited in what they can sell. Cable channels (starting with MTV and their "I want my MTV!" campaign) have gone from paying the cable/satellite providers to demanding to be paid by the cable/satellite providers. This led to lots of mergers and takeovers as the smaller mom and pop operations who had no leverage to negotiate got taken over by the giants. Some channels like ESPN are reportedly getting paid as much as $7 per subscriber by the cable firms. Many more are in the one dollar per subscriber range. With hundreds of channels now available and the cable firms having to pay to air most of those channels, squeezing a profit from the industry is getting very challenging. Most cable firms are likely clearing less profit per customer than they were twenty years ago despite the much higher current prices. Their costs have risen faster than their prices.
Now streaming and streaming cable services are popping up that require little to none of the capital investment in stringing and maintaining hundreds of miles of cables through every street in a town. They don't require cable boxes, DVR's or any of the extras. The cable and satellite industry as we know it are dinosaurs looking up at the giant comet heading towards Earth and know their time is limited. They will soon be extinct and they know it.
Even the miles of coaxial cable they have strung that they're now pushing consumers to high speed broadband on will soon be antiquated as the newest gneration of wireless takes over. The 5G tech that's in the pipeline will cover a larger area, deliver speeds up to 35 gigabits per second and be a vast improvement over 4g. It's expected to reach the market in or around 2020.
There's a revolution coming and the cable and satellite industry both know it. They're doing all they can to survive, but sadly for them, progress doesn't stop. Some, like Comcast, are jumping on the wireless wagon and hoping they can survive. They've also bought up tons of content providers like NBC and other associated channels to give them revenue after the pending disaster of easy streaming hits them. In the very near future homes with cable or satellite TV will be as odd as walking into a house that still uses an old rotary dial phone is today. The times they are a changing and the future does not look good for the traditional cable/satellite providers.
Kudos to companies like Comcast for diversifying as much as they are. They're still going to take a big hit in a few years time, but they're more likely to survive than some of the competition. The future is now in wireless and companies like Qualcomm that are developing the new 5g tech. Every wireless provider in the country will be upgrading to that around 2020 if things stay on track and with a much improved range, coverage and speeds as fast as 35 gigabits per second, the sky's the limit for wireless. Future smart HDTV's will come equipped with 5g tech built right in, much as most smartphones have 4g tech built in. Things like routers, modems, and the like will become obsolete. Every device in your house that needs to connect to the internet will do so directly through 5g.
The times they are a changing and they're not changing in a good way for the traditional satellite and cable companies. We are rapidly heading to a completely wireless future and there's pretty much nothing to stop that movement. If the 5g development continues as it's looking now, five years from now much of the stuff we deal with on a daily basis will be gone, including the cable and satellite providers.
Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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