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Speaker 1: With technology with tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at how Stuff Works

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Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And today we're gonna

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Speaker 1: talk a bit about the evolution of how we get

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Speaker 1: television content. Now, I've already done episodes specifically about the

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Speaker 1: early days of television and the birth of cable, but

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Speaker 1: today we're going to take a step back and look

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Speaker 1: at general trends and how they've changed over the decades.

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Speaker 1: So kind of how we went from broadcast to cable

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Speaker 1: and satellite to internet delivered television, And what are the

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Speaker 1: various not just technological challenges, but the legal challenges that

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Speaker 1: exist in this world, the business challenges, And why is

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Speaker 1: it that you can't just have alah cart I know

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Speaker 1: that's the dream for everybody about getting a package where

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Speaker 1: you have just the channels you want and none of

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Speaker 1: the ones you don't want, because it seems like every

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Speaker 1: service out there it comes with a bundle, right, and

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Speaker 1: you have channels that you might really like, and there

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Speaker 1: might be a few channels that you really like, but

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Speaker 1: they're not included in that bundle, And then there's a

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Speaker 1: whole bucket load of channels that have stuff that you

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Speaker 1: either have no interest in or you would actively avoid

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Speaker 1: with every fiber of your being. You would never even

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Speaker 1: dream of just channel surfing because it would mean going

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Speaker 1: through too many channels of stuff what you do not want.

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Speaker 1: So we're gonna take a look at why that is,

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Speaker 1: Why are we in that world? And it's not just

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Speaker 1: about finding new ways to watch the latest episode of

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Speaker 1: Supernatural though those when Chester Boys are indeed dreamy. The

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Speaker 1: changes affect other important factors as well, like how is

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Speaker 1: television monetized and how do we as consumers pay for

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Speaker 1: that television. Now, for this episode, I'm largely focusing on

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Speaker 1: the United States as the model, which is because I

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Speaker 1: live there. I'm I live in the United States. A

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Speaker 1: lot of what I'll talk about also pertains to other nations,

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Speaker 1: but there are particulars that will be different. So, for example,

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Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom, any place that has a television

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Speaker 1: that is either being used to watch television live or

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Speaker 1: to record TV transmissions, no matter how those transmissions are sent,

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Speaker 1: whether it's over broadcast, cable, satellite, whatever, you gotta pay

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Speaker 1: a television licensing fee. I mean like individual households pay

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Speaker 1: a license fee for their TVs. Now, for those folks

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Speaker 1: over in the UK, you're all listening to this and

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Speaker 1: you're saying, well, yeah, that's true. But here in the

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Speaker 1: United States that would be really unheard of. So Americans,

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Speaker 1: if you head over to the UK and you decide, hey,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to live here, now, you would actually need

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Speaker 1: to purchase a television license to watch your own TV

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Speaker 1: in your own home. But then in the UK, the

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Speaker 1: British Broadcasting Company uses those license fees to fund their work.

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Speaker 1: So without the TV license you lose your precious doctor who,

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Speaker 1: So just keep that in mind. But that's an aside.

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Speaker 1: I want to talk about the evolution from broadcast TV

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Speaker 1: to cable and satellite, to time shifting technologies, to internet

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Speaker 1: delivery and place shifting options as well. Now, later in

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Speaker 1: this episode, we're gonna have a discussion with Jim shade

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Speaker 1: Chatari of Sling TV to talk about how their approach

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Speaker 1: is guiding us closer to that heavily desired a la

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Speaker 1: carte strategy for getting television content, So that will come

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Speaker 1: up a little bit later in this episode. Now, broadcast

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Speaker 1: television starts before anyone outside of research and development labs

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Speaker 1: or enterprising inventors even had a TV set. Generally, most

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Speaker 1: scholars agree that General Electric created the first broadcast station

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Speaker 1: in January. Originally, they broadcasted under the channel designation to

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Speaker 1: x B using a seven killer hurts frequency. Now, their

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Speaker 1: broadcast was for mechanical television, not not electronic television. It's

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Speaker 1: not the televisions that we know today, but the predecessors,

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Speaker 1: the mechanical models that actually did use mechanical elements to

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Speaker 1: transmit pictures. And if that just blew your mind, you

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Speaker 1: need to go back and listen to my podcasts called

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Speaker 1: The TV Story. It was actually a three part series.

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Speaker 1: So there's TV Story Story Part one, Part two, and

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Speaker 1: Part four. Because you know we always skip part three. No,

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Speaker 1: that's a lie. There's also part three. The first two

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Speaker 1: parts really focus on the invention and development of television.

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Speaker 1: The first part came out on April and the second

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Speaker 1: part came out on April, So check those out if

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Speaker 1: you want to hear more about the development on the

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Speaker 1: television set side, but let's focus more on just the

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Speaker 1: concept of broadcasting. In September nine, General Electric behind to

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Speaker 1: broadcast the first television drama on their station, which at

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Speaker 1: that point was called W two x B. The actual

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Speaker 1: drama's name was The Queen's Messenger, and it was described

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Speaker 1: as a quote blood and thunder, play with guns, daggers

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Speaker 1: and poison end quote. And that I actually pulled from

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Speaker 1: a website for the Early Television Museum. So great website

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Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about some of the

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Speaker 1: earliest forms of TV and broadcast. And frankly, that description

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Speaker 1: makes it sound like The Queen's Messenger was a precursor

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Speaker 1: to shows like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones, But

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Speaker 1: according to the website, it was not exactly high drama.

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Speaker 1: Most reports made it sound like the program was perhaps

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Speaker 1: a little bit more ambitious and the technology could technically support.

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Speaker 1: Some people said it was proof that quote radio moving

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Speaker 1: pictures end quote weren't quite ready for the home. And yeah,

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Speaker 1: that is what some people referred to television as early on,

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Speaker 1: was radio moving pictures. After all, you were broadcasting these

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Speaker 1: signals over radio waves, and the closest analog really to

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Speaker 1: TV at that point was the radio. So not that

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Speaker 1: unusual or at least not that surprising. W two XB

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Speaker 1: would broadcast its first electronic television signal a decade later,

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Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine. Electronic televisions had been pioneered in

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Speaker 1: the late nineteen twenties. Farnsworth. You probably have heard that name,

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Speaker 1: Filo Farnsworth. He actually created electronic TVs and he features

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Speaker 1: heavily in the TV story series that I mentioned a

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Speaker 1: second ago. Our c A was heavily invested in electronic television.

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Speaker 1: In the early days. The company had been a dominant

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Speaker 1: force in radio and owned two NBC radio networks. The

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Speaker 1: company wanted to establish a dominant position in the burgeoning

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Speaker 1: world of broad cast television, and so they invested millions

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Speaker 1: of dollars to do so. That was a significant investment.

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Speaker 1: I mean it would be today, but even more so

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Speaker 1: back then because I think fifty million dollars in nineteen

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Speaker 1: twenties money nineteen thirties money. That's that's a huge chunk

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Speaker 1: of change. Meanwhile, there was a competitor that was also

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Speaker 1: interested in getting in the game. That would be Columbia

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Speaker 1: Broadcasting System or CBS. There was another powerhouse in the

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Speaker 1: radio world, and they were jumping into early TV broadcasts

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Speaker 1: and created two newscasts a day. Each of those newscasts

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Speaker 1: lasted about fifteen minutes, so this was quite some time

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Speaker 1: before the twenty four hour news cycle, and these broadcasts

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Speaker 1: weren't coast to coast. They reached a relatively small audience,

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Speaker 1: primarily in New York City. So these early early broadcast

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Speaker 1: networks were very much local in nature, and in fact,

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Speaker 1: that's how we would see television evolved at first, lots

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Speaker 1: of little islands of broadcast TV that were mostly centered

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Speaker 1: around cities, and if you didn't live near one of

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Speaker 1: those cities, it became very challenging for you to get

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Speaker 1: any sort of content. There was a very little reason

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Speaker 1: for you to go out and get a television because

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Speaker 1: chances are you wouldn't have an antenna strong enough to

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Speaker 1: pick up the signals, or the broadcast antenna wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: strong enough to send the signals so that you could

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Speaker 1: actually receive anything worth watching. So the early early days,

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Speaker 1: this was very much an urban sort of form of entertainment,

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Speaker 1: and it would only be later that we would see

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Speaker 1: ways of distributing it to broader networks. By the early

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Speaker 1: nineteen forties, the US government was beginning to create regulations

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Speaker 1: for the new television industry, and this would be an

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Speaker 1: ongoing kind of back and forth between the US government

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Speaker 1: and various providers, whether they were broadcast companies, cable company,

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Speaker 1: satellite companies, or what have you. Part of this process

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Speaker 1: meant that the government wanted to bust up some of

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Speaker 1: the bigger companies like our c A. Then newly formed

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Speaker 1: Federal Communications Commission. The f c C went up to

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Speaker 1: our c A and said, hey, we see you've got

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Speaker 1: a couple of NBC networks. Do you need to knock

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Speaker 1: that off? Dump one of them. You can keep one,

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Speaker 1: but you've gotta get rid of the other one. So

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Speaker 1: our c A did as it was told and spun

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Speaker 1: off one of the two NBC networks, and that became

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Speaker 1: a newly formed company that took on a new name.

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Speaker 1: That new name was the American Broadcasting Company, or ABC.

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Speaker 1: Now ABC wouldn't really become a television broadcast company for

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Speaker 1: a few more years, but then you get the three

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Speaker 1: big early broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC here in

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Speaker 1: the United States. Fox, of course, would follow much much

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Speaker 1: much later. By the late nineteen forties and early nineteen fifties,

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Speaker 1: commercial television was becoming a thing. Sponsored programs would feature

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Speaker 1: frequent pauses to identify the sponsor and urge people to

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Speaker 1: go out and buy the product. It could be incorporated

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Speaker 1: directly into a show. In several cases, even the NBC

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Speaker 1: News in the late nineteen forties was sponsored by a

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Speaker 1: tobacco company, and as such, the host, John Cameron Swayze

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Speaker 1: was required to have a smoking cigarette in frame during

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Speaker 1: every shot. He didn't have to have it in his mouth,

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Speaker 1: but it had to be seen and it had to

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Speaker 1: be lit. Enlightened times, ladies and gentlemen. The programs on

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Speaker 1: television at that time were primarily extensions of previously existing

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Speaker 1: radio programs. So if you ever watch old Classic TV

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Speaker 1: and then you find out, hey, there was also a

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Speaker 1: radio show, well, chances are the radio show came first,

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Speaker 1: and then they would end up adapting that into a

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Speaker 1: television series, finding often that doing so was not always

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Speaker 1: easy because, as it turns out, with radio shows, you

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Speaker 1: have an unlimited visual effects budget because it is in

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Speaker 1: the mind of the listener. If I do a science

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Speaker 1: fiction series Ease or a Western, I don't have to

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Speaker 1: actually have any spaceships or horses. I can just create

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Speaker 1: a little bit of sound effects and let the listener

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Speaker 1: provide all the visuals. But if I'm going to do

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Speaker 1: a television series, suddenly, I gotta produce some stuff otherwise

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Speaker 1: viewers are going to be turned off pretty quickly. So

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Speaker 1: it was a mixed bag, but it did mean that

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Speaker 1: there were a lot of people drawing upon the experience

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Speaker 1: of radio broadcasting in those early TV broadcasting days, and

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Speaker 1: those three big broadcast networks were largely able to float

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Speaker 1: their television businesses by pulling from radio profits. So in

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Speaker 1: other words, they were taking the profits they were making

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Speaker 1: from one business and using it to support a second one.

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Speaker 1: Because even though it was revolutionary, there wasn't a huge

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Speaker 1: audience yet, there was not really an easy way to

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Speaker 1: make a lot of money in TV because there just

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Speaker 1: weren't that many people able to afford a television set.

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Speaker 1: So this was kind of a necessary evil in order

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Speaker 1: to keep a very young industry afloat while its audience

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Speaker 1: was able to start to coalesce and and grow, and

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Speaker 1: it ended up working. It paid off big time, but

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Speaker 1: it did take some time to do so. Now keep

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Speaker 1: in mind television's at this time, we're still pretty expensive,

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Speaker 1: and in order to get any use of them, you

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Speaker 1: still needed to live somewhere relatively close to a broadcasting

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Speaker 1: tower unless you had really innovative approaches to getting content

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Speaker 1: like people did and say Pennsylvania. But we'll get to

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Speaker 1: that in a second. Now, it would be a good time,

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Speaker 1: I think, to talk about how broadcast television works from

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Speaker 1: a very very high level. First, in order to send

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Speaker 1: a television signal out over the air, you need a

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Speaker 1: certain amount of bandwidth in radio frequencies. It's because you're

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Speaker 1: setting a lot of information out, the image information, the

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Speaker 1: audio information for picture and sound, plus you want a

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Speaker 1: little room on either side to avoid interference. If you're

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Speaker 1: talking about like a fairly modern broadcast that's about six

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Speaker 1: mega hurts a bandwidth space on the radio spectrum, and

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Speaker 1: again that creates a bit of a buffer so that

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Speaker 1: you don't have two channels overlapping each other and interfering

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Speaker 1: with one another. So in the United States, the government

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Speaker 1: would dictate which frequencies could be used for stuff like

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Speaker 1: television or radio broadcasts. They could also determine what the

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Speaker 1: other parts of the spectrum could be used for. And

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Speaker 1: this is a way again to avoid having two different

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Speaker 1: services try and use the exact same bandwidth and thus

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Speaker 1: create interference with each other. It's a very orderly system

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Speaker 1: to make sure that things run smoothly. Otherwise you would

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Speaker 1: have amateur radio operators honing in and and booting off

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Speaker 1: actual commercial radio stations or television stations, depending upon the

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Speaker 1: power of the transmitter and maybe how far away you

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Speaker 1: happen to be from that transmission source. So in the

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Speaker 1: United States, uh the government said that from fifty four

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Speaker 1: mega hurts to the eighty eight mega hurts range, you

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Speaker 1: would have channels two through six. Then you have to

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Speaker 1: jump up to a hundred seventy four mega hurts to

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Speaker 1: two hundred sixteen mega hurts for channels seven through thirteen,

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Speaker 1: and then jump up again to four hundred seventy mega

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Speaker 1: hurts all the way up to eight hundred ninety mega

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Speaker 1: hurts for channels fourteen through three. Now, the reason why

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Speaker 1: there are gaps between six and seven and between thirteen

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Speaker 1: and fourteen is because those frequencies had already been allocated

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Speaker 1: to other radio uses, so you couldn't just shift everything over.

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Speaker 1: That would require an enormous amount of work. So instead

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Speaker 1: of shifting everybody, you say, all right, well, we've got

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Speaker 1: this band of frequencies available here, We're going to allocate

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Speaker 1: that to these channels. Then we'll go up the spectrum

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Speaker 1: until we can find the next wide band of frequencies

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Speaker 1: that are available to allocate to TV again, and they

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Speaker 1: did that a couple of times. As for the tech

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Speaker 1: of the broadcast, it's pretty simple and concept. You have

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Speaker 1: a camera and a microphone on one end that's capturing

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Speaker 1: obviously visual and audio data, converts it into an electronic signal.

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Speaker 1: That signal goes to a transmitter that's essentially a giant antenna.

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Speaker 1: You amplify that signal quite a bit and you send

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Speaker 1: it up the antenna, which then converts that signal to

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Speaker 1: radio waves. So you get these electromagnetic waves that emanate

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Speaker 1: outward from the antenna. On the television side, you would

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Speaker 1: have a receiving antenna that would pick up those incoming

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Speaker 1: radio waves and then convert them back into a television signal,

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Speaker 1: which gets amplified in the TV set, and then you're

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Speaker 1: able to watch your stories. Now, obviously it gets more

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Speaker 1: technical than that, but that's good enough for our purposes,

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Speaker 1: with not an episode to talk about the actual workings

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Speaker 1: of broadcast TV. Just as commercial broadcas as television was

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Speaker 1: getting its start, so was cable television. Now I don't

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Speaker 1: mean cable channels, but rather using actual physical cable as

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Speaker 1: a delivery mechanism for television signals. So in other words,

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Speaker 1: we're not talking cable TV like MTV and UH, Comedy

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Speaker 1: Central and those kind of things. We're talking about just

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Speaker 1: getting television signals using cables. Uh. This arose in three

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Speaker 1: different areas in the United States, more or less simultaneously

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Speaker 1: and independently of each other. It was in nine which

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Speaker 1: is pretty incredible when you think about it, that it

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Speaker 1: was that early, and it was happening in Arkansas, Oregon,

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Speaker 1: and Pennsylvania. And the three things that these places had

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Speaker 1: in common was that they had some communities that were

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Speaker 1: a good distance away from these urban centers and therefore

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Speaker 1: could not easily pick up television signals. But they had

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Speaker 1: populations that people who wanted to watch TV. So what's

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Speaker 1: your solution if you can't really get a signal out

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Speaker 1: to your house. Well, they decided to take a sort

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Speaker 1: of communal approach. H Essentially, the community would put up

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Speaker 1: a big receiver antenna someplace that would get the best reception,

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Speaker 1: like at the top of a really tall hill, and

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Speaker 1: they would receive broadcast signals at this big antenna. Now

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Speaker 1: that big antenna would be connected to a system that

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Speaker 1: used cables to send the TV signal to distant homes.

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Speaker 1: So if you think about it like a regular television set,

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Speaker 1: if you have a TV set at home and you've

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Speaker 1: got a regular antenna set up, it's essentially the same thing,

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Speaker 1: except the signal is traveling a much further distance in

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Speaker 1: the cables than it would from the antenna to your screen.

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Speaker 1: It's going through a cable that actually crosses the land

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Speaker 1: or rather as usually strung up on utility polls, and

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Speaker 1: so you can have people in very distant regions watch television.

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Speaker 1: They're getting the low coal broadcast, uh, they're picking it

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Speaker 1: up from a centralized antenna that is then sending the

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Speaker 1: signal out to these distant homes. It was a pretty

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Speaker 1: clever way of fixing things, although it would cause some

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Speaker 1: issues further down the line, and we'll talk about those

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Speaker 1: towards the end of this episode. This idea of how

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Speaker 1: do you how do you end up reconciling the broadcast

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Speaker 1: side of this business with the cable side of this business.

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Speaker 1: But at the beginning, it was just a way of

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Speaker 1: allowing people who otherwise would not have access to television

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Speaker 1: at all to get that access. By the early nineteen sixties,

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Speaker 1: there were about eight hundred cable systems in the United

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Speaker 1: States with more than eight hundred thousand subscribers, and larger

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Speaker 1: companies were starting to get in on the game. They

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Speaker 1: were moving in on the domain that had been the

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Speaker 1: arena for smaller businesses. This is kind of the story

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Speaker 1: of Comcast. I also at a show about that. If

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Speaker 1: you search the tex Stuff archives, you'll find the story

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Speaker 1: of Comcast, and you'll learn that a lot of Comcasts

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Speaker 1: history involved the company buying up smaller companies, regional companies,

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Speaker 1: and growing their own business that way, and they became

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Speaker 1: a coast to coast business largely by buying up other companies.

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Speaker 1: They didn't grow their subscribers just by convincing people to

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Speaker 1: join Comcasts. They grew their subscribers largely by buying up

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Speaker 1: other companies that already had a large subscriber base. And

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Speaker 1: they just kept getting bigger and bigger that way. And

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Speaker 1: they were not the only company to do that, although

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Speaker 1: that was of course the focus of my episodes. Now.

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Speaker 1: Around this time, the FCC put some limits on what

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Speaker 1: cable companies could do. For example, they weren't supposed to

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Speaker 1: run cables so that a person in one service area

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Speaker 1: like a city, would be able to get access to

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Speaker 1: the local programming of a different service area different So

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Speaker 1: in other words, I shouldn't be able at this time

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Speaker 1: be able to turn on my television in Atlanta and

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Speaker 1: watch local Chicago broadcasts. That would have been a no

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Speaker 1: no around the early nineteen sixties according to the f

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Speaker 1: c C. Now, one thing this managed to do was

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Speaker 1: kind of put the brakes on the cable industry at

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Speaker 1: that time, because now big companies were saying, well, it's

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Speaker 1: starting to become a headache. I mean, there are all

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Speaker 1: these little local broadcast areas where this makes sense, but

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Speaker 1: we'd have to operate as almost like a franchise across

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Speaker 1: the United States, and that was a little bit more

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Speaker 1: daunting of a task than having a unified approach. So

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Speaker 1: it actually slowed down the deployment of cable TV in

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Speaker 1: the US for about a decade. But in nineteen seventy two,

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Speaker 1: the FCC decided ease back on some of those restrictions.

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Speaker 1: They started to deregulate the cable industry and this would

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Speaker 1: continue on through the next two decades. So this is

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Speaker 1: also when the first pay TV network came about. That

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Speaker 1: would be the Home Box Office or HBO network. To

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Speaker 1: learn more about that story, you can check out the

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Speaker 1: three part series on the HBO story, the first episode

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Speaker 1: published on May fen. Now, HBO's Passed is closely tied

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Speaker 1: to the rise of cable television and the other network

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Speaker 1: that really fostered the growth of cable TV in the

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Speaker 1: United States, as in this idea of nationalized cable, not nationalized,

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Speaker 1: but national cable in the sense that you could watch

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Speaker 1: content from other places on your local TV. That big

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Speaker 1: network was w TBS, the Ted Turner Network, and along

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Speaker 1: with HBO, this was suddenly an ability for people in

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Speaker 1: very different places in the US to get access to

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Speaker 1: the same content as opposed to relying solely upon their

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Speaker 1: local providers, their local broadcasters. In nine four, the Cable

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Speaker 1: Act further deregulated the industry, and there was an enormous

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Speaker 1: boom at that point in cable television development. But then

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Speaker 1: we need to talk a little bit about satellite TV.

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Speaker 1: Let's jump back again to nineteen sixty two. So we're

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Speaker 1: back in the year where uh communities are are using

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Speaker 1: cable to deliver television broadcast to remote locations. The f

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Speaker 1: c C is just getting into the game saying, don't

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Speaker 1: show stuff that doesn't belong to your region. Keep regions

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Speaker 1: separate from each other, because we're getting into these disputes

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Speaker 1: that are really a headache to deal with. And around

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Speaker 1: this time was when the United States launched the first

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Speaker 1: telecommunications satellite. This one was called tell Star. It was

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Speaker 1: a Bell Labs project. It was built by a T

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Speaker 1: and T and it could receive signals from the ground

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Speaker 1: from Europe and send them over across the Atlantic to

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Speaker 1: America and vice versa. But it was limited. It could

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Speaker 1: only act as a sort of line of sight satellite,

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Speaker 1: so that meant that it had to have a clear

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Speaker 1: shot both from wherever it was receiving information and wherever

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Speaker 1: it was sending information. And from a practical standpoint, that

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Speaker 1: meant that the satellite could beam a live television feed

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Speaker 1: for about twenty minutes every two and a half hours,

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Speaker 1: because that's how long it took it to orbit the Earth.

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Speaker 1: So you couldn't watch a full length movie in one

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Speaker 1: sitting using this thing. But it was kind of a

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Speaker 1: dawn of a new era with this telecommunications approach. Tell

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Speaker 1: Stars actual fate was rather unfortunate. The United States and

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Speaker 1: the then Soviet Union had been in the habit of

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Speaker 1: conducting high altitude atomic weapons tests, and those tests pretty

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Speaker 1: much toasted the satellites systems. So it went offline permanently

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Speaker 1: on February twenty one, nineteen. Although it was still in orbit,

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Speaker 1: it hadn't crashed to the Earth, but the electronics inside

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Speaker 1: it were essentially fried, so there was no more TV

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Speaker 1: being sent by Telstar one at that point. Now, it

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Speaker 1: proved a point, but it wasn't really a replacement for

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Speaker 1: broadcaster cable TV. In nineteen seventy six, there was a

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Speaker 1: Stanford professor named H. Taylor Howard who built the first

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Speaker 1: privately owned satellite receiving system, and he was a pretty

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Speaker 1: clever dude. His satellite antenna could pick up the same

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Speaker 1: transmissions that cable networks were using to send signals across

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Speaker 1: the nation. So while you didn't have individual customers using

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Speaker 1: satellite dishes until this point to pick up this stuff,

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00:24:31,320 --> 00:24:34,840
Speaker 1: cable companies were using it. So what would happen is

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Speaker 1: you would have a cable company in one region and

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Speaker 1: they would send a signal up to beam up to

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Speaker 1: a satellite that would then beam it down to another

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Speaker 1: receiving station much further away someplace where you don't have

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Speaker 1: physical cables connecting the two areas, right, So might one

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Speaker 1: might be in the East coast, one might be in

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Speaker 1: the central United States, and the satellite would beam the

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Speaker 1: signal down to the center well United States, and they

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Speaker 1: would also get the same programming as the folks southeast. Dead.

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Speaker 1: This was a way that networks like HBO could distribute

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Speaker 1: their content across an entire nation without having a physical

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Speaker 1: infrastructure connecting coast to coast, and there was really no

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Speaker 1: worry about anyone else tapping into it because I mean,

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Speaker 1: if you had a receiver, if you had a satellite receiver,

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Speaker 1: as Taylor Howard had because he built his own, then

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Speaker 1: you could get all that content for free. You wouldn't

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Speaker 1: have to pay a monthly fee to HBO or to

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Speaker 1: any provider. You're getting that information just by picking it

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Speaker 1: up using an antenna. It was being sent in the

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Speaker 1: clear or I t C, meaning there was no encryption

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Speaker 1: or scrambling going on. So as long as you had

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Speaker 1: an antenna capable of picking up the signals, you could

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Speaker 1: actually watch that stuff for free, or at least for

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Speaker 1: the cost of actually putting together an antenna. But the

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Speaker 1: reason for this was the reason why companies like HBO

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Speaker 1: weren't concerned about this was that if you wanted to

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Speaker 1: go out and buy a satellite antenna, you'd be spending

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Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of dollars tens of thousands of dollars

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Speaker 1: to get one of these things, and it was just

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Speaker 1: largely considered to be impractical. It was well beyond the

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Speaker 1: reach of the average person. So the companies like HBO

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Speaker 1: weren't concerned with us. Why would you worry about that.

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Speaker 1: No one's going to bother with us until h Taylor

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00:26:27,320 --> 00:26:30,560
Speaker 1: Howard goes out and builds his own and he even

436
00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:33,639
Speaker 1: I think somewhat cheekily wrote a hundred dollar check and

437
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:37,120
Speaker 1: sent it to HBO saying, Hey, I've been watching your

438
00:26:37,119 --> 00:26:41,760
Speaker 1: content using my homemade satellite antenna, and I figure, you know,

439
00:26:42,119 --> 00:26:44,040
Speaker 1: I should at least pay you for it, even though

440
00:26:44,080 --> 00:26:47,640
Speaker 1: I don't have a cable subscription. And HBO's response was, hey,

441
00:26:47,640 --> 00:26:50,040
Speaker 1: we can't accept this check. We only deal with big

442
00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:54,440
Speaker 1: networks or big big, you know, cable providers. We don't

443
00:26:54,920 --> 00:26:59,040
Speaker 1: deal with individuals. So then Howard published a how to

444
00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:03,560
Speaker 1: guide how he built his own satellite receiver, and that

445
00:27:03,680 --> 00:27:07,000
Speaker 1: meant that any enterprising home engineer with enough money to

446
00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:10,080
Speaker 1: buy the the basic parts could get to work and

447
00:27:10,080 --> 00:27:13,879
Speaker 1: build their own satellite antenna and therefore receive HBO for

448
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:18,399
Speaker 1: free or minus the price of building the antenna. The

449
00:27:18,440 --> 00:27:21,879
Speaker 1: satellite TV industry essentially started off that way. People started

450
00:27:21,920 --> 00:27:26,159
Speaker 1: to grab some signals meant for cable customers. But before

451
00:27:26,320 --> 00:27:31,280
Speaker 1: too long two things happened. One, cable companies began to

452
00:27:31,320 --> 00:27:37,119
Speaker 1: scramble their signals so that you would be incentivized, let's say,

453
00:27:37,560 --> 00:27:41,480
Speaker 1: to subscribe to their service to get the ability to

454
00:27:41,640 --> 00:27:45,439
Speaker 1: de scramble that channel and watch the content. And the

455
00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:51,320
Speaker 1: second thing that happened was that the satellite providers were

456
00:27:51,359 --> 00:27:54,720
Speaker 1: beginning to emerge as a competing industry to cable providers.

457
00:27:55,240 --> 00:27:59,840
Speaker 1: So you had the individual cable channels, the people who make,

458
00:28:00,359 --> 00:28:03,679
Speaker 1: or at least who who produced the stuff that you

459
00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:06,919
Speaker 1: want to watch, and then you add the cable providers,

460
00:28:06,960 --> 00:28:10,119
Speaker 1: the people who have or the companies who have the

461
00:28:10,160 --> 00:28:14,199
Speaker 1: infrastructure that delivers that content. This can get really confusing

462
00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:19,560
Speaker 1: because we frequently will refer to cable just as cable,

463
00:28:19,840 --> 00:28:22,960
Speaker 1: and we could either mean the provider or we could

464
00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:26,200
Speaker 1: mean the content creator. And to make it more confusing,

465
00:28:26,680 --> 00:28:29,600
Speaker 1: there are of course companies that are both They are

466
00:28:29,640 --> 00:28:34,000
Speaker 1: both providers and content creators, and that makes things messy.

467
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:36,000
Speaker 1: It's also one of the reasons why you've got people

468
00:28:36,080 --> 00:28:40,160
Speaker 1: arguing for net neutrality to try and create a separation

469
00:28:40,560 --> 00:28:44,600
Speaker 1: between the content creators and the content providers so that

470
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:49,160
Speaker 1: you don't see preferential treatment given to one company's own

471
00:28:49,320 --> 00:28:53,120
Speaker 1: products over all the other competitors. But I've already talked

472
00:28:53,120 --> 00:28:55,120
Speaker 1: about net neutrality and other episodes, so we'll leave that

473
00:28:55,200 --> 00:28:59,680
Speaker 1: from for now. Back to satellite TV. Uh, you started

474
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:05,120
Speaker 1: seeing these companies pop up with their own services, so

475
00:29:05,200 --> 00:29:07,600
Speaker 1: you could, you know, subscribe to them, just as you

476
00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:11,800
Speaker 1: would with cable TV, so dish and direct TV things

477
00:29:11,880 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 1: like that, you could subscribe to them and get your

478
00:29:15,360 --> 00:29:17,520
Speaker 1: television that way. And I'll have to do a full

479
00:29:17,560 --> 00:29:20,680
Speaker 1: episode on the satellite TV industry to go into how

480
00:29:20,720 --> 00:29:24,440
Speaker 1: they evolved over time, But to be honest, to get

481
00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:27,480
Speaker 1: into that story here would take up way too much time.

482
00:29:27,920 --> 00:29:30,640
Speaker 1: It really deserves its own episode or pair of episodes.

483
00:29:30,680 --> 00:29:32,960
Speaker 1: So let's just say it had its own challenges in

484
00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:37,920
Speaker 1: those early days. That brings us to television over the Internet.

485
00:29:38,080 --> 00:29:41,320
Speaker 1: While there are many services that deliver video content over

486
00:29:41,360 --> 00:29:43,640
Speaker 1: the Internet that I've been around for a decade or so,

487
00:29:43,720 --> 00:29:47,320
Speaker 1: such as just streaming recorded video live TV over the

488
00:29:47,360 --> 00:29:51,400
Speaker 1: internet that is still relatively young. Now one of those

489
00:29:51,400 --> 00:29:54,840
Speaker 1: services is Sling TV. When we come back, I'll have

490
00:29:54,880 --> 00:29:58,000
Speaker 1: a discussion with Jim Shade Chadar, the VP of Product

491
00:29:58,040 --> 00:30:01,600
Speaker 1: Marketing and Management over at sling t But first, let's

492
00:30:01,600 --> 00:30:11,440
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor and Jim Shade,

493
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:14,720
Speaker 1: thank you so much for agreeing to be on tech stuff.

494
00:30:14,760 --> 00:30:18,080
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. I'm very excited to have this conversation.

495
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:22,640
Speaker 1: So let's say we're doing the classic elevator pitch. You

496
00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:25,280
Speaker 1: get an elevator, there's a person there, you're you're going

497
00:30:25,360 --> 00:30:28,400
Speaker 1: up to the floor, and it's not the express elevator,

498
00:30:28,440 --> 00:30:30,440
Speaker 1: And of course conversation turns to, so what do you

499
00:30:30,480 --> 00:30:33,040
Speaker 1: do for a living? How do you describe to someone

500
00:30:33,440 --> 00:30:37,360
Speaker 1: what Sling TV is all about. Yeah, it's a great question.

501
00:30:37,360 --> 00:30:42,080
Speaker 1: So Sling TV is the leading live OTT streaming service

502
00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:46,200
Speaker 1: in the United States. Think of it as Netflix, but

503
00:30:46,320 --> 00:30:49,360
Speaker 1: for live and on demand TV. All the customers to

504
00:30:49,480 --> 00:30:52,680
Speaker 1: do is download an app to their favorite device and

505
00:30:52,840 --> 00:30:55,880
Speaker 1: they can watch channels like ESPN, A, m C, h G,

506
00:30:56,000 --> 00:30:59,360
Speaker 1: t V, CNN Live on the device of their choice

507
00:30:59,480 --> 00:31:03,880
Speaker 1: over the net. Cool. So it's following a very uh

508
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:06,520
Speaker 1: proven model at this point. One of the things that

509
00:31:06,560 --> 00:31:10,520
Speaker 1: a lot of people have said about services, specifically Netflix

510
00:31:10,520 --> 00:31:13,720
Speaker 1: in particular, but services light Netflix, is that the thing

511
00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:17,880
Speaker 1: they really nailed was this concept of making sure the

512
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:22,280
Speaker 1: application was available wherever people wanted a chance to use it,

513
00:31:22,720 --> 00:31:25,760
Speaker 1: and so that it just became kind of ever present

514
00:31:25,920 --> 00:31:27,800
Speaker 1: and you can find it on everything, to the point

515
00:31:27,800 --> 00:31:31,040
Speaker 1: where I wouldn't be surprised if there are refrigerators and

516
00:31:31,120 --> 00:31:34,320
Speaker 1: stoves that have it on them now. So it sounds

517
00:31:34,400 --> 00:31:37,040
Speaker 1: like this is a similar concept, but now we're looking

518
00:31:37,080 --> 00:31:41,560
Speaker 1: at live television, something that previously you you were pretty

519
00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:44,520
Speaker 1: much stuck to either over the air broadcast or cable

520
00:31:44,600 --> 00:31:47,080
Speaker 1: or satellite service, and now you can get it through

521
00:31:47,400 --> 00:31:51,240
Speaker 1: your internet service provider. Is that that more or less correct? Yeah?

522
00:31:51,240 --> 00:31:53,040
Speaker 1: I think the way I would think about it is

523
00:31:53,240 --> 00:31:55,960
Speaker 1: really about choice for our customers. And if you think

524
00:31:55,960 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 1: about traditional pay TV, you are always locked into the

525
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:02,160
Speaker 1: steptop box that came with that PATV provider. And so

526
00:32:02,200 --> 00:32:04,920
Speaker 1: now if you you know, if you prefer Coo over Amazon,

527
00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:07,600
Speaker 1: or if you like Apple TV, we're putting that choice

528
00:32:07,600 --> 00:32:09,600
Speaker 1: back into customer's hands. You can use playing on any

529
00:32:09,600 --> 00:32:13,160
Speaker 1: one of those devices. Excellent. So talk a little bit

530
00:32:13,400 --> 00:32:17,240
Speaker 1: if you can about the process of coming up with

531
00:32:17,280 --> 00:32:20,200
Speaker 1: the idea and rolling it out. What was that like,

532
00:32:20,400 --> 00:32:25,160
Speaker 1: because obviously getting into this field, it's it's their challenges

533
00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:28,360
Speaker 1: that I think the average person has no real knowledge of,

534
00:32:28,520 --> 00:32:31,600
Speaker 1: things like carriage agreements, things of that nature. And I'm

535
00:32:31,600 --> 00:32:33,760
Speaker 1: not asking to get into particulars with any of that,

536
00:32:33,800 --> 00:32:37,440
Speaker 1: but kind of let people know, Like when you're an

537
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:40,200
Speaker 1: average customer who wants to watch television, your question might

538
00:32:40,240 --> 00:32:43,800
Speaker 1: just be, well, why can't I just get this? You know,

539
00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:45,720
Speaker 1: why why did it take so long for it to

540
00:32:45,760 --> 00:32:47,560
Speaker 1: get to me? And I don't think they understand the

541
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:52,120
Speaker 1: complications that are that are surrounding such an endeavor. So

542
00:32:52,120 --> 00:32:54,040
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about the development both

543
00:32:54,360 --> 00:32:56,680
Speaker 1: maybe from not so much a technological side, we can

544
00:32:56,680 --> 00:32:59,040
Speaker 1: talk about a little bit, but really from the the

545
00:32:59,080 --> 00:33:02,600
Speaker 1: business side, what took to get this in place? Sure,

546
00:33:02,600 --> 00:33:04,280
Speaker 1: I think you bring up a lot of great points.

547
00:33:04,480 --> 00:33:06,600
Speaker 1: Um when you when it comes to kind of content

548
00:33:06,680 --> 00:33:09,560
Speaker 1: rights and digital content rights, they're really complicated and I

549
00:33:09,560 --> 00:33:14,000
Speaker 1: don't think the average consumer definitely appreciate the complexity around them.

550
00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:20,000
Speaker 1: So we started negotiating with our programming partners almost five

551
00:33:20,120 --> 00:33:23,280
Speaker 1: to six years ago, way before we launched the service,

552
00:33:23,360 --> 00:33:25,600
Speaker 1: because we knew that one of the pain points that

553
00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 1: we were trying to address was that customers didn't like

554
00:33:28,040 --> 00:33:31,440
Speaker 1: paying for channels that they weren't watching. And so it

555
00:33:31,520 --> 00:33:33,680
Speaker 1: was very important for us when we launched pling TV

556
00:33:34,360 --> 00:33:36,240
Speaker 1: to make sure that we launched the service to put

557
00:33:36,240 --> 00:33:38,680
Speaker 1: the choice and control back in customers hands and dealt

558
00:33:38,680 --> 00:33:41,600
Speaker 1: with that pain point. And so we spent years basically

559
00:33:41,600 --> 00:33:44,720
Speaker 1: negotiating with these programming partners, and we had the benefit

560
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 1: of being part of Dish and this has had these

561
00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:51,560
Speaker 1: programming relationships for you know, decades at this point, and

562
00:33:52,320 --> 00:33:54,480
Speaker 1: we really worked with our programming partners to come up

563
00:33:54,520 --> 00:33:57,880
Speaker 1: with a model where we could offer you a smaller

564
00:33:57,960 --> 00:34:00,560
Speaker 1: kind of base pack of channels and let people choose

565
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:03,719
Speaker 1: different genre packs that they wanted sports or if they

566
00:34:03,760 --> 00:34:07,120
Speaker 1: wanted kids, they could just add those on and still

567
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:11,680
Speaker 1: have an affordable service and so um, like I said,

568
00:34:11,680 --> 00:34:14,960
Speaker 1: the content rights are pretty complicated. So sometimes you know,

569
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:17,040
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to watch you know, football on a

570
00:34:17,120 --> 00:34:19,879
Speaker 1: mobile device. It's not something we have control over because

571
00:34:19,880 --> 00:34:23,719
Speaker 1: that's how the NFL negotiative rights with the carriers, or

572
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:27,000
Speaker 1: you know, some channels aren't available on some services, etcetera.

573
00:34:27,360 --> 00:34:29,879
Speaker 1: And so for us, it was really important to give

574
00:34:29,960 --> 00:34:32,719
Speaker 1: customers a choice of the channels that they wanted, the

575
00:34:32,800 --> 00:34:34,920
Speaker 1: things that we thought were going to be most popular,

576
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:36,840
Speaker 1: but make sure that they didn't have to pay for

577
00:34:36,960 --> 00:34:40,239
Speaker 1: things that they didn't want or didn't want to watch. Right.

578
00:34:40,320 --> 00:34:43,920
Speaker 1: So this this is kind of that dream of the

579
00:34:44,080 --> 00:34:47,160
Speaker 1: Alakhart approach that a lot of people thought was going

580
00:34:47,200 --> 00:34:51,560
Speaker 1: to be a natural progression once we started seeing the

581
00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:56,240
Speaker 1: possibilities of delivering streaming content over the Internet. But again

582
00:34:56,360 --> 00:35:01,080
Speaker 1: that was largely without the the understand ding of how

583
00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:04,080
Speaker 1: the business side of it works. Once upon a time,

584
00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:08,880
Speaker 1: how stuff works was part of Discovery Communications, and for

585
00:35:08,920 --> 00:35:12,480
Speaker 1: me that was my education and learning more about things

586
00:35:12,560 --> 00:35:15,400
Speaker 1: like carriage agreements and if it's a if it's a

587
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:18,480
Speaker 1: network of channels, if it's one big channel, there's also

588
00:35:18,600 --> 00:35:21,360
Speaker 1: issues of if you negotiate with them, then you have

589
00:35:21,400 --> 00:35:24,320
Speaker 1: to figure out, well, I can get that channel, but

590
00:35:24,360 --> 00:35:26,280
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to get these other five channels

591
00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:28,920
Speaker 1: on my cable package because it's all part of a

592
00:35:28,960 --> 00:35:31,880
Speaker 1: package deal and Once you see it from that side,

593
00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:34,319
Speaker 1: the backside, you start to get a deeper appreciation of

594
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:38,040
Speaker 1: how as you say, how complicated this is. And that's

595
00:35:38,080 --> 00:35:42,719
Speaker 1: before you get to the added restrictions of things like, well,

596
00:35:42,960 --> 00:35:44,879
Speaker 1: you can watch this, but it has to be either

597
00:35:44,960 --> 00:35:48,799
Speaker 1: on a television set or maybe on a computer but

598
00:35:48,880 --> 00:35:51,719
Speaker 1: not on a mobile device. Or it maybe yes, you

599
00:35:51,760 --> 00:35:55,440
Speaker 1: can have this, but some of the capabilities of your app,

600
00:35:55,560 --> 00:35:58,680
Speaker 1: maybe you were able to do things like pause live

601
00:35:58,760 --> 00:36:01,640
Speaker 1: TV or rewind a little bit. They might work with

602
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:04,800
Speaker 1: the or the agreements might allow for that for certain

603
00:36:04,880 --> 00:36:07,560
Speaker 1: channels but not for others. And once you see how

604
00:36:07,600 --> 00:36:11,080
Speaker 1: complicated this is, you really get that appreciation of Okay,

605
00:36:11,120 --> 00:36:14,080
Speaker 1: now I understand even though the technology existed, it still

606
00:36:14,120 --> 00:36:18,200
Speaker 1: took years of development to get it all uh rolled out.

607
00:36:18,280 --> 00:36:20,440
Speaker 1: And as I understand it, when it first when it

608
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:24,000
Speaker 1: first rolled out, there were essentially two broad categories that

609
00:36:24,080 --> 00:36:27,120
Speaker 1: you could take blue and orange, and that was sort

610
00:36:27,160 --> 00:36:29,400
Speaker 1: of the base packages, and you could also choose to

611
00:36:29,440 --> 00:36:32,799
Speaker 1: combine the two. Is that correct? Yeah, So, so from

612
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:37,160
Speaker 1: a services standpoint, we offered you know, Spling Orange and

613
00:36:37,280 --> 00:36:39,960
Speaker 1: we offered Spling Blue, and they had some of the

614
00:36:40,040 --> 00:36:42,280
Speaker 1: channels were the same between them, some of them are different.

615
00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 1: One had ESPN and the other ones had NBC and

616
00:36:46,280 --> 00:36:50,160
Speaker 1: Fox channels. And now we also offered you know, international

617
00:36:50,640 --> 00:36:54,520
Speaker 1: language group choices and Latino choices. So Orange and Blue

618
00:36:55,040 --> 00:36:58,520
Speaker 1: are the kind of the base domestic packs for you know,

619
00:36:58,560 --> 00:37:01,200
Speaker 1: English speaking, and then we the Latino packs. And we

620
00:37:01,239 --> 00:37:04,720
Speaker 1: also have a bunch of content in different language groups

621
00:37:04,840 --> 00:37:09,839
Speaker 1: from Arabic, the Chinese to Polish, et cetera. So in

622
00:37:10,360 --> 00:37:12,640
Speaker 1: I am sure that in your career you've already seen

623
00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:16,360
Speaker 1: how the industry, how how really the delivery of content

624
00:37:16,440 --> 00:37:18,919
Speaker 1: has changed dramatically. It's something that I like to talk

625
00:37:18,960 --> 00:37:22,719
Speaker 1: about a lot on my show from the era of broadcast,

626
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:26,200
Speaker 1: over the year two era of cable and then also

627
00:37:26,280 --> 00:37:30,360
Speaker 1: cable and satellite, And would you say that it's you know,

628
00:37:30,480 --> 00:37:32,920
Speaker 1: is it fair to say that the Internet delivery is

629
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:35,279
Speaker 1: kind of like that next era, that next step in

630
00:37:35,320 --> 00:37:39,719
Speaker 1: evolution in the way we get content from UH, from

631
00:37:39,800 --> 00:37:44,680
Speaker 1: major creators and channeled through to two audiences. I definitely

632
00:37:44,680 --> 00:37:47,879
Speaker 1: think it's it's an uh an evolutionary past. I think

633
00:37:47,920 --> 00:37:49,759
Speaker 1: the one thing to keep in mind was that the

634
00:37:49,760 --> 00:37:53,160
Speaker 1: the Internet's original purpose is not to deliver video, and

635
00:37:53,239 --> 00:37:55,759
Speaker 1: so although it is a natural kind of evolution. It

636
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:58,840
Speaker 1: is also a challenge to deliver live TV over the

637
00:37:58,880 --> 00:38:01,120
Speaker 1: Internet where you know, we don't own the I s P.

638
00:38:01,320 --> 00:38:03,320
Speaker 1: We don't own the end device that a customer has,

639
00:38:04,080 --> 00:38:05,640
Speaker 1: right and then of course there are all the other

640
00:38:05,680 --> 00:38:09,960
Speaker 1: issues things like you you can't really guarantee that uh,

641
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:12,359
Speaker 1: that the bit rate is going to be the at

642
00:38:12,440 --> 00:38:13,920
Speaker 1: a at a level where you're going to get the

643
00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:18,040
Speaker 1: quality that the home viewer expects, and that's completely outside

644
00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:20,960
Speaker 1: of your control. It's not like it's, you know something

645
00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:24,359
Speaker 1: where sling TV just says, all right, well, I know

646
00:38:24,440 --> 00:38:26,520
Speaker 1: you wanted to watch this program, but I'm gonna throttle it.

647
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:29,200
Speaker 1: It's not that it's it's all these other elements that

648
00:38:29,200 --> 00:38:31,719
Speaker 1: are outside of that. But the flip side of that,

649
00:38:31,800 --> 00:38:34,440
Speaker 1: of course is the convenience on the consumer side, the

650
00:38:34,480 --> 00:38:38,520
Speaker 1: fact that you have these different options of ways to

651
00:38:38,800 --> 00:38:41,400
Speaker 1: access the content. And I find I find that the

652
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:45,239
Speaker 1: really compelling thing. What's the deployment like so far for

653
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:47,799
Speaker 1: Sling TV about I don't know how much you can

654
00:38:47,840 --> 00:38:51,080
Speaker 1: talk about your your install base, but I was kind

655
00:38:51,080 --> 00:38:54,520
Speaker 1: of curious to hear what adoption has been like. Yes,

656
00:38:54,600 --> 00:38:57,520
Speaker 1: so unfortunately can give you specific numbers about our installed base,

657
00:38:57,640 --> 00:39:01,200
Speaker 1: but you know, we are the leading last streaming offering

658
00:39:01,200 --> 00:39:04,719
Speaker 1: out out there today. I think, you know, for us,

659
00:39:05,040 --> 00:39:08,200
Speaker 1: we've seen kind of broad adoption across the different devices

660
00:39:08,239 --> 00:39:11,120
Speaker 1: were on. We've realized there's kind of this rule of

661
00:39:11,200 --> 00:39:13,919
Speaker 1: people gravitate towards the largest screen that's in front of them.

662
00:39:14,320 --> 00:39:15,960
Speaker 1: So if they're at home, you know, they were going

663
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:18,520
Speaker 1: to watch on their TV. If they're you know, on

664
00:39:18,560 --> 00:39:21,319
Speaker 1: a subway somewhere, if they're traveling and the phone is

665
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:23,239
Speaker 1: the only screen in front of them, you know, we

666
00:39:23,280 --> 00:39:25,520
Speaker 1: see a lot of usage on the phone because that's

667
00:39:25,520 --> 00:39:27,719
Speaker 1: the biggest screen they have in front of them. We've

668
00:39:27,719 --> 00:39:30,640
Speaker 1: seen a lot of engagement from our customers. Um you know,

669
00:39:30,680 --> 00:39:32,880
Speaker 1: if you look if we go back to two thousand,

670
00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:38,719
Speaker 1: sixteen seventeen, I think we saw increase on a per

671
00:39:38,800 --> 00:39:42,040
Speaker 1: user basis and the time within app. So, you know,

672
00:39:42,400 --> 00:39:45,359
Speaker 1: I think if you think about splaying as a cord

673
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:49,440
Speaker 1: cutting or live streaming solution, I think people were experimenting,

674
00:39:49,480 --> 00:39:51,399
Speaker 1: they were trying our service, and then at once they

675
00:39:51,440 --> 00:39:55,160
Speaker 1: tried it, they recognized the choice and the convenience and

676
00:39:55,200 --> 00:39:57,520
Speaker 1: the control that we give them, they started engaging more

677
00:39:57,520 --> 00:39:59,600
Speaker 1: with the platform. And realizing that they could really meet

678
00:39:59,640 --> 00:40:02,680
Speaker 1: their injury him and needs, which plink TV. So this

679
00:40:02,800 --> 00:40:06,320
Speaker 1: is also one of those offerings that might appeal to

680
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:09,359
Speaker 1: the so called cord never's the people who have never

681
00:40:09,440 --> 00:40:13,359
Speaker 1: really subscribed to to cable at all, but now they

682
00:40:13,360 --> 00:40:16,680
Speaker 1: could get that same sort of access to content only

683
00:40:16,880 --> 00:40:19,359
Speaker 1: over the Internet, which is that's you know, that's kind

684
00:40:19,360 --> 00:40:22,759
Speaker 1: of the the access point they've become used to with

685
00:40:22,920 --> 00:40:25,960
Speaker 1: other services. So I see this as really catering to

686
00:40:26,120 --> 00:40:29,080
Speaker 1: that group as well, a group that otherwise seems to

687
00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:34,320
Speaker 1: be unreachable through traditional means of getting you know, getting

688
00:40:34,360 --> 00:40:38,080
Speaker 1: content to audiences. So it's it's fascinating to me there

689
00:40:38,080 --> 00:40:40,160
Speaker 1: as well. It was one of those stories where again

690
00:40:40,520 --> 00:40:42,880
Speaker 1: coming from a world where at one point I was

691
00:40:42,960 --> 00:40:46,920
Speaker 1: part of a company that in part owned a large

692
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:51,880
Speaker 1: cable network and seeing the conversations going on there about

693
00:40:52,160 --> 00:40:54,719
Speaker 1: concerns of how to reach audiences. To me, this is

694
00:40:55,600 --> 00:40:59,440
Speaker 1: a potential solution in that it is a different avenue.

695
00:40:59,480 --> 00:41:02,480
Speaker 1: It's one that doesn't depend upon uh services that a

696
00:41:02,560 --> 00:41:06,000
Speaker 1: lot of people just view as as being like you say,

697
00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:09,319
Speaker 1: like like including offerings that you don't have any interest in,

698
00:41:09,400 --> 00:41:11,480
Speaker 1: you know, why why do I want to subscribe to

699
00:41:12,120 --> 00:41:16,360
Speaker 1: a one fifty channel cable package if I'm only watching

700
00:41:16,840 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 1: a dozen or so of those channels. And this seems

701
00:41:20,239 --> 00:41:23,719
Speaker 1: to be uh much closer to that Alakhart future that

702
00:41:23,760 --> 00:41:26,080
Speaker 1: a lot of people wanted. What do you see in

703
00:41:26,120 --> 00:41:30,000
Speaker 1: the future, What has you excited over at Sling TV? So,

704
00:41:30,040 --> 00:41:33,080
Speaker 1: I think, uh, when we look kind of to the future,

705
00:41:33,520 --> 00:41:35,680
Speaker 1: there's a couple of couple of areas that we're focused

706
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:39,880
Speaker 1: on that I think are exciting. Probably not the sexist

707
00:41:40,440 --> 00:41:42,759
Speaker 1: areas to think about, but I think so us we

708
00:41:42,920 --> 00:41:46,839
Speaker 1: think about two main focus areas. One is just course stability.

709
00:41:47,320 --> 00:41:49,560
Speaker 1: Like I said, not the sexist area. But if you

710
00:41:49,600 --> 00:41:52,360
Speaker 1: think about people and the experience have had with traditional

711
00:41:52,480 --> 00:41:55,840
Speaker 1: pay TV, not like the customer service or the fees

712
00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:57,880
Speaker 1: that pay, et cetera. But they know that when they

713
00:41:57,880 --> 00:42:01,440
Speaker 1: tune to a channel, it's gonna play. And that expectation,

714
00:42:01,520 --> 00:42:04,319
Speaker 1: whether your cord never and you've been using Netflix and

715
00:42:04,400 --> 00:42:08,279
Speaker 1: Hulu or your cord cutter, you have that expectation that

716
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:11,160
Speaker 1: your experience, your entertainment experience, is gonna be reliable. That

717
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:13,560
Speaker 1: you click on something, it's gonna play. You're not going

718
00:42:13,600 --> 00:42:16,880
Speaker 1: to see a buffering wheel, and you know we were

719
00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:19,200
Speaker 1: serving customers on a daily basis when they're using it,

720
00:42:19,239 --> 00:42:21,440
Speaker 1: and we know when there's marquee events, you know, we

721
00:42:21,520 --> 00:42:23,640
Speaker 1: bring in a ton of customers just to watch those events,

722
00:42:23,640 --> 00:42:25,440
Speaker 1: and it's critical for us to make sure that the

723
00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:29,399
Speaker 1: service delivers the experience that they want. We talked about

724
00:42:29,440 --> 00:42:33,400
Speaker 1: earlier delivering live TV over the Internet is not a

725
00:42:33,440 --> 00:42:36,080
Speaker 1: simple task and a lot of people are trying it,

726
00:42:36,120 --> 00:42:37,560
Speaker 1: and I think what we've learned over the last three

727
00:42:37,640 --> 00:42:41,960
Speaker 1: years is that stability is really important um for customers

728
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:44,640
Speaker 1: to not only jump off to the service, but to

729
00:42:44,680 --> 00:42:47,240
Speaker 1: stay with the service. And then I think the second

730
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:50,160
Speaker 1: area is really around contum discovery. We give a lot

731
00:42:50,239 --> 00:42:53,520
Speaker 1: of choice and control to customers. They can mix and

732
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:56,280
Speaker 1: match the channels they want to create their own entertainment experience,

733
00:42:56,840 --> 00:42:59,920
Speaker 1: but we gotta make we're making sure that TV is

734
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:02,920
Speaker 1: simple for them. Um. You know, that's a pretty fragmented

735
00:43:02,920 --> 00:43:05,920
Speaker 1: experience out there if you're in consumer or customer and

736
00:43:05,920 --> 00:43:08,400
Speaker 1: you're thinking about all the different places you can go

737
00:43:08,480 --> 00:43:10,880
Speaker 1: to watch TV. And one of our focus areas for

738
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:13,120
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen is how do we make it simple?

739
00:43:13,160 --> 00:43:15,799
Speaker 1: How do we aggregate that content that customers want, whether

740
00:43:15,840 --> 00:43:20,040
Speaker 1: it's core channels, it's premiums like HBO and Stars, or

741
00:43:20,080 --> 00:43:23,520
Speaker 1: it's even over their local channels. How can we produce

742
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 1: kind of a single interface and make it simple for customers? Again, Yeah,

743
00:43:27,600 --> 00:43:30,320
Speaker 1: I've I've talked on this show before about how user

744
00:43:30,400 --> 00:43:35,919
Speaker 1: interface design is uh a fascinating area and it's it's

745
00:43:36,040 --> 00:43:40,960
Speaker 1: so much more challenging than you might actually think, you know,

746
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:44,080
Speaker 1: on on just casual glance. And the example I always

747
00:43:44,120 --> 00:43:47,360
Speaker 1: give people is, I say, think of all the times

748
00:43:47,400 --> 00:43:51,160
Speaker 1: you've heard of a product or service that sounded really compelling,

749
00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:53,320
Speaker 1: but then when you've got a chance to use it,

750
00:43:53,320 --> 00:43:57,760
Speaker 1: it was so so difficult to access for whatever reason

751
00:43:58,120 --> 00:44:01,440
Speaker 1: that you walked away from it. Creating that that magic

752
00:44:01,560 --> 00:44:05,919
Speaker 1: user interface that just invites engagement is that's that's something

753
00:44:05,920 --> 00:44:08,279
Speaker 1: that a lot of different companies have really, you know,

754
00:44:08,320 --> 00:44:12,360
Speaker 1: struggled with and and experimented with. And obviously it's always

755
00:44:12,400 --> 00:44:16,120
Speaker 1: evolving and changing, especially as the product itself evolves. So

756
00:44:16,239 --> 00:44:18,400
Speaker 1: I wish you guys the best on that because I

757
00:44:18,440 --> 00:44:20,600
Speaker 1: know it's a challenging endeavor, but I'm also excited to

758
00:44:20,600 --> 00:44:24,680
Speaker 1: see how it turns out. So I have to ask you, now,

759
00:44:24,920 --> 00:44:28,200
Speaker 1: this is the big, important gotcha question of the interview,

760
00:44:28,360 --> 00:44:32,680
Speaker 1: What's what's your favorite show? It's interesting, I think right

761
00:44:32,680 --> 00:44:40,160
Speaker 1: now I would have to gravitate towards this is us No. Nice, nice, Okay, alright,

762
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:46,120
Speaker 1: you pass. Acceptable, fantastic. I have to thank you again

763
00:44:46,239 --> 00:44:48,480
Speaker 1: for being on the show talking a little bit about

764
00:44:48,520 --> 00:44:51,680
Speaker 1: this service. I'm really fascinating to take a deeper dive

765
00:44:51,800 --> 00:44:55,200
Speaker 1: into it. And and again, uh, it's nice to get

766
00:44:55,200 --> 00:45:00,000
Speaker 1: that perspective and that understanding of you know, the technology

767
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:02,399
Speaker 1: side of it is always complicated, but that's something that's

768
00:45:02,440 --> 00:45:05,000
Speaker 1: easier to solve if you just stick with it. It's

769
00:45:05,040 --> 00:45:10,239
Speaker 1: the business side that's that's like a a super intricate

770
00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:13,040
Speaker 1: web that you have to unravel gently in order for

771
00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:15,480
Speaker 1: this to work. So I greatly appreciate you taking the

772
00:45:15,520 --> 00:45:18,880
Speaker 1: time to talk with my listeners. And uh, I'll you know,

773
00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 1: you're free to come on the show whenever you want.

774
00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:23,520
Speaker 1: We can chat about what's good on TV. Yeah, all right,

775
00:45:23,680 --> 00:45:27,040
Speaker 1: thank you appreciate having me on board. Big thanks to

776
00:45:27,160 --> 00:45:30,799
Speaker 1: Sling TV for joining me to talk on this episode.

777
00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:33,040
Speaker 1: When we come back, I'm gonna talk a little bit

778
00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:36,480
Speaker 1: more about carriage deals and some of the other challenges

779
00:45:36,600 --> 00:45:40,160
Speaker 1: that we see with the way we get television today.

780
00:45:40,200 --> 00:45:43,640
Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.

781
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 1: All right, guys, Sling TV is one of many services

782
00:45:52,719 --> 00:45:56,360
Speaker 1: that are competing in the live TV over the Internet space.

783
00:45:56,920 --> 00:46:00,640
Speaker 1: There are competitors like direct TV now, there's YouTube TV,

784
00:46:00,880 --> 00:46:04,600
Speaker 1: there's PlayStation View, there's Hulu with live TV, and these

785
00:46:04,600 --> 00:46:08,359
Speaker 1: services all seek to appeal to cord cutters and coordinators

786
00:46:08,400 --> 00:46:11,960
Speaker 1: alike by offering up options to get television programming over

787
00:46:12,000 --> 00:46:14,080
Speaker 1: the Internet and again to try and get to that

788
00:46:14,239 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 1: a lakhart approach. Now, I mentioned in the interview that

789
00:46:19,680 --> 00:46:22,240
Speaker 1: one of the big challenges out there, and in fact

790
00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:25,160
Speaker 1: this was what they were talking about two, is just

791
00:46:25,239 --> 00:46:27,560
Speaker 1: the agreements that need to be in place in order

792
00:46:27,640 --> 00:46:31,759
Speaker 1: to carry content over a service. As it turns out,

793
00:46:31,800 --> 00:46:37,120
Speaker 1: this is a really tricky, tricky situation. It's it's challenging

794
00:46:37,280 --> 00:46:41,520
Speaker 1: and it has been for decades. And the reason for

795
00:46:41,560 --> 00:46:47,800
Speaker 1: that is this agreement called carriage. Right, these carriage deals,

796
00:46:48,560 --> 00:46:55,240
Speaker 1: this refers to a content provider or rather a signal provider,

797
00:46:55,280 --> 00:46:59,120
Speaker 1: if you will, to carry certain types of content and

798
00:46:59,280 --> 00:47:01,800
Speaker 1: what they have to hey in order to get access

799
00:47:01,840 --> 00:47:06,120
Speaker 1: to it. So let's separate them out by the creators

800
00:47:06,120 --> 00:47:10,600
Speaker 1: and the providers the service providers, the creators, the content creators,

801
00:47:10,680 --> 00:47:13,000
Speaker 1: or at least the people who are companies that own

802
00:47:13,440 --> 00:47:16,560
Speaker 1: this content, whether they made it or they contracted to

803
00:47:16,560 --> 00:47:20,160
Speaker 1: have it made for them or whatever. They've got the

804
00:47:20,160 --> 00:47:24,800
Speaker 1: stuff people want to watch. The providers have the connections

805
00:47:24,880 --> 00:47:30,640
Speaker 1: that can get stuff to customers, because generally speaking, the

806
00:47:30,840 --> 00:47:34,200
Speaker 1: creators don't have a direct line to their audience, they

807
00:47:34,239 --> 00:47:41,640
Speaker 1: rely upon providers. The providers traditionally have to pay to

808
00:47:41,920 --> 00:47:46,640
Speaker 1: be able to carry content to their customers. The customers

809
00:47:46,640 --> 00:47:50,200
Speaker 1: pay a subscription to the providers so that the providers

810
00:47:50,360 --> 00:47:53,480
Speaker 1: will give them the stuff they want. So I'm a customer.

811
00:47:54,280 --> 00:47:57,040
Speaker 1: Let's say that I am a customer of Cable Company A,

812
00:47:58,200 --> 00:48:01,400
Speaker 1: and I pay a certain amount per month to Cable

813
00:48:01,440 --> 00:48:05,880
Speaker 1: Company A to get a bundle of channels. It's the

814
00:48:05,880 --> 00:48:10,960
Speaker 1: basic bundle. I'm going bare bones local channels and small

815
00:48:11,000 --> 00:48:14,760
Speaker 1: collection of cable shows or cable channels. I should say.

816
00:48:15,360 --> 00:48:18,239
Speaker 1: Cable Company A takes my subscription money and all the

817
00:48:18,280 --> 00:48:22,000
Speaker 1: other subscription money that's part of their revenue. They also

818
00:48:22,080 --> 00:48:24,480
Speaker 1: look at their costs, and part of their costs is

819
00:48:24,520 --> 00:48:29,239
Speaker 1: the carriage deals that they have struck with various cable networks,

820
00:48:29,640 --> 00:48:36,279
Speaker 1: and cable networks will end up negotiating a fee for

821
00:48:37,360 --> 00:48:41,520
Speaker 1: a per subscriber basis. Typically, and this has caused some

822
00:48:41,600 --> 00:48:47,520
Speaker 1: big problems in the past, but sometimes they will negotiate

823
00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:50,520
Speaker 1: not to have a higher fee, but rather for the

824
00:48:50,680 --> 00:48:56,600
Speaker 1: cable provider to carry additional channels, secondary channels that perhaps

825
00:48:56,640 --> 00:48:59,799
Speaker 1: the cable provider otherwise would not carry, and this ends

826
00:48:59,840 --> 00:49:03,200
Speaker 1: up creating more of an audience for those secondary channels.

827
00:49:03,840 --> 00:49:08,120
Speaker 1: So I talked in the interview about how how stuff

828
00:49:08,120 --> 00:49:12,400
Speaker 1: works was once part of Discovery Communications. We Discovery Communications

829
00:49:12,440 --> 00:49:16,920
Speaker 1: has several different cable channels under its umbrella. You've got

830
00:49:16,960 --> 00:49:19,200
Speaker 1: the Discovery Channel, you have the Science Channel, you have

831
00:49:19,280 --> 00:49:22,880
Speaker 1: t l C, you have other channels. And typically a

832
00:49:23,640 --> 00:49:27,040
Speaker 1: company like Discovery Communications would go into a carriage deal

833
00:49:27,080 --> 00:49:31,160
Speaker 1: discussion and say, yes, we know you want Discovery Channel.

834
00:49:31,880 --> 00:49:34,600
Speaker 1: We realize that that is a valuable property to you,

835
00:49:35,200 --> 00:49:39,040
Speaker 1: and we have agreed upon what the cost should be

836
00:49:39,120 --> 00:49:42,080
Speaker 1: for you to get access to our content to send

837
00:49:42,080 --> 00:49:45,080
Speaker 1: to your subscribers. If you're going to do that, you

838
00:49:45,200 --> 00:49:48,279
Speaker 1: also have to take the Science Channel and TLC as

839
00:49:48,280 --> 00:49:52,200
Speaker 1: part of the deal, and then your subscribers are going

840
00:49:52,239 --> 00:49:55,600
Speaker 1: to also have access to those channels. So what it

841
00:49:55,640 --> 00:49:58,359
Speaker 1: means is that a big channel that's got a lot

842
00:49:58,440 --> 00:50:01,080
Speaker 1: of viewers, if they've decided they want to invest in

843
00:50:01,080 --> 00:50:05,839
Speaker 1: a smaller channel and perhaps grow that business, then they

844
00:50:05,840 --> 00:50:09,920
Speaker 1: can use their leverage to have a cable provider include

845
00:50:09,960 --> 00:50:13,359
Speaker 1: that channel with their service. Why would you get into

846
00:50:13,360 --> 00:50:19,360
Speaker 1: a smaller channel, Well, here's why publicly traded companies depend

847
00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:24,279
Speaker 1: upon growth. Growth is kin to success, right, that is,

848
00:50:25,280 --> 00:50:28,400
Speaker 1: that's how we measure success with publicly traded companies. Typically,

849
00:50:28,440 --> 00:50:30,239
Speaker 1: it's not just how much profit did you make, it's

850
00:50:30,239 --> 00:50:33,239
Speaker 1: how much did you grow year over year? Not not

851
00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:34,960
Speaker 1: just how much did you make this year, but how

852
00:50:35,000 --> 00:50:37,040
Speaker 1: much more did you make this year from last year.

853
00:50:38,080 --> 00:50:41,960
Speaker 1: Eventually you're going to reach a saturation point with your channel.

854
00:50:42,600 --> 00:50:45,560
Speaker 1: You're you're gonna hit about as many people as you're

855
00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:48,799
Speaker 1: ever going to get. Your channel is not likely to

856
00:50:48,840 --> 00:50:52,319
Speaker 1: grow much beyond that. It may mean that you've hit

857
00:50:52,480 --> 00:50:56,759
Speaker 1: essentially everybody's television already, so there's nowhere else to grow. Well,

858
00:50:56,760 --> 00:50:59,960
Speaker 1: if you can't grow with your primary channel, the next

859
00:51:00,080 --> 00:51:02,360
Speaker 1: best thing to do is to create a secondary channel

860
00:51:02,640 --> 00:51:05,399
Speaker 1: that can then grow, and as a result, the entire

861
00:51:05,440 --> 00:51:09,040
Speaker 1: company benefits because while your main channel can no longer

862
00:51:09,120 --> 00:51:12,320
Speaker 1: really add viewers just because you've you've hit that saturation point.

863
00:51:12,520 --> 00:51:14,920
Speaker 1: Your secondary channel has just started off. The sky is

864
00:51:14,960 --> 00:51:18,600
Speaker 1: the limit. You can grow your your audience by leaps

865
00:51:18,600 --> 00:51:22,320
Speaker 1: and bounds year over year. And remember in the early days,

866
00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:27,440
Speaker 1: if you have a small audience and you double it, well,

867
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:30,759
Speaker 1: it's not impressive if you're looking at raw numbers, but

868
00:51:30,840 --> 00:51:35,440
Speaker 1: from a percentage basis, it's incredibly impressive. If I say, oh,

869
00:51:35,520 --> 00:51:38,799
Speaker 1: we went from viewers to five viewers, that's not a

870
00:51:38,800 --> 00:51:40,759
Speaker 1: big deal. But if I say, oh, we increased our

871
00:51:40,800 --> 00:51:46,000
Speaker 1: viewership by then everyone's suddenly thinking, wow, that's amazing. So

872
00:51:47,280 --> 00:51:50,280
Speaker 1: that is kind of the thought process that goes behind

873
00:51:50,320 --> 00:51:53,680
Speaker 1: this bundling approach. It's also one of the reasons why

874
00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:56,400
Speaker 1: when you subscribe to cable, even if you're getting a

875
00:51:56,400 --> 00:52:01,600
Speaker 1: basic cable package, you may find yourself with access to

876
00:52:01,680 --> 00:52:04,040
Speaker 1: channels that you really didn't have any interest in. And

877
00:52:04,080 --> 00:52:07,880
Speaker 1: it's not that the cable company the provider necessarily thinks

878
00:52:07,920 --> 00:52:09,840
Speaker 1: that you're going to have interest in all those channels,

879
00:52:10,280 --> 00:52:14,440
Speaker 1: but rather that the big names in the game own

880
00:52:15,040 --> 00:52:19,840
Speaker 1: those channels. Right those are all secondary or subsidiary channels

881
00:52:19,880 --> 00:52:23,680
Speaker 1: of this bigger channel, and part of the agreement for

882
00:52:23,760 --> 00:52:27,600
Speaker 1: the provider to be able to carry that primary channel,

883
00:52:27,600 --> 00:52:30,200
Speaker 1: that big one that everybody wants, is that they have

884
00:52:30,280 --> 00:52:34,960
Speaker 1: to carry all those smaller ones. Now. Sadly, what this

885
00:52:35,000 --> 00:52:38,000
Speaker 1: means from a consumer standpoint is that we get this

886
00:52:38,200 --> 00:52:43,680
Speaker 1: feeling that we are completely inundated by channels we just

887
00:52:43,719 --> 00:52:46,839
Speaker 1: don't care about, and we end up looking at our

888
00:52:46,840 --> 00:52:50,120
Speaker 1: cable bill and our cable bill gets higher and higher. Right,

889
00:52:50,200 --> 00:52:54,000
Speaker 1: those cable prices are pretty expensive, even for basic channels.

890
00:52:54,040 --> 00:52:56,080
Speaker 1: They tend to be pretty expensive if you're going through

891
00:52:56,800 --> 00:53:02,320
Speaker 1: traditional cable service, and the implication is, I am paying,

892
00:53:03,320 --> 00:53:06,400
Speaker 1: you know, more than a hundred dollars a month, let's say,

893
00:53:06,520 --> 00:53:10,839
Speaker 1: for four channels I want and fifty channels I don't

894
00:53:10,880 --> 00:53:15,080
Speaker 1: care about, or more, depending upon what your basic cable

895
00:53:15,120 --> 00:53:19,400
Speaker 1: package happens to be. And that's very frustrating. And in

896
00:53:19,440 --> 00:53:21,439
Speaker 1: our minds, we're thinking, Hey, if I could just cut

897
00:53:21,480 --> 00:53:23,960
Speaker 1: that down to those four channels, think of how much

898
00:53:24,000 --> 00:53:26,520
Speaker 1: more money I would save. Plus I wouldn't be so

899
00:53:26,600 --> 00:53:29,080
Speaker 1: irritated that I've got all this useless stuff on my

900
00:53:29,120 --> 00:53:32,160
Speaker 1: TV that I don't care about. But that's not the

901
00:53:32,200 --> 00:53:36,640
Speaker 1: way the industry works because You've got these these big

902
00:53:36,680 --> 00:53:40,000
Speaker 1: companies that own multiple channels, and they all are pushing

903
00:53:40,040 --> 00:53:44,320
Speaker 1: to have those channels included in these carriage deals. Meanwhile,

904
00:53:44,600 --> 00:53:48,200
Speaker 1: you can get into these disputes where a company can

905
00:53:48,400 --> 00:53:52,760
Speaker 1: ask for more money per subscriber than the cable provider

906
00:53:53,000 --> 00:53:55,759
Speaker 1: was willing to give. There was a big one in

907
00:53:55,800 --> 00:53:58,920
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. There was a dispute between Fox and

908
00:53:59,160 --> 00:54:03,520
Speaker 1: Time Warner Cable. And from what I recall, Fox wanted

909
00:54:03,560 --> 00:54:08,000
Speaker 1: to get a monthly fee of around a dollar per subscriber.

910
00:54:08,000 --> 00:54:11,200
Speaker 1: For Time Warner Cable to say, all right, Time Warner Cable,

911
00:54:11,440 --> 00:54:14,680
Speaker 1: you want to carry the Fox network on your service.

912
00:54:15,880 --> 00:54:19,240
Speaker 1: We want a dollar per subscriber to Time Warner Cable

913
00:54:19,320 --> 00:54:22,360
Speaker 1: in return, and then we'll make this deal. Time Warner

914
00:54:22,400 --> 00:54:25,239
Speaker 1: Cable said, whoa, that's kind of steep. We were thinking

915
00:54:25,320 --> 00:54:30,440
Speaker 1: more like twenty cents per subscriber, so maybe one fifth

916
00:54:30,680 --> 00:54:33,920
Speaker 1: of what you're asking for. Neither party really wanted to

917
00:54:33,960 --> 00:54:38,160
Speaker 1: budge on this, and they didn't just try to settle

918
00:54:38,239 --> 00:54:41,680
Speaker 1: this negotiations. They actually took it to the public. There

919
00:54:41,719 --> 00:54:45,279
Speaker 1: were pr campaigns both from Time Warner Cable and from

920
00:54:45,320 --> 00:54:51,200
Speaker 1: Fox that were aimed at Time Warner Cable customers. The

921
00:54:51,320 --> 00:54:55,640
Speaker 1: Fox was saying, Hey, Time Warner Cable customers, t WC

922
00:54:55,920 --> 00:54:59,320
Speaker 1: doesn't want you to see our shows. So if you

923
00:54:59,360 --> 00:55:01,600
Speaker 1: want to watch our shows, like if you like the Simpsons,

924
00:55:02,560 --> 00:55:04,799
Speaker 1: I tell you what, maybe you should look at a

925
00:55:04,840 --> 00:55:09,279
Speaker 1: different cable provider because Time Warner Cable just doesn't have

926
00:55:09,320 --> 00:55:14,000
Speaker 1: your back. Man, you should just you should just ditch them. Meanwhile,

927
00:55:14,040 --> 00:55:17,799
Speaker 1: Time Warner Cable is saying, Fox doesn't want to be

928
00:55:17,960 --> 00:55:22,040
Speaker 1: on your chancel on on your service anymore. And if

929
00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:26,520
Speaker 1: we if we capitulate to their demands, that means we're

930
00:55:26,520 --> 00:55:29,440
Speaker 1: gonna have to raise your subscription price. You're gonna have

931
00:55:29,480 --> 00:55:33,000
Speaker 1: to pay more because it's gonna cost us more to

932
00:55:33,080 --> 00:55:37,080
Speaker 1: have Fox on your network. So and we don't want

933
00:55:37,120 --> 00:55:40,840
Speaker 1: to charge you more money. Come on, man, we just

934
00:55:40,880 --> 00:55:43,400
Speaker 1: want to get your stuff to you. So you have

935
00:55:43,480 --> 00:55:46,000
Speaker 1: these two different public relations battles going on at the

936
00:55:46,040 --> 00:55:51,160
Speaker 1: same time, and ultimately they both settled out of public

937
00:55:51,320 --> 00:55:56,040
Speaker 1: view for a fee that was never publicly announced, So

938
00:55:56,480 --> 00:55:59,400
Speaker 1: somewhere probably between twenty cents and a dollar per subscriber,

939
00:55:59,400 --> 00:56:01,880
Speaker 1: as my guest, but who knows what the actual number is.

940
00:56:02,640 --> 00:56:05,359
Speaker 1: Anyone in the deal knows, but anyone outside of it

941
00:56:05,400 --> 00:56:09,919
Speaker 1: probably doesn't. So that's the way that this can get

942
00:56:09,960 --> 00:56:14,160
Speaker 1: really ugly with these carriage deals as well. All of

943
00:56:14,200 --> 00:56:17,239
Speaker 1: that was to say that going with television over the

944
00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:20,840
Speaker 1: Internet has these same issues. It's not like TV of

945
00:56:20,880 --> 00:56:28,759
Speaker 1: the Internet is uh has got a blank pass two

946
00:56:29,200 --> 00:56:32,839
Speaker 1: show you anything and everything. You can't just sign up

947
00:56:32,840 --> 00:56:35,040
Speaker 1: and say I want these six channels, I don't want

948
00:56:35,040 --> 00:56:39,160
Speaker 1: anything else, because again, they have to follow the same

949
00:56:39,239 --> 00:56:43,040
Speaker 1: rules as cable and satellite providers. This is largely because

950
00:56:43,040 --> 00:56:44,719
Speaker 1: in the United States, at least, there are all these

951
00:56:44,760 --> 00:56:49,520
Speaker 1: different rules and regulations in place to protect industries from

952
00:56:49,719 --> 00:56:54,200
Speaker 1: what is considered to be unfair competition. Cable and satellite

953
00:56:54,239 --> 00:56:57,640
Speaker 1: channels or providers rather have to follow these rules that

954
00:56:57,680 --> 00:57:01,200
Speaker 1: have been set up in order to create one it's

955
00:57:01,200 --> 00:57:03,800
Speaker 1: supposed to be a fair playing ground. You could argue

956
00:57:03,800 --> 00:57:05,480
Speaker 1: that that's not really the case since there are so

957
00:57:05,640 --> 00:57:09,919
Speaker 1: few major providers in the United States, but that's what's

958
00:57:09,920 --> 00:57:15,360
Speaker 1: supposed to happen. The Internet providers also are supposed to

959
00:57:15,360 --> 00:57:18,880
Speaker 1: follow those rules because without it they could run rampant,

960
00:57:19,320 --> 00:57:23,280
Speaker 1: and in fact, there have been some pretty big cases

961
00:57:24,080 --> 00:57:27,640
Speaker 1: involving stuff that is kind of in a gray area.

962
00:57:28,160 --> 00:57:31,720
Speaker 1: Between these You may remember when I was talking earlier

963
00:57:31,720 --> 00:57:36,600
Speaker 1: in this episode about people in Pennsylvania and Arkansas and uh,

964
00:57:36,680 --> 00:57:41,160
Speaker 1: you know, using these cables connected to antenna so that

965
00:57:41,200 --> 00:57:43,280
Speaker 1: they could get access to stuff that otherwise they would

966
00:57:43,320 --> 00:57:46,160
Speaker 1: not be able to receive because the signals are too

967
00:57:46,160 --> 00:57:50,280
Speaker 1: weak for them to pick up on their home television sets.

968
00:57:51,600 --> 00:57:57,040
Speaker 1: There was a company called Areo that launched and the

969
00:57:57,080 --> 00:58:00,280
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve and went out of busines this in

970
00:58:00,320 --> 00:58:02,840
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen. And the reason when out of business

971
00:58:02,960 --> 00:58:06,200
Speaker 1: wasn't because of lack of customers, but because it encountered

972
00:58:06,280 --> 00:58:10,400
Speaker 1: legal problems. What area was doing was offering up a

973
00:58:10,440 --> 00:58:14,320
Speaker 1: service where you can subscribe to the service and get

974
00:58:14,360 --> 00:58:18,320
Speaker 1: access over the internet to live television stations that were

975
00:58:18,360 --> 00:58:23,880
Speaker 1: picked up by local antenna. Uh not your antenna, but

976
00:58:24,000 --> 00:58:27,080
Speaker 1: the business is antenna and they had set up antenna

977
00:58:27,120 --> 00:58:30,080
Speaker 1: originally in New York City, and so you could subscribe

978
00:58:30,080 --> 00:58:34,560
Speaker 1: to this business and get access to live TV picking

979
00:58:34,720 --> 00:58:37,320
Speaker 1: that was being picked up by these antenna. And there

980
00:58:37,320 --> 00:58:42,520
Speaker 1: were service providers and uh, content providers who said, this

981
00:58:42,560 --> 00:58:45,880
Speaker 1: isn't fair. We can't get compensated for this. There's no

982
00:58:46,000 --> 00:58:50,960
Speaker 1: carriage agreement. And Ario's argument was saying, well, we're just

983
00:58:51,040 --> 00:58:54,960
Speaker 1: using antenna. We're using broadcasts that are over the air.

984
00:58:55,360 --> 00:58:58,480
Speaker 1: There's no limit, you know, there's not anything here that

985
00:58:58,560 --> 00:59:02,320
Speaker 1: should be a gateway or a wall between the customer

986
00:59:02,400 --> 00:59:06,040
Speaker 1: and the content. So it's the exact same thing as

987
00:59:06,040 --> 00:59:08,160
Speaker 1: if the customer had set up his or her own

988
00:59:08,240 --> 00:59:11,760
Speaker 1: antenna in their own home. All we're doing is just

989
00:59:11,800 --> 00:59:15,560
Speaker 1: sort of creating a middleman approach where we've got the antenna,

990
00:59:15,800 --> 00:59:19,040
Speaker 1: but the customer still gets to see stuff that's over

991
00:59:19,040 --> 00:59:23,080
Speaker 1: the air. It's not like we're descrambling signals or anything.

992
00:59:23,080 --> 00:59:27,880
Speaker 1: This is all in the clear broadcasts. But the various

993
00:59:27,920 --> 00:59:31,600
Speaker 1: industry group said, no, you're you you're charging a subscription

994
00:59:31,640 --> 00:59:34,480
Speaker 1: fee for the service and we're not seeing any of that,

995
00:59:34,960 --> 00:59:36,640
Speaker 1: and we don't have any of these carriage agreements. You're

996
00:59:36,640 --> 00:59:40,640
Speaker 1: acting more like a cable provider than you are anything else. Uh.

997
00:59:40,720 --> 00:59:43,280
Speaker 1: And if in fact this we're just a case of

998
00:59:43,480 --> 00:59:46,840
Speaker 1: using an antenna, then there's already a solution there, right.

999
00:59:47,240 --> 00:59:49,200
Speaker 1: The person can just go out and buy an antenna,

1000
00:59:49,400 --> 00:59:51,200
Speaker 1: never mind the fact that, depending upon where you live,

1001
00:59:51,240 --> 00:59:53,520
Speaker 1: you may not be able to get a good signal

1002
00:59:53,600 --> 00:59:57,600
Speaker 1: over the air using an antenna. That was the argument,

1003
00:59:57,960 --> 01:00:01,760
Speaker 1: and Originally some of the lower courts agreed with Area,

1004
01:00:01,880 --> 01:00:03,920
Speaker 1: but eventually this went all the way up to the

1005
01:00:03,960 --> 01:00:07,640
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, wherein a six three decision, the Supreme Court

1006
01:00:07,720 --> 01:00:10,200
Speaker 1: came down and said, you know what, Area, you don't

1007
01:00:10,200 --> 01:00:13,320
Speaker 1: have a leg to stand on. You you are acting

1008
01:00:13,320 --> 01:00:16,840
Speaker 1: more like a cable service provider as opposed to just

1009
01:00:16,920 --> 01:00:22,360
Speaker 1: an antenna, and therefore you are not allowed to practice

1010
01:00:22,440 --> 01:00:27,320
Speaker 1: business in this method anymore. And so the company ended

1011
01:00:27,360 --> 01:00:31,360
Speaker 1: up folding. He said they could no longer do that

1012
01:00:31,480 --> 01:00:35,360
Speaker 1: kind of business. There are similar businesses that do rely

1013
01:00:36,000 --> 01:00:42,920
Speaker 1: upon an actual consumers own UH feed. So, in other words,

1014
01:00:43,080 --> 01:00:47,200
Speaker 1: there's slingbox, not to be confused with sling TV, and

1015
01:00:47,280 --> 01:00:51,680
Speaker 1: slingbox is a streaming media service. It's a device that's

1016
01:00:51,720 --> 01:00:56,439
Speaker 1: actually UH allows you to watch your television no matter

1017
01:00:56,480 --> 01:00:59,520
Speaker 1: where you are. But this relies upon the feed that's

1018
01:00:59,520 --> 01:01:04,000
Speaker 1: going into your home. It's not like it's a system

1019
01:01:04,160 --> 01:01:07,480
Speaker 1: that is connected to someone else's antenna. It's connected to

1020
01:01:07,520 --> 01:01:10,880
Speaker 1: your cable box or satellite box or whatever. And the

1021
01:01:10,920 --> 01:01:13,919
Speaker 1: way it works is that the incoming signal can then

1022
01:01:13,960 --> 01:01:17,560
Speaker 1: be sent over the Internet to the receiver. And the

1023
01:01:17,600 --> 01:01:20,080
Speaker 1: benefit of this is you can watch your local television

1024
01:01:20,120 --> 01:01:23,880
Speaker 1: even when you're away from home. Now, there are some

1025
01:01:23,960 --> 01:01:26,520
Speaker 1: issues with this as well, because depending upon the content

1026
01:01:26,560 --> 01:01:31,480
Speaker 1: you're trying to watch, there are blackout agreements that can

1027
01:01:31,600 --> 01:01:34,320
Speaker 1: make this a little muddy. So, for example, is sports.

1028
01:01:34,960 --> 01:01:38,600
Speaker 1: If I happen to be traveling to let's say ce

1029
01:01:38,920 --> 01:01:41,640
Speaker 1: S and I want to watch a Braves game, which

1030
01:01:41,640 --> 01:01:43,120
Speaker 1: would be weird because it would be in the middle

1031
01:01:43,160 --> 01:01:47,000
Speaker 1: of winter and baseball doesn't happen then, But follow me,

1032
01:01:47,000 --> 01:01:48,960
Speaker 1: because we don't have the Thrashers anymore, so I don't

1033
01:01:48,960 --> 01:01:52,240
Speaker 1: really have any other sports I would watch, um, but

1034
01:01:52,280 --> 01:01:54,760
Speaker 1: I want to watch local sporting event while I'm in

1035
01:01:54,880 --> 01:01:59,240
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. Usually I wouldn't have access to it because

1036
01:01:59,560 --> 01:02:03,920
Speaker 1: that would have this regional agreement where a very specific

1037
01:02:03,960 --> 01:02:07,400
Speaker 1: broadcaster would be allowed to show that, and it would

1038
01:02:07,440 --> 01:02:11,720
Speaker 1: only apply to a specific region and not outside of it. Now,

1039
01:02:11,760 --> 01:02:13,760
Speaker 1: I live in that region, but I wouldn't actually be

1040
01:02:13,840 --> 01:02:17,160
Speaker 1: there at the time. I'd be in Las Vegas. Using slingbox,

1041
01:02:17,240 --> 01:02:20,240
Speaker 1: what I could do is tune into my local television,

1042
01:02:20,320 --> 01:02:23,880
Speaker 1: the TV set that's actually in my house, change it

1043
01:02:23,920 --> 01:02:26,280
Speaker 1: to whichever channel I want to watch, and watch the

1044
01:02:26,280 --> 01:02:32,040
Speaker 1: game that way. Even this approach has received some resistance

1045
01:02:32,280 --> 01:02:34,960
Speaker 1: but you could argue that this is much more clear

1046
01:02:35,080 --> 01:02:39,440
Speaker 1: cut case than the area approach because it's all relying

1047
01:02:39,520 --> 01:02:42,800
Speaker 1: on services that you, as a consumer already subscribed to

1048
01:02:43,000 --> 01:02:46,000
Speaker 1: or already have access to. It's not giving you access

1049
01:02:46,040 --> 01:02:49,760
Speaker 1: to an outside antenna. It is literally the services you

1050
01:02:50,000 --> 01:02:53,840
Speaker 1: are getting as a customer somewhere else. Now, some people

1051
01:02:53,880 --> 01:02:58,000
Speaker 1: would argue you should just stick with Internet over or

1052
01:02:58,000 --> 01:03:02,080
Speaker 1: television over internet services, and you're a little more limited

1053
01:03:02,080 --> 01:03:04,440
Speaker 1: because you're not gonna get a lot of localized stuff

1054
01:03:04,520 --> 01:03:07,480
Speaker 1: this way. But at the same time, you don't have

1055
01:03:07,520 --> 01:03:11,520
Speaker 1: to worry about these weird carriage deals. And like I said,

1056
01:03:11,560 --> 01:03:14,520
Speaker 1: this doesn't have really that much to do with technology.

1057
01:03:14,560 --> 01:03:18,000
Speaker 1: It has to do with business and competition and the

1058
01:03:18,040 --> 01:03:22,000
Speaker 1: fear of competition in some cases. And it also shows

1059
01:03:22,000 --> 01:03:25,520
Speaker 1: just how messed up a world our content delivery system is.

1060
01:03:26,600 --> 01:03:30,120
Speaker 1: It is incredibly complicated, and it involves a lot of

1061
01:03:30,280 --> 01:03:34,800
Speaker 1: very big power players in this space, all working very

1062
01:03:34,840 --> 01:03:39,520
Speaker 1: hard to maintain their spot of dominance. It's getting increasingly difficult.

1063
01:03:39,560 --> 01:03:42,040
Speaker 1: As we've seen in the cable industry and the satellite

1064
01:03:42,360 --> 01:03:46,600
Speaker 1: TV industry, we're starting to see more and more users

1065
01:03:46,680 --> 01:03:51,919
Speaker 1: kind of ease off of those those standards. So we're

1066
01:03:51,920 --> 01:03:55,120
Speaker 1: seeing more chord cutters moving away from cable TV and

1067
01:03:55,200 --> 01:03:59,200
Speaker 1: away from satellite TV and moving toward either going over

1068
01:03:59,240 --> 01:04:01,760
Speaker 1: the air and just picking stuff up over antenna or

1069
01:04:02,240 --> 01:04:06,520
Speaker 1: using internet delivery systems, and I suspect we're going to

1070
01:04:06,640 --> 01:04:09,840
Speaker 1: see that trend continue. It may not mean that we'll

1071
01:04:09,840 --> 01:04:14,840
Speaker 1: see a huge adoption of these live TV over internet services,

1072
01:04:15,720 --> 01:04:19,000
Speaker 1: largely because I think many consumers are going to see

1073
01:04:19,040 --> 01:04:22,520
Speaker 1: them as being prone to the same problems that they

1074
01:04:22,520 --> 01:04:26,400
Speaker 1: see in the cable business, although the price might be lower,

1075
01:04:26,440 --> 01:04:29,600
Speaker 1: in which case people might say, well, I'm gonna I'm

1076
01:04:29,640 --> 01:04:31,480
Speaker 1: still gonna get channels I don't want, but I'm paying

1077
01:04:31,560 --> 01:04:35,120
Speaker 1: less for it, so that we may see that happen. Uh,

1078
01:04:35,320 --> 01:04:37,919
Speaker 1: We're also seeing, you know, a lot of resistance now

1079
01:04:37,960 --> 01:04:41,680
Speaker 1: with so many different competing services out there, this concept

1080
01:04:41,680 --> 01:04:43,919
Speaker 1: of I wanted to go to just internet, but when

1081
01:04:43,920 --> 01:04:46,280
Speaker 1: I add up everything, it's cost me the same amount

1082
01:04:46,320 --> 01:04:50,520
Speaker 1: as getting cable tv. You know, if I'm using Amazon

1083
01:04:50,640 --> 01:04:54,320
Speaker 1: Prime and Netflix and Hulu on top of some live

1084
01:04:54,400 --> 01:04:58,160
Speaker 1: TV service, that all adds up after a while, and

1085
01:04:58,160 --> 01:04:59,800
Speaker 1: it just shows that this really is a lot more

1086
01:05:00,000 --> 01:05:02,400
Speaker 1: complicated than just saying I'll take these three channels and

1087
01:05:02,440 --> 01:05:05,240
Speaker 1: you can leave the rest. Will we ever get to that.

1088
01:05:05,720 --> 01:05:10,360
Speaker 1: I doubt it, at least not not anytime soon. There's

1089
01:05:10,480 --> 01:05:13,240
Speaker 1: there's too many players with too large a stake in

1090
01:05:13,280 --> 01:05:18,320
Speaker 1: the game to go to that. And ultimately, we consumers

1091
01:05:18,400 --> 01:05:22,720
Speaker 1: are actually revenue generators and no company wants to limit

1092
01:05:22,760 --> 01:05:26,680
Speaker 1: the amount of revenue they create. Kind of kind of freaky,

1093
01:05:26,720 --> 01:05:30,480
Speaker 1: but as I understand, that's how business works. I don't know,

1094
01:05:30,720 --> 01:05:33,800
Speaker 1: I'm just a tech guy. Well, that kind of wraps

1095
01:05:33,880 --> 01:05:39,320
Speaker 1: up this conversation about how the delivery systems for television

1096
01:05:39,360 --> 01:05:41,720
Speaker 1: have changed over the years. I didn't really get into

1097
01:05:41,800 --> 01:05:46,080
Speaker 1: time shifting. That obviously is another big element that has

1098
01:05:46,880 --> 01:05:49,600
Speaker 1: uh complicated matters. That's of course, when you record a

1099
01:05:49,640 --> 01:05:51,880
Speaker 1: show and you watch it on your schedule as opposed

1100
01:05:51,920 --> 01:05:55,760
Speaker 1: to when it originally airs. VCRs were kind of the

1101
01:05:55,800 --> 01:05:59,800
Speaker 1: start of that, but DVRs really pushed it because then

1102
01:05:59,800 --> 01:06:03,400
Speaker 1: you had an easy way to get into a show

1103
01:06:03,440 --> 01:06:07,560
Speaker 1: and then bypass stuff like advertising, which brought the question

1104
01:06:07,600 --> 01:06:11,520
Speaker 1: the whole monetization model for TV and really shook the

1105
01:06:11,560 --> 01:06:15,560
Speaker 1: industry quite a bit. And uh, it's still one of

1106
01:06:15,600 --> 01:06:19,240
Speaker 1: the components of television that has people in the industry

1107
01:06:19,240 --> 01:06:23,720
Speaker 1: worried because if you suddenly take away the revenue generator,

1108
01:06:24,000 --> 01:06:28,240
Speaker 1: the whole concept of using ads to support the production

1109
01:06:28,280 --> 01:06:32,480
Speaker 1: of television, eventually you run out of money to produce stuff,

1110
01:06:33,000 --> 01:06:38,680
Speaker 1: and so we could ultimately find ourselves in a a

1111
01:06:38,840 --> 01:06:42,960
Speaker 1: low point in TV production. Some might argue that the

1112
01:06:43,000 --> 01:06:49,280
Speaker 1: reality television era was already evidence of that, although we've

1113
01:06:49,280 --> 01:06:54,640
Speaker 1: seen some pretty phenomenal TV come out since the reality

1114
01:06:54,680 --> 01:06:57,760
Speaker 1: television boom, so I don't know that that argument is

1115
01:06:58,040 --> 01:07:04,200
Speaker 1: entirely uh with merit. But who's to say. It's a

1116
01:07:04,240 --> 01:07:06,920
Speaker 1: complicated issue, and maybe one day I'll be able to

1117
01:07:06,920 --> 01:07:11,240
Speaker 1: get like a real expert in the industry to break

1118
01:07:11,280 --> 01:07:13,280
Speaker 1: it down in a way that we can all understand,

1119
01:07:13,320 --> 01:07:16,000
Speaker 1: because goodness knows, I still get confused. If you guys

1120
01:07:16,080 --> 01:07:17,680
Speaker 1: have a topic you would like me to cover in

1121
01:07:17,680 --> 01:07:20,440
Speaker 1: a future episode of tech Stuff, please let me know.

1122
01:07:20,680 --> 01:07:23,520
Speaker 1: Send me a message. The email addresses tex Stuff at

1123
01:07:23,560 --> 01:07:25,320
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, or you can drop me

1124
01:07:25,360 --> 01:07:28,120
Speaker 1: a line on Facebook or Twitter handle both of those

1125
01:07:28,320 --> 01:07:32,800
Speaker 1: tech stuff hs W. Remember we are on Instagram and

1126
01:07:32,840 --> 01:07:35,720
Speaker 1: you can watch me record this show live on Twitch

1127
01:07:35,760 --> 01:07:39,520
Speaker 1: dot tv slash tech Stuff. I record on Wednesdays and Fridays,

1128
01:07:39,560 --> 01:07:41,960
Speaker 1: just pop over to twitch dot tv slash tech Stuff.

1129
01:07:41,960 --> 01:07:44,720
Speaker 1: You'll see the schedule there. I hope you'll join us.

1130
01:07:44,760 --> 01:07:47,400
Speaker 1: We've got a cool chat room in there. You can

1131
01:07:47,600 --> 01:07:51,919
Speaker 1: join in on the conversation, make jokes, you know, ask

1132
01:07:52,000 --> 01:07:54,880
Speaker 1: for my attention, which I will likely give you as

1133
01:07:54,880 --> 01:07:58,160
Speaker 1: soon as I hit a break in between recording segments.

1134
01:07:58,840 --> 01:08:00,600
Speaker 1: And I would love to see you there and I

1135
01:08:00,640 --> 01:08:08,520
Speaker 1: will talk to you guys again really soon for more

1136
01:08:08,560 --> 01:08:10,840
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, because at how

1137
01:08:10,920 --> 01:08:21,639
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com