With what is going on with the digital transition and the economy, not to mention the “new media”, I think that broadcasting as we know it is going to die off or at least change into something we would never recognize if we were to jump ahead 10 years. That’s right, 10 years, at most, is all these traditional broadcasters have as a business.
The problem with Broadcast TV (over the air local stations) is that the networks are getting close to not paying the stations to carry their programing. Once the networks quit paying local TV stations, most of them will be forced to go out of business.. Just turn off the transmitters and go home. My thought is that most markets will only support one over the air TV station that is all local with no network affiliation. It will be the local news channel and they might have some sort of syndicated programing on there to fill time, but mostly it will be for local news, weather , sports and whatever. It’s just like the newspaper business. Back in the day, it wasn’t too uncommon for a big city to have 2 or 3 newspapers. Now there seems to be just one in most big cities. It will be the same for broadcast TV.
Cable TV will survive but it will be a different busness then it is today. The cable outlets will be mostly internet service providers. The channels they carry will be IP based instead of RF based. Instead of getting your ESPN channels on channel 17 and 35 it will just be a menu item on the cable company’s set top box.
Satilite TV may not survive. They will have a hard time competing with streaming internet channels because of the coming improvements to wireless internet. Right now EVDO (which isn’t really fast enough to watch TV on) is just about everywhere in the USA. Once that gets improved enough and the streams compressed enough, then people will have wireless internet everywhere their cable doesn’t go.. In cars, RV’s, Trucks and wherever else. They will be able to watch that ESPN Stream live on their phones. Who’s going to want to pay $50 a month for a satellite connection?
10 years ago, having radio stations in the sky seemed like a great idea, and it was. But in the 10 years it took XM and Sirius to get up to speed, the business model changed on them. They had to merge just to stay alive. So far they are holding their own. This won’t last. As with TV, and to a much greater extent, people will be able to stream audio to their cars (which is the major part of XM/Sirius’ market) though their telephone connection. Once this takes off, the XM network will dry up and blow away. I give them 5 years.. Maybe less.
IPTV which is the streaming content put out by CNET, HULU, Ustream and many others will be the wave of the future. The only thing they are not good at is live events (for now). Thats where the local tv stations will have hope. The broadcasters could use their bandwidth to stream data to cars and other wireless devices. There are already phones that can pick up special broadcasts on digital TV. Also, podcasts such as those put out by revision3 and others will remain strong as long as the distribution costs stay reasonable.
Broadcast radio (you know AM/FM) will be similar to TV in that these big groups of radio stations such as Clear Channel will not survive. We can get all the national syndicated shows via podcasting or streaming the same as video. That will leave the real local stations. Maybe a small AM transmitter in every town. Something that can be used to pass along emergency messages and local news. The rest of the time they will just be background noise.
The good old days of broadcasting are over. There are way too many outlets of information, entertainment and sports out there for the big expensive transmitters to survive. The power of the media will drop with the demise of the big central outlets. It might be a good thing and it might not. One thing for sure, it’s going to be interesting to watch. Being on both sides of the broadcast world is a lot of fun for me, but I wouldn’t put a long term bet on it. Just do it as a hobby as I have been.
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