Mobile and Social: How We’re Really Getting Our News
Facebook, smartphones and tablets have been around for a long time — long enough to say with confidence that the fact we share news on them isn’t itself news. But what is news is that almost 44 percent of U.S. adults that get their news online are learning about the 2016 presidential election through social networking sites. Pew’s latest fact sheet on the State of the Media 2016’s segment on “Digital News Audience” spotlights the findings of a survey released earlier this year about media consumption during the 2016 presidential campaign. Here, the breakdown of the 65 percent of respondents
Why TV Everywhere Will Soon Be the New Norm
Summertime is approaching and with it vacations and travel start to ramp up. It’s during these times that taking TV on the go with you is the easiest and most convenient way to stay on top of those programs and live streaming events that you just don’t want to miss. Pay TV providers offer TV Everywhere services and with that comes a myriad of content available to subscribers on their phones or tablets and anywhere and everywhere they go outside of their homes. More and more people are catching on, but did you know that next summer there could be a whole new batch of happy travelers watching
Recognizing LGBT Programming Throughout Pride Month and Beyond
It’s been sixteen years since former U.S. president Bill Clinton officially recognized and declared June as Pride Month. That’s also 16 years of some of the best breakthroughs in LGBT programming we’ve seen on television. Cable creators have long been championing gay rights by ensuring more screen time for LGBT characters and incorporating storylines that point out injustices against the LGBT community. With pride celebrations underway, we take a look at a few of the cable-led efforts happening this month in support of the LGBT community, and a look back at some of the programming that broke
30 Years of Senate Coverage: How C-SPAN 2 Changed History
Three decades ago this week, an important part of how American democracy is covered was forever changed. C-SPAN, known for its long-format and uneditorialized televising of U.S. federal government proceedings, launched the first of its spin-off networks, C-SPAN 2, which provides live coverage of the U.S. Senate, and reaches over 95 million U.S. homes. This might be taken for granted in today’s 24-hour live streaming news cycle, but it was very much a novelty to allow TV cameras onto the Senate floor back in 1986. Floor proceedings of the House of Representatives had started airing in 1979, but
Four Reasons Why the FCC Set-Top Box Proposal Won’t Work
During a time when the worlds of technology, media and television are colliding and undergoing constant change and delivering exciting new services, you would think the government would focus its efforts on areas that truly need fixing. That’s why it is so puzzling that the FCC finds it necessary to propose a complicated and backwards-looking set-top box mandate that has unleashed a torrent of criticism from a significant (and growing) coalition of diverse voices. After all, the entire TV ecosystem is moving away from a hardware-centric world and into one that relies on apps and IP connected
Set-Top Boxes, Apps, and the Future of Entertainment
There’s been a lot (and I mean a lot) of talk lately about the set-top box. Through it all, we can see clearly that television delivery is moving in a completely new direction at rocket speed. With the inevitable switch in content distribution as the backdrop, Stephen Goldstein, VP of Business Development & Marketing at Samsung and Andrew Ferrone, VP of Pay TV at Roku stopped by Imagine Park today at INTX to talk about “Entertainment’s Apptastic Future.” Roku has started partnering with cable companies like Time Warner, Charter, and most recently Comcast to use their devices as an alternative
New Digital Media Stars and the Phenomenon Behind Their Success
Kids and their videos these days. They’re all over the place, on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook–those bite-sized pieces of entertainment that go viral and have everyone talking. Roll your eyes all you want at those kids, but the greatest “aha” moment in the Internet and television world is that there’s actually a strategy behind the creation and success of a lot of these digital media stars, said Evan Shapiro, Executive Vice President of NBCUniversal during a late afternoon session at INTX. Shapiro kicked off an hour-long conversation with Whistle Sports Director of New Channel Partnerships
The Future of Live Broadcast News in an On-Demand World
As NCTA President & CEO Michael Powell noted in his opening remarks to #INTX2016, every screen is now a television. That’s a double-edged sword. As more opportunities exist to consume video everywhere, the concept of traditional broadcasting is in upheaval. Entertainment programming has started to respond to this disruption rather successfully with shows like “Fargo” or “True Detective,” which take a cinematic approach to television. “[Entertainment] television is becoming more like the movie business,” Andy Lippman, Associate Director of the MIT Media Lab, said today at the opening talk in
Is the FCC’s Set-Top Box Plan Technology Neutral? Spoiler Alert: It’s Not
At a press conference following the FCC’s April 28 public meeting, Chairman Wheeler took the opportunity to call out NCTA for raising concerns about his proposal that would impose significant new rate regulation on competitive providers of business data services. According to the Chairman, the cable industry has long advocated technology neutral regulation and he suggested we were being hypocritical when we questioned his purportedly technology neutral approach to business data services. We explained in response that the Chairman was incorrect and that NCTA had long advocated a technology
CommScope Talks on Delivery of Gigabit Speeds
