Category: Multichannel News Blog

Mid-April Las Vegas Super Session Breaks New Ground (Las Vegas, NV, April 13, 2015) – On Tax Day, Wednesday, April 15, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), for the first time ever, will present a session about the Internet of Things, titled “Broadband and the Internet of Things: Realities and Myths.”   This bigger-than-normal-in-audience-size-and-attention “Super Session” will take the NAB… Read More

Study Finds Rights Hamper New Media While Demand Rises The Carmel Group’s most recent across-the-industry study looks at where the video industry is headed in the next 3-5-to-7-year time span, focused almost entirely on the content side of the business.* We asked questions of 30+ key C-Level executives representing a macro cross-section of the federal government, trade groups, telecom law… Read More

Can IoT Play A Role In Radio- and TV-Related Devices, Usage, Spectrum, and The Like?3/11/2015 4:45 PM Author: Jimmy Schaeffler For the past several decades, TV has been the center of my professional life. It got its truest start 20 years ago, assisting companies that wished to transition from a broadcast and cable world, to that including a satellite-telco pay… Read More

Handicapping Future Acquisitions Based on Word Abbreviations? At the time and place of the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas (LVC), the Washington, DC (WDC)-based Satellite Broadcasting Communications Association (SBCA), conducted an off-site “Leadership Luncheon” (SBCALL). This SBCALL was organized by The Carmel Group (TCG), in conjunction with SBCA (of course), EchoStar (DISH and SATS), and DirecTV (DTV),… Read More

Reviving The Internet TV Trend; A Huge Challenge to Traditional Pay TV   The top headline above deals with video services and in-home consumer devices. Yet, someone young and new to the media and telecom industries might easily confuse this title with groups and music stars among their youthful music and entertainment. Indeed, “Sling and The Disruptors” could well be… Read More

And a Bit of World-Class Satellite Distribution, As Well My 10-day European excursion ended  a week ago Monday (following another horrendous experience with United Airlines), with visits for three days each to the International Broadcasting Conference 2014 in Amsterdam; Messe Frankfurt’s Automechanika 2014 in Frankfurt; and to one of the world’s largest (and best) fixed satellite services (FSS) providers, SES,… Read More

The Future of Small-To-Midsized Cable The Pittsburgh-headquartered American Cable Association (ACA), and its sister organization, the Lenexa, Kan.-based National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC), have been, for many decades between them, advocating for and representing their hundreds of cable TV, phone, and broadband members in their business and governmental endeavors.   In the case of the NCTC, it stands as an… Read More

More Convergence Than Ever Four years ago, the editors at Multichannel News asked me to create a title for my new column.   Even back then, it seemed like “Mixed Signals” made a lot of sense.   I liked “Mixed Signals” because even back then, there was so much actual or oncoming overlap between cable, broadcast, satellite, telco video and other forms… Read More

Assessing A Video Future Shaped By Those Giants Steve Jobs, quite a time before he died in October 2011, bragged about his interest in TV being something of a “hobby” in search of a real business. It was a good enough idea that Jobs’ successor and that team at Apple have continued that mission, albeit arguably without any of the… Read More