Fire-Wired Blog

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com The rise of high-speed Internet and online streaming video over the last decade has definitely shaken the broadcast and pay TV business. While burgeoning Web technology has contributed to lower ratings and dipping revenues, it appears what the TV industry is most afraid of is a tool older than the medium itself, the antenna. Aereo , an online streaming video service, leases customers dime-sized antennas that retransmit locally broadcasted TV content over the Internet. This means someone living in Oregon can lease an Aereo antenna deployed in New York City and watch TV content hours before its broadcast in his or her actual time zone. The streaming video start-up has upset the broadcast TV industry so much, it’s scheduled to defend its legality before the United States Supreme Court in April. Broadcasters are challenging Aereo’s legal right to stream their content online without paying providers retransmission fees. Cable pro...

This article was first published by  dmcityview.com For tech geeks everywhere, doomsday came last week. On Jan.14, a federal appeals court struck down government regulations commonly referred to as “net neutrality,” the laws that forced Internet service providers (ISPs) to treat all Web traffic the same. Whether you were reading a blog post, sending an email or streaming a movie, net neutrality meant ISPs had to load all sites at the same rate and not some content over others. Confused? Net neutrality is like that, but at the heart of the discussion know that this means money. Think of it in terms of tiered TV subscriptions. Cable providers such as Mediacom or DIRECTV can host certain channels and not others based on the fee to carry them, beyond that, they can charge customers more for premium channels such as HBO or Showtime. With net neutrality potentially dead, ISPs can tier Internet sites and content in much the same way. Imagine Internet service where email and news sit...

This article was first published by dmcityview.com Just as television networks kick off another season of reality shows, sitcoms and dramas, a deluge of media outlets are pondering the future of TV. With advertising dollars being spread thin between cable television and the rise of online video, will TV follow the path of the daily newspaper industry? It might be too early to forecast TV’s demise, but just for kicks, I’d like to throw out one idea that could potentially throw the TV world into disarray. What if Google gained exclusive rights to livestreaming NFL games online? On its face, the idea sounds preposterous: Why would a tech giant possibly want the rights to streaming NFL games? Well the answer is quite simple. Google is much more than Web searches and smartphones. In recent years, it has quietly turned into a media giant. YouTube, which is owned by Google and is the fourth-most heavily trafficked website, is arguably the place for online entertainment. It streams Hollywo...

This article was first published by dmcityview.com The cable television industry is capitalism at its most corrupt. Outside of refusing to partake, cable and satellite subscribers have close to zero recourse in bringing down the cost of the service. While it would seem the fate of TV viewers is sealed, one provider has stepped in to potentially stem the tide of ever-climbing cable bills. Verizon Fios proposed last month to change its payment model to a system where networks are paid for their content based on the actual number of views they receive, not the current system of set, negotiated rates. Cable bills are, for the most part, comprised of “carriage fees,” which is the amount networks get paid per subscriber to their service. The amounts are rather small with payments anywhere from $4 for ESPN to less than a nickel for networks such as MTV2, LOGO and BBC World News. While those carriage costs don’t seem like much by themselves, many networks refuse to sell their content unl...