Why Pay for Free Stuff

The local ABC station, WCPO Channel 9, recently announced that it was going to begin to charge a fee for some of the news content provided on its website. (www.wcpo.com) The report noted that only a portion of the material will be in this “walled garden” section.  Reports on local businesses and government will require a subscription while weather and public safety news will continue to be provided free.
 

This is not the first online news reporting to embrace the subscription model.  The Wall Street Journal has, from the very outset of online publishing, required a fee to read the complete daily paper.  About 18 months ago the Enquirer adopted a pay as you read model.  For some these changes may be irritating.  Nobody likes to pay for something that was free. 

 

A closer look however might change your mind.  A cursory glance at news reporting available online will show clearly that a large portion of the solid, credible and complete reporting is still being done by professionals associated with bona fide newspapers and broadcast news organizations.  In many cases the Internet is only a wonderful aggregator of material produced and paid for by others. 

 

When the internet was only a minor player in our daily lives this was not a problem.  In fact, newspapers and other major broadcast news operations were delighted with the publicity and the extended reach provided by the online exposure.  As more and more of us moved away from paying for the ink and paper version dropped on our driveways everyday, the newspapers’ revenues plummeted.  Today the viewership of major TV network newscasts is a fraction of what it was and as such there has been a precipitous drop in advertising revenue.

 

Look for more news websites to begin charging.  While citizen journalists and twitter and Facebook reports can provide information quickly and from places inaccessible by traditional media, having trained articulate journalists also part of our news diet is critical.  Paying a modest fee toward the cost of professional newsgathering is a small price to pay for maintaining an informed electorate that is absolutely imperative for a vital democracy.

Why No Local TV On My Smartphone

A reader recently asked me why he is not able to watch local TV stations on his smartphone.  With the state of mobile technology providing apps for everything from real time foreign language translation to solving complex math problems, one would think the simple process of capturing and displaying programming that already is being transmitted over the air would be a simple task for a smartphone.   Well, it is not.

There are two major stumbling blocks to making local TV a reality on your smartphone: the first impediment is technology based; the second, and the more difficult issue to conquer, relates to money and programming rights.

As I have written often, the standard over-the-air digital TV broadcasts are often plagued with reception issues.  Trying to receive these less than robust signals transmitted from your local TV stations using a small hand held device is difficult if not impossible without the addition of a large antenna and some battery eating circuitry.   Both are cumbersome, heavy and just not practical. 

While there are special mobile DTV technologies available, they have been enthusiastically embraced by neither the phone manufacturers nor the broadcasters.  Here in Cincinnati some stations have mobile transmissions but programming is sparse and very few of the local viewers have the equipment to receive them. 

A few Cincinnatistations are now promoting an add-on device called Dyle.  This mini DTV converter, about the size and weight of a can of tuna, connects via a wire to your iPhone or Android.  It might be ok for use at home but carrying around this extra box with a two foot antenna just doesn’t cut it for me.

The technical problems most likely could be solved by using the internet and existing 3G or 4G networks to carry the stations but then the second big impediment, the legal and financial issue, would need to be addressed.

The way local broadcast stations obtain programming from the networks for local broadcast has really not changed in decades.  The local affiliate has rights to broadcast programming from the network within a specific geographic area, i.e., a market.  For non-network programming like Jeopardy or Oprah, stations purchase the rights for the individual market from a syndicator.  Again the rights are only for the specific market which is limited by the physics of the broadcast signal.  Moving from a broadcast to the internet broadens the coverage.  It changes the economic model.  At this writing the local stations would not be permitted to offer most of their programming on line.

Programming that is locally produced, like the local newscasts, could be distributed via live internet streaming but so far very little is.  There have been some.  Recently one of the mayoral debates for Cincinnati was streamed live instead of being broadcast on a TV station.

The bottom line to this whole issue comes down to the fact that the economic model, the copyright laws and the agreements between local stations and the networks are based on technology that was dominant in the last century.  Until and unless these issues get resolved you will be able to watch programming live from half way around the world on your mobile phone but local news and weather will not be available.

 

All Eggs in One Basket

 The recent outage causing thousands of Cincinnati Bell Fioptics subscribers to be unable to watch the Bengals trounce the New York Jets calls to mind an old saying: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”  The problem is that with the integration of all things digital, that good advice may be difficult, if not impossible, to follow.

Not too long ago you made telephone calls on a wired phone, watched TV using rabbit ears, paid your bills with a check, envelope and stamp and watched your favorite movie at the local movie theater.  When planning a family trip to Aunt Gertrude’s house you sent her a letter using the post office and you plotted your route using a free map picked up from the Esso station down the road.

Today literally all the tasks listed above are routinely accomplished with a smart phone and the internet.  Great when it all works as it does most of the time, but a real pain in the (fill in your favorite word here) when it does not.  Our eggs are indeed now firmly packed into a single basket.  While the integration provides great convenience, when the technology fails bad things can happen and sometimes it can be more serious than just missing out on a touchdown.

For example, many have cut the cord with Ma Bell and use a voice over internet (VOIP) service from Time Warner or another internet provider.  A power outage can render the phone useless.  Since Cincinnati Bell provides power to their network, even powering standard phones in your house, very seldom will you lose the use of your wired phone, even if your whole neighborhood is without power from Duke.

A few months ago there was a story on the news about a motorist who placed a bit too much confidence in her malfunctioning GPS, only to get lost in the Mohave Desert.  This does not happen often but a healthy skepticism of technology can be good idea.  Digital or not, you are using machines, very sophisticated machines but still machines.

Just as you most likely have a flashlight on hand for those times when the lights fail, you should have some alternate ways of handling those tasks that you take for granted and are handled solely by the internet.  So the cloud is fine for storing your files but make sure you have copies of those important files in a safe place. 

In the case of the customers relying in Cincinnati Bell Fioptics, a $10 rabbit ears antenna would have solved the problem.