Those who have been paying exorbitant prices for their pay TV packages on cable and satellite are about to get some bad news: Nearly all of the major pay TV companies across the nation are about to raise their prices for customers currently subscribing to their services.
Three stories hit the news on Monday in separate publications, concerning three different but interrelated subjects -- advertising, entertainment, and the IT backbone of the Internet. Taken together, they represent a tipping point in a trend we've seen building for a decade. Welcome to the era of cord cutting.
DISH Network's Sling TV continues to improve its path blazing Internet TV subscription service, and continues to go after cord-cutting or "cord-never" Latino audiences, with two big additions this week: a new app for Android TV (i.e., the Google Nexus Player), and the addition of ESPN Deportes to its add-on pack for Spanish-speaking live sports nuts.
After the Supreme Court struck down Aereo's business model -- streaming live and live-recorded broadcast TV through the Internet for a low-cost subscription -- those who don't want to buy into cable or satellite TV are left with one fewer option. That's no big deal, according to Grant Whipple of Winegard, a company that makes high-tech home antennae with cord cutters in mind. We spoke with him about the Aereo case, cord cutting, and how the future of free digital TV is still bright.
Netflix now takes up about a third of North America's peak downstream traffic, according to a new report by network analysis company Sandvine. The company's report also purportedly shines a light on "cord cutters," a segment of internet users which it says is using more than seven times the data of typical internet users.
Probably the most entertaining thing at CES 2014 was the presentation from World Wrestling Entertainment Inc., as it announced it was launching the WWE Network - a streaming video channel on the internet that will include a huge amount of archival wrestling videos and new content for one monthly subscription.
