Wall Street Thinks The Cable TV Sector Could Easily 'Unravel.' That's Probably A Good Thing.

from the adapt-or-perish dept

For the better part of the last decade, some Wall Street analysts have quietly been pointing out that the current pay TV business model is unsustainable. As it stands, broadcasters increasingly impose giant price hikes for the same programming to cable companies, who in turn pass those higher costs on to consumers. Those consumers are, in turn, increasingly "cutting the cord" by moving to cheaper streaming alternatives. And when those streaming alternatives don't provide what they want or raise rates (as AT&T recently did with its DirecTV Now service), subscribers then shift toward free options like over the air antennas or piracy.

Smaller cable providers have been warning for years that unless you enjoy the size and leverage of being a giant ISP and broadcaster combined (AT&T/Time Warner, Comcast/NBC Universal), you're not going to be able to survive this new tight-margin market. Some, like CableONE, have opted to get out of TV entirely and focus on broadband. It's a trend that's only likely to accelerate.

Some Wall Street analysts, like MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett, have been noting for a while that this entire mess isn't getting better anytime soon. He's again making the rounds, arguing that there's a chance that bigger cable operators could similarly embrace the idea of giving up on video as margins tighten. And if they stop caring about video (either by dropping pricey channels or raising rates), it's only going to accelerate the cord cutting trend:

"If larger MSOs follow their smaller peers in concluding that video is no longer worth defending, then subscriber declines would almost certainly accelerate, perhaps radically so," Moffett wrote. "And that, in turn, would force programmers to be even more aggressive in licensing their content to OTT services, sealing the deal. The industry as we know it today could, or would, simply unravel."

This is an industry that responded to increased streaming competition by doubling down on all of its very worst impulses, especially raising rates. As such, a semi-collapse of the sector could probably be a good thing. Most specifically by curing many cable and broadcast executives of the false belief that the traditional, bloated cable bundle is going to live forever, and that cord cutting is just this weird, overhyped trend that stops once Millennials procreate more. A collapse would send a very clear message that heated video competition is the new normal and adaptation is essential.

That said, giant cable operators like Comcast NBC Universal have a secret weapon in this fight: their monopoly over broadband. Moffett has been pointing out for a long time that "video just doesn't matter" anymore if you're a cable TV provider. With tight margins and hot competition in video, all the money is going to be in broadband moving forward:

"That in turn has diminished the value of a pay TV subscriber versus a broadband customer. Moffett estimated that the market values a video customer at a multiple of about 2 times cash flow, while a broadband subscriber is attached a value of between 12 and 13 times cash flow. “Video just doesn’t matter much anymore,” Moffett said."

Moffett doesn't clearly illustrate in his research notes is why broadband is so profitable. It's so profitable because in many areas it remains a natural monopoly dominated by just a few major players like Comcast or Charter (Spectrum). This monopoly control provides a secret weapon in the video wars. Thanks to no competition, these companies can impose arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps and overage fees, which drives up the price of not just broadband...but of using streaming competitors. Companies like AT&T remove these restrictions if you use their own streaming services. In short, they hope to win by dominating the pipe, then tilting the playing field to dominate the content.

Between their attacks on FCC oversight (including net neutrality) and these natural monopolies, many of the bigger companies will be protected for some time from the financial cost of increased video competition. But ultimately the entire market is going to need to be dramatically reshaped as traditional, bloated and expensive cable TV channel bundles die thanks to a little thing called competition. Avoiding the financial hit on the video side of the equation is not going to be avoidable for many of these companies, no matter how hard they tried to convince themselves the cord cutting trend wasn't a serious threat.

While that greater video competition will be a good thing for consumers as a universe of companies battle it out, consumers will ultimately be paying for the evolution courtesy of higher broadband bills and weird net neutrality violations, thanks to a broken US broadband market and regulatory capture problem neither party has historically been interested in trying to fix.

Filed Under: cable, television, wall street

Tech Journalists Keep Completely Missing The Point Of Cord Cutting

from the buy-ALL-the-things! dept

It has become the laziest "hot take" in technology media. Once a month or so, a writer decides to subscribe to as many streaming video services as possible. They then proudly declare that this whole cord cutting thing (ditching traditional cable TV for streaming video) is a waste of time. Why? For whatever reason, these writers feel compelled to try and use streaming alternatives to perfectly mirror the existing, bloated cable bundle consumers have spent two decades complaining about, only to shockingly wind up disappointed by the cost (gosh, it's almost as if broadcasters dictate the pricing for both services!).

Each time one of these stories pops up (from Gizmodo to USAToday,) we note how these writers are completely missing the point. Cord cutters aren't trying to precisely mirror traditional cable bundle, they're simply looking for greater flexibility. Cord cutting provides just that, in that if you don't like sports -- for example -- you don't have to subscribe to any services that offer it. As such, "cord cutting is really expensive when I subscribe to every streaming service in the known universe" is just an odd narrative that just keeps bubbling up across various media outlets despite not really making much sense.

The latest culprit is the New York Post, which recently penned a missive declaring that "streaming TV is getting as bad as cable." Why? Again, it's apparently because when you sign up for every streaming service imaginable, it starts to get somewhat expensive:

"Home entertainment is really starting to add up. Want to watch “The Crown,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Transparent,” “Game of Thrones” and “Homeland”? Prepare to drop $51 a month — minimum. And that number doesn’t even include your Internet package or basic options such as Food Network, Travel Channel and Syfy.

And just when we thought we’d reached maximum capacity, in September, CBS will resurrect “Star Trek” for a new series called “Discovery.” Fans rejoiced at the announcement — they’d been without a “Trek” series for 12 years — until they made a rude discovery of their own: The new show would only be available on the CBS All Access app. That’s $5.99 a month to basically watch one show. Absolutely nobody is signing up for the “NCIS” reruns. So now we’re at $57 a month.

So, several things. One, $57 a month is still significantly less money that what many people pay for cable. Two, writers like this ignore a number of obvious realities that can lower your costs further, including the fact that countless people share streaming service passwords (something most streaming companies don't care about because they see it as free advertising). You also need to factor in things like over the air antennas (and the rising number of solutions that let you record this content to DVR), which provide additional options for less money -- or free.

Writers like this also hysterically like to avoid so much as mentioning piracy. Too many writers bizarrely act as if you're not allowed to even acknowledge piracy exists because it's naughty. But if you're "analyzing" how much it costs for an ordinary consumer to get TV content and you're not factoring in piracy, you're missing a fairly massive part of the overall picture. It doesn't really matter if you or your publisher don't like it, or don't think people should be doing it. It's happening, it's part of the overall cost-saving picture, and it's something companies have to compete with. Yet it's never even mentioned in these reports.

That said, journalists pushing the "if I buy everything in the store it gets expensive" narrative are missing the most important point: actual consumers repeatedly say cord cutting saves them significant sums of money each and every month. And if any of these writers had actually bothered to, say, talk to actual cord cutters, they would tell them the same thing.

Every time a story like this pops up I enjoy heading over to Reddit where users quickly point out how cord cutting is saving them plenty of money. Why? Because it provides something most traditional cable providers aren't willing to: flexibility and choice. With cord cutting, the end user gets to decide how to best balance their viewing options to build a content package that works for them and their budget. That's in contrast to your cable provider, who'll consistently pay empty lip service to choice and flexibility, right before it raises both your cable bill and set top box rental fee.

Yet somehow the reality that consumers are truly saving money escapes these pearl-clutching authors. Like in this recent story at Wired pushing the same, stale narrative. One user at Reddit put their objection to these reports rather succinctly:

"I don't know why every article like this dives into recreating cable, and then laments that it's not that much cheaper than cable. He's way more concerned with watching channels than watching shows or entertainment."

Look, if you really like paying a significant sum of money for 500 channels to a company with a worse customer service rating than the IRS nobody's stopping you. In fact, if you truly need to access every shred of programming imaginable and have oodles of disposable income, cable remains your best bet. But the idea that cord cutting is somehow "failing" just because it's not good at mirroring the abysmal value presented by the traditional cable bundle makes no coherent sense. At the very least, the next time you proudly declare that cord cutting doesn't save consumers money -- perhaps talk to some actual consumers first?

Filed Under: cable, cord cutting, television

As A Streaming Future Looms, ESPN Is Damned If It Does, Damned If It Doesn't

from the rock-and-a-hard-place dept

So for years we've examined how executives at ESPN completely whiffed at seeing the cord cutting revolution coming, and personified the industry's denial that a massive market (r)evolution was taking place. As viewers were beginning to drift away from traditional cable and erode revenues, ESPN executives were busy doubling down on bloated sports contracts and expensive Sportscenter set redesigns. Only once ESPN lost 10 million viewers in just a few years did executives finally acknowledge that cord cutting was a problem, though they subsequently have tried to downplay the threat at every opportunity.

The question now is how to fix that problem. ESPN's first step was to try and save costs by firing oodles of on-air talent, but not the executives that failed to navigate this sea change. That has since been followed by ESPN-owner Disney recently proclaiming it would be offering two direct to consumer streaming platforms -- one stocked with Disney and Pixar fare, and the other being a direct to consumer ESPN product. During a recent earnings call, Disney CEO Bob Iger verbalized the company's slow epiphany in the face of cord cutting:

"We’ve got this unbelievably passionate base of Disney consumers worldwide that we’ve never had the opportunity to connect with directly other than through the parks,” Iger said. “It’s high time we got into the business to accomplish that.”

Iger acknowledged that the decision to act was spurred by the disruption in the traditional TV eco-system that has been rocking ESPN for the past few years. But Disney’s blue-chip brands give them a leg up in taking a radical new approach to reaching consumers.

“It’s not just a defensive movie, it’s an offensive move,” Iger said.

Granted it's not really playing offense when you only react after worries about cord cutting and ratings slides causes a $22 billion valuation hit in just a few days, something Disney experienced last year. Still, it's good to see Disney pull its head out of the sand and embrace the idea of giving consumers what they want, even if the move is painfully belated and under-cooked. The problem for ESPN specifically, as many have been quick to point out, is that the company is still stuck between a rock and a hard place in terms of navigating the transition to streaming -- even if it does everything right (which it won't).

There's plenty of reasons for that, the biggest being that streaming simply can't be as profitable as the long-standing practice of forcing cable TV customers on to bloated bundles filled with channels (like ESPN) that they may not want. ESPN currently makes $7.21 for each cable TV subscriber, many of which pay for ESPN begrudgingly. One survey found that 56% of ESPN viewers would ditch the channel if it meant saving that money off of their monthly bill. Fear of losing those customers was one of the reason ESPN sued Verizon when the company tried to take ESPN out of its core TV bundle.

And while ESPN may now be technically doing the right thing in finally offering a direct-to-consumer streaming product, such an offering will only aid to expedite viewer defections, while ESPN's sports licensing costs remain the same:

"A streaming service, while it might attract sports fans who have cut the cord, won’t solve ESPN’s profit problems. Instead it will exacerbate them. Why? Because ESPN will continue to lose the millions upon millions of cable subscribers who pay for it but never watch it. Losing $7.21 from each non-watcher is going to be a revenue killer. There is no possible way the universe of sports fans who want ESPN can make up that revenue, even if they’re charged more for a streaming service."

Traditionally, many cable and broadcast companies have tried to give the impression of adaptation by launching a streaming service, then saddling it with all manner of caveats to prevent existing, traditional cable TV customers from downgrading to the cheaper, more flexible streaming option. This really never works, but it looks like the path Iger and Disney are going to follow when it comes to ESPN's latest streaming venture:

"To make matters worse, Disney appears to be planning a streaming service that even the most rabid sports fan will be reluctant to pay for. All the good stuff — big-time college football, professional basketball, the Monday night National Football League game — will remain exclusively on ESPN’s cable channels. The streaming service will get, well, other things. It’s pretty clear that Iger is still trying to protect Disney’s legacy cable business, and that his move to the internet is not exactly a wholehearted embrace."

In other words, ESPN's epiphany and transition isn't quite as profound as many are suggesting, and ESPN still somehow believes it can control the rate of evolution; a fool's errand. Many industry insiders also have told me over the years that ESPN's contracts with many cable providers state that should ESPN offer its own streaming services, cable providers will no longer be bound by restrictions forcing them to include ESPN in their core lineups, which will only accelerate the number of skinny bundle options without ESPN.

It's a damned if you do and damned if you don't scenario for ESPN, and even if ESPN does all the right things here and offers a truly compelling streaming platform customers really enjoy -- there's simply no getting around the fact that this transition is still going to really hurt.

Filed Under: cord cutting, streaming, television
Companies: disney, espn

FCC Pressure Helps Bring Netflix To Comcast Cable Boxes

from the pretending-to-be-open dept

We've long noted how Comcast is a bit of an anti-competitive jackass on both the TV and broadband fronts. When the nation's biggest cable provider isn't using usage caps to hinder streaming video competitors, it's busy finding new and creative ways to prevent paying customers from wandering too far outside of Comcast's well-cultivated walled garden. And while many global cable companies have joined the year 2016 by integrating Netflix functionality into their cable boxes for consumer benefit, Comcast has historically fought such a move, instead trying to drive consumers to its own Netflix knockoff.

But with the FCC considering new rules that would open up ye olde cable box to competition, Comcast is busy trying to portray itself as open to the changing competitive tides in the hopes of pre-empting new FCC regulations. The company this week is getting oodles of sudden praise for informing Recode that it will "allow" Netflix on to its X1 cable box:

"Said the pair in a statement: “Comcast and Netflix have reached an agreement to incorporate Netflix into X1, providing seamless access to the great content offered by both companies. We have much work to do before the service will be available to consumers later this year. We'll provide more details at that time." Sources said the deal to be on the cable giant’s set-top box would be akin to the arrangement that Netflix has cut with smaller cable operators in the United States and bigger ones across the globe.

It's kind of amazing what the faintest threat of a regulator actually doing its job can do. And while that's great that Comcast is joining the modern era by making its cable boxes actually useful, it's still a problem that Comcast can determine what consumers can and can't access via cable boxes they own and rent, which are looking more and more antiquated in the Roku and smart phone era. That's why the FCC is proposing rules that would require cable providers to simply provide existing programming to third party hardware vendors, in the hopes of creating better, cheaper set top boxes free of traditional walled gardens.

Comcast's sudden about face comes hand-in-hand with the cable industry's attempt to pre-empt FCC regulation on this front with an "app-based" plan of its own. Under the cable industry's "counter proposal" to cable box competition, cable providers would instead be able to keep the traditional cable box and walled gardens intact, provided that it offered its own cable TV lineup via an "app" for third party streaming devices. And while that sounds great on its face, this being the cable industry the plan has a number of ingrained caveats, such as the fact to use DVR recording you'd still need to rent a cable box. This is not a $21 billion annual monopoly the cable sector will give up easily.

So while it's all well and good that Comcast is being slowly forced to join the modern era, it should be clear that this is Comcast trying to forestall real, open cable platforms, not embrace them. The fact that Comcast still needs to "allow" its customers access to the most popular online service potentially ever conceived remains the real problem.

Filed Under: cable, fcc, set top boxes, television
Companies: comcast, netflix

Verizon's Attempt To Woo Millennials Is Equal Parts Creepy, Expensive And Sad

from the hip-cat dept

For some time now Verizon's made it very clear it wants nothing to do with its core fixed-line broadband business. Instead, Verizon's taking a huge bet that it can transform ye olde phone company into a huge advertising and streaming media empire, with a focus on wooing (read: selling ads to) Millennials. To that end Verizon acquired AOL and its ad technology for $4.4 billion last year. It developed a highly-controversial stealth ad tech that can track these youngsters around the Internet without their consent, and it created its own "Go90" streaming video service specifically aimed at Millennials.

More recently, Verizon announced it would be spending $650 million on a 25% stake in AwesomenessTV, a streaming venture aimed at, you guessed it, Millennials. AwesomenessTV was sold to Dreamworks for $33 million just three years ago, but Verizon believes the mark up is worth it, and the acquisition will be the cornerstone of the company's new Millennial sexification efforts:

"We are capitalizing on the emergence of these strong media brands that can reach millennials and Generation Z,” said Brian Angiolet, Verizon’s senior vice president for consumer product and marketing. “It’s like we’re in the early days of cable, and we want to participate more fully in the economics of that trend.”

AwesomenessTV will, moving forward, help feed exclusive content into Verizon's Go90 platform. The problem is that by all appearances, Verizon's Go90 rebranding efforts (which remove the Verizon name entirely in ads) aren't going all that well. Despite Verizon giving away some free, extra wireless gigabytes of data to users that try the service, Go90's ranking on most app stores appears to have only floundered since the initial launch last year. Analysts at firms like UBS aren't impressed either, noting that most Millennials are already getting their video content elsewhere:

"We believe Go90 will be hard-pressed to mount a meaningful challenge to mobile video and social networking leaders YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Netflix (NFLX) and Hulu,” wrote UBS analyst John Hodulik in the report. “That said, Verizon is pulling various levers to ramp up interest in and usage of Go90, including more live and exclusive content and free data for Verizon Wireless customers."

Even the company's plan to abuse its position as an anti-competitive gatekeeper hasn't really helped. The company gave the FCC and its net neutrality rules a giant middle finger recently by exempting Go90 content from company usage caps, but even this unfair advantage doesn't appear to have lit much of a fire under the initiative. As a result the effort has been mocked by T-Mobile CEO John Legere, who called Go90 a "debacle," that will in time be spoken of alongside things like Amazon and Facebook's failed attempts to sell their own phones.

Keep in mind that Verizon executives, after the departure of former Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, decided to effectively give up on fixed line broadband -- something it was actually marginally good at -- to pursue this new initiative. As such, Verizon stopped expanding FiOS (despite billions in subsidies and tax breaks for fiber never delivered) and began trying to offload or otherwise ignore the company's DSL customers. In some instances, this even meant outright refusing to repair DSL customers hit by natural disasters, citing expense.

Many of these resources were instead diverted to wireless (which makes sense from a ROI and future-proofing perspective). But Verizon executives honestly believe that if they spend enough money they can become an ad empire akin to Facebook or Google. But not even Verizon's experience with shady privacy violations, notably anti-competitive behavior and PR distortion fields appears capable of turning the company's legacy telecom empire into a sexy new media brand. Still, it should prove entertaining to watch Verizon spend billions trying.

Filed Under: millennials, streaming, television
Companies: awesomenesstv, dreamworks, verizon

Canadian Government Fails To Force Cheaper TV Options, Blames Consumers For Not Trying Harder

from the much-more-of-the-same dept

Last month we noted how Canadian regulator the CRTC tried to do something about the high cost of TV service by forcing Canadian cable operators to provide cheaper, more flexible TV bundles. Under the new CRTC rules, companies had to provide a $25 so-called "skinny bundle" of discounted TV channels starting March 1, and the option to buy channels a la carte starting December 1.

The Canadian TV industry responded, but not in the way government (should have) expected. Some companies responded by pouting and refusing to show regulators faces on TV. Some cable operators tried to hide the options from consumers. Others offered so-called "skinny bundles," but saddled them with so many below the line fees as to make the product offerings lack any real value. Some cable operators even agreed to adhere to the December 1 a la carte requirement a little early by offering consumers individual channels for sale -- but pricing them at $18 each.

In other words the CRTC's attempt to lower industry prices isn't really working, in part because the CRTC (much like the FCC in the states) refuses to crack down on misleading, below the line fees and false advertising. In a bit of an odd interview with the Globe and Mail, CRTC boss Jean-Pierre Blais now seems to claim that the CRTC's efforts can't be a bust, because the goal was never to lower TV prices:

"People may have thought, mistakenly, that the CRTC was going to reduce everybody’s cable bills – that’s not what we promised. We said we’re going to give you more choice,” Jean-Pierre Blais, chairman of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, said in an interview."

Right, but the reality is that the CRTC's plan (so far) has fostered neither choice nor lower prices, it has simply fostered the illusion of choice. Users may now be able to get a $25 discounted bundle of TV channels, but once you add on set top rental fees, DVR fees, home gateway rental fees, HD fees, "digital service fees," fees for additional channel packs you actually want to watch, and the cost of mandatory broadband -- you're not really seeing much if any significant improvement. The CRTC's effort might work, but it would require cracking down on misleading pricing, which no telecom regulator in North America seems all that keen on.

Oddly, Blais then proceeds to effectively imply consumers (which are calling in at volume to complain about the misleading offers) are to blame for not working hard enough to secure a good deal:

"He said the commission’s aim has been to give consumers “tools to solve their own problems,” and used a personal anecdote to drive home his point. “I myself … looked at my offerings and slimmed it down,” Mr. Blais said, after giving a speech about anti-spam legislation in Toronto on Tuesday. “Was it easy? No. … You have to keep going up the chain into [the] loyalty program. It requires effort...This will take time and I’ll repeat it again: Canadians will have to do some work,” Mr. Blais said. “They will have to be ready to at least threaten to change providers."

Again though, the end result, even with a lot of consumer work, really is more of the same. Users now get to enjoy the illusion of choice and value, instead of actual choice and value. Which leaves one again wondering if instead of trying to regulate cable prices (and even cable boxes as we're trying here in the States) it would make more sense to just let the legacy pay TV system collapse under the weight of its own hubris and Internet video competition, then focus the full power of regulatory attention on doing everything possible to promote broadband competition, the real regulatory battlefield of the 21st century.

Filed Under: cable, canada, crtc, television

Comcast, Which Wanted To Become Even Bigger, Leads The ISP Pack In Consumer Complaints To The FCC

from the comcan't dept

We've talked a lot about Comcast here at Techdirt, mostly because between the company's broadband cash-grab caps, its great big middle finger to the concept of net neutrality, and its (haha) customer service, there's just a never ending wealth of stories to write up and Mike only lets us out of the dungeon for porridge after we write enough posts. And, as we bring 2015 to a close, it's kind of fun to remember that Comcast wanted to be an even bigger corporate thing with its intended merger with Time Warner Cable.

Especially when you consider that Comcast is already the ISP most efficiently producing customer complaints with the FCC. ArsTechnica filed an FOIA request with the FCC to get an idea of how many complaints were lodged against which ISPs. Turns out Comcast is outpacing them all.

So we filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FCC, seeking information on three major types of Internet provider complaints: availability, billing, and speed. In those categories, Comcast received 11,812 complaints so far this year (from January 1 to November 9). AT&T got 3,896 such complaints, Verizon got 1,588, and TWC had 1,240. In total, AT&T, Verizon, and TWC received 6,724 such complaints—5,000 fewer than Comcast alone.

Digging in, the biggest factor in complaints by Comcast customers is the company's broadband caps and the overage chargers incurred should users go over the caps. For the largest player in the field, and one that wanted to become even larger, it's interesting that the company has a customer-angering policy that limits broadband usage at a time when data usage is growing and not shrinking. Keep in mind that Comcast itself admitted this was all about cashflow rather than capacity on the network. Its difficult to imagine how a company that is bucking the demand of the market could exist, never mind thrive, except in the barely-competitive marketplace that's been setup in the United States.

That point is driven home even more so when you consider that Comcast is both the largest ISP and the most widely despised along with the fact that it has the most FCC complaints levied against it per customer.

It isn’t surprising that Comcast received the most complaints, since it’s the largest ISP in the US and has regularly ranked at or near the bottom of its industry in customer satisfaction. Comcast also is the subject of much negative media coverage and attention from consumer advocacy groups, which may encourage more customers to file complaints.

Whatever the reason, it’s clear Comcast receives far more complaints on a per-customer basis than do other top ISPs. Comcast has 22.9 million broadband subscribers, compared to 15.8 million for AT&T, 13 million for TWC, and 9.2 million for Verizon, Leichtman Research Group reports. For wireline broadband, that means AT&T, TWC, and Verizon have a combined 38 million customers—about 15 million more than Comcast, even though the three firms together receive far fewer complaints.

And this is the company that sought government approval to become even larger, more unwieldy, and better able to thumb its nose at its customers? Please. While it was nice to see the merger denied when it happened, missing is the dropping of the other shoe, which ought to have been the realization that the ISP market is suffering from a severe lack of options and competition. No business so reviled should be so successful as Comcast. It's the hallmark of a broken system, yet we hear little about any attempts to repair it.

Filed Under: broadband, broadband caps, complaints, consumer complaints, customer service, fcc, television
Companies: comcast

Comcast Still Blocking HBO Go On Roku (And Now Playstation 3), Incapable Of Explaining Why

from the crash-the-gatekeepers dept

For years, HBO and Time Warner have refused to give people what they want and offer a standalone streaming video service, because they're afraid of shaking up their cozy, promotion-heavy relationship with the cable industry. Instead, HBO's Go streaming service has been made available on desktops and a growing number of devices, TVs, set tops and game consoles -- provided you log in with your traditional cable subscriber information. It's a half-measure, and availability to this day remains a little fractured.

Case in point: Sony this week finally made HBO Go available on the Playstation 3 (despite HBO Go launching in early 2010), but not the new Playstation 4. The new Playstation 3 version works for most cable operators in the country -- except for users on Comcast. Why not? Comcast doesn't really give an answer other than to say the massive (and soon to get much larger) company only has so many people available to ensure TV Everywhere authentication works on new devices:

"With every new website, device or player we authenticate, we need to work through technical integration and customer service which takes time and resources. Moving forward, we will continue to prioritize as we partner with various players."

Which might almost sound like a reasonable explanation -- until you realize that HBO Go on Roku hasn't worked for Comcast users since 2011, despite Roku being one of the most prominent Internet streaming devices available. Apparently, it's a matter of priorities? Comcast's argument for being allowed to acquire companies is always that these acquisitions make them bigger and more efficient. So apparently, getting simple TV authentication to work takes Comcast years longer than every other pay TV operator because Comcast is simply too big, efficient and fantastic?

Now, Playstation 3 users have joined the Roku user chorus, asking Comcast in their official forums why they can't use HBO Go, and are being greeted by the same silence Roku owners have enjoyed for years. I'm not sure you can get away with calling this a net neutrality violation (I think the term is mutated to the point of uselessness anyway), given HBO Go on Roku will work if you have Comcast broadband -- but get HBO from another pay TV provider like Dish. Still, it's fairly curious how Comcast's own Internet video and on-demand offerings (which include HBO content) tend to take priority.

The problem illustrates once again how the TV Industry's "TV Everywhere" mindset fails because it winds up taking value away from the user, not delivering it. It's also another shining example of how HBO should shake off its fears, embrace innovation, leapfrog the gatekeepers and release the standalone Internet streaming app everyone has been clamoring for.

Filed Under: cable, hbo go, playstation, streaming, television, tv everywhere
Companies: comcast, hbo, roku