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Television The Internet Wireless Networking

Cringely Predicts The End Of Broadcast TV Within A Decade (cringely.com) 171

Posted by EditorDavid from the one-network-to-rule-them-all dept.
In a new essay Friday, technology pundit Robert Cringely remembers the day he got his first home fax machine in 1986, arguing that broadcast television is like a fax machine -- in that "they are both obsolete."

Then he offers a quick history of television, cable TV, and the rise of Netflix, concluding "I'll be surprised if broadcast TV in the U.S. survives another decade" -- also predicting the end of cable TV packages: 5G wireless networking, as I've written here before, has pretty much nothing to do with mobile phones. It has to do with replacing every other kind of data network with 5G wireless. No more land lines, no more cable systems, no more wires. Going all-wireless almost completely eliminates customer-facing labor. No more guy with a tool belt to keep you waiting for service. No more truck rolls. There will be 5G and there will be content, that's all.

Content can mean a phone call or a movie, a game, or anything else that involves electrons in motion. And given that we'll all have voracious and completely different demands for high-resolution content, 5G will suck-up all available bandwidth and then some. Legacy broadcast license holders like broadcast TV and radio stations will sell their airspace to 5G carriers and retire to Florida. They'll get offers they can't refuse....

Cable TV packages will fall apart with every network fighting for itself in an a la carte programming world.
"There's nothing sacrosanct about a broadcast network paradigm that we've been riding for a century," he concludes. "This too shall pass."
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Cringely Predicts The End Of Broadcast TV Within A Decade More

Cringely Predicts The End Of Broadcast TV Within A Decade

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  • since we are at that... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I predict the end of Robert Cringely in 20 years .

    • He's been going on for long enough that I think he'll go on until he dies, then be replaced by a bot that makes random predictions every year. Slashdot will still report them and people will still forget about then a day later.

  • I don't think I agree on 5G with technical issues hampering that technology in the role he predicts.

    But we are already living the dream of countless small streaming segments taking over traditional broadcasting. I don't think there's any reason left at all to go for broadcasting when you have so many varied streaming options to consider. Forget 50 channels, try 500 or 5000....

    • Cringely is right. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 08, 2019 @04:00PM (#58731868)

      I work in broadcast TV, and I myself predicted this 10 years ago. The main reason is people want to watch what they want, when they want. They don't want to be tied to a schedule. Streaming is not only the future, it Is now. I first saw this when Steam came about, and solidified when phone apps were the norm.

      Second is local (and even national) news act like this is still 1995. They continue to run rehashed AP stories that 95% of the people have already seen on the social outlets. Local news forgets they need to focus even more on local, and forget about wasting one time use airtime being behind the ball with news that Facebook Twitter has already disseminated days previous.

      As I said, I'm in broadcast TV, and I know my job is not safe. I'm already looking for an out.

      • There will be upheaval. And changes. And a hell of a lot less money... But gone? They predicted the end of buggy while manufacturing, and yet it is still here. And broadcast TV will be as well. Of course, it will also be on the web. And there will be a lot of consolidation. I suspect all of the local stations will end up as HD channels to one bit of spectrum before it is over. But it will still be here.
      • Yet you post as an AC. Gotcha.

        • Would it please... (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          ...if I posted as my SlashdotUser5553479764 account? Would that appease you as to who I "really" am? Would you recognize me if you saw me on the street, if I slept with your spouse?

      • Can rewatch it later, years later even, can edit it for just the good bits only, no fees at all, and the best part is no tracking.

  • Rumors of it's demise... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @03:47PM (#58731802) Homepage

    He first compares broadcast TV to the fax machine to highlight it's antiquity, then goes on to make the bombastic prediction that broadcast TV won't list another decade...while apparently unaware that the venerable fax machine is still going strong, completely missing the lesson inherent in that simple premise.

    Both serve a market, and both will continue to serve a market.

    Broadcast TV isn't going anywhere, and he's an myopic idiot for even suggesting it.

    • Re:Rumors of it's demise... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @04:16PM (#58731958)
      I'd take the point even further. People still listen to the radio and that predates the fax machine by decades. Matter of fact, people are still reading these utterly ancient things called books. You'd think we'd have replaced those by now as well.

      • People still listen to the radio and that predates the fax machine by decades

        No, it doesn't. Fax is a much older than a lot of people realize, dating back to 1846. Long ranged wired over dedicated cables came in a couple of decades, before the invention of the telephone. Radio transmission of faxes developed at the same time as the transmission of audio over radio. A fax machine that could transmit over standard telephone lines, however, wasn't developed until the 1960s.

      • The fax machine was developed in the 1840's from telegraph tech. While radio was more like the 1890's.

        https://faxauthority.com/fax-h... [faxauthority.com]
        https://www.timetoast.com/time... [timetoast.com]

      • In my day television was called books.

      • I'd take the point even further. People still listen to the radio and that predates the fax machine by decades. Matter of fact, people are still reading these utterly ancient things called books. You'd think we'd have replaced those by now as well.

        You can read a book, listen to the radio, or watch broadcast TV without a pesky ISP or Cell Phone provider acting as the middle man, recording everything you watch, building marketing profiles, selling your data, etc. I live in CA. When the big one occurs (massive earthquake) and it will, none of that internet or cell phone stuff will be working. For those two reasons alone, I personally hope commercial broadcasting remains viable.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bert64 ( 520050 )

          You still have to buy a book from somewhere, and you still require a radio or broadcast tv provider. Those broadcast stations are just as likely to fail in an earthquake as the cell towers or isp.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Radio works well when on the move, better than mobile streaming. Eventually streaming will get that good and radio will start to go away as well, or at least most of the FM stuff will.

    • Fax software (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Every commercial service, and most portable fax-scanners, use tiffg3 file format, invented by Sam Leffler. Sam also invented TIFF format. He also wrote HylaFAX, the open source software used for very commercial fax service. And oh, yes, he was one of the core authors of BSD UNIX.

      Some people are just *scary*.

    • Broadcast TV isn't going anywhere,

      I see evidence that it is going to shrink substantially, or at least the trend seems quite clear.

      I don't know what you meant exactly by "going anywhere", but I hope you don't mean that it's not even going to decrease substantially compared to now, because that would surprise me.

  • I don't feel like this is a profound prediction.

    Broadcasters moving to a medium which costs less to maintain than the towers & transmitters they currently have? I can see that happening.

    But... Cringley must note that fax machines are still here so I'm sure that there will be some traditional broadcasters for a long time to come.

    • But... Cringley must note that fax machines are still here so I'm sure that there will be some traditional broadcasters for a long time to come.

      I think when he says "end in ten years", you should interpret that as "having fallen to largely irrelevant numbers", which is where fax machines are. The only reason fax machines are still here is that it doesn't take much to maintain an existing technology when it piggybacks on other more useful tech.

      Cable may have a long tail simply because it's technology is more useful for internet traffic now, and it can simply leech of content produced for streaming in the future. And, most importantly, people who s

      • I think when he says "end in ten years", you should interpret that as "having fallen to largely irrelevant numbers", which is where fax machines are.

        If you really believe this, it says a lot about you professionally. You do not work in government. Nor in the legal profession, insurance, or real estate. And you to not work for any company that does a lot of work with any government agencies. Because FAX is sadly all to common there. it is actually required because a FAX has a specific legal status.

        • Eh... that's a good point. Still ubiquitous in certain businesses, and a large number of small business probably still have a fax set up simply for communication with other sectors that still rely on it, legal issues, and plain inertia, as you indicated.

          I probably should have worded it like: you should interpret that as "having fallen to largely irrelevant numbers", which is where fax machines are heading.

          But the larger point I was making was the "long tail", and I think you're sort of confirming that cert

    • Absolutely wrong in every way. Just as the democratisation of music production has removed and destroyed all power from the music industry and put it back in the hands of performers, 5g and user created content will remove any need for major broadcasting companies.

      Sorry, what was that? They did what? So the artist gets a big cut of that right? Oh bugger.

      Sorry looks like that never happened. Yeah you're right they'll be around for a long time to come, they just might evolve into something else.

  • Land lines (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Land lines are going away? Given how inefficient the radio spectrum is used, I doubt it. Even if the world completely changed radio technology now, I couldn't see land lines going away, not even just being relegated to backhaul only.

  • More BS predictions. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jason1729 ( 561790 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @04:06PM (#58731900)
    So...5G will replace my last-mile cable? I get gigabit broadband with no cap for $38 CDN, around $28 US/month. My real speed is typically 700-800mpbs. 5G is really going to compete with that service, at that price within 10 years? Especially when without cable, network loads will be much higher than today as everyone streams everything. And despite the cheap broadband, cellular data is insanely expensive, on the order of $90 for 5 gig, $130 for 10 gig.

    And for an extra kicker, I'm in a somewhat remote subdivision. The nearest cell tower is a mile away. To say my cell service spotty or unreliable is far too kind. But my broadband is fantastic.

    This prediction is so pathetically bad it doesn't qualify as a bad joke.

    • I think he's right for the wrong reason. Most cable DVRs are still a box with a hard drive in it. They act like it too! How many concurrent video streams do you think you can write to disk on a shitty consumer hard drive with minimal processing power?

      The on-demand stuff is more server based. There's no reason for DVRs to exist at this point, save for the mentality of cable companies that they can't have their entire catalogue available at any time, because they are "broadcasters". Yet I'd put $100 down that

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        The on-demand stuff is more server based. There's no reason for DVRs to exist at this point, save for the mentality of cable companies that they can't have their entire catalogue available at any time, because they are "broadcasters".

        This is probably just as much legal as technical, I bet their royalties for video-on-demand is quite different from a broadcast license. What's sad to see for me is that there's no universal client that you buy content for, if you want to run Netflix you must have the Netflix app. For HBO you must have the HBO app. It should be more of a plug-in architecture.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dryeo ( 100693 )

      You must live in a Province with competition, I pay $97 CDN for an LTE connection with a 250GB cap. Down the road, they have fibre, it's also $97 with, I believe, a GB cap. I'm about 40 miles from downtown Vancouver and it's LTE or dial up.
      Note that the only reason I have the 250GB cap is so Telus didn't have to run fibre as they promised and got subsidies for and 18 months ago my only choice was dial-up at $39 a month +$70 for the phone line.

      • I'm in Ontario (GTA) and with Rogers I have to call every year to maintain the price or they jack it up to about $80 per month. But other than that, there's no issues with the price.

        But $97 is a steal for an LTE connection with 250GB. My $38 is cable broadband. It's hard to find anything over a 10GB cap around here and that's well over $100. Bundled with cable TV and a home phone, I could get 10 GB for $78, but then I'd be paying close to $200/month for the privilege of that 10GB. I have a friend

  • i quit watching TV 20 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @04:07PM (#58731908)
    WAY too much advertising, i find the advertising so annoying that i would sooner take a hammer to my TV and smash it before i sit through an evening watching TV, the only thing i use my TV for is my Playstation game console, and other than that it sits dark and unused

    • Yup, I stopped with regular TV 15+ years ago too. When Netflix came around, I immediately jumped onto the bandwagon, but because of the limited number of titles in smaller countries like mine, I've stocked up on huge walls with DVD's, so - eventually I'll never need any other entertainment than games + news online anyway.

      Internet killed the Video Star...etc.

  • No more land lines, no more cable systems, no more wires.

    If 5G really capable of supporting the bandwidth necessary?

  • Biz bribery made it useless by digitizing it so poorly as to make it impractical, which reduces viewers, which big biz then uses to justify cancelling it and turning it into cell phone spectrum.

  • to politics. Mass media (Radio & TV) gives a relatively small [google.com] number of people a captive audience [wikipedia.org].

    What's gonna happen when we can all pick and choose our media on the fly? As an example I always thought of Joe Biden as a left wing Union activist until I saw stuff like this [youtube.com] and this [youtube.com]. That's information I wouldn't have gotten from CNN or MSNBC.
    • Well, I think USA politics at least be a lot easier for politicians ... they'll be able to say things to one group and say something different to another group and not worry about them comparing notes so much. My history studies suggest this was very true in the early days of the republic. Now, instead of a lag of communication time being the barrier, as it was in the early 1800s, it'll be just a signal-to-noise ratio problem. We'll need a better journalism backbone than we have today to monitor them, I sus

      • We'll need a better journalism backbone than we have today to monitor them, I suspect.

        It will happen. It is actually happening already, but it does not have enough critical mass yet to be noticed. When it does, things will change fast.

  • Broadcast TV is rapidly falling in popularity, however there is a large portion of society that have grown up with TV and it is part of their routine. They are used to the passive nature of broadcast TV. The get home and switch on, watching what is there.

    Many predicted the death of Radio with the advent of the MP3 player, but it is still around.

    As the number of people from older generations dwindles and new generations replace them with on demand being the normal way of consuming media, TV will fade awa

    • All those people "cutting the cord" are switching to antenna TV - you know - BROADCAST TV. We like that broadcast doesn't report back to the mothership what we are watching.

      Remember "privacy?"

      We dropped CATV after the 2012 Olympics. Back then, there were 30 channels broadcast. Now there are over 90 channels broadcast here. Why do you think that is? Because they are making money. There is a market.

      5G? We only get 3G here a few times a month. I suppose people inside cities get better coverage?

      I have ZER

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        Cities get better 3g coverage, but there is also more demand so it actually tends to be slower most of the time. It's great late at night when most people are asleep.

  • Erm... (Score:2)

    by XanC ( 644172 )

    Isn't broadcast TV, by definition, wireless?

  • I can't see those words without playing this one at least 2 time
    https://youtu.be/UJKythlXAIY

  • I refuse to pay for TV (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EzInKy ( 115248 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @04:42PM (#58732080)

    I cut cable 10 years ago and will never again pay $100/month ($12,000/decade). OTA provides me with news, that's all I really care about anyway.

  • I remember too. (Score:3)

    by kamapuaa ( 555446 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @04:47PM (#58732096) Homepage

    I remember when Cringley claimed to be Apple employee #12. However, weirdly enough nobody at Apple remembers him, and also there was a different employee #12 at Apple. I also remember when Cringley claimed to have earned a PhD at Stanford, but actually according to Stanford he didn't. Actually, his sole basis to fame is that he had an editorial in a computer magazine 25 years ago. Why does this old hack keep getting brought up on Slashdot?

  • Television doesn't end until the Boomers all die. In a decade many of them will be in the 80's, and still watching that damn idiot box.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Television doesn't end until the Boomers all die. In a decade many of them will be in the 80's, and still watching that damn idiot box.

      Not likely.

      TV has many advantages. First, it's spectrum efficient - being a broadcast medium, one channel can reach millions of TVs without consuming additional bandwdith. This is something no current network technology can handle. Sure most networking technologies have multicast and broadcast capability, but not many video protocols are designed around it to allow users to

      • TV has many advantages. First, it's spectrum efficient - being a broadcast medium, one channel can reach millions of TVs without consuming additional bandwdith. This is something no current network technology can handle. Sure most networking technologies have multicast and broadcast capability, but not many video protocols are designed around it to allow users to efficiently view their video.

        Using a community tv or computer or radio is more efficient too.

        why care about efficiency when each of the 7B humans can each receive say 10Mbps? note energy supply is still close to infinity if you can tap them good.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        Broadcast is only efficient for mass market content, it is extremely inefficient for anyone who has niche interests.

  • The End of Cringely within a decade.

  • between 5G and broadcast television is download caps.

    Depending on your distance from the local broadcast towers, and geographical issues like hills/mountains, you can probably pick up 40 or so local channels. Most cellular contracts slow your connection to useless speed after a very small amount of GB per month.

    You can inexpensively purchase OTA DVR boxes to store broadcast TV (that you care about) and save it as long as you want, and fast forward through commercials. Some of them store the (higher quality

  • I mean, not just the prediction itself, but the statement. Cringely isnt the one who predicted this. Lots of people have stated this. Does google not exist anymore? Literally fool dot com did an article on this topic over a year ago!

    https://www.fool.com/investing... [fool.com]

  • Not everyone has broadband, and oh by the way as soon as there's no choice but the internet for programming then everyone will have a data cap and everyone will no doubt be going over it regularly, and the cable companies (comcast I'm looking at you) will get their revenge on the so-called 'cord cutters' for daring to not keep handing over their cash. Meanwhile we'll have an even deeper divide between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' because not everyone has or can afford broadband still, it's way overpriced

  • Loss of shared experiences (Score:3)

    by TJHook3r ( 4699685 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @08:46PM (#58732932)
    I grew up on TV and bonding around shared punchlines and characters. You can't hold back the tide but I just don't see a replacement for the whole broadcast experience.

  • Streaming "channels" provide the vital process of editing down available material, and packaging it so users can find and select what to watch. However, with no limit to the number of streaming providers, we're engaged in a race to the bottom as each provider competes to be one of the few that users will pay money for, which will be followed by lower-cost packagers that infest the material with interstitial advertising to reach the greatest number of users. Soon enough, there'll be a few packagers that corr

  • A issue of IEEE Broadcast Technology Society had an article that describes the three-legged stool of television broadcasting. The transmitter being the studio, equipment, antenna. The receiver being the TV set with all the capabilities to receive signals. The third leg is programming. Need content that is compelling for viewers. To me most of broadcast TV has nothing compelling so if that industry goes away, I'm not missing much.

    I also see this as an industry that is pricing themselves out of the market.

  • BBC News demonstrated otherwise (Score:4, Informative)

    by rklrkl ( 554527 ) on Sunday June 09, 2019 @08:13AM (#58734584) Homepage

    I suspect Ctringely didn't see the recent UK 5G launch PR TV disaster, as the BBC foolishly decided to broadcast [bbc.co.uk] a live interview using 5G to "celebrate" UK 5G launch day.

    Needless to say, it didn't go too well and the speed the reporter got (40 Mbit/sec) was barely any better than 3G. And that's not even considering the insane pricing that EE are gouging with their initial UK 5G plans (£54 aka $68 for 10GB of data a month, which you can use up in under 15 minutes if you transfer at a conservative 100 Mbit/sec).

    5G has a *long* way to go before it replaces your home broadband. Cluestick to all 5G operators - if you achieve the high speeds that 5G is promising, then a truly unlimited/unthrolled plan is the only way to go, even if you initially charge way over the odds for it. Mind you, 5G home routers have to come down in price too - no-one's going to pay £800 for one (yes, that's the current cost)!

  • I didn't see anyone mention the impoverished, so far. With more and more people in America struggling to pay their bills, I see broadcast TV's use growing. Pay TV is pricey, and getting more expensive over time.

    Further, I think there are some benefits of broadcasting: more competition, intentional or unintentional failure of the cable(s) (such as during an invasion/crisis/disaster), it can be quickly (somewhat) restored in an emergency if the main broadcasting station gets taken out, it can be utilized

  • I can understand the point about broadcast TV. The last time I had a TV in my household was in 1997. Around 2000 I predicted the rise of TV over IP, and I argued we should skip the transition from analog TV to DVB altogether. Well, here we are, with all the naysayers hooked on Netflix.

    However, I still maintain that wireless is always an emergency solution in comparison to wired. There will always be more bandwidth in dedicated cables than a shared ether, and less power wasted. Reliability is also an obvi

  • Disney yanked all their content from Netflix. CBS pulled most of their content. Everybody wants to have their own streaming service these days, and people aren't going to pay for a dozen of them. The current trend of fragmentation isn't going to last. There will be mergers which bring us back to three or four powerhouses. Like Big Cable, the fees will be exorbitant and the offerings mediocre and full of advertising. Yeah, sign me up for that!

    Meanwhile, broadcast TV is doing surprisingly well for all its dif

  • Fox TV has always gamed the system. The network does not air a full prime network schedule to get around audience cap rules for major broadcast networks. Then it hides behind the fraudulent UHF discount laws to own more stations in the largest TV markets, again to circumvent other aspects of the audience cap rules. do my homework [theessayservice.org]

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