Uncabled

“Nearly everyone told me that their household currently has a high-speed Internet connection, but no household connection to cable or satellite TV. I suppose I assumed the high-speed Internet connection went hand-in-hand with a cable/satellite subscription, but apparently I was wrong. The general consensus among the group was: “I don’t need cable. Anything I want to watch on TV, I can get on the Internet.”

This is how a new article from Broadcasting & Cable begins, for the most part.

The author reports that 11.4% of the highly desirable 18-34 market now has high-speed Internet, but no cable or satellite service to go with it. Specifically the question isn’t about what a network like NBC is going to do about it — they’re “fine” going forward since people will still watch their shows online — but what your local NBC affiliate will do. The author ponders that this could “eliminate the need for local television stations.”

Of course, the real question is: what does this author think is the need for local TV? Apparently, local TV is just a repeater for some national broadcast. I would argue that Local TV needs to become local again.

Perhaps they will produce more of their own shows like they once did, by starting them fresh or signing up online programming and podcasts that already have audiences. Public radio and TV has shown that locally-produced content can create big brands for their parent stations, be valuable in syndication, and still allow them to own their shows’ online spaces. Hometown programs highlight and break local talent, foster and invigorate local culture, and get people to care about what’s happening in their city, state or region.

The point is that like all things, local television will adapt to fill new needs….and hopefully existing ones that have been left unfulfilled for some time now.

In May of 2006, I threw away standard television and launched uncabled.info. Today, the writings of Uncabled return as part of teradome.com, thanks to the helpful folks in #drupal, who found a solution for importing the site into my regular blog here. (You might find that some post that point back into earlier Uncabled posts will break due to the move. I’ll do my best to update them as I find them.)

In case you missed the launch of Uncabled, I’ve republished the About/manifesto page that the site kicked off with after the break. The internet TV-focused site will return someday, in a newer, non-redundant, more useful form. But you’ll find my reviews and musings right here, on Teradome, where they belong.

For those wondering about the drop in posting, here’s the scoop: My plan was, and still is, to bring the internet television posts back onto my original blog on teradome.com, but I have hit a wall in trying to import the stories that exist on this Drupal site into the other.

Since they are running the same installation there should be no serious migration issues… But the database skills to do the export/inserts are just beyond me and there are no working tools or plugins to do this without knowing SQL very well.

If you have some Drupal skills and can help me with the queries I need, I would greatly appreciate it.

It’s been a while since last posting, so there’s two quick updates I wanted to let everyone know about.

Regarding the Yahoo! Pipes issue, user finwright on the discussion boards reminds us about a trick to get your enclosures back: use FeedBurner’s free feature to turn plain RSS feeds into podcasting-ready ones. I can verify that this works — now all of my various playlist feeds from Blip.tv, Network2.tv and Revver.com have been merged into a single feed, and subsequently a single entry in Front Row.

And about this Apple TV… I love that it is creating this buzz in the industry, but I’m still eager to see how this plays out in Mac OS X Leopard. In my idealized world, Apple would be planning on not only bringing the front-end experience of Apple TV to the Front Row application (which is known to become a platform for all Macs and not just a pre-installed app for only the newest machines) but also tuning the Mac mini product into a desktop Mac that, with a few tweaks, can become a home media server/center that can drive your HDTV if you want. Think of it as selling the iPod nano to people who just need a little music (Apple TV) and the iPod 80GB to the people who realize they want or need much, much more (Mini media center). In any case, if you’ve got one of these babies, the always forward-thinking Rocketboom has been releasing their content in 720p high-def for a while now and you might as well subscribe to that feed instead of the lower-rez one you’ll find in the iTunes Podcast Directory.

Thanks to the folks at Galacticast for the laughs. And Uncabled agrees: Yes, for now, but not for much longer.

Goodbye, Ze. See you soon.