Media Companies Are Ready to Sell. Does Anyone Want to Buy?

[michael hagerty]

For my own part, trying to make sense of the streaming landscape, one thing I've noticed is the rapid advance in TV sets' built-in support for programming from multiple streaming sources. One of the challenges I've had is that our Samsung set was made in 2015. Welp. The set says it supports apps. The reality is that most services only support apps on Samsung sets made after 2017. For LG, the magic year seems to be 2016. So stuff simply doesn't work out of the box.

The solution appears to be to get a streaming player, e.g. a Roku box, which can then be a "middleman" between anything I subscribe to and the TV set. In other words, a STB in functional disguise. So I've got one on order, to arrive later this week. I still can retain direct over-the-air TV since the apparently already quasi-obsolete Samsung supports that pretty well.

I mention this because, eventually (and in some instances, it's already the case) all the apps, services, and over-the-air TV may appear to the viewer as a single menu of program sources. No channel numbers, just names. As with streaming versus FM versus whatever for "radio", it's all just going to be "TV". I expect there still will be room for local television, especially news, weather, and sports. It may look and act different, but I think it will still be there. The power grid in Albin, Wyoming should continue to be safe and stable.

Hoping this doesn't sound too "gee-whiz" but, again, I plead inertia, for I just stuck with the cable box for more than 20 years until the move...I have had a life to live and a career to tend...and now I'm trying to make sense of a landscape that no longer fits the mental architecture that I have from more than 60 years of TV viewing tied to channel numbers and RF-based technology. It's a landscape that's in transition.

Yeah. I was using a Roku box until our almost 30-year old Sony gave up the ghost in 2019. I replaced it with a Samsung with full app capabilities and OTA updates.

 

[Kelly A]

I’ve often thought that Kirk and Chimp might be putting us on…and prayed that tall_guy1 was.

Actually the three of them may be a window into three different alternative universes. 👽

 

[davideduardo]

I’ve often thought that Kirk and Chimp might be putting us on…and prayed that tall_guy1 was.

I'll state now... in what looks like a thread in bad need of closure... that Frank and I had numerous discussions over the years about a small group of posters who had a different reality and sense of how broadcasting works / should work.

We were at the edge of suspending or banning on several occasions, but ended up deciding that "drawing the line" was risky and, perhaps, too authoritarian. I am rethinking this now because of recent posts.

 

[CTListener]

I'll state now... in what looks like a thread in bad need of closure... that Frank and I had numerous discussions over the years about a small group of posters who had a different reality and sense of how broadcasting works / should work.

We were at the edge of suspending or banning on several occasions, but ended up deciding that "drawing the line" was risky and, perhaps, too authoritarian. I am rethinking this now because of recent posts.

If they mean well, you'd think they'd eventually absorb some reality simply through reading your (and other pros') replies, right? That's how a radio fan like me, with tons of print experience but only one brief guest shot in a radio booth at a high school football game 40+ years ago for radio experience, learned about the inner workings of radio. But with these folks, nothing seems to stick. I hesitate to label them trolls, but like you, I get a bit upset when their bizarre musings start to take up entire pages of discussion.

 

[michael hagerty]

If they mean well, you'd think they'd eventually absorb some reality simply through reading your (and other pros') replies, right? That's how a radio fan like me, with tons of print experience but only one brief guest shot in a radio booth at a high school football game 40+ years ago for radio experience, learned about the inner workings of radio. But with these folks, nothing seems to stick. I hesitate to label them trolls, but like you, I get a bit upset when their bizarre musings start to take up entire pages of discussion.

It’s been an ongoing issue here for years—-willful ignorance. There was a peak of it 11 or 12 years ago and it looks like we’re in another one.

 

[CTListener]

It’s been an ongoing issue here for years—-willful ignorance. There was a peak of it 11 or 12 years ago and it looks like we’re in another one.

So it's about half the length of the sunspot cycle. If only it were the other way around.

 

[davideduardo]

It’s been an ongoing issue here for years—-willful ignorance. There was a peak of it 11 or 12 years ago and it looks like we’re in another one.

Probably related to the sunspot cycle, which also follows an 11 year pattern.

Radiation?
Gamma rays?
Too much sugar?

 

[davideduardo]

I'm distressed and disappointed by how this thread, based on the radio and TV station sales environment has gone off track so wildly and weirdly.

We all benefit when threads jump into interesting derivatives and sidebars. But this one just jumped into a swamp and drowned.

Thread closed.