A New year, new chance to talk about cord-cutting and shaving down your bills. Which is either a big deal that’s going to get bigger, or not ,depending on who you like to listen to. Wall Street Journal’s Peter Kafka reports.

According to a study conducted by consulting firm Deloitte, approximately 9 percent of users subscribing to premium television programming such as cable or satellite TV ditched those services in favor of online options during 2011. With more than 2,000 respondents between the ages of 14 to 75 participating in the survey, eleven percent are considering “cutting the cord” during 2012 since they believe their favorite television shows are already available online. Beyond that group, an additional 15 percent want to try out movies and television shows via online digital sources in the upcoming months.

Younger consumers between the ages of 23 to 28 were the most likely to “cut the cord” in 2012 with nearly one-fifth of that age range considering the move. As age increases, Americans are less likely to ditch cable or satellite service. Only seven percent of people between the ages of 46 and 64 are considering the change and just five percent of people beyond 65 years of age are doing the same. However, many respondents value DVR service like TiVo almost as much as premium TV service and 80 percent of respondents have no plans to stop paying for cable or satellite service this year.

The study also found that increased accessibility to online media has driven usage up over the last two years. With set-top boxes, gaming consoles, smart televisions, Blu-ray players and smartphones offering access to digital media such as movies, the amount of people streaming movies has risen from 28 percent in 2009 to 42 percent in 2011. In addition, the amount of people that prefer watching a movie through a streaming source rose from 4 percent in 2009 to 14 percent in 2011. Other devices, like eBook readers and smartphones, have increased the amount of people consuming newspapers, books and magazines on a digital device over the paper alternative. The survey also found there are many more homes with smartphones in the U.S. as that number jumped from 25 percent in 2009 to 42 percent in 2011

Ways to save on Home Entertainment

As Americans continue to look for ways to save money in 2012, one area that can be a major budget buster is home entertainment.  Did you know the average American now spends approximately $1,000 a year on television costs?  Luckily, home technology guru CHRIS CASHMAN has some timely tips for cutting costs without sacrificing entertainment!

Don’t pay a cable or satellite bill: Get HD TV Over the Air for FREE with a digital antenna! Millions of consumers are cutting entertainment costs by opting for streaming options and getting free over the air (OTA) content from a digital antenna.

·        Most of America’s favorite network TV shows – like Glee, Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory and more are available for FREE with a digital antenna.

·        All of these FREE programs, many of which are HD, can even be recorded with a TiVo DVR.  In fact, 88 percent of the most recorded shows from TiVo customers are available for free over the air with a digital antenna like one from Antennas Direct.

Ways to save on Home Entertainment: wishtv.com

A great and informing newscast of how people are cutting- the-cord by using an antenna and saying goodbye to expensive monthly cable bills!

This video compiles footage of our antenna giveaways held across the country. Antennas Direct is the leading advocate in cord cutting and watching free broadcast TV.

The demand for our antennas in these taxing economic times is unlimited. Paying outrageous cable or satellite bills is not par for the course in how families receive their viewing entertainment anymore.  Watch the video and we hope to see you at one of our upcoming bus tour giveaways.

By John Eggerton — Broadcasting & Cable, 11/1/2011 3:50:42 PM

The National Association of Broadcasters message was clear Tuesday, saying that the FCC’s plan to take back as much as 120 mHZ of spectrum and auction it for broadband wireless is a threat to the multicast digital channels that NAB President Gordon Smith said are the best way to get diverse content to minority populations that are disportionately over-the-air viewers.

Smith said NAB understood there was a spectrum problem, though he suggested a spectrum crunch might be a planning and hoarding issue by wireless companies rather than a technical limitation — he cited a Sprint exec’s reported statement last week that the crunch was an issue more of planning than capacity. But Smith also said that given that problem, the coalition was meant to send a signal to Congress, and particularly the deficit reduction supercommittee currently considering spectrum incentive auctions, that “if auctions go forward, please protect the signal contours of the television broadcasters. If [repacking] is done incorrectly or even wrecklessly,” he said, “one of the things that will be sacrificed will be multicasting and mobile.” He said that would remove a foothold for diverse broadcasters in favor of faster app downloads.

To make that point, NAB held a press conference at its Washington headquarters to announce the official launch of the Future of Television Coalition, an effort to turn a debate Smith conceded had been shaped by NAB’s opposition on the issue spectrum reclamation. The coalition is promoting mobile DTV, diversity and, in the process, making NAB’s political pitch that broadcasters should not be kneecapped in the spectrum reclamation process or sacrified to the one-to-one wireless technology that is inferior to over-the-air for video delivery

Helping NAB make the point about the importance of broacasters’ continued access to digital multicasting spectrum was Bounce TV co-founder and former legislator, mayor and ambassador Andrew Young, and by extension his partner in the effort, Martin Luther King III. The African American-targeted channel has been building distribution through multicast station deals, the latest with Gannett for WUSA Washington, which was announced at the press conference. WUSA weeknight anchor Derek McGinty was in attendance covering the press conference for the station. Also in attendance was David Lougee, President of Gannett Broadcasting, pitching the value of Mobile DTV — Gannett is a member of both the Open Mobile Video Coalition and the mobile content consortium coming up with programming for the service. Lougee assured Young Bounce would be up and running on WUSA spectrum by New Year’s Day.

Young pitched the Bounce muilticast service as an opportunity for small businesses that could not afford ads on larger networks, but could on Bounce TV. “We feel this is an opportunity that has been overlooked,” he said. He also talked about being able to broadcast local sports, including high school, and a group in Atlanta that is contemplating the return of Friday Night Fights.

Also passionately pitching the need to preserve over-the-air TV was Carmen DiRienzo, president of VME Media, a Spanish-language network carried on noncommercial multicast stations and created with the idea of using those multicast channels to reach the almost one-fourth of Hispanic households that are over-the-air only. “Digital Television is a huge, free and important part of the digital future,” she said. “It’s absence would diminish the amount, quality and diversity of voices, thought and experience that VME and other networks like it provide.” She said that if free, over-the-air TV were not protected, it would “disenfranchise millions of Americans and most especially the very hard-working, inspiring Latino’s that VME and public television are so proud to serve.”

Young was scheduled to meet Tuesday with Rep. James Clyburn, Democratic representative from South Carolina and the father of FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, to talk about Bounce. Young said he was trying to build a channel, but thought Bounce TV could also become a political force in the debate if they put it on the channel and also ran the ads of Antenna Direct, whose President, Richard Schneider, was also at the press conference.

Schneider’s role at the conference was to make the point that cord-cutters were on the rise. He has been handing out free antennas, 1 million to date, to the unemployed and used a video to illustrate that the reception to his campaign handing them out in markets across the country has been greeted with long lines. Local TV stations have teamed up with the company to promote the give-aways. “I am hearing pronouncements that there is a decline in over-the-air,” he said, while he is having to add shifts to keep up with demand for antennas. Schneider talked about an upcoming meeting with Wal-Mart, which he said plans to to create “a destination for over-the-air and over-the-top because they, like us, agree that the best value is over-the-air TV.”

Smith said the FCC needed to consider that the 15% of Americans still reliant on over-the-air TV could increase, and that the FCC did not want to be regulating toward the past but looking to the future. “What if Richard is right, and the needle isn’t falling, but 15% and rising. The challenge for the FCC will be about legislating for yesterday.” What he said the coalition was “shining a light on,” was that “the puck is going back to direct-over-the-air.”

Smith pointed out that the government took about 30% of spectrum back in the DTV transition and that if the FCC took back another 120 MHz leaving only 30%, “it creates real problems for broadcasting.”

McGinty said that when he turned on his TV he saw ads for DirecTV or FiOS or a cable company, asking Smith how important it was for him to be letting folks know broadcasting was still there. Smith said that he thought broadcasters “have not told our story well enough and I think we need to do a better job.” He gave credit to cable and satellite and telco. “They are putting their money where their mouth is. They have shaped the debate. We are trying to reassert ourselves in this debate with the Future of Television Coalition.” He said that while people have the “blessing of taking broadcast television for granted, there are decisions that could be made that may take that away from us.” He said if NAB does its job that won’t happen, but he can’t assume that.

He said broadcasters should take as a “line item cost of business” reminding them why they could hit a switch and get free content.

Lougee pitched the potential of mobile DTV, saying that over 100 stations are currently delivering it. He pointed out that the DTV transition was only 28 months ago, and said more innovation, like combining TV spectrum with return-path providers to create VOD services, was on the horizon. “From a policy standpoint, this just got deployed in the middle of a recession.”

November 1, 2011

WASHINGTON: The National Association of Broadcasters highlighted the opportunity for greater diversity on broadcast TV during an event to launch the Future of TV Coalition.

Former Ambassador Andrew Young, one of the principals of the recently launched Bounce TV broadcast network, was on hand. Bounce TV is the first broadcast network programmed specifically to black Americans. He said networks like Bounce provided the opportunity for smaller business to buy TV advertising.

“Almost anything is possible when you have the outlet,” he said.

Young announced that Gannett’s WUSA-TV Ch. 9 would start carrying Bounce on one of it’s digital multicast channels. Gannett also carries Bounce on WATL-TV in Atlanta.

Gordon Smith, chief of the NAB and a former member of the Senate Commerce Committee during the digital transition, said one of the hopes for taking TV digital was that broadcasters would “strive for diversity, and… become more mobile and use [the] spectrum efficiently and inclusively.”

Vme was held up as an example. The Spanish-language diginet launched by PBS member stations across the United States is now the fourth largest Spanish-language broadcast network, said Carmen DeRienzo founding president and CEO. She said that 23 percent of U.S. Hispanic households comprising 12 million people–many of whom are low income–relied on broadcast-only TV.

Dave Lougee, president of Gannett, a member of two organizations promoting mobile DTV, said stations reaching half the U.S. audience were ready to launch the service. It will target smartphones, tablets and cars, and one of the groups–Mobile Content Venture–is “getting commitments from consumer electronics makers, he said.

Richard Schneider was also at the event. Schneider started Antennas Direct, the St. Louis area maker of broadcast TV antennas. Schneider is a vocal proponent of over-the-air TV who says adoption continues to grow, despite the predictions that it would diminish after the June 2009 DTV transition.

“Growth has accelerated since digital transition,” he said. “Most of the customers who are buying them are not the elderly, not the indigent, but 25-somethings.”

Schneider said that he initially built 100 antennas for the online business. Those sold out in 48 hours. The next batch of 250 sold out in 22 hours. The original goal, he said, was to sell 25 a month. The company shipped 80,000 antennas last month alone, he said.

“We don’t even have Walmart yet, but they called up because they’re seeing a shift as well,’ he said.

Members of the Future of TV Coalition include the participants–Bounce, VME, the Open Mobile Video Coalition, Antennas Direct–as well as Qubo, a joint venture of ION Media and Scholastic Corp., County Executives of America, The Center for Asian American Media, Digitenna, MHz Networks, This TV, The Country Network, DLT Entertainment, the New York Television Festival, LATV Networks, Pacific Islanders in Communications, and Native American Public Telecommunications.

NAB Launching Future of TV Coalition

Looks to leverage value of minority-targeted multicast channels in fight for spectrum

By John Eggerton — Broadcasting & Cable, 10/28/2011

The National Association of Broadcasters is launching the Future of TV Coalition next week, an effort to promote diversity via digital broadcasting.

NAB has been arguing for some time that one of the ways broadcasters can serve a growing minority population that is disproportionately over-the-air TV dependent is through the digital multicast channels made possible by the transition to digital channels it argues could be lost to spectrum reclamation by an FCC focused on wireless broadband.

Bounce TV, for example, an African American targeted over-the-air programming service, has been building its audience via multicast channel deals with station groups.

NAB described the coalition as “a broad array of constituencies that rely on broadcast television” and support “the evolution of broadcast television and its integration with other technologies and across many platforms.”

The Nov. 1 unveiling of the coalition will also feature a “special announcement” by Bounce TV, which has been making numerous station deal announcements over the past few weeks.

Scheduled to appear at an NAB press conference are NAB President Gordon Smith; Bounce TV co-founder and former Atlanta Mayor and UN Ambassador Andrew Young; Carmen DeRienzo, founding president of Spanish-language broadcast net Vme Media; Dave Lougee, Gannett Broadcasting president and member of the Open Mobile Video Coalition executive committee; and Richard Schneider, president of Antennas Direct, which markets antennas to cord-cutters and cord-avoiders.