24 (Continued from Cover) as the last quarterly results from The Walt Disney Company have shown, its traditional TV services, including its ABC network and cable channels such as FX and Disney Channel, generated $498 million in profits, with revenue now reaching $2.5 billion. Granted, Disney’s linear TV income declined, but close to half a billion dollars in profits isn’t anything that a media company should sniff at. Then, let’s look at Comcast, which is planning to spin off its cable TV channels. In 2012 Comcast’s cable TV networks (like USA, Bravo, and CNBC) generated $3.3 billion in cash flow. Today, the same channels generate $7 billion in annual revenues. Nonetheless, Comcast is spinning off all its cable TV networks (with the exception of Bravo). Similarly, Warner Bros. announced last month that by mid-2025 it will separate its linear TV networks (like CNN, TNT, and TBS) from its streaming and studio assets. The announcement prompted its stock to gain, but it’s unclear if that was because Wall Street applauded the stand-alone linear division, which records lower revenues, but is still profitable, or valued the potential of the still money-losing streaming platform. Indeed, in the first nine months of 2024, Warner’s cable unit posted $15.4 billion in revenue. This is all happening despite the fact that executives running legacy media companies around the world are actively looking for ways to have traditional linear TV outlets reinvent themselves through streaming. Plus, streaming is not yet ready to fully compete with appointment television (as broadcast can also be defined), especially with live events, as the $150 million Jake Paul/ Mike Tyson glitch-plagued television match on Netflix demonstrated. Previously, the streamer also experienced streaming problems during the live Love is Blind reality show reunion. However, the live Netflix delivery improved with the 2024 Christmas Day NFL games, which were watched by 30 million U.S. viewers — about half of those of the Paul-Tyson match. Many devices have reinvented themselves throughout history. Look at something as simple as the umbrella (also known as a parasol). Though originally envisioned as a device to block the sun, it’s now mostly known as a way to shield oneself from rain. Broadcast is also simple, compared to the more complex streaming, nonetheless radio is reinventing itself with podcasts — and the enhancement of video podcasts. Television will soon follow with new technologies in the forms of ATSC 3.0 (Next Gen TV) and HbbTV, which are explained below. Vincent Grivet, the Paris, France-based chairman of the Geneva, Switzerland-based Hybrid broadcast broadband TV (HbbTV), explained that the key elements for a traditional TV outlet to reinvent itself is “offering streaming, addressable advertising on linear TV, and reaching viewers on complex smart TVs.” According to Grivet, “HbbTV provides for traditional linear broadcasters the interactive and streaming functions they need to expand and adapt. [Today] most TV sets sold in Europe are HbbTV compatible.” HbbTV was born in 2010, and its initial technical concept was developed separately in Germany and France in 2006. Of HbbTV’s 65 members, 14 are broadcasters, including the BBC and ITV in the U.K., Italy’s RAI and Mediaset, Germany’s RTL, and Greece’s ERT. Sam Matheny, chief technology officer of the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), explained: “The HbbTV specification and the interactive portion of the ATSC 3.0 standard are tools that essentially both achieve the same end goal — enhancing and augmenting the linear TV viewing experience using a combination of broadcast and broadband resources available to the TV set.” He continued: “HbbTV has been around longer than ATSC 3.0 and is widely deployed in Europe and a number of other countries, and has been a starting point for developing modern solutions in other regions. On the other hand, ATSC 3.0 broadcast app development has taken place holistically along with the rest of the ATSC 3.0 television platform and, as a new system being deployed in the U.S. and other countries, is evolving rapidly without needing to grapple with the burden of legacy receiver issues.” To Grivet, “HbbTV is a fully non-redundant complement with DVB (and vice versa). DVB specifies the ‘transport of bits’ while HbbTV specifies the ‘handling of bits in the TV.’ ATSC 3.0 has a functional scope that aligns to the combination of DVB and HbbTV, but the specifications are different, and in some aspects the difference is quite structural. ATSC, on one side, and DVB and HbbTV on the other side cooperate to try taking coordinated views at new subjects, but as they start from different spots, this did not produce any immediate joint project by now.” Nonetheless, according to NAB’s Matheny, “Both HbbTV and ATSC 3.0 demonstrate the benefits and advantages of media convergence, using the best distribution mechanism for different elements of media content and combining them at the receiver in a seamless way. “Delivering live content to mass audiences using over-the-air broadcasting along with interactive elements (such as those enabled by HbbTV and ATSC 3.0’s broadcast apps), taking advantage of the two-way nature of data networks, is a win-win proposition. For ATSC 3.0, having content and elements based on Internet Protocol transport makes integrating the program with interactive enhancements practical and reliable. Convergence of broadcast and broadband networks is leading the media industry towards providing the best user experience. Continued cooperation between organizations like ATSC and HbbTV are part of that global effort.” Indeed, as the American economist Thomas Sowell has said, “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” On a final note, Grivet explained that “Linear TV [refers to] a precise type of TV viewing, [while] traditional TV may refer to linear TV, but also to the overall proposal of traditional players, which includes non-linear and on-demand content consumption. Legacy media may be broader by also including printed press and radio.” Sam Matheny, CTO of the National Association of Broadcasters Vincent Grivet, chairman of the HbbTV Association VIDEOAGE January 2025 Linear TV Review C M Y CM MY CY CMY K
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