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Rejoice, cord-cutters. HBO has announced it will launch its own online video streaming service next year, no cable TV subscription needed. 
  
 Until now, HBO's streaming service, HBO GO, has required users to have an HBO subscription, but in an investor meeting on Wednesday, HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler acknowledged that this model excludes the some 10 million homes in the U.S. that are now broadband-only. And that number is only expected to grow. "That is a large and growing opportunity that should no longer be left untapped," Plepler said. "It is time to remove all barriers to those who want HBO." 
  
 For those who have been watching the cord-cutter revolution, HBO's move is a long time coming. The HBO GO subscription model has always felt like a half-baked attempt at the over-the-top TV market. Plus, a poorly kept secret about HBO GO has always been that you don't really need a subscription to watch unlimited HBO content online. You just need to know someone—or know someone who knows someone—with a subscription and is willing to share his password. That means that a whole lot of us are basically getting full access to HBO without paying a penny. With a standalone service, in other words, HBO will finally be able to collect on all that binge Game of Thrones watching you've been doing on your cousin's boyfriend's roommate's account. 
  
 What's most unusual about this change in events, though, is the fact that many consumers are actually ready and willing the pay HBO for this kind of thing. Two years ago, a site called TakeMyMoneyHbo.com launched, and asked people how much they'd pay for a standalone service. The site got more than 163,000 visitors in the first 48 hours and found that the average person would pay around $12 a month. 
  
 Consumers wanted this service because, with so many options for watching traditional television online—from Netflix to Hulu to Amazon Prime Instant Video—access to HBO has been one of the last remaining reasons to stick with cable. Better to pony up the $12 a month than fork over $120 or more for cable. 
  
 So, why then did HBO take so long to break away from cable? The answer may be that HBO was under tremendous pressure from cable companies, who are finding themselves struggling to compete with the emergence of low-cost services like Netflix. Angering them could potentially jeopardize HBO's relationship with the cable companies, who could then slap HBO with higher fees for carrying their content. 
  
 But in recent years, the power seems to have shifted. As HBO has become more and more beloved and cable companies have become more and more reviled, the odds of HBO winning a fight against a massive cable company are much higher. Many people still subscribe to cable to get HBO, meaning if say, Comcast, were to hit HBO with higher fees or terminate its service, Comcast might very well lose customers, too. 
  
 Meanwhile, another new cultural trend may also be adding to the pressure HBO is feeling to launch such a service. It's not cord cutting, per se, but "cord shaving," a phenomenon recently explored by The Wall Street Journal, in which consumers are keeping cable, but cutting add-on channels like ESPN or the Food Network. As more HBO-quality content emerges from companies like Netflix and Amazon, it's possible that this cord-shaving trend could hit HBO particularly hard if it doesn't act fast. 
  
 HBO already tiptoed toward the unbundled future earlier this year, announcing a deal that would give Amazon Prime members unlimited access to some older HBO content. Now, it seems HBO is ready to fully take the plunge. Details on the new service's name, how much it will cost, and what content will be available are still unclear, but one thing is sure: cable companies should be very, very afraid. ||||| It may not rival Hamlet and King Lear with scholars, but there are few more poignant moments in Shakespeare than when Julius Caesar utters his last words. Literally surrounded by the Senators who have conspired to bring about his downfall, Caesar is devastated as his realizes the betrayal even by his friend Brutus. Thus we hear Caesar’s cry of “Et tu, Brute?” (in Latin, literally “And you, Brutus?”). Of course in the movie (I know, so 20th Century of me) Marlon Brando’s (as Mark Antony) glorious “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!” that follows is a classic. 
  
 HBO yesterday dropped the other shoe on cable operators and their multichannel video distributor brethren. They announced that in 2015, you will no longer need to subscribe to HBO through your cable service provider in order to get access to all of HBO’s content online and on mobile devices in the U.S. (HBO has operated in this fashion in Scandinavia through HBO Nordic since last year). So beginning next year, HBO GO(es) OTT (“over the top” or Internet-delivered) and will begin to build its own, direct relationship with U.S. consumers. 
  
 HBO isn’t the first to jab the proverbial shiv into the cable industry ribs, and it’s certainly one that the cable industry (, , etc.) has seen coming for some time. The industry has been increasingly encircled by a growing cast of characters looking to expand OTT options for consumers. This runs the gamut from , which dominates the premium online video landscape with over 50 million subscribers, to Amazon and Hulu, to and DISH (newly announced entrants to the OTT market), to device manufacturers such as Roku, Apple TV and Google Chrome, to content providers World Wrestling Entertainment and Sarah Palin (separately, of course, although recent news reports might suggest a promising joint venture here). But of all the surrounding attackers, the tip of the HBO knife has to hurt just a little bit more than most. 
  
 It may seem like ancient history now, but for many years, cable content was HBO. The cable industry’s origins (as early as the 1940s) were as a simple retransmitter of existing broadcast television stations to areas that due to their geography or topography (rural areas distant from big city broadcasters, valleys, etc.) received no or hard-to-watch broadcast signals. It wasn’t until HBO went up on a satellite in 1972 that “cable” meant something more than clearer pictures. If you wanted to see high quality content not on broadcast television, such as top movies and big boxing matches, you had to have HBO. It helped drive cable subscriptions years before ESPN, CNN, Discovery, USA and their brethren were anything more than business plans and spreadsheets. And of course cable helped HBO by providing the literal pathway into subscriber homes with their wires. 
  
 HBO had professed for some time that it would never seek to undermine its longtime relationships with the multichannel distributors to whom it has traditionally relied on for reaching U.S. subscribers. But the rise of popularity and usage of online video, especially among younger people, has been undeniable for some time. If cable helped father HBO’s success (and vice versa) it wasn’t enough to overcome “mother” (remember that necessity is the “mother of invention”). 
  
 So with HBO setting a new course, have we now hit the proverbial tipping point, and is that the end of cable? These things never play out as quickly as we think, and in fact I think winners and losers may end up being a little surprising here. My initial scorecard is as follows: 
  
 Big winner: HBO 
  
 This one isn’t brain surgery. There are roughly 30 million HBO subscribers today (through cable, satellite and telco) generating nearly $5 billion in revenue and nearly $2 billion in profit. Yet the US has roughly 132 million households and nearly 240 million adults over the age of 18. There is a vast untapped market for HBO GO (or HBO “Go-it-alone” as some have dubbed it). And remember that HBO gets virtually all of the revenue from this independent service – no need to share with any multichannel video provider friends. Whether this ultimately cannibalizes multichannel video (and for the reasons below, I don’t think that happens so rapidly), or just creates a new market, HBO will go nowhere but up with this move. 
  
 Small winners: Netflix and Hulu 
  
 Say what? Aren’t these HBO’s biggest competitors and don’t they stand to lose the most by HBO entering their OTT turf? Although Netflix took a hit in the market yesterday (who didn’t?), I attribute this much more to the short-term fallout from their recent price increase. HBO will now make OTT a much more mainstream option for millions of Americans than just an early adopter, “anti-cable” move. For those foregoing traditional multichannel video, they will begin to examine more closely the value proposition of putting together their own online “packages” to include HBO GO and some of their competitors as well. 
  
 Small loser: Comcast, Charter, other multichannel video providers 
  
 It may seem on the surface like cable and their multichannel fellow travelers will be devastated by this move, and I certainly think it carries the emotional baggage I outlined above. But from a practical perspective, it’s not quite so cataclysmic. The numbers of U.S. households dropping multichannel video has been growing at a relatively light pace. The top 13 of these providers lost 105,000 subs in 2013 representing 0.1% of their total of 94.6 million subscribers. For millions of Americans (the average American still watches roughly 5 hours per day of live television, including but not limited to live sports (through ESPN and all of the broadcast networks), they still aren’t going to find that “no cable” is a good enough solution. I think the new HBO OTT service has much more impact on those who otherwise have no interest in subscribing to traditional multichannel video – not good news for cable and co., but not a quick lethal blow either. Look for more creative responses to come from cable. 
  
 Big loser: Amazon 
  
 The party that has to really feel like the betrayed spouse right now must be Amazon. Just last April, Amazon and HBO announced a deal for a selection of HBO content to be made available on Amazon Prime. We don’t know the payment terms, but now pretty quickly you’ll be able to get virtually all HBO content from HBO directly. They will benefit like Netflix and Hulu from the overall focus on the OTT marketplace, but their recent deal seems ridiculous now – their HBO content will serve as an ad for a way to get all HBO content. It’s never easy to feel sorry for Amazon, but they look like losers on this one. ||||| Call it the paradox of cable TV. As a medium, cable has been enjoying its so-called "Golden Age," with complex, immaculately produced dramas like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Girls, True Detective, and The Walking Dead earning impressive ratings and critical acclaim. But as a video delivery service, it’s on the brink of becoming entirely obsolete. 
  
 HBO just announced that beginning in 2015, it will offer a standalone online streaming service. Thanks to the millions of people who’ve been illegally downloading Game of Thrones or swiping their parents' HBO GO login, the news immediately made headlines. NPR reports, in predictably NPR-y fashion, that “the move would seem to be a big one.” That's an understatement—from where I'm sitting, it’s the death knell for traditional cable television. 
  
 This may seem dubious, seeing as how the news is breaking at the same moment that a Golden Age cable show, The Walking Dead, set a record for cable TV viewing: 17.3 million people watched the season five debut. But all those people were watching something more historic than just the most-viewed cable TV show ever; they were watching the apex of Peak Cable. 
  
 HBO is just the most powerful cable network to allow users to cut the cord and opt for a la carte online viewing. There's been a steady trickle of other networks and services that allow you to do the precisely that. Comedy Central has a new app that allows viewers to access much of its content for free (some of it is still locked for non-cable subscribers), MLB.tv lets you stream baseball games, NFL.com does the same with football, and AMC lets you watch most of its shows, even premium titles like The Walking Dead online after it's aired, for free. TV streaming apps are, according to the New York Times, currently "soaring in popularity." 
  
 With HBO coming to your computer screens, Xbox, and iPads next year, there's almost no conceivable reason you'd need a cable subscription. 
  
 It's about time. As a service, cable is, almost across the board, an ugly, over-priced mess. Cable companies are the most hated in the nation for a reason—they are monopolistic monoliths that offer customers little in the way of choice and terrible service. If you want premium networks, like ESPN or HBO, you pay through the nose for a package and are rewarded with a glut of other channels you never watch. (In the past, cable execs have argued that the resultant subsidization make shows like AMC's Mad Men, which isn’t a ratings behemoth, possible. That won't be the case as much in the future.) 
  
 Personally, I hate my cable company, with a kind of quiet, flaming passion for its incessant stream of irritations to my privileged life. I pay about $100 for a basic cable and high-speed internet package from Comcast, and both are absolute garbage. (The internet is consistently and inexplicably slow, despite my neverending calls to customer service reps, but that is another story.) 
  
 The average American, meanwhile, pays $64 a month for cable, according to the FCC, and that rate is only rising. The International Business Times reports that "the average bill for expanded basic cable rose 5.1 percent" in 2012. “That's about four times the rate of inflation, which rose just 1.6 percent during the same 12-month period, according to the Consumer Price Index." To get premium channels and high-speed internet, Comcast sells packages of up to $159.99 a month. 
  
 This doesn't mean that the internet has triumphed and won us a bullshit-free delivery system for our favorite shows 
  
 That is a lot of money to dole out for a pantheon of channels consumers have little to no control over—and considering that you could probably get nearly all the content you want, a la carte, for probably half that. If you are a baseball fan who likes The Daily Show, SNL, and Breaking Bad, then a monthly subscription to MLB.tv ($9.99), Hulu ($9.99), and Netflix ($8.99) will keep you happy for less than $30 a month. You can beam all of those services and more onto your TV with a cheap little box like Chromecast or Roku, or through an Xbox or BluRay player. 
  
 Then there's my cable. On a given week, I'm not even sure which networks I'll have access to. Some weeks I have TBS, where I'll occasionally watch Seinfeld reruns, some weeks I won't. No ESPN. No FX. No USA. Not that I'd particularly want to watch those networks, but their absence, along with the highly dubious quality of most other cable TV I've encountered, has helped convince me that cable is overpriced, absurd and anachronistic. 
  
 See, as a first-wave "digital native"—just typing that still makes me cringe, but I've more or less accepted my fate—I didn't have a TV for years. After college, my girlfriend and I would just watch stuff on the computer; on Hulu, on Netflix, or, yeah, on one of those virus-laden streaming portals hosted in China (a tip of the hat to you, MegaVideo). Even when we eventually splurged for a flat screen TV, after they became cheap enough, we still just hooked up a BluRay and watched online. This experience was more than satisfactory. 
  
 But we moved, and Comcast sold me on cable when I called for internet. It would only be $20 more they promised, for CNN, TBS (at the time), Comedy Central, and so on. My re-acclimation to cable has taught me many things, the pinnacle of which is: All those years I didn’t have it, I was missing absolutely nothing. CNN is a mind-numbingly terrible news network, my life didn't need more Seinfeld reruns (and I could watch them on Crackle anyway), and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were already on Hulu, where I could watch them at my convenience. 
  
 In fact, every kind of content that cable TV produces, the internet usually does better, even when it’s not specifically delivering the same show online. Certainly this is true for news, where Fox, MSNBC, and CNN account for a kind of nadir in the history of modern civilization’s information delivery. The likes of Twitter, NYTimes.com, and Vice News (sure, I'm partial, but serious) will keep you more informed and entertained than all of the above, with video, if that’s what you'd feel like you’d be missing. TMZ has more juicy celebrity gossip than anything on TV, Buzzfeed does VH1-style nostalgia trips in the appropriate amount of time (30 seconds versus 30 minutes), and obviously, anyone who watches music videos does so on YouTube. 
  
 And I'm not worried that the death of cable TV will deprive of us of future Mad Men. We've already seen that the likes of Netflix and Amazon are more than willing to pay for thoughtful, elaborate productions; Transparent is the best show I've seen this fall, and everyone seems to love House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. The shows themselves are still better than ever, hence the success of Walking Dead—which, by the way, counted plenty of internet users among its record-breaking viewership—and there's indisputably a market for them. Now, plenty of niche shows may fall by the wayside without the help of subsidies from the big packages—but ultimately, I think that means less crappy TV and more time-wasting on the internet. 
  
 I'm planning on returning to internet-only TV. More and more people are following suit—the number of households without satellite or cable TV has grown 44 percent over the last four years. That oft-uttered phrase "Oh, I don’t have a TV" is no longer an affected hipsterism but a practical choice. 
  
 With HBO available online, the two things now keeping cable alive are the all-powerful ESPN (viewers still need cable to access its app, so it is now the major pull for enticing subscribers) and the inertia inherent to any long-accepted system. People used to cable are going to keep paying the bills. Ultimately, it will be cohort replacement that drives the final nail into cable's coffin—subscribers will simply eventually die off. 
  
 This doesn't mean that the internet has triumphed and won us a bullshit-free delivery system for our favorite shows. Cable companies have positioned themselves excellently to cope with this shift, by becoming our chief internet service providers as well, which means they'll still control the delivery mechanisms that make the shows viewable, and will no doubt find ways to increase profits over their streaming. 
  
 This is yet another reminder of the importance of preserving net neutrality. It's not hard to imagine a future where a newly merged Comcast-Time Warner offers users "high-speed delivery groups" of shows, ensuring high quality streaming for HBO GO, MLB.tv, or whatever else, for scaling fees. The power to deliver your favorite shows still lies in the hands of massive corporate conglomerates, in other words—but the days of pointless, overstuffed cable packages are drawing to a close. |||||
– HBO's announcement that it will launch some of type of stand-alone streaming service next year means that "cable companies should be very, very afraid," writes Issie Lapowsky at Wired. It's a sentiment widely shared out there, with Brian Merchant at Vice chiming in, "From where I'm sitting, it’s the death knell for traditional cable television." After all, people who hate the expensive bundles offered by cable companies will be able to cut the cord and still get high-quality shows. Other entities such as the NFL, Comedy Central, AMC, and, now, CBS, offer similar options, and HBO's entry means "there's almost no conceivable reason you'd need a cable subscription," writes Merchant. People finally will be able to pick and choose what they will pay to watch. Skeptics say those most likely to sign up for the HBO service are probably young, tech-savvy adults who already skip cable, and thus the move won't lead to a significant jump in cord-cutters, writes Derek Thompson at the Atlantic. But even if it simply curbs cable's growth by preventing new sign-ups, "that's bad enough," he writes. The cable industry may still be "ridiculously profitable" but the "empire is shrinking" as subscriptions stagnate. "Bundling has worked," he writes. "Now it's ending. Somebody has to lose this game." Of course, cable companies also are in the business of providing Internet service, so expect them to try to boost profits on that front. In fact, at Forbes, Howard Homonoff thinks the biggest loser in all this isn't the cable industry—he figures most people will stick with cable for the foreseeable future—but Amazon, which recently signed a content deal with HBO for its Prime service.
Skriv en sammanfattning baserad på denna artikel: Gläd dig, sladd-klippare. HBO har meddelat att man kommer att lansera sin egen online video streaming tjänst nästa år, ingen kabel-TV abonnemang behövs. Hittills har HBO:s streamingtjänst, HBO GO, krävt att användarna ska ha ett HBO-abonnemang, men i ett investerarmöte på onsdagen erkände HBO:s ordförande och VD Richard Plepler att denna modell utesluter de cirka 10 miljoner bostäder i USA som nu bara är bredband. Och det antalet förväntas bara växa. "Det är en stor och växande möjlighet som inte längre bör lämnas outnyttjad," Plepler sade. "Det är dags att ta bort alla hinder för dem som vill ha HBO." För dem som har sett sladdhuggarrevolutionen är HBO:s drag en lång tid på väg. HBO GO-abonnemangsmodellen har alltid känts som ett halvfärdigt försök till den översta TV-marknaden. Plus, en dåligt hemlig om HBO GO har alltid varit att du inte behöver en prenumeration för att titta på obegränsat HBO innehåll på nätet. Du behöver bara känna någon – eller känna någon som känner någon – med en prenumeration och är villig att dela med sig av sitt lösenord. Det betyder att en hel del av oss i princip får full tillgång till HBO utan att betala ett öre. Med en fristående tjänst, med andra ord, kommer HBO äntligen att kunna samla på alla hetsiga Game of Thrones titta på du har gjort på din kusins pojkväns rumskompis konto. Vad som är mest ovanligt med denna förändring i händelser, dock, är det faktum att många konsumenter faktiskt redo och villiga lön HBO för denna typ av saker. För två år sedan lanserades en webbplats som heter TakeMyMoneyHbo.com och frågade hur mycket de skulle betala för en fristående tjänst. Sajten fick mer än 163 000 besökare under de första 48 timmarna och fann att den genomsnittliga personen skulle betala runt 12 dollar i månaden. Konsumenterna ville ha denna tjänst eftersom, med så många alternativ för att titta på traditionell TV på nätet-från Netflix till Hulu till Amazon Prime Instant Video-tillgång till HBO har varit en av de sista återstående skälen att hålla sig med kabel. Bättre att ponny upp $ 12 i månaden än gaffel över $ 120 eller mer för kabel. Så varför tog det så lång tid för HBO att bryta sig loss från kabel? Svaret kan vara att HBO var under enorm press från kabelbolag, som befinner sig i svårigheter att konkurrera med uppkomsten av lågpristjänster som Netflix. Angering av dem kan potentiellt äventyra HBO: s förhållande till kabelbolagen, som sedan kunde slå HBO med högre avgifter för att bära sitt innehåll. Men på senare år tycks makten ha skiftat. Eftersom HBO har blivit mer och mer älskade och kabelbolag har blivit mer och mer förolämpade, är oddsen för att HBO vinner en kamp mot ett massivt kabelbolag mycket högre. Många människor fortfarande prenumerera på kabel för att få HBO, vilket innebär om säga, Comcast, var att slå HBO med högre avgifter eller avsluta sin tjänst, Comcast kan mycket väl förlora kunder också. Samtidigt kan en annan ny kulturell trend också öka trycket HBO känner att lansera en sådan tjänst. Det är inte sladdskärning, i sig, utan "cord rakning", ett fenomen som nyligen utforskats av The Wall Street Journal, där konsumenterna håller kabel, men skär av tilläggskanaler som ESPN eller Food Network. Allt eftersom mer HBO-kvalitet innehåll kommer från företag som Netflix och Amazon, är det möjligt att denna sladd-rakning trend kan slå HBO särskilt hårt om det inte agerar snabbt. HBO redan tipsade mot den öppna framtiden tidigare i år, tillkännage en affär som skulle ge Amazon Prime medlemmar obegränsad tillgång till några äldre HBO-innehåll. HBO verkar vara redo att ta steget. Detaljer om den nya tjänstens namn, hur mycket den kommer att kosta, och vilket innehåll som kommer att finnas tillgängligt är fortfarande oklart, men en sak är säker: kabelbolag bör vara mycket, mycket rädda. Det kanske inte är Hamlet och kung Lear som tävlar med forskare, men det finns få mer gripande ögonblick i Shakespeare än när Julius Caesar yttrar sina sista ord. Bokstavligen omgiven av senatorerna som har konspirerat för att få till stånd hans undergång, blir Caesar förkrossad då hans inser sveket även av sin vän Brutus. Därmed hör vi kejsarens rop av ”Et tu, Brute?” (på latin ordagrant ”Och du, Brutus?”). Naturligtvis i filmen (jag vet, så 20th Century of me) Marlon Brandos (som Mark Antonius) härliga “Vänner, romare, landsmän, låna mig dina öron!” som följer är en klassiker. HBO släppte igår den andra skon på kabeloperatörer och deras flerkanaliga videodistributör bröder. De meddelade att du under 2015 inte längre behöver prenumerera på HBO via din kabelleverantör för att få tillgång till allt HBO:s innehåll online och på mobila enheter i USA (HBO har verkat på detta sätt i Skandinavien genom HBO Nordic sedan förra året). Så börjar nästa år, HBO GO(es) OTT (“över toppen” eller Internet-levereras) och kommer att börja bygga sin egen, direkt relation med amerikanska konsumenter. HBO är inte den första att jabba ordspråket kniv i kabel industrin revben, och det är säkert en att kabel industrin (, , etc.) har väntat på att få komma ett tag. Industrin har i allt större utsträckning omgärdats av en växande uppsättning karaktärer som vill utöka möjligheterna till OTT för konsumenterna. Detta kör hela skalan från , som dominerar premium online videolandskap med över 50 miljoner prenumeranter, till Amazon och Hulu, till och DISH (nyligen meddelade aktörer på OTT-marknaden), till tillverkare av enheter som Roku, Apple TV och Google Chrome, till innehållsleverantörer World Wrestling Entertainment och Sarah Palin (separat, naturligtvis, även om de senaste nyhetsrapporterna kan föreslå ett lovande samriskföretag här). Men av alla de omgivande angriparna måste spetsen på HBO kniven göra lite mer ont än de flesta. Det kan tyckas som forntida historia nu, men under många år, kabelinnehåll var HBO. Kabelindustrins ursprung (så tidigt som på 1940-talet) var som en enkel återsändare av befintliga TV-stationer till områden som på grund av sin geografi eller topografi (landsbygdsområden långt från storstadsbolag, dalar, etc.) Mottog inga eller svårbevakade sändningssignaler. Det var inte förrän HBO gick upp på en satellit 1972 som “kabel” betydde något mer än tydligare bilder. Om man ville se högkvalitativt innehåll som inte fanns i TV, till exempel toppfilmer och stora boxningsmatcher, var man tvungen att ha HBO. Den hjälpte till att driva kabelabonnemang flera år innan ESPN, CNN, Discovery, USA och deras bröder var något annat än affärsplaner och kalkylblad. Och naturligtvis hjälpte kabel HBO genom att förse den bokstavliga vägen in i abonnenthem med sina ledningar. HBO hade bekänt sig under en tid att man aldrig skulle försöka undergräva sina långvariga relationer med de flerkanalsdistributörer som man traditionellt förlitat sig på för att nå amerikanska abonnenter. Men ökningen av popularitet och användning av online-video, särskilt bland yngre människor, har varit obestridligt under en tid. Om kabel hjälpte far HBO framgång (och vice versa) var det inte tillräckligt för att övervinna “mamma” (kom ihåg att nödvändighet är “moder till uppfinning”). Så med HBO sätta en ny kurs, har vi nu nått den ordspråkliga tippning punkten, och är det slutet på kabel? Dessa saker går aldrig så fort som vi tror, och jag tror faktiskt att vinnare och förlorare kan bli lite överraskande här. Min första poängkort är som följer: Stor vinnare: HBO Detta är inte hjärnkirurgi. Det finns ungefär 30 miljoner HBO abonnenter idag (genom kabel, satellit och telco) genererar nästan $ 5 miljarder i intäkter och nästan $ 2 miljarder i vinst. Ändå har USA ungefär 132 miljoner hushåll och närmare 240 miljoner vuxna över 18 år. Det finns en stor outnyttjad marknad för HBO GO (eller HBO “Go-it-alone” som vissa har dubbat det). Och kom ihåg att HBO får i princip alla intäkter från denna oberoende tjänst – ingen anledning att dela med några flerkanaliga video leverantör vänner. Oavsett om detta i slutändan kannibalizes flerkanalsvideo (och av anledningarna nedan, jag tror inte att händer så snabbt), eller bara skapar en ny marknad, HBO kommer att gå ingenstans men upp med detta drag. Små vinnare: Netflix och Hulu Säg vad? Är inte dessa HBO: s största konkurrenter och inte de står för att förlora mest genom HBO in i deras OTT torv? Även Netflix tog en hit på marknaden igår (vem gjorde inte det? ) tillskriver jag detta mycket mer det kortsiktiga resultatet av deras senaste prisökning. HBO kommer nu att göra OTT en mycket mer mainstream alternativ för miljontals amerikaner än bara en tidig adopterare, “anti-kabel” drag. För dem som tidigare inte har någon traditionell flerkanalsvideo, kommer de att börja närmare undersöka värdet av att sätta ihop sina egna online-paket för att inkludera HBO GO och några av sina konkurrenter också. Liten förlorare: Comcast, Charter, andra flerkanaliga videoleverantörer Det kan tyckas på ytan som kabel och deras flerkanaliga medresenärer kommer att bli förkrossade av detta drag, och jag tror verkligen att det bär det känslomässiga bagage jag beskrivit ovan. Men ur ett praktiskt perspektiv är det inte riktigt så omvälvande. Antalet amerikanska hushåll som släpper flerkanalsvideo har ökat i relativt lätt takt. De 13 främsta av dessa leverantörer förlorade 105 000 subs under 2013 vilket motsvarar 0,1 % av deras totala 94,6 miljoner abonnenter. För miljontals amerikaner (den genomsnittliga amerikanska fortfarande tittar ungefär 5 timmar per dag av live-TV, inklusive men inte begränsat till levande sport (genom ESPN och alla sändningsnät), de fortfarande inte kommer att hitta att “ingen kabel” är en tillräckligt bra lösning. Jag tror att den nya HBO OTT-tjänsten har mycket större inverkan på dem som annars inte har något intresse av att prenumerera på traditionell flerkanalsvideo – inte goda nyheter för kabel och co., men inte ett snabbt dödligt slag heller. Leta efter mer kreativa svar som kommer från kabel. Stor förlorare: Amazon Festen som måste verkligen kännas som den förrådda maken just nu måste vara Amazon. Bara i april förra året, Amazon och HBO meddelade en affär för ett urval av HBO-innehåll som ska göras tillgängliga på Amazon Prime. Vi vet inte betalningsvillkoren, men nu ganska snabbt kommer du att kunna få i princip allt HBO innehåll från HBO direkt. De kommer att dra nytta som Netflix och Hulu från det övergripande fokus på OTT marknadsplats, men deras senaste affär verkar löjligt nu – deras HBO-innehåll kommer att fungera som en annons för ett sätt att få allt HBO-innehåll. Det är aldrig lätt att tycka synd om Amazon, men de ser ut som förlorare på denna. Kalla det paradoxen med kabel-TV. Som medium har kabeln njutit av sin så kallade "Gyllene Tidsåldern", med komplexa, oförlikneligt producerade dramer som Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Girls, True Detective, och The Walking Dead som tjänar imponerande tittarsiffror och kritisk hyllning. Men som en video leveranstjänst, är det på gränsen till att bli helt föråldrad. HBO meddelade precis att från och med 2015 kommer det att erbjuda en fristående online streaming tjänst. Tack vare de miljontals människor som har varit olagligt ladda ner Game of Thrones eller svepa sina föräldrars HBO GO inloggning, nyheterna omedelbart gjorde rubriker. NPR rapporterar, på ett förutsägbart NPR-aktigt sätt, att ”det verkar som om flytten är stor.” Det är en underdrift – där jag sitter är det dödsstöten för traditionell kabel-TV. Detta kan tyckas tvivelaktigt, eftersom nyheten går ut i samma ögonblick som en Golden Age-kabelshow, The Walking Dead, satte rekord för kabel-TV-tittande: 17,3 miljoner människor tittade på säsong fem-debuten. Men alla dessa människor tittade på något mer historiskt än bara det mest sedda kabel-TV-programmet någonsin; de tittade på toppen av Peak Cable. HBO är bara den mest kraftfulla kabelnät för att låta användare att klippa sladden och välja a la carte online visning. Det har funnits en stadig rännil av andra nätverk och tjänster som tillåter dig att göra just det. Comedy Central har en ny app som gör att tittarna kan få tillgång till mycket av sitt innehåll gratis (vissa av det är fortfarande låst för icke-kabel abonnenter), MLB.tv låter dig strömma basebollspel, NFL.com gör samma sak med fotboll, och AMC låter dig titta på de flesta av sina shower, även premiumtitlar som The Walking Dead online efter att det sänts, gratis. TV-streamingappar är, enligt New York Times, för närvarande "svävande i popularitet." Med HBO kommer till dina datorskärmar, Xbox, och iPads nästa år, det finns nästan ingen tänkbar anledning att du skulle behöva en kabel-abonnemang. Det var på tiden. Som en tjänst är kabel, nästan över hela linjen, en ful, överprissatt röra. Kabelbolag är de mest hatade i nationen av en anledning – de är monopolistiska monoliter som erbjuder kunderna lite i vägen för val och fruktansvärd service. Om man vill ha premiumnätverk, som ESPN eller HBO, betalar man genom näsan för ett paket och belönas med ett glute av andra kanaler man aldrig tittar på. (Tidigare har kabel chefer hävdat att den resulterande subventionering gör visar som AMC: s Mad Men, vilket inte är en betyg behemoth, möjligt. Så blir det inte i framtiden.) Personligen hatar jag mitt kabelföretag, med en sorts stilla, flammande passion för dess ständiga ström av irritationer mot mitt privilegierade liv. Jag betalar ca $ 100 för en grundläggande kabel och höghastighets internetpaket från Comcast, och båda är absolut skräp. (Internet är konsekvent och oförklarligt långsamt, trots mina aldrig sinande samtal till kundtjänst reps, men det är en annan historia.) Den genomsnittliga amerikanska, under tiden, betalar $ 64 i månaden för kabel, enligt FCC, och den hastigheten är bara stigande. International Business Times rapporterar att "den genomsnittliga räkningen för expanderad baskabel steg 5,1 procent" 2012. – Det är ungefär fyra gånger inflationstakten, som steg bara 1,6 procent under samma tolvmånadersperiod, enligt konsumentprisindexet. För att få premiumkanaler och höghastighetsinternet säljer Comcast paket på upp till $159.99 i månaden. Detta betyder inte att internet har segrat och vann oss en skitsnacksfri leverans system för våra favoritprogram Det är en hel del pengar att dö ut för en pantheon av kanaler konsumenter har lite till ingen kontroll över-och med tanke på att du förmodligen kan få nästan allt innehåll du vill, en la carte, för förmodligen hälften av det. Om du är ett basebollfan som gillar The Daily Show, SNL, och Breaking Bad, då en månatlig prenumeration på MLB.tv ($ 9,99), Hulu ($ 9,99), och Netflix ($8,99) kommer att hålla dig glad för mindre än $ 30 i månaden. Du kan stråla alla dessa tjänster och mer på din TV med en billig liten låda som Chromecast eller Roku, eller genom en Xbox- eller BluRay-spelare. Sen har vi min kabel. Jag vet inte ens vilka nätverk jag har tillgång till. Vissa veckor har jag TBS, där jag ibland tittar på Seinfeld repriser, vissa veckor kommer jag inte. Ingen ESPN. Ingen FX. Inget USA. Inte för att jag skulle vilja titta på dessa nätverk, men deras frånvaro, tillsammans med den högst tvivelaktiga kvaliteten på de flesta andra kabel-TV jag har stött på, har hjälpt mig att övertyga mig om att kabel är överprissatt, absurd och anakronistisk. Som en första våg "digital inföding" – bara skriva som fortfarande gör mig krypande, men jag har mer eller mindre accepterat mitt öde – jag hade inte en TV på flera år. Efter college, min flickvän och jag skulle bara titta på saker på datorn; på Hulu, på Netflix, eller, ja, på en av de virus-laddade streamingportaler som är värd i Kina (en spets av hatten till dig, MegaVideo). Även när vi så småningom sprack för en platt-TV, efter att de blev billiga nog, vi fortfarande bara koppla upp en BluRay och tittat på nätet. Denna erfarenhet var mer än tillfredsställande. Men vi flyttade, och Comcast sålde mig på kabel när jag ringde efter internet. Det skulle bara bli $ 20 mer de lovade, för CNN, TBS (på den tiden), Comedy Central, och så vidare. Min re-acclimation till kabel har lärt mig många saker, vars höjdpunkt är: Alla de år jag inte hade det, jag saknade absolut ingenting. CNN är ett otroligt hemskt nyhetsnätverk, mitt liv behövde inte fler Seinfeld repriser (och jag kunde se dem på Crackle ändå), och Jon Stewart och Stephen Colbert var redan på Hulu, där jag kunde titta på dem på min bekvämlighet. I själva verket, varje typ av innehåll som kabel-TV producerar, Internet brukar göra bättre, även när det inte är specifikt leverera samma show på nätet. Detta gäller förvisso nyheter, där Fox, MSNBC, och CNN står för ett slags nadir i historien om den moderna civilisationens informationsleverans. Twitter, NYTimes.com och Vice News (visst, jag är partisk, men allvarlig) kommer att hålla dig mer informerad och underhållen än alla ovanstående, med video, om det är vad du skulle känna att du skulle saknas. TMZ har mer saftiga kändisskvaller än något på TV, Buzzfeed gör VH1-stil nostalgi resor i lämplig tid (30 sekunder mot 30 minuter), och uppenbarligen, alla som tittar på musikvideor gör det på YouTube. Och jag är inte orolig för att kabel-TV-döden kommer att beröva oss framtida Mad Men. Vi har redan sett att sådana som Netflix och Amazon är mer än villiga att betala för genomtänkta, genomarbetade produktioner; Transparent är den bästa showen jag har sett i höst, och alla verkar älska House of Cards och Orange är den nya svarta. Själva showerna är fortfarande bättre än någonsin, därav framgången med Walking Dead – som förresten räknade många internetanvändare bland sitt rekordhöga tittarskap – och det finns obestridligen en marknad för dem. Nu kan massor av nischshower falla vid sidan av utan hjälp av subventioner från de stora paketen – men i slutändan tror jag att det innebär mindre skitig TV och mer tidsspillan på internet. Jag planerar att återvända till internet-tv. Allt fler människor följer efter – antalet hushåll utan satellit- eller kabel-TV har ökat med 44 procent under de senaste fyra åren. Den ofta formulerade frasen "Åh, jag har ingen TV" är inte längre en påverkad hipsterism utan ett praktiskt val. Med HBO tillgänglig på nätet, de två saker som nu håller kabeln vid liv är den allsmäktiga ESPN (viewers behöver fortfarande kabel för att få tillgång till sin app, så det är nu den stora dragningen för lockande abonnenter) och trögheten inneboende i någon lång-accepterad system. Folk som brukade kabel-TV kommer att fortsätta betala räkningarna. I slutändan kommer det att bli kohortbyte som driver den sista spiken in i kabelns kista – subscribers kommer helt enkelt så småningom att dö bort. Detta betyder inte att internet har segrat och vunnit oss en skitsnacksfri leverans system för våra favoritprogram. Kabelbolag har positionerat sig utmärkt för att klara av detta skifte, genom att bli våra främsta leverantörer av internettjänster också, vilket innebär att de fortfarande kommer att kontrollera de leveransmekanismer som gör showerna synliga, och kommer utan tvekan att hitta sätt att öka vinsten över sin streaming. Detta är ännu en påminnelse om vikten av att bevara nätneutraliteten. Det är inte svårt att föreställa sig en framtid där en nyligen sammanslagen Comcast-Time Warner erbjuder användare "höghastighets leveransgrupper" av shower, vilket garanterar högkvalitativ streaming för HBO GO, MLB.tv, eller vad som helst, för skalavgifter. Kraften att leverera dina favoritshower ligger fortfarande i händerna på massiva företagskonglomerat, med andra ord – men dagarna med meningslösa, överfyllda kabelpaket närmar sig sitt slut. Â°°
Write a summary based on this article: Rejoice, cord clipper. HBO has announced that it will launch its own online video streaming service next year, no cable TV subscription needed. To date, HBO's streaming service, HBO GO, has called for users to have an HBO subscription, but in an investor meeting on Wednesday, HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler acknowledged that this model excludes the approximately 10 million homes in the United States that are now only broadband. And that number is only expected to grow. "It's a great and growing opportunity that should no longer be left unused," Plepler said. "It's time to remove all obstacles for those who want HBO." For those who have seen the cord cutter revolution, HBO's move is a long time on the way. The HBO GO subscription model has always felt like a half-finished attempt at the top television market. Plus, a bad secret about HBO GO has always been that you don't need a subscription to watch unlimited HBO content online. You just need to know someone – or know someone who knows someone – with a subscription and is willing to share their password. This means that a lot of us basically get full access to HBO without paying a penny. With a stand-alone service, in other words, HBO will finally be able to collect on all the heated Game of Thrones watch you've done on your cousin's boyfriend's roommate account. What is most unusual about this change in events, however, is the fact that many consumers actually ready and willing pay HBO for this type of thing. Two years ago, a website called TakeMyMoneyHbo.com was launched and asked how much they would pay for a stand-alone service. The site received more than 163,000 visitors in the first 48 hours and found that the average person would pay around $12 a month. Consumers wanted this service because, with so many options to watch traditional television online-from Netflix to Hulu to Amazon Prime Instant Video access to HBO has been one of the last remaining reasons to stay with cable. Better to pony up $12 a month than fork over $120 or more for cable. So why did it take so long for HBO to break free of cable? The answer may be that HBO was under enormous pressure from cable companies, which are in difficulty competing with the emergence of low-cost services such as Netflix. Angering them may potentially compromise HBO's relationship with the cable companies, who could then beat HBO with higher charges to carry their content. But in recent years power seems to have shifted. As HBO has become more and more loved and cable companies have become more and more offended, the odds that HBO wins a fight against a massive cable company are much higher. Many people still subscribe to cable to get HBO, which means if say, Comcast, where to beat HBO with higher fees or end their service, Comcast may well lose customers as well. At the same time, another new cultural trend can also increase the pressure HBO feels to launch such a service. It is not cord cutting, per se, but "cord shaving", a phenomenon recently explored by The Wall Street Journal, where consumers hold cable, but cut off additional channels such as ESPN or Food Network. As more HBO quality content comes from companies like Netflix and Amazon, it is possible that this cord-shaving trend can hit HBO particularly hard if it does not act quickly. HBO already tipped off towards the open future earlier this year, announcing a deal that would give Amazon Prime members unlimited access to some older HBO content. HBO seems to be ready to take the step. Details of the new service name, how much it will cost, and what content will be available are still unclear, but one thing is certain: cable companies should be very, very afraid. It may not be Hamlet and King Lear competing with scholars, but there are few more moving moments in Shakespeare than when Julius Caesar utters his final words. Literally surrounded by the senators who have conspired to bring about his downfall, Caesar is devastated as his realizes the betrayal even by his friend Brutus. Thus we hear the Emperor's cry of "Et tu, Brute?" (in Latin literally "And you, Brutus?"). Of course in the film (I know, so 20th Century of me) Marlon Brandos (as Mark Antony) lovely “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!” that follows is a classic. HBO yesterday released the second shoe on cable operators and their multi-channel video distributor brothers. They announced that in 2015 you no longer need to subscribe to HBO via your cable provider to access all HBO content online and on mobile devices in the United States (HBO has operated in this way in Scandinavia through HBO Nordic since last year). This is how next year, HBO GO(es) OTT (“over the top” or Internet delivered) will begin to build its own direct relationship with American consumers. HBO is not the first to jab the proverb knife in the cable industry ribs, and it is certainly one to cable industry (, , etc.) I've been waiting to get here for a while. Industry has increasingly been surrounded by a growing set of characters who want to expand the possibilities of OTT for consumers. This runs the full range from , which dominates premium online video landscapes with over 50 million subscribers, to Amazon and Hulu, to and DISH (recently announced players in the OTT market), to manufacturers of devices such as Roku, Apple TV and Google Chrome, to content providers World Wrestling Entertainment and Sarah Palin (separately, of course, although the latest news reports may propose a promising joint venture here). But of all the surrounding attackers, the tip of the HBO knife must hurt a little more than most. It may seem like ancient history now, but for many years, cable content was HBO. The origin of the cable industry (as early as the 1940s) was like a simple returner of existing television stations to areas that due to their geography or topography (rural areas far from metropolitan companies, valleys, etc.) Received no or hard-to-watch broadcast signals. It wasn’t until HBO went up on a satellite in 1972 that “cable” meant something more than clearer images. If you wanted to see high quality content that was not on TV, such as top films and big boxing matches, you had to have HBO. It helped operate cable subscriptions several years before ESPN, CNN, Discovery, the United States and their brothers were something other than business plans and spreadsheets. And of course, cable HBO helped by supplying the literal route into subscriber homes with its wiring. HBO had professed for some time that it would never attempt to undermine its long-term relationships with the multichannel distributors on which it had traditionally relied to reach U.S. subscribers. But the increase in popularity and use of online video, especially among younger people, has been undeniable for some time. If cable helped father HBO success (and vice versa) it was not enough to overcome “mother” (remember that necessity is “mother of invention”). So with HBO setting a new course, have we now reached the proverbial tipping point, and is that the end of cable? These things never go as fast as we think, and I actually think winners and losers can be a little surprising here. My first score card is as follows: Big winner: HBO This is not brain surgery. There are approximately 30 million HBO subscribers today (through cable, satellite and telco) generate nearly $5 billion in revenue and nearly $2 billion in profit. Yet, the United States has about 132 million households and nearly 240 million adults over the age of 18. There is a large unused market for HBO GO (or HBO “Go-it-alone” as some have dubbed it). And remember that HBO receives virtually all revenue from this independent service – no reason to share with any multi-channel video vendor friends. Whether this ultimately cannibalizes multichannel video (and for the reasons below, I don't think that happens so quickly), or just creates a new market, HBO will go nowhere but up with this move. Little winners: Netflix and Hulu Say what? Aren't these HBO's biggest competitors and not they stand to lose the most through HBO into their OTT turf? Even Netflix brought a hit to the market yesterday (who didn't? ) I attribute this much more to the short-term result of their recent price increase. HBO will now make OTT a much more mainstream option for millions of Americans than just an early adopter, “anti-cable” move. For those who previously do not have a traditional multichannel video, they will begin to examine more closely the value of putting together their own online packages to include HBO GO and some of their competitors as well. Small loser: Comcast, Charter, other multichannel video providers It may seem on the surface like cable and their multichannel fellow travelers will be devastated by this move, and I really think it carries the emotional baggage I described above. But from a practical point of view, it's not quite so transformative. The number of US households releasing multichannel video has increased at a relatively easy pace. The top 13 of these providers lost 105,000 subs in 2013 representing 0.1% of their total 94.6 million subscribers. For millions of Americans (the average American still watching about 5 hours a day of live television, including but not limited to live sports (through ESPN and all broadcast networks), they still won’t find that “no cable” is a good enough solution. I think the new HBO OTT service has a much greater impact on those who otherwise have no interest in subscribing to traditional multichannel video – not good news for cable and co., but not a quick fatal blow either. Look for more creative answers that come from cable. Big loser: Amazon Party that must really feel like the betrayed husband right now must be Amazon. Only in April last year, Amazon and HBO announced a deal for a selection of HBO content to be made available on Amazon Prime. We do not know the payment terms, but now quite quickly you will be able to get virtually all HBO content from HBO directly. They will benefit as Netflix and Hulu from the overall focus on OTT marketplace, but their latest deal seems ridiculous now – their HBO content will serve as an advertisement for a way to get all HBO content. It's never easy to feel sorry for Amazon, but they look like losers on this one. Call it the cable-TV paradox. As a medium, the cable has enjoyed its so-called "Golden Age", with complex, incomparably produced dramas such as Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Girls, True Detective, and The Walking Dead earning impressive ratings and critical tribute. But as a video delivery service, it's on the verge of becoming completely obsolete. HBO just announced that as of 2015, it will offer a stand-alone online streaming service. Thanks to the millions of people who have been illegally downloading Game of Thrones or sweeping their parents' HBO GO login, the news immediately made headlines. NPR reports, in a predictable NPR way, that “it seems like the move is big.” It’s an understatement – where I sit it’s the death blow for traditional cable TV. This may seem questionable, as the news goes out the moment a Golden Age cable show, The Walking Dead, set a record for cable television viewing: 17.3 million people watched the season five debut. But all these people were watching something more historic than just the most viewed cable TV program ever; they were watching the top of the Peak Cable. HBO is just the most powerful cable network to allow users to cut the cord and choose a la carte online display. There has been a steady gutter of other networks and services that allow you to do just that. Comedy Central has a new app that allows viewers to access much of their content for free (some of it is still locked for non-cable subscribers), MLB.tv allows you to stream baseball games, NFL.com does the same with football, and AMC allows you to watch most of its shows, even premium titles like The Walking Dead online after it airs, for free. TV streaming apps, according to the New York Times, are currently "slobbering in popularity." With HBO coming to your computer screens, Xbox, and iPads next year, there is almost no possible reason that you would need a cable subscription. About time. As a service, cable, almost all over the line, is an ugly, overpriced mess. Cable companies are the most hated in the nation for a reason – they are monolithic monoliths that offer customers a little in the way of choice and terrible service. If you want premium networks, such as ESPN or HBO, you pay through your nose for a package and are rewarded with a glute of other channels you never watch. (Formerly, cable managers have claimed that the resulting subsidization does show as AMC's Mad Men, which is not a grade behemoth, possible. This will not happen in the future.) Personally, I hate my cable company, with a kind of still, flaming passion for its constant stream of irritations towards my privileged life. I pay about $100 for a basic cable and high-speed internet package from Comcast, and both are absolute junk. (The internet is consistent and inexplicably slow, despite my never ending calls to customer service reps, but that's a different story.) The average US, meanwhile, pays $64 a month for cable, according to the FCC, and that speed is just rising. The International Business Times reports that "the average bill for expanded base cable rose 5.1 percent" in 2012. “It is about four times the rate of inflation, which rose only 1.6 per cent over the same twelve-month period, according to the Consumer Price Index. To get premium channels and high-speed internet, Comcast sells packages of up to $159.99 a month. This doesn't mean that the internet has won and won us a bullshit-free delivery system for our favorite programs It's a lot of money to die out for a pantheon of channels consumers have little to no control over-and considering that you can probably get almost all the content you want, a la carte, for probably half of it. If you are a baseball fan who likes The Daily Show, SNL, and Breaking Bad, then a monthly subscription to MLB.tv ($9.99), Hulu ($9.99), and Netflix ($8.99) will keep you happy for less than $30 a month. You can beam all these services and more on your TV with a cheap little box like Chromecast or Roku, or through an Xbox or BluRay player. Then there's my cable. I don't even know what networks I have access to. Some weeks I have TBS, where I sometimes watch Seinfeld reruns, some weeks I won't. No ESPN. No FX. No United States. Not that I would like to watch these networks, but their absence, along with the highly questionable quality of most other cable TV I have encountered, has helped me convince myself that cable is overpriced, absurd and anachronistic. As a first wave "digital native"—just writing that still makes me creeping, but I've more or less accepted my destiny—I didn't have a TV for years. After college, my girlfriend and I would just look at things on the computer; on Hulu, on Netflix, or, yes, on one of the virus-charged streaming portals hosted in China (a tip of the hat for you, MegaVideo). Even when we eventually burst for a flat-screen TV, after they became cheap enough, we still just hooked up a BluRay and watched the net. This experience was more than satisfying. But we moved, and Comcast sold me on cable when I called for the internet. There would only be $20 more they promised, for CNN, TBS (at the time), Comedy Central, and so on. My re-acclimation to cable has taught me many things, the highlight of which is: All those years I didn't have it, I lacked absolutely nothing. CNN is an incredibly horrible news network, my life didn't need more Seinfeld reruns (and I could see them at Crackle anyway), and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were already at Hulu, where I could look at them at my convenience. In fact, every type of content that cable TV produces, the Internet usually does better, even when it is not specifically delivering the same show online. This certainly applies to news, where Fox, MSNBC, and CNN stand for a kind of nadir in the history of modern civilization's information delivery. Twitter, NYTimes.com and Vice News (certainly, I am biased, but serious) will keep you more informed and maintained than all the above, with video, if that is what you would feel you would be missing. TMZ has more juicy celebrity gossip than anything on TV, Buzzfeed makes VH1 style nostalgia travel in appropriate time (30 seconds to 30 minutes), and obviously, anyone watching music videos does it on YouTube. And I'm not worried that cable TV death will rob us of future Mad Men. We've already seen that people like Netflix and Amazon are more than willing to pay for thought-through, elaborate productions; Transparent is the best show I've seen this fall, and everyone seems to love House of Cards and Orange is the new black. The shows themselves are still better than ever, hence the success of Walking Dead – which by the way counted many internet users among its record-high viewership – and there is unquestionably a market for them. Now lots of niche shows can fall alongside without the help of subsidies from the big packages – but ultimately I think it means less dirty TV and more time wasted on the internet. I'm planning on returning to Internet TV. More and more people are following – the number of households without satellite or cable TV has increased by 44% over the past four years. The often worded phrase "Oh, I don't have a TV" is no longer an influenced hipsterism but a practical choice. With HBO available online, the two things that now keep the cable alive are the all-powerful ESPN (viewers still need cable to access their app, so it is now the big draw for alluring subscribers) and the inertia inherent in any long-accepted system. People who used to cable TV will continue to pay the bills. In the end, there will be cohort change that pushes the last nail into the cable's coffin—subscribers will simply eventually die away. This does not mean that the internet has won us a bullshit-free delivery system for our favorite programs. Cable companies have positioned themselves excellently to cope with this shift, by becoming our top internet service providers as well, meaning they will still control the delivery mechanisms that make the shows visible, and will undoubtedly find ways to increase profits over their streaming. This is yet another reminder of the importance of maintaining net neutrality. It is not difficult to imagine a future where a recently merged Comcast-Time Warner offers users "high-speed delivery groups" of shows, guaranteeing high-quality streaming for HBO GO, MLB.tv, or whatever, for shell fees. The power to deliver your favorite shows is still in the hands of massive corporate conglomerates, in other words – but the days of meaningless, overcrowded cable packages are coming to an end. <unk>
– HBO:s tillkännagivande att det kommer att lansera någon typ av fristående streamingtjänst nästa år innebär att "kabelföretag ska vara mycket, mycket rädda", skriver Issie Lapowsky på Wired. Det är en känsla som delas brett där ute, med Brian Merchant på Vice chiming i, "Från där jag sitter, det är dödsstöten för traditionell kabel-TV." När allt kommer omkring kommer människor som hatar de dyra buntar som kabelbolagen erbjuder att kunna klippa av sladden och ändå få högkvalitativa shower. Andra enheter som NFL, Comedy Central, AMC, och nu CBS, erbjuder liknande alternativ, och HBO: s inträde betyder "det finns nästan ingen tänkbar anledning att du skulle behöva en kabelprenumeration," skriver Merchant. Folk kommer äntligen att kunna välja vad de ska betala för att titta på. Skeptiker säger att de som mest sannolikt anmäler sig till HBO-tjänsten är troligen unga, tech-kunniga vuxna som redan hoppar över kabel, och därmed kommer flytten inte att leda till ett betydande hopp i sladd-klippare, skriver Derek Thompson på Atlanten. Men även om det helt enkelt hämmar kabelns tillväxt genom att förhindra nya registreringar, "det är illa nog", skriver han. Kabelindustrin kan fortfarande vara "löjligt lönsam" men "empiren krymper" som abonnemang stagnerar. "Bundling har jobbat", skriver han. "Nu är det slut. Någon måste förlora det här spelet." Naturligtvis är kabelbolagen också i färd med att tillhandahålla Internettjänster, så förvänta dig att de försöker öka vinsterna på den fronten. I själva verket, på Forbes, Howard Homonoff tror den största förloraren i allt detta är inte kabel industrin-han siffror de flesta människor kommer att hålla sig med kabel under överskådlig framtid-men Amazon, som nyligen undertecknat ett innehållsavtal med HBO för sin Prime-tjänst.
“HBO’s announcement that it will launch some type of stand-alone streaming service next year means that “cable companies should be very, very scared,” writes Issie Lapowsky at Wired. It's a feeling shared widely out there, with Brian Merchant on Vice chiming in, "From where I sit, it's the death blow for traditional cable television." After all, people who hate the expensive bundles offered by cable companies will be able to cut the cord and still get high-quality shows. Other devices such as NFL, Comedy Central, AMC, and now CBS, offer similar options, and HBO's entry means "there's almost no possible reason that you would need a cable subscription," writes Merchant. People will finally be able to choose what to pay to watch. Skeptics say that those most likely to sign up for the HBO service are probably young, tech-savvy adults who already skip cable, and thus the move will not lead to a significant jump in cord clippers, Derek Thompson writes on the Atlantic Ocean. But even if it simply inhibits the cable's growth by preventing new registrations, "it's bad enough," he writes. The cable industry may still be "ridiculously profitable" but the "empires are shrinking" as subscriptions stagnate. "Bundling has worked," he writes. "It's over. Someone has to lose this game." Of course, cable companies are also in the process of providing Internet services, so expect them to try to increase profits on that front. In fact, on Forbes, Howard Homonoff believes the biggest loser in all this is not the cable industry—he figures most people will stay with cable for the foreseeable future—but Amazon, who recently signed a content agreement with HBO for his Prime service.