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from the nuke-it-from-orbit-it's-the-only-way-to-be-sure dept.
AT&T Explores Parting Ways With DirecTV:
Telecom giant considers fate of DirecTV satellite unit as cord-cutting saps subscriber base
AT&T Inc. is exploring parting with its DirecTV unit, people familiar with the matter said, a sharp reversal from Chief Executive Randall Stephenson's strategy to make the $49 billion bet on the satellite provider a key piece of the phone giant's future.
The telecom giant has considered various options, including a spinoff of DirecTV into a separate public company and a combination of DirecTV's assets with Dish Network Corp., its satellite-TV rival, the people said.
AT&T may ultimately decide to keep DirecTV in the fold. Despite the satellite service's struggles, as consumers drop their TV connections, it still contributes a sizable volume of cash flow and customer accounts to its parent.
AT&T acquired DirecTV in 2015 for $49 billion. The company's shrinking satellite business is under a microscope after activist investor Elliott Management Corp. disclosed a $3.2 billion stake in AT&T last week and released a report pushing for strategic changes. Elliott has told investors that AT&T should unload DirecTV, The Wall Street Journal has previously reported.
Related: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/09/18/1656205
Like Blockbuster, DirecTV, Dish, etc. are extremely slow to catch onto the whole Netflix/Amazon Prime Ad-Free, pick-what-I-want-to-watch model.
(Score: 2) by rylyeh on Friday September 20 2019, @03:33AM
Someone will buy.
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday September 20 2019, @04:05AM (5 children)
That was always the problem. They can't compete with the services of the satellites in LEO because of bandwidth. HEO and geostationary is a pretty cool feature, but it doesn't lend itself well to low latency network communications and high bandwidth media.
They needed to capitalize on what they do really well, which is reach very remote areas that land based services will not service. That's not a trivial market. If they had their heads in the game, they would've changed to all on-demand programming and ditched the scheduled bullshit that only really works for people 50+. Hell, they could've partnered up with Netflix, Amazon, and even Blockbuster to bring their content over their network with custom receivers that let you choose which account your logging into. Then offered to HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc the ability to stream content to their users. Something like that may well have kept people paying $100/mo+.
Where they definitely fucked up was keeping an ancient business model lumbering through the future on its own inertia, while everything around them upgraded, sped up, and delivered more popular features.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday September 20 2019, @06:17AM (1 child)
Maybe not a trivial market in the number of potential customers.
What about their purchasing power?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday September 20 2019, @11:18AM
Well, those are exactly the people who aren't going out to the club on saturday night because the closest club is 500 miles away, so ... Ditto pro sports, etc.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday September 20 2019, @02:43PM (2 children)
Does a satellite have the data rate for that? A scheduled bullshit channel only needs to broadcast one scheduled program at a time to many users. On demand programming needs to send out many, many different data streams, each of approximately the same bandwidth.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by edIII on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:14AM (1 child)
Good point. I thought I had seen some on demand programming the last time I looked at a DirecTv setup. So perhaps it was it more on request than on demand? It would cache an existing stream and wait till it received everything before allowing it to play. That would allow you to collapse, or multiplex the programming. Then you would be limited to the number of channels multiplied by 24 hours. You would have to wait for your show to be allocated a slot along with all of the other subscribers. Popular and current content would receive more bandwidth obviously.
That's still not satisfying consumer demand, nor does it compete with land based services. My idea is a Hail Mary at best, and only works with people that have satellite as their only choice.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday September 22 2019, @12:39PM
Yes, I can see it working in remote areas where satellite is the only choice. And even if there's a 24-hour delay, or longer, I can see it working better than the nearly bankrupt DVD rental place 50 miles away. Though bandwidth would still likely restrict it to the more popular offerings.
But for those popular offerings it would likely work better than downloading (encrypted) movies from Netflix before viewing them, because it would be organised for those shared downloads.
What kind of download protocol would be suitable here?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 20 2019, @04:36AM (2 children)
I can't speak to Netflix, but Amazon Prime flogs their crappy shows at the beginning of *every single video stream*.
I rarely watched their stuff anyway, and I watch it less now. In fact, when The Expanse season 4 is released on December 13, I'm going to torrent it instead of watching it on Amazon Prime for just that reason. Assholes.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday September 20 2019, @02:37PM (1 child)
Ahh...., I don't use Amazon Prime, but yeah that would definitely be annoying to me. I don't even like Netflix's auto-play previews for the shows I am actually looking at. They also have an auto-play advertisement for something on the main page. I give it a pass, because they're trying to keep thing fresh and the ultimate goal is to get people to watch interesting things on their site.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Sunday September 22 2019, @12:42PM
I don't even like autoplay chaining me automatically from one episode to the next. It tries to void my decision to watch just one episode. On Netflix there's an option to turn it off. On Crave (which unfortunately has the license for Dr. Who at the moment) there isn't.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Revek on Friday September 20 2019, @05:35AM (3 children)
Lets face it. They don't do anything as well as their competition. Only their bulk keeps them afloat.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday September 20 2019, @11:26AM (2 children)
I once worked at a financial company place that used them for telecom, if your bill is less than six figures they are pretty crap at commodity service delivery, but if your bill is six figures or larger they're really a pleasure to deal with.
Kinda like IBM; If you have five mainframes and more 3745 than I could count and a data center over an acre in size and an onsite field circus team, they're an absolute joy to deal with, but if you bought a single desktop "IBM" PC at walmart, its gonna be phone support hell.
I can't think at the top of my head of any service provider industry who can provide decent service across a range of more than 4 or so orders of magnitude of cost. Maybe automobile stealerships are right on the cusp of working or not working?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday September 20 2019, @02:49PM (1 child)
Does IBM even make any desktop "IBM" PC's any more? Let alone sell them at walmart?
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 23 2019, @11:25AM
Oh no no, "Lenovo" owned now by Chinese. But in the old days... And the point stands, send them over $1M/yr and they treat you VERY well but Joe6Pack isn't going to have much fun.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 20 2019, @07:11AM (1 child)
My wife worked on "The DirecTV Project" before it launched. She managed a lot of the tech development.
One night at dinner she said to me, "I'm going to look for a new job as soon as this thing goes up."
"Why?"
"I've been playing with the numbers. I don't see how this can ever make money. It's not going to survive."
It took a while, but she was right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 20 2019, @10:32AM
I have to admit, I don't see how free (though with advertisement) satellite TV can be profitable in Germany but not in the US?
I am sure there are good reasons, but it seems really strange, especially since there are some REALLY niche channels on there.
And the infrastructure isn't even shared, France and Germany each have their own satellites for example.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Friday September 20 2019, @11:28AM (1 child)
Is direct TV as hard to cancel as cable? If so, the FTC should enforce a punishment where the CEO of Elliot has to argue with "Bob" in an Indian call center for a minimum of three hours before they'll graciously permit him to disconnect direct TV from ATT.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday September 20 2019, @02:40PM
That would be some schadenfreude worth watching, could end up being drama or comedy gold!
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 20 2019, @12:23PM
Ought to go down in the blaze of glory, and become the first cable company to offer a-la-carte service. It would give them a significant amount of appeal over other providers.... excluding any time where it happens to be raining.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Friday September 20 2019, @03:34PM (2 children)
ADVERTISING
It destroys every medium it ever touches.
It may start out okay. Then ads get more frequent. Then longer. But there is no outer limit. No sense of restraint. None. It eventually becomes abusive. A once beautiful country roadway littered with billboards as far as the eye can see. And now they are flashing bright animated jumping seizure-inducing ads to see as you drive.
Cable TV was destroyed by advertising run amok.
Content became crap. Ads got more airtime than content. Then after the ads there were bugs and animated characters that walked out on screen over the top of the content.
And they wonder why nobody seems to want Cable TV?
Oh, gee, I wonder why?
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 20 2019, @07:30PM
Even NFL RedZone now has this crap. So much for it being a "premium channel".
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Sunday September 22 2019, @12:47PM
Even without seizures, the animation distracts from the serious and life-critical activity of driving. Even with your best effort to watch the road and the other traffic, your attention is diverted. Worse are animated billboard trucks that drive on the road itself. They confuse you as to what's on the road itself.
All this animation on or near roads should be illegal.