When Amazon briefly marked its brand new Fire Stick down to $20, I bought one. It now joins my Roku and Chromecast as ancillary TV receivers. It’s TV over the Internet instead of over the air. Some ‘channels’ are linear others totally on demand.
Definitions are getting blurry. Are they channels? Is ComediansInCarsGettingCoffee a channel or show or both or neither? That’s still being decided.
I downloaded an app to watch CBSN, the new all news offering from CBS.
It’s available only via the net.
It looked pro. They’ve gone for warmth with a tie-less anchor and brick walled studio. The production seemed a little thin. 24/7 is a lot of time with few additional bodies. TV can be done inexpensively. The product is almost as good.
It is well written and serious–CBS’ish.
They play an animated “We’ll be right back” bumper. Really? In 2014? These are early problems which will be solved.
I probably won’t watch CBSN much on the big TV in the loft. Too many steps. Using the big TV for shows on the net today reminds me of watching UHF pre-cable. It was there, but a hassle. It’s more likely I’d watch on my PC where there’s a fuller multimedia presentation through the browser.
What happens to the incumbents–newspapers and local TV news outfits as more and more services set out to the Internet? They adapt or perish.
Some adapt, still perish.
Have you read a newspaper with a hyphenated name? The Journal-Courier, Courier-Journal, Star-Ledger, Times-Picayune, Times-Herald-Record, Post-Gazette, Post-Dispatch? Consolidations and shakeouts happen.
When I was a kid, New York City had seven citywide English language newspapers with additional dailies in Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens. Not anymore.
This market, Orange County, is greatly under-served. Maybe some clever video news provider will shake-in? Alas, the bigger trend is in the other direction.
Addendum: I am considering sending the Fire Stick back. It is unstable or unusable on the two sets I’d like to use it on. I believe the problem has to do with DHCP, a method of digital rights management and these individual sets. Will Amazon fix the problem? It’s stopping me from using their product.