That was the nail in the coffin...the corpse had been rotting for a long time.jess76 wrote:I think the real "clincher" came with the 1996 FCC ruling[in the US] limiting dish size to 39"[1m].
Even without the 1996 FCC ruling, if the programmers scrambled all the content and only dealt with dbs, it would have been game over.
It is interesting to see how the industry is evolving today. Some programmers like HBO and MLB have started streaming directly to the customer, bypassing cable execs. Similar to how it used to be with c band. I think the programmers would love to cut out the middle man altogether, but streaming isn't reliable yet and has to be compressed like crazy, while c band suffers from big dish syndrome.
If the c band industry (or what is left of it), did some serious R&D and developed a compact ultra-low-noise antenna (possibly a torroidal smart antenna measuring 6'x3') that could electronically lock every sat over a range of say 70 degrees and wasn't an eye sore or too hard to install and maintain, and the c band sat operators cranked out more rf power and if the programmers issued inexpensive stbs with smartcards to access their programming, they could cut out the middle men and fatten their own bottom line in no time.
But I digress...most of these programmers will never think outside the box and will stay in bed with cable until the cord cutting revolution strangles them both to death.