If you are part of the TV industry—and even if you aren’t—you surely have witnessed, and maybe participated in, conversations about “the new era” of television: About how technological innovation has given us new and very appealing ways to consume entertainment, such as on-demand, over-the-top, connected TVs, and more.

And, if you are a stakeholder in the well-established TV industry, the following question is probably keeping you awake at night:

 
Now that we can have all content available anytime, anywhere…  are our traditional Pay-TV technologies, cable, and satellite, with their linear channels, still relevant?

Disturbing terms like “cable-cutting”, “churn”, and “shrinking market”, haunt us from the back of our minds. The core concern is that a radical and irreversible generational turnover may be underway, a turnover that will leave us with viewers only caring for on-demand binge-watching on their computers or smart TVs.

How real is this concern? No one can debate that content is—and will always be—king. No use denying the seductiveness of having the best content at your fingertips, which in a time-starved society means you don’t have to wait for Thursday night to watch that new episode on your 70-inch UHD screen. No use denying the financial advantage of choosing inexpensive streaming providers, picking from a deck of brands that are tailored to your taste. No use denying that for some viewers, paying for the extra 700 channels that no one’s watching is like paying for a buffet when all you want is coffee.

So what is the way to experience content in the new era? Media gurus have been saying it for a while: 

Traditional Pay-TV’d better adapt or it will end up in memory lane just like Blockbuster (mind you, some of you younger readers may be asking: What’s Blockbuster??).

 

But media gurus should also start warning Pay-TV disruptive innovators by telling them to adjust swiftly to a young and restless viewership quickly falling out of love with its new toy. Millennials and Gen X viewers are becoming aware of the fragmentation and limitations of on-demand libraries, the lack of content diversity, the loss of the immediacy of live content, and the absence of the ease that linear channels offer. Paradoxically, some viewers nowadays are watching fewer, not more, hours of content than in the old linear days, because in the current situation finding what you want to watch can be exhausting. The industry needs to avoid creating fertile soil for illegal offerings that can creatively fill those gaps.

In the current scenario, for instance, what are more traditional players like DTH operators doing to adjust?  First of all, the Global TV market is not a fixed pie. By breaking ground into new territories and new audiences, DTH providers are making the overall pie larger. While the industry figures out what to do with 5G, the advantages of satellite television remain unchanged. It is still the easiest way to transmit a large number of services across a wide region to potentially unlimited viewers. Areas lacking the infrastructure to carry television by terrestrial antennas, cable, or optic fiber are being serviced by satellite beams. Beams that reach districts and geographically challenging terrains to bring information, news, and connect. The cost of devices and dishes has exponentially decreased to make them affordable to a wider public than ever before, in contrast to the unchanging—and perhaps increasing— economic, labor, and time requirements for the building and maintenance of ground infrastructure.

 

the challenges to satellite television are far from overcome: the industry still has to contend with bad weather, a dislike for dishes, the inability of the industry to create a standard for set-top-boxes that might spare consumers periodical STB replacement… And it will naturally have to contend with unforeseeable future technological innovation and future trends.

 

Last year the world was able to witness state-of-the-art global live broadcasting of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, a feat made largely possible through satellite means. Water has gone under the bridge since that pioneering “live via satellite” color broadcast of the Games from Tokyo in 1964: Last year the DTH service industry reaped 115 Billion USD and is expected to reach 162B in 2026. By this token, we can say the sun is not setting on satellite and DTH broadcast anytime soon.  And, if you are still wondering if satellite & DTH technology is here to stay, almost 80 years ago, by imagining a new way of transmission, Arthur C. Clarke (the creator of 2001-A Space Odyssey) indeed created satellite broadcast. Just like Clarke’s most famous creation, satellite broadcast is still very much evergreen and still on top, not just literally.