As users flock to iTunes, Hulu and Netflix, TV stations struggle to survive

Washington Post By Cecilia Kang, Updated: Monday, April 23, 10:15 AM As the audience for free television fades, federal regulators are wrestling over the future of the government-mandated broadcasts, which were originally intended to knit the nation’s disparate communities together. Today, only 10 percent of the nation relies on free, over-the-air TV, which was created by the Telecom Act in the 1930s. To get a license, broadcasters had to offer local, educational and political programming, and to make it widely available to rich and poor alike. A peek into the future of TVs: Companies are scrambling to be the one-stop shop for Web, media consumption, social networking and gaming with their TVs and accessories. Now, that viewing audience is becoming fragmented once again, social scientists say. On the Web, where users pick and choose what they want to watch, it’s harder to ensure public broadcasting, local news and political debates will reach the bulk of American households. With options such as iTunes, Hulu, YouTube and Netflix — which can be accessed on TVs and mobile devices alike —communities are no longer bonded by watching the same evening news and prime-time shows. And as fewer people rely only on broadcast television, stations around the nation are struggling to survive even as some rural residents, elderly and the poor continue to rely on free TV. “Broadcast has an in­cred­ibly important function for community and political reasons, and that programming will need to be delivered to 100 percent of the people,” said Reed Hundt, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Americans watch about 147 hours of cable, satellite and broadcast television a month, a pretty consistent figure in recent years, according to Nielsen, a media metrics firm. Now they are supplementing that viewing with tablets and laptops, watching an average of 41 / 2 hours of online video each month, double the amount three years ago. Younger viewers are watching even more hours online. Those who only watch broadcast television, however, comprise a niche audience. In the third quarter of 2011, they totalled 5.8 million homes, down from 6.25 million homes in the third quarter of 2010. In the past four weeks, all four major networks said prime-time viewing declined, according to Nielsen. That’s made it harder for broadcasters to court advertisers as viewers shift to the Internet, analysts say. Viewership for local television news has steadily declined since 2007, Nielsen said. Six in 10 consumers, meanwhile, now get their news online. Networks NBC Universal, News Corp. and Disney, are responding by trying to steal away advertising dollars from its local television stations to its online site, Hulu, whose viewers watched about 1.7 billion ads last month. And local broadcasters are faced with new rivals such as Aereo, an online startup that the networks are suing for alleged copyright infringement. The firm, funded by IAC/Interactive chief executive Barry Diller, offers $12 monthly subscription to get shows from New York city broadcast stations streamed on the Internet. Diller will testify in a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Tuesday on the future of television and online video. The business battles being fought for video dominance in the digital age have created an abundance of new options. But not always for the better, some consumers say. So what revenue stream will getting rid of broadcast TV allow to happen or who wants to buy the airwaves to create a new revenue stream? Most of the decline of broadcast TV has been brought on by the cost cutting of the networks. When TV shows are watched less, local TV news' ratings decline. David Letterman has complained about that since the 90s. No TV and no beer make Homer go something. We must not forget that satellite and cable both utilize the public airwaves and considerable additional public right-of-way that should result in their continued regulation. You can't get a signal from a satellite, whether direct to the home or to a cable company's antennas, without having that signal intrude on the public airwaves. Those airwaves belong to US, We The People. Freedom of the press has been hijacked by the few who own it... and keep us away from controlling it ourselves.