Silicon Valley

The United States has public stations, cable stations, and pay stations, but what is the essential difference between these TV stations? Henry has lived in the United States for so long, and he can be considered clear.

At present, there are five public stations in the United States: ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, and PBS (PBS is a non-profit public television station, and CW TV station has not yet been established). The signals of these stations cover almost the entire United States, forming a huge TV network. The top five public broadcasting networks!

These public stations are equivalent to China's CCTV, Hunan Satellite TV, Zhejiang Satellite TV, etc... Almost all American families can watch them, and TV stations make money mainly from advertisements and TV drama videos!

You may wonder why there are so few public stations in the United States. In fact, these stations have many sub-channels. During prime time, such as 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm, other sub-channels will broadcast the programs of the public station uniformly, while at other times, there are different abc channels in different cities, and the content they broadcast can be different programs. ABC TV has more than 200 sub-TV stations.

The cable TV stations include CNN, HBO, cinemax, ***, etc. Some of the cable TV stations require additional subscriptions to watch, so they are paid stations!

Usually, TV stations have packages.

The first category is the most basic package: the five public broadcasting networks plus 20 or so cable channels, this is the package for the poor in America!

The second category includes the five public broadcasting networks and 70 cable TV stations, but the more popular cable TV stations such as HBO, showtime, starz, Cinemax, etc. are not among them. The average American buys this package!

The third category is that channels such as HBO, showtime, starz, Cinemax and even some pure pornography can be customized. Cinemax channels are basically "action blockbusters" and have no plot. Therefore, when watching such programs, you need to enter a password to prevent children from watching (you know this)...

Generally speaking, the public broadcasting network has a wide coverage, more profit and more influence than the cable TV station!

The principle of the public broadcasting network is to place a high-power signal transmitter in a central city. Then place a repeater at intervals (used to strengthen the signal, because the signal transmission distance is too far to weaken), and other general small cities can put a signal receiver and broadcasting system. Ordinary families can watch this kind of public radio program as long as they have an antenna! Cable TV is different. If you want to watch cable TV channels, you need to lay coaxial cables to connect to the home, which is very troublesome, and the speed of developing customers is also slow!

compare the two. PBS clearly outperformed.

Henry was very impressed by the previous TV sets. At least one antenna was plugged into the back of the TV set, and some even had two or three antennas plugged in, and the antenna was naturally used to receive TV signals! But with the development of the cable TV network, many good programs have emerged. Viewers naturally want to watch cable TV. Therefore, only wired access (connected to the back of the TV or above the set-top box)! As for those public stations, they are packaged and sold with cable TV stations. Therefore, in cities or better-developed suburbs, whoever uses an antenna to watch TV basically uses cable access!

However, although the public broadcasting network is more profitable, the investment in the construction of the public broadcasting network is also huge, such as transmitters, repeaters, base stations, towers, various electronic equipment and concrete equipment, etc. In fact, investment in equipment is only one reason. More importantly, you have no construction qualifications at all. If you want to build a launch station in one place, you need a lot of approvals, and you also need the permission of the land owner. Without strong financial resources and contacts, it is almost impossible to do it!

Therefore, the use of coaxial cable is an inevitable choice for the development of cable TV networks! Just think, fixed line, broadband, and TV all have to be linked to the family, why not get them together? What a cost savings!

Therefore, cable operators are often telecom giants too! However, this is after 1996!

As for TV stations and cable TV operators, they are two different concepts. TV stations are "program providers"! The coaxial cable access, line laying, signal management, etc. must be done by someone... Who will do it? It is done by "cable TV operators"!

When the cable network has not yet developed, the three major American TV networks are themselves TV operators. But now that most households use cable TV, cable operators are born!

With the development of science and technology, among TV operators, in addition to cable TV operators, wireless TV operators have emerged. In the future, the most famous one will be DIRECTV, an American direct broadcast satellite company. In the forefront of the world, it has many of its own "broadcast satellites", with a market value of more than 50 billion US dollars! However, after that, the current DIRECTV company has not yet been established, and it will have to wait until 1994...

In fact, Henry can also buy "live satellites" and engage in the operation of live TV satellites! What's more, with the existence of SpaceX, a space exploration technology company, the price of rocket launches can be much cheaper. As for "live satellites", they can be purchased from other companies!

In the mid-1980s, Europe and Japan successively established Ku-band direct broadcast satellites based on analog technology, and the technology has been very mature until now!

There are also many companies in the United States that can produce live broadcast satellites!

There are one or twenty high-power KU frequency band transponders installed inside an ordinary direct broadcast satellite, each transponder can transmit 4 to 8 TV channels, and the system capacity is larger, generally one or two hundred channels can be stored. Think about it, buy a hundred or so live satellites, and then basically you can watch TV channels from all countries in the world, this is a kind of rhythm against the sky!

Such a TV operator, who can compare?

However, if it really wants to do this, I am afraid that the satellite manufacturing company will not be able to close its mouth when laughing...

Henry thought, at least until SpaceX can develop its own satellites. There is a saying that fat water does not flow to outsiders, how can they give so much money to competitors? Of those who manufacture satellites, how many are not engaged in rocket research and development? !

Williams Telecom itself has the advantage that it can enter the cable TV operator industry, and Williams Film and Television Media Group can buy broadcast companies!

Virtually all telcos want to be in the business of operating cable TV very much, and Williams Telecom is no exception, it's just one extra cable left and right... It's a pity that between the 70s and 90s, In order to protect the nascent cable industry and prevent monopolistic telecommunications companies from using unfair competition methods to crowd out cable companies, the Federal Telecommunications Commission prohibits telecommunications companies from operating together in cable business.

However, at the beginning of this year, a number of telecommunications companies in the United States, including Williams Telecom, formed an alliance, and then filed a lawsuit in federal court on the grounds that the Federal Telecommunications Commission policy violated freedom of speech, and finally won! This victory eventually led to the promulgation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Since then, the U.S. telecommunications and television industry can do whatever they want, with no restrictions and complete freedom!

It's only 1992, and it will take a few years. However, Williams Telecom can make preparations early... Its subsidiary CommScope Fiber Manufacturing Company has begun to study the triple play, namely telephone, TV, Broadband.

After the triple play, not only can enhance competitiveness, provide users with better services, but also reduce costs! ! !

There are three important technical foundations for triple play:

1. Mature digital technology, that is, information such as voice, data, and images can be transmitted and exchanged through bit streams encoded into 0 and 1, which is the basic condition for the integration of the three networks.

2. Adopt TCP/IP protocol. Only based on independent IP addresses can point-to-point and point-to-multipoint interactions be realized, and various IP-based services can be interoperated on different networks.

3. Optical communication technology. Only optical communication technology can provide sufficient information transmission speed and ensure transmission quality, and optical communication technology also greatly reduces transmission costs!

IP telephony is an application of the triple play, and it is also one of the very important competition areas for all telecom operators in the future.

IP telephony is also called Internet telephony. It is a brand-new communication technology that uses the Internet Inter as the medium of voice transmission to realize voice communication.

At present, ICQ is developing the ICQ voice system "skype", and this is the prototype of the IP telephony application... At a certain stage, it is possible to directly dial the other party's phone number with a computer, and even "calling a mobile phone from a mobile phone" also uses IP Phone function, thereby reducing the bill!

The emergence of IP telephony is undoubtedly a huge challenge to traditional telecom companies. Obviously, the call fee is reduced, and the loss is the interests of the telecommunications company. But if no change is made, the user will go to the competitor and lose even more!

Henry concluded that the top priority is to speed up the acquisition of TV stations. Among them, ABC American Broadcasting Company and TBS Turner Broadcasting Company are their own acquisition targets! However, neither company is cheap. Disney bought ABC for $19 billion and Time Warner bought TBS Turner for $7.6 billion! Among them, the acquisition negotiation is also protracted, it took more than a year!

TBS Turner Broadcasting is okay, Ted Turner himself already has the intention to retire! He wants to enjoy life, go to the pastoral life, and engage in environmental protection careers with peace of mind. In his manor, he can often see wood storks, vultures, Canadian argali, black-footed ferrets, and black-tailed prairie dogs and other endangered animals. Wildlife, he spent more money on wildlife conservation than he spent $500 million on land!

The ABC American Broadcasting Company is a bit difficult to handle. This company has a very good relationship with Disney. Many Disney programs are broadcast on ABC TV. In fact, there is no need to think about it. Once the news of the acquisition of ABC comes out, then the Disney company will definitely hit the bar...

(To be continued ~^~)