Nielsen put out an interesting study about the coming end of traditonal TV broadcasting:
Just four months ahead of the nationwide transition to digital TV, more than 9 million U.S. households — 8.4% of all homes — remain unready for the switch to all-digital broadcasting, Nielsen reported Wednesday.
…
Older, white households are better prepared than their younger, African American, Asian, or Hispanic counterparts. Thirteen percent of Hispanic households remain completely unready for the transition, as do 12.5% of African American households.
So in addition to facing problems accessing the internet, the poorest will be unable to connect to the TV grid.
Awesome!
7 Comments
October 29, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Don’t kid yourself Kent. I sold Comcast cable tv door to door 1987-90 in the the worst parts of Philadelphia, white, black and hispanic. Our best customers were the poorest. Many times you had to go back on pay day to get a deposit for installation. As a matter of fact, the hardest places to sell cable were rich white hoods. One guy told me, “I read books” on a sales pitch. Nice try, but this post is way off IMHO.
October 29, 2008 at 6:54 pm
While I agree that the transition will be a bonus for online video, I’d be curious to see what the broadband penetration is in the lower income ranges, because if they don’t have high speed, they sure aren’t watching online video.
Can we maybe look to a small resurgence of radio?
October 29, 2008 at 7:30 pm
ummm,,,why did you say “awesome” after such a sad statement:(
i feel terrible that the poorest are being kept without the tools to learn and evolve…awful, just awful
October 30, 2008 at 5:55 am
People only have themselves to blame if they are left in the dark. With that federal coupon, a convertor box is practically free.
October 30, 2008 at 8:22 am
WTL – “Can we maybe look to a small resurgence of radio?”
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Oh, I wish…mainly because I’m in love with radio (the reason I’ve stayed in the industry).
When “bankers” took over radio stations (from “broadcasters”), they ruined it. It became all about profits. Creativity, and those who pursued it, left for other areas…like the internet.
We must challenge our local outlets:
In exchange for obtaining a valuable license to operate a broadcast station using the public airwaves, each radio and television licensee is required by law to operate its station in the “public interest, convenience and necessity.” This means that it must air programming that is responsive to the needs and problems of its local community of license. (http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/audio/public_and_broadcasting.pdf)
November 15, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Dude, you should see the web-phone market in Shenzhen China, currently the world’s 4th most populous city, with a population of 10,000 in 1980.
Next generation of up-and-coming middle classes, well they’ll be watching youku on a linux based mobile phone plugged into an LCD monitor.
The Shenzhen geek massive were running Android on krackpot handsets last year. Not n00bin around.
November 15, 2008 at 11:24 pm
by market, BTW, I’m talking stalls and stalls and stalls of weirdo sole traders in a dirty great football pitch sized warehouse, not market as in “marketing”.