Goodbye to the traditional grid of channels, welcome to the platforms. This seems to be a synthesis of the new reality of television. The irruption of the Internet takes more and more prominence away from the cable and satellite TV service. The irruption of “apps” dominates the scene. And it is heading to become the future.
For the specialized consultant Henry Carrier“information technology and communications services -ICT- revolve more and more around the broadband connection, which tends to centralize the flow of content and services to the home”. This is reflected in the fact that households that only contract the Internet (without combining it with TV and/or fixed and/or mobile telephony) went from being 10% of total accesses in 2015 to 24% in 2022 (based on connected homes). An advance that shows the least attractiveness of combined proposals, beyond the total economic value, according to a survey by your consultant
“The trend appears to be driven by both generational and socioeconomic factors,” says Carrier. From his point of view, young people are “the most likely to opt for broadband as the only need for connectivity” in their homes, while the opposite occurs where only adults live. There is a fact that describes the reality: the contracting of an ‘Internet only’ product grew in the order of 10 points in the last 5 years, both for medium and low sectors, while in the high sectors it was only 3 points, adds the same study.
Changes. Since the existence of the Internet, social platforms, mobile devices, “friendly” editing software, anyone can produce content and publish it. It can even be broadcast live from a cell phone, and almost any human being can access to see that publication. “Freedom of expression, creativity and innovation, and access are the values of these times. People sacrifice hours of sleep to see more stories,” he explains. Caroline Bertoniprofessor of the Master’s Degree in Content Management at the Postgraduate School of Communication at the Austral University.
Carolina Aguerreco-director of the Center for Studies in Technology and Society of the University of San Andres, coincides with the fact that the irruption of the Internet caused a paradigm shift. “The consumption of audiovisual content was radically modified by a series of factors that began three decades ago, with the expansion of the Internet with the ‘www’ and the mass use of smart cell phones, and mobile broadband in the last decade, to mention some of the most important milestones”, he points out. From his point of view, “this allows for greater content segmentation which, in turn, is consumed at the time desired by the end user. At the same time, younger generations, including boys and girls, prefer audiovisual content created by other users and not by entertainment companies, media or platforms. The change is radical especially among children and young people for whom social media (networks) and digital platforms are their main means of information and entertainment”.
“The other side of this growth is in the weight loss of the TV-Internet combo”, says Carrier. This went from a maximum of 32% in 2018 to 22% in 2022. For the consultant, it is about “a drop that is uniform in all the NSE. In contrast, triple play offers rose slightly due to the impact of fiber products, mainly Movistar and Claro, which include IP TV and a telephone line. This slight growth was also fueled by the fall of the TV-Internet cable combo”.
on the rise. On the other hand, the combos that include mobile telephony rose at higher rates, although “starting from a practically zero base four years ago,” according to the study by Carrier & Asociados. “Thus, the trends are towards two proposals: one of pure Internet as basic infrastructure, another where the economic benefit of a broader combo weighs. It remains to be seen how far the weight of mobile connectivity can grow. But everything indicates that the convergent offer aims to be of networks (fixed and mobile) and not so much of services (TV, telephone)”enlarge.
Bertoni considers that “it is interesting to look at this phenomenon by separating the two components of the service: cable (infrastructure) and TV (as content)”. “The progress of content transmission over the internet has to do with a sum of technological changes in the infrastructure of the industry, such as, for example, the operating systems that make smart televisions today, or triple play. We no longer need a decoder connected to a television to watch content. The deco became a software integrated to the TV, and the ‘cable’ can carry both the internet signal and the contents”, he indicates. In the United States, the penetration of streaming video services now reaches 88%, while the penetration of cable services has dropped to 55%. “In short, the digitization of these services is more efficient and, therefore, it becomes a new standard for the transmission of content,” concludes Bertoni.
Hand in hand with technology, the metamorphosis of the television business is just beginning. And, with it, welcome the era of apps.
by Marcelo Alfano
