The menu is increasingly varied. The offer is growing, at the same rate that the question mark is growing regarding the future of cable television. Faced with the invasion of new platforms, what will become of traditional “closed” television services? The open TV rating, perhaps, is a thermometer of the prevailing scenario. They are exceptions, such as the Masterchef case, those programs that manage to break the psychological barrier of 15 points. The rest is located just above 10 points.
Just as pay TV decades ago was the revolution, today the so-called traditional carriers face the challenge of how to survive.
Streaming put a business that seemed installed in check. “The last two years have seen great changes in the landscape of video streaming in Argentina and in the world. Due to the effect of the pandemic and its consequent isolation that led many to consume more audiovisual content as a way to take advantage of the large number of days locked up. And simultaneously, in this period there was a great expansion in the offer of platforms, expanding the menu of entertainment options. Such is the case that today, 93% of Argentine Internet users consume audiovisual content via streaming”, indicates the report “Online audiovisual consumption“, made by Carrier and Associates.
in numbers. According to a consultant report Keys Competitive Information, if the total billing of the telecommunications sector is analyzed, cellular telephony remains the main business, representing 45% of the total billing. For its part, pay TV is the second most important market, with 22% (including cable and satellite TV), followed by fixed internet with 18% and, further away, fixed telephony, with 9%. and audiovisual communication, with 6%.
“Today, the climate of the industry is tinged with a tense relationship between the Government and the companies around the setting of price increases regulated by decree 690/2020. This generated different judicializations by the companies”, expresses the Claves report.
The report highlights that “In December 2021, a process of negotiations began between the administration of Alberto Fernández and the main Internet, mobile telephony and pay TV operators. The objective is to reach a truce in the judicialization of DNU 690, the one that declares the function of these companies as a public service and enables state intervention in the regulation of their prices. In this way, an attempt is made to be able to agree on a path of increases considering variables such as inflation, exchange rate, salary increases and investment plans.
Nothing is what it was, and nothing will be what it is today. The change of habits causes a scenario very different from that of the past and, surely, in the future it will also be different from what this present shows. For the consultant Enrique Carrier, “acronyms such as OTT, SVOD, AVOD, TVE, FAST and others respond to models that reflect the evolution in audiovisual consumption, some as part of a necessary transition, others as clear exponents of the new generation.” The consultant recalls that, when TV was only free and open air, “everything was easier and also more limited”. “With four channels (in the AMBA), really massive content had to be available”, he adds.
Paradigms. One of the keys to the current phenomenon is the paradigm shift. “While in the traditional pay TV model what is contracted is the network and content combo (not accessible outside of it), the Internet allowed access to content available on the public network, outside the control of whoever provides access. This gave rise to the OTT (Over The Top) model. In the case of video, it is a streaming service that is transmitted via the Internet without involving the broadband provider in the control or distribution of the content.“, Explain. And he rounds: “technically, all video streaming services are OTT, regardless of differences that are mostly commercial (free, ad-supported, subscription, event, or combinations) and that give rise to a wide menu of ways to access audiovisual content. Although the video reached the Internet thanks to YouTube, the TV industry paid more attention to what was happening on the Internet with the arrival of Netflix, a company that was born as a video store with CD delivery based on a monthly subscription and that at the same time began to put an online catalog that could be accessed through a subscription. This is how the SVOD model (Subscription Video on Demand) or video on demand by subscription was born”.
For its part, John MarencoCEO of BeInfluencers, considers that “a change in consumption is clearly observed with the arrival of OTTs that came to modify certain habits. Until a few years ago, although cable use began to decline, there was a coexistence between that consumption and Netflix, since it was almost the only alternative. With the arrival of HBO, Apple, Paramount, Disney+, Star+ and other offers that added economic pressure that is detrimental to cable, but also to the OTTs themselves, which are no longer economical”. The irruption of streaming puts paid TV in check for nothing more and nothing less than for managing the remote control.
by Marcelo Alfano
