Tech Talk / By Martha Knight

It depends on whom you ask. Television is dead. No, it isn’t, just network television is. No, it isn’t dead, but it is terminally ill. Or it is doing pretty well, except for a couple of old-line networks.

Or it’s cable networks that are doomed. Or just some of those. Or not.

Some observers say knowingly that it’s a duel to the death among the content providers. Others insist that it’s a battle between television viewing and online viewing. Or the joust is between traditional studio production and amateurs, or indies.

Again, the hardware involved may be what is changing. Will we get our entertainment  delivered on television sets, or will those be relegated to extensions of our game gear? Will we view our favorite programs on giant screens in our living rooms, or stream them to tablets?

For a period dating back to 2011, ratings (audience size numbers) for television, both broadcast and cable, have shrunk. There was a brief surge for the Olympics, but otherwise viewership has been in decline.

Broadband internet should be growing by leaps and bounds, but until recently that has not benefitted much.

The reasoning in some quarters has been that as people desert regular and cable TV they will spend more time viewing content—including some of the same programs—by streaming it to their computers or their wireless devices.

Some reports say this has not been the major change that has been occurring. At least, with pay-TV, the drop in viewership has affected cable subscribers and internet ones as well. Indications are that cutting the TV cable often includes cutting the broadband cable too.

But those who continue to be cable customers include large numbers who have canceled their TV service and continued only their internet service. This feeds to their computers or to computers and tablets, sometimes distributed through routers using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

A Charter Communications exec is quoted as saying about a quarter of their subscribers don’t want TV signal, just internet. Time-Warner lost only 24,000 broadband internet subscribers, in a recent period, while it lost 306,000 television subscribers.

Even as complaints about Zito Media phone and internet service have some local subscribers asking for explanations and improvement, some of those same customers are not reporting the TV service outages that have angered those with the phone and internet problems.

How did Zito Media get those phone and internet customers in the first place? By bundling.

You might be thinking of the quaint courtship customs of our ancestors, back in the day when many a young couple spent winter dates  well bundled up and in bed, in a chilly guest room, under quilts, with a bundling board separating them. This arrangement led to understandings that often resulted in marriage.

In the Adelphia heyday, that company had the local television franchise here, and some of us first began using digital phone when it was offered by them. My guess is that all their phone customers subscribed to that service in addition to cable, or bundled with it. Phone service was available to us when it was turned on by them, and it came through the same cable that was in our homes anyway. These customers did not call Adelphia and sign up for digital phone as a single service.

Adelphia also promoted high-speed internet, or broadband internet, as a service we could bundle with TV service, or TV and phone. The company offered to become our ISP, or Internet Service Provider. That was when many of us were still using dial-up, which either tied up our regular phone lines a lot or made us get a second line. And it was too slow for some of the increasingly popular uses of the web, including streaming music and video.

Early commercials for Adelphia’s digital phone featured children playing outdoors and talking about the number 8 as if it were a featured numeral on Sesame Street. That was a competitive per-minute charge, in the old days before unlimited usage.

Zito Media was the Rigas phoenix that rose from Adelphia’s ashes, when a judge allowed some of the family to keep a handful of cable franchises in nearby communities—I think it was five—so they could “make a living.”

Since then they have acquired many more areas, as shown by the giant list on the back of our Zito Media bills. I see that list has changed in the past little while, and it does include the contact information for the franchisor, Port Allegany Borough, along with dozens of other municipalities.

It is no longer true that the TV signal, with the subscriber’s chosen “Pak” of channels, is the sine qua non for internet and or digital phone service from Zito Media. I believe it is possible for us to buy any combination of services from the company. But certainly TV cable was the service that got them in a position to sell the other services initially.

The borough council wants to talk with a Zito Media representative at an upcoming meeting, in the wake of last Sunday’s extended outage of digital phone and internet service, and other service hiccups and quality concerns. One issue may be the company’s obligations under FCC rules relating to 911.

Meanwhile, council member Dave Fair is still interested in hearing from more local Zito Media customers who have opinions, good or bad, about the company’s service.