It’s that time again! During the last week of every year I look back at the big stories that defined the year in Solid-Signal-Land. 2023 was certainly exciting and it’s amazing when I look back at all the wins and challenges we’ve seen.
The year in satellite TV
What a year! DIRECTV had two massive wins this year in the hardware category. The Gemini for Satellite is the first new residential hardware for the company since 2017. It brings apps, a new form factor, speed, and an all-new Bluetooth remote with voice. To say it’s been popular is an understatement!
The other exciting piece of hardware for the company is the H26K Commercial Receiver. This is DIRECTV’s first standalone receiver since 2011, and the first ever commercial-only receiver. It brings 4K and a modern user interface to commercial customers, and not a moment too soon. DIRECTV kept the NFL Sunday Ticket package for commercial customers, and this drove a mad rush for people to upgrade their receivers to 4K. Although the NFL didn’t really come through with a lot of 4K content, customers still love the responsiveness and reliability of the H26K.
DIRECTV also rolled out their new Sports Central experience, the successor to ScoreGuide which can actually show you when games are airing even if they aren’t on DIRECTV.
Although the world of DISH wasn’t quite as exciting, there was still a lot to talk about. DISH is now in preparation to launch a whole new satellite which should keep the company broadcasting well into the 2030s. At the same time, they finished decommissioning their 129 satellite location, paving the way for more of the country to get reliable programming.
And the bad news…
It wasn’t all sunshine unfortunately. Both DIRECTV and DISH dealt with protracted channel blackouts. This isn’t anything new, but because there are now so few players in the broadcast TV market each blackout now affects more and more cities.
The year in over-the-air broadcasting
The biggest news in over-the-air broadcasting is about ATSC 3.0, the next generation of over-the-air broadcasting (they hope.) The good news here is that the FCC did manage to reauthorize testing of ATSC 3.0 channels before it expired. This keeps hope for ATSC 3.0 alive, even if it does mean the transition has been moved to 2027 at the earliest.
On the other hand, it’s worth pointing out that more and more people are giving over-the-air broadcasting a chance since local cable TV providers are getting out of the live TV business. That’s a real win!
The downside to the world of OTA comes in the form of the twin actors’ and writers’ strikes. These events hit broadcast TV harder than streaming and pay television, because of the shorter lead times in broadcast TV. The fall TV season was quite literally decimated, and the hope is that at least the majority of shows can have limited seasons in 2024.
The year in cellular and internet
Most people would say that the biggest news in internet boils down to eight letters: STARLINK. The low-earth-orbit internet service continues to grow by leaps and bounds. They rolled out programs for RVs and boats, which is great news for our Signal Connect division. Getting Starlink for a boat or RV isn’t as easy as it is for home, though. You might need accessories, and you’ll definitely want to talk to an expert to get everything set up properly.
It’s also worth pointing out that T-Mobile greatly expanded its home-internet-over-cellular product, and if you are looking for something with more reliability and lower cost than Starlink, talk to a Signal Connect representative.
The year in streaming
Well, it’s hard to find a lot of bright spots in the world of streaming in 2023. This was the year that prices exploded, with some services seeing increases of 40%. At the same time, folks like Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav led the charge to gut their own streaming services. Some services saw close to half of their content disappear, and there were movies that never even got to see the light of day, canceled in favor of a tax writeoff.
At the same time, real hits in the streaming world were few and far between. Probably the buzziest show of the year was Suits, which originally aired a decade ago and became popular on Netflix this year. (In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, it stars a pre-Duchess of Sussex back when she was properly known as Meghan Markle.)
The year ended with the metaphorical sound of a whoopee cushion slowly deflating, as Netflix’s Squid Game: The Challenge showed that (a) some people will do literally anything to be on TV and (b) the anti-capitalist message of the original scripted show wasn’t super-obvious to some people.
Maybe the only good streaming news…
I would say that the only good news in the streaming world is that more services didn’t shut their doors. Showtime announced the end of their standalone app, merging that content into Paramount+ (which then, naturally, saw a price increase.) Disney and Hulu announced plans for a unified app, but really we didn’t see the massive die-off of smaller streaming services that I expected.
Will 2024 be any better?
It may not seem so to you, dear reader, but I am ever the optimist. I hope that we’ll continue to see new hardware from our favorite providers, more entertainment options, and even more to watch in the coming year. Read this blog tomorrow (December 29) and this coming Saturday (December 30) for my annual predictions, as well as an accounting of how well last year’s predictions panned out.
