Rant: TV Anywhere

In response to: Charter Starts Internet Video Trials

Charter is the latest cable operator to fire up their “TV Anywhere” Internet video ambitions — a “cord cutter” retention tool that involves giving paying TV customers access to a walled garden of limited TV content. While Charter has yet to name the service yet, last week they launched a trial of their TV Everywhere incarnation involving 5,000 to 10,000 Charter subscribers in St. Louis, Missouri, Madison, Wisconsin, Chicopee, Massachusetts, and Kennewick, Washington. Charter will be running the trial for the rest of the year before deciding whether they want to take the project footprint wide.

The big cable companies, not just Charter, are pushing this “TV Anywhere” as a way to prevent cord cutters. The idea is to offer some online video to subscribers in addition to regular cable to make paying loads of cash for cable service more appealing. The problem? TV Anywhere isn’t “anywhere,” it’s only in your desktop browser, only when you’re logged in, and it’s nothing you can’t already see on Hulu. In fact, it’s probably far less. I saw a preview of a TV Anywhere look-alike through AT&T’s portal. All AT&T had was searchable list of episodes and shows you could watch… on Hulu. Clicking any link simply brought up some AT&T page with a embedded Hulu video.

TV Anywhere is funny to me, because, on one hand you have the cable execs telling the press they’re not losing any sleep over online video. Then you see initiative like TV Anywhere, seeing they’re investing millions into online video hoping that it appeals enough to their subscribers to keep them. Why would you create TV Anywhere if your customers weren’t looking for online video as a replacement for cable?

Next step? Bandwidth caps where TV Anywhere is exempt.

I’m Annoyed With Poor Signage

I’ve recently come to realize that I can get very irritated at poor signage or “notices.” For example the below sign is posted at my workplace:

I cannot understand the purpose of the quotations around the instructions posted on this sign. The purpose of the sign is to instruct you to do something. Taking off your shoe covers is a sanitation issue, so it needs to be done. Quotation marks usually used denote something someone said (quotes), jargon that’ll be explained later in some writing, or to denote cynicism. To use it around the bold text of a sign just weakens the message, I think, and looks ridiculous. This is official signage, by the way, not some 8.5″ by 11″ paper stuck to the wall. There are a couple other signs posted elsewhere around work with quotation marks, but picturing them will only frustrate me more.