The Real Kato Online

I've always told my friends that if Comedy Central and ESPN were available over the Internet instead of exclusively on cable, that would be enough for me to ditch my cable subscription and "cut the cord".

I think we're getting there.

Viacom and Amazon today announced that a number of shows from Comedy Central (and Nickelodeon) will now be available on Amazon Prime. It strikes me that Amazon and Netflix have become the pioneer "networks" on a new broadcast medium: the Internet. Existing content providers will have to evolve to compete, just as the broadcast networks had to become cable networks in order to survive thirty years ago.

My prediction is that some time in the next couple of years, the ABC/Disney/ESPN empire will either partner with one of these outlets or create their own paid streaming service. CBS will follow next; NBC (owned by Comcast) and all the Time Warner-owned stations will come around last. Then we'll finally have an open television market where the cable companies don't have a stranglehold on the terms of distribution, and content providers can negotiate subscription prices directly with consumers. This is how a free market is supposed to work; what we have now is effectively a monopoly.

The rub, of course, is that cable companies are also Internet service providers, and may respond to this threat by jacking up Internet rates or metering the bandwidth available for competing video services. So the other part of the equation is that we need a more competitive Internet market, or municipal Internet providers.

Of course, stupid states like my own (North Carolina) have legislation to prohibit municipal Internet providers... in order to protect the anti-competitive market that exists today. Sigh. Can you imagine if Time Warner were your electricity provider? If they could, they'd charge you extra for electricity being used for your computer, if they knew you were using it to watch YouTube.

Permalink Comment

Posted by Ken in: techwatch, television

Site Updates

Saturday, 2013 May 4 - 2:29 pm

Hey, yeah, this blog is still alive... barely.

Lately I've been fending off comment spam like crazy. I have a giant list of banned keywords, URLs, and IP addresses, but it always seems like I'm a step behind the spammers. My latest step is to ban all comments from certain countries, especially China... I think 90% of my comment spam comes from China.

Frankly I'm not sure what's going to become of this blog in the long term. Every now and then I feel like I have a long-form essay to post, but that seems like it happens less and less often. Meanwhile all my short-form stuff goes onto Facebook, or less frequently, Twitter. Is blogging dead? Very few of my friends do it any more.

I have a sentimental attachment to this site so I doubt it'll go away any time in the near future. Maybe what I need is a new project, like the frozen lunches thing I did a while back. Hmm.

Permalink Comment

Posted by Ken in: site-business

Newtown

Tuesday, 2013 January 22 - 2:09 am

It's been a month since the Newtown shooting and I've stayed quiet about the issue of gun control until now. But I think I need to say something.

Being a civil libertarian, there's a part of me that believes that responsible gun ownership is part of living in a free society. But that doesn't mean it can't be regulated and controlled in a sane manner.

I would hope that we would all agree on a couple of things. First, we should not tolerate living in a society where it is relatively easy for a teenager with mental health issues to walk into a school and murder first graders, using a weapon that has no practical use in either self-defense or hunting. So doing nothing is not the answer. The status quo is unacceptable.

Second, not everyone should be allowed to own nuclear weapons, nerve gas, or fighter jets... so regardless of where you stand on handguns and assault rifles, surely you agree that there's a line that should be drawn somewhere, and the right to bear "arms" is not an absolute license to own any kind of weapon imaginable. We should be able to have a discussion on where that line should be drawn, without accusing each other of being anti-American or part of a socialist conspiracy.

As for me, I will probably never own a gun. Not to be critical of my gun-owning friends, but if I ever reach a point where I think it's necessary to have a gun to keep me or my family safe, then it means that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong with my life. I'll change my tune when the zombie apocalypse comes, but as of today I'm much more likely to die from alcohol poisoning than an armed assailant, and I'd like to keep it that way, thank you very much.

Permalink Comment

Posted by Ken in: commentary, politics

Apple Watch: 2013 Predictions

Tuesday, 2013 January 1 - 7:22 pm

Time for my annual Apple predictions.

Read more...

Permalink Comment

Posted by Ken in: techwatch

Election 2012

Saturday, 2012 November 17 - 11:56 am

With Obama's re-election two weeks in the rear-view mirror, there's been a lot of soul-searching and hand-wringing in the Republican party lately. Obviously most of the pundits have already weighed in on this topic, but I wanted to add my take on what happened in the election, what's in store for the Republican party, and what we might see in 2016.

Read more...

Permalink Comment

Posted by Ken in: politics

College Football Week Something Something

Saturday, 2012 November 17 - 10:53 am

Okay... I fully realize that I failed to post my usual college football recaps and previews for the past couple of weeks, and for my two readers that look for those things, I apologize. Let's sum up a bit.

Read more...