Updated 8:18 am, Sunday, August 24, 2014
Bay Area television viewers may soon have one more reason to cut the cord with cable and satellite companies thanks to a service that brings free over-the-air TV to tablet computers.
It's called Tablet TV, which doesn't require Wi-Fi, a cellular connection or a subscription fee. All that customers need is an iPad or Android tablet and one of the startup's antenna devices costing less than $100.
And it's backed by Granite Broadcasting, owner of independent San Francisco station KOFY. At a time when viewers have more choices than ever - from Netflix to YouTube to 500-plus cable channels - Granite sees Tablet TV as a way to lure viewers back to broadcast television, without the need for a television at all.
'This puts the broadcasters back into the driver's seat,' said Peter Markham, chairman and CEO of Granite Broadcasting. 'Now we're going to a one-to-one relationship with the viewer, which the broadcast industry has never had.'
Tablet TV is a 2-year-old joint venture between Granite, a New York company that operates stations in six markets, and Motive Television, a London technology company focused on the TV industry.
In the U.S., Tablet TV would be a throwback to the days before cable and satellite became dominant, when everyone relied on rooftop antennas or set-top rabbit ears to tune in.
If Tablet TV can prove that the technology is reliable, easy to use and cheaper than subscription TV, it could lead to 'a little bit of a renaissance in over-the-air television,' said analyst Brett Sappington of the Dallas research firm Parks Associates.
Since February, Granite and Motive engineers have conducted a closed test at KOFY. But the venture plans a more widespread beta test starting in early September, with the service set to begin on Black Friday, the traditional day-after-Thanksgiving kickoff of holiday shopping.
Betting on S.F.
If all goes well in the Bay Area, Tablet TV will take its show to other cities.
'Our theory is if we can make it work in San Francisco and people like it, the rest of the country will be easier, because people here are connoisseurs of media and technology,' Motive CEO Leonard Fertig said. 'We are placing our bet with San Francisco with this thing.'
The gamble comes at a time when cable and satellite providers worry about the rising trend of cord cutting, a term used when people watch video on the Internet instead of subscribing to traditional, and costlier, pay TV services.
About 7.6 million U.S. households have cut the cord, a 44 percent increase from 2010, according to a recent report by research firm Experian Marketing Services.
In an even more worrisome trend for pay TV services, Experian said 67 percent of younger adults watch streamed or downloaded video during a typical week. Many younger adults bypass pay TV services and go right to online sources like Netflix and Hulu.
The explosion in tablet use is part of the shift. Parks Associates said about 61 percent of all U.S. homes with high-speed Internet own at least one tablet, and found that the weekly video viewing time on tablets has increased from an average of a half hour in 2012 to 1.3 hours this year.
Tablet TV hopes to capitalize on that trend with a device Motive calls a T-Pod - a palm-size digital TV antenna, tuner and digital recorder. The company hasn't settled on a price, but Fertig said Tablet TV expects to sell T-Pods for between $50 to $100.
The rechargeable T-Pods can capture over-the-air digital TV signals and retransmit them to tablets using their own Wi-Fi signal. They work both indoors and outdoors, but must be within 100 feet of the tablet. The companion tablet app decodes the signal and shows the programs. The app includes a program guide and chat service, and users change channels with a simple swipe.
The programming isn't limited to KOFY's platter of reruns and syndicated shows - the antenna-tuner is designed to pull in any digital TV signal within range, including those from the local affiliates of CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX and PBS.
58 Bay Area channels
During a recent demonstration at San Francisco International Airport, Fertig found 58 over-the-air TV signals, including the various secondary channels broadcast by stations like KQED and KNTV. In larger markets, he said, there are as many as 120 available channels.
And Tablet TV wants to compete with pay TV providers in another way - the T-Pod is also a DVR, able to record programs using its built-in flash drive and the tablet's available memory. The company has plans to eventually offer storage in the cloud.
Fertig said Tablet TV plans to offer video on demand three months after its service begins. That service needs a local TV station to transmit the signal - here it would be Granite's KOFY.
Tablet TV might have a hard time breaking the entrenched hold of cable and satellite providers, which the majority of U.S. households rely on even for over-the-air signals. 'Once you get cable, why would you go looking for over-the-air channels?' Brett Sappington of Parks Associates said.
But Fertig argued that pay TV's specialized networks offer only about 15 percent of what viewers watch.
The most popular shows - 'NBC Sunday Night Football' and CBS' 'The Big Bang Theory' topped the Nielsen ratings last season - and local news are on broadcast stations.
'We're not saying turn off your cable,' Fertig said. 'But what people are really buying is that 15 percent' of programming.
Tablet TV's main competitor will remain big-screen, living room HDTVs. The Parks Associates study found that U.S. households still watch an average of 20 hours a week on their TVs.
A secondary option
But Tablet TV positions itself as a secondary option for backyards, bedrooms or commuter trains, and Sappington said that portability could help the service find an audience.
Live mobile TV is already a hit in countries outside the U.S. where cable TV is not as entrenched, and in Asian markets, mobile phones have integrated over-the-air TV tuners, he said.
And a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that shut down New York startup Aereo, which retransmitted over-the-air TV broadcasts online, showed 'there really was an appetite for broadcast TV among consumers,' Sappington said.
The court found that Aereo violated copyright laws. Tablet TV, however, is backed by an industry that owns broadcast rights and will probably embrace a service that lets them capture more viewers and advertising dollars, Sappington said.
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