“People are departing from cable, getting stuff online and getting stuff in an on-demand way."
Richa Hanley
Comcast, which operates 12 of Connecticut’s 25 local cable television franchises, is rolling out a new service. It’s part of the effort by the cable industry to keep up with the changing demands of consumers -- but it may also be a warning sign for a Connecticut employer.
The new service, called Stream, will allow on-the-go customers to watch live television on their phones, tablets, and laptops.
Rich Hanley, director of the graduate program in journalism at Quinnipiac University, said consumers want choice. “People are departing from cable, getting stuff online and getting stuff in an on-demand way,” he said.
But Hanley said there’s still one place where they prefer to watch in real time. "Sports are the only events that people will watch simultaneously because people already know the score, so it doesn’t make any sense to watch it on a time-shifted basis," he said.
And Hanley said demand for live-action drives the bidding for rights. "If you can pay as much as you can for the rights to NFL games and NBA games, you will – but that means you can’t hire as many people as you would like. Because that money has been drained to the leagues and to the colleges, who demand exorbitant rights fees for their games," he said.
And Hanley said that, in turn – coupled with what the Wall Street Journal says is the network’s loss of more than three and a quarter million subscribers in a little over a year -- means concern about jobs at ESPN in Bristol.
So what does that mean for the state's economy?
“There a number of high-skill jobs there – technicians, engineers, broadcast engineers, software programmers, etcetera, that get paid a lot of money because they’re in-demand professions. So if you want to keep Connecticut competitive, you’ve got to keep that kind of job here. And ESPN hires lots of those folks," Hanley said.
