AT&T customers are telling Stop the Cap! the company is emailing their broadband customers to alert them they now qualify for unlimited internet access because they also happen to subscribe to DirecTV Now, AT&T’s streaming service targeting cord cutters.

“Good news about your internet service! Because you also added DIRECTV NOW℠ to your internet service, we’re giving you unlimited home internet data at no additional cost.”

AT&T normally charges customers an extra $30 a month to remove their 1,000 GB data cap.

The move has some net neutrality implications, because AT&T is favoring its own streaming service over the competition, which includes Sling TV, Hulu TV, PlayStation Vue, and other similar services. If a customer subscribes to Hulu TV, the 1 TB cap remains in force. If they switch to DirecTV Now, the cap is gone completely.

AT&T has undoubtedly heard from customers concerned about streaming video chewing up their data allowance. With AT&T’s DirecTV on the verge of launching a streaming equivalent of its satellite TV service, data caps are probably bad for business and could deter customers from switching.

It is yet the latest evidence that data caps are more about marketing and revenue than technical necessity.

Updated 1:15pm EST 12/20: Hat tip to Karl Bode, who got AT&T’s official confirmation the unlimited internet offer that formerly applied to DirecTV satellite customers has now quietly been extended to DirecTV Now streaming customers as well. We are still looking for a screen cap of anyone who received an e-mail from AT&T about unlimited service for streaming customers. If you have one, drop me a line at phil (at) stopthecap.com

NBC News will appeal to cord cutters and online news junkies with a new streaming network to be launched this summer, according to a report in Variety.

NBC News Digital is an experimental project from NBC News and will not duplicate existing NBC and MSNBC programming. Instead, the news division is hiring producers and talent to create new, original news shows for online audiences.

NBC News chairman Andrew Lack hinted that NBC was getting into the live-streaming business back in March, but had offered few details.

Most 24/7 news channels are behind the cable industry’s “TV Everywhere” authentication paywall, requiring viewers to prove they are current paid cable television subscribers to gain access.

NBC will face immediate competition from CBSN, the free digital streaming service from CBS offering live coverage of important news events and a regularly updated playlist of pre-recorded news segments and airings of CBS network news programming and features.

Fox News is working on its own subscription-based online news channel called Fox Nation that is expected to arrive by the end of this year.

In contrast, other cable news networks have been substantially cutting back on digital projects. CNN laid off its digital staffers in early 2018 and MSNBC relies exclusively on streaming material that has already aired on the cable news channel.

PBS TV stations in smaller communities and secondary PBS affiliates and public stations in large ones are ending their free, over-the-air television broadcasts after decades of service because of politics, budget cuts and repacking the TV dial to give up more spectrum for wireless providers.

The most significant trigger for the impending closedown of several stations, especially those run from universities, is the FCC’s spectrum auction and reallocation plan, repacking UHF stations into a much smaller number of available channels, requiring stations to buy new transmitting equipment many cannot afford.

The original plan to repack television stations reassured affected broadcasters that the auction proceeds from the wireless industry auctions would cover the costs of the necessary new equipment.

KNCT’s coverage partly overlaps other nearby public stations.

Then Central Texas College, which owns and operates PBS affiliate KNCT in Belton, Tex., learned Republicans in Congress might appropriate only enough funding to cover 60% of the transition costs. The trustees that oversee KNCT, which serves central Texas, realized they would have to find roughly half of the $4.5 million needed to change their channel from 46 to 17 as part of the “station repack” and hope Congress would change its mind and reimburse the station.

That was money the trustees ultimately decided could not be found, especially as annual deficits at the station now average $500,000 — costs covered by the college.

KNCT general manager Max Rudolph, who has been in charge of KNCT for most of its 38 year history, said the station will now have to leave the airwaves.

“The board had to make a tough decision, but repacking was only the tip of the iceberg,” Rudolph said. “It’s economics — dollars and cents.”

KNCT operates with a staff of 15 — including five part-time employees, that take care of both the PBS TV station and KNCT-FM, which will continue on the air. The annual budget for the TV station was about $1 million, half spent on PBS membership and programming. Donors also provided around $160,000 a year.

KNCT-TV serves the Belton/Killeen/Temple/Waco, Tex. market, although KNCT’s signal struggles to reach into the northeastern part of its service area near Waco, where public TV station KAMU-TV in more distant College Station strangely provides a better signal.

The station hopes to continue operations through online streaming and on-demand shows kept on its website, but both require a subscription to internet service. For parts of central Texas, it represents the end of free PBS over-the-air programming.

Last year, Central Michigan University decided to accept a $14 million offer for satellite PBS station WCMZ-TV in Flint to vacate its current UHF channel and close down for good April 23, 2018. WCMZ-TV’s signal reaches as far away as Port Huron, Detroit and Lansing. But its intended market was Flint, which lacked local PBS service when the station signed on more than 30 years ago. Today, Central Michigan University still operates its primary station WCMU in Mount Pleasant, along with WCMV, which serves Cadillac and Traverse City, WCML, serving Alpena, Petoskey, Cheboygan and the Straits of Mackinac, and WCMW, which broadcasts to the Lake Michigan communities of Manistee, Ludington and Pentwater.

CMU officials are pulling the plug on WCMZ because, they claim, 99 percent of viewers live in areas that are now served by other public broadcasting stations. While cord cutters may miss WCMZ, cable and other pay television customers likely won’t because the service is expected to continue uninterrupted on cable and possibly satellite.

KMTP, San Francisco’s youngest multicultural public television station, is looking for a new home after selling its spectrum for $87.8 million in last year’s FCC auction. KMTP is licensed to Minority Television Project, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation, and serves the San Francisco Bay Area with non-commercial public television. KMTP broadcasts international programming in multiple languages including English and is not affiliated with PBS.

Its best chance to survive is dependent on an acquisition or arrangement with Poquito Mas Communications LLC, the licensee of low-power KCNZ in San Francisco, which is best known for carrying Creation TV, a Chinese language religious network. KMTP can either occupy several of KCNZ’s subchannels, or potentially buy the station outright. As a low power outlet, KMTP can hope to keep carriage on cable television, giving it perfect reception in areas where KCNZ’s low-power UHF transmitter cannot reach. But that means cord-cutters may have no access to the channel unless they live near the transmitter.

WUSF-TV, on the air in Tampa for 51 years, signed off late last year after the University of South Florida decided to liquidate the station for $18.8 million in auction proceeds from the FCC’s spectrum auction. The area’s larger PBS station, WEDU, has absorbed most of the programming that used to appear on WUSF, which now appears as a virtual subchannel on WEDU — unofficially called WEDQ.

Today, WEDU carries six different signals on its over the air digital channel: WEDU/PBS HD, PBS World, PBS Kids, WEDU+, Florida Channel, and Create TV. Many of these services are also available on cable television. But the original competing voice from WUSF is now gone.

WYCC in Chicago was the city’s second PBS affiliate, behind the larger and better known WTTW. Licensed by City Colleges of Chicago, the trustees decided to liquidate WYCC last year for cash as part of the FCC’s spectrum auction.

WYCC began its operations in 1983 with a message from President Ronald Reagan, congratulating the station for producing adult learning programming lacking on commercial television. WYCC first ended its PBS affiliation in 2017 and had one sole program provider, MHz Networks’ WorldView, when it ceased broadcasting on Nov. 27, 2017.

WTTW has sought to claim WYCC’s remaining assets and intends to place WorldView on one of its subchannels in the future. It already grabbed two Australian shows WYCC used to air:  “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries” and “The Doctor Blake Mysteries.” All that will remain of WYCC are its “call letters,” which could possibly reappear when WTTW launches WorldView.

Discovery Communications, occasionally left out of online video alternative bundles targeting cord-cutters, is preparing to retaliate with a $3-4 web-delivered bundle of channels featuring Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC and other affiliated networks and possibly Scripps Networks’ bouquet of channels including HGTV, Food Network, and the Cooking Channel.

Discovery is one of two bidders (Viacom is the other) vying to take charge of Scripps Networks Interactive, one of the few remaining independent network owners not affiliated with a cable company or Hollywood studio.

Bloomberg News reports Discovery wants the networks to bolster its forthcoming inexpensive online video bundle, which will sell for $3-4 a month. While Discovery has advocated selling a sports-free package of networks in partnership with Viacom and AMC for under-$20 since April, those negotiations appear to be stalled, so Discovery is reportedly moving forward on its own.

Discovery Networks¹

If Discovery successfully snares Scripps, it will own five of the top 20 U.S. cable networks. That is likely to be important in future negotiations with cable and satellite providers at contract renewal time. Discovery, like most cable network owners, pitches cable companies bundles of networks sold at wholesale prices, whether a cable operator wants all the channels in that bundle or not. Discovery plans to avoid alienating cable and satellite providers by using them to market the bundle direct-to-consumers. A prospective customer would call their local cable or satellite provider to order the bundle of web-streamed networks, not Discovery. Cable operators would likely also handle billing and customer service issues.

Scripps Interactive Networks¹

This type of sales partnership is not unprecedented. Before the era of DirecTV and Dish Networks, home satellite dishowners using C band TVRO satellite dishes as large as 12 feet across often ordered satellite-delivered programming from cable companies, particularly those owned by John Malone’s Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) and sold through its home satellite programming division Netlink. Customers would be billed directly by the nearest TCI cable system on an ongoing basis, which irritated a lot of dishowners in the 1990s who sought satellite reception as an alternative to dealing with the cable company.

The practice did not come without problems. Many local TCI systems were baffled when their customer audits revealed they had customers in cities 100+ miles outside of their immediate service area. Many were accidentally disconnected after their subscriptions were purged from TCI’s systems in error. By 2005, TCI was five years out of the cable business and had sold Netlink to Echostar, which owns Dish Networks. That same year TVRO owners were informed they could no longer subscribe to a number of networks for their giant backyard dishes and were converted to Dish Network small dish service instead.

¹-Information sourced by Wikipedia and Stop the Cap!

Google’s forthcoming online TV streaming service will cost too much for too little and includes a cloud-based DVR that will replace many of your recordings with unskippable-ad-laced alternatives.

YouTube TV was previewed for reporters Tuesday, despite the fact it won’t debut until late spring or early summer, with a lineup of 40 channels for $35 a month. The “skinny bundle” from Google has managed to put together a very incomplete lineup of major cable networks and for most of the country, on-demand-only access of network shows about a day after they air.

YouTube TV Tentative Lineup

• Disney: ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN31, ESPNU, ESPNews, SEC Network, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, Freeform
• NBCUniversal: NBC, Telemundo, Bravo, Chiller, CNBC, E!, Golf Channel, MSNBC, NBC Universo2, NBCSN, Oxygen, Sprout, SyFy, Universal HD, USA. In some regions: Comcast Regional Sports Networks, NECN (New England Cable News)
• CBS: CBS, The CW, CBS Sports Network
• Fox: FOX, FS1 (Fox Sports 1), FS2 (Fox Sports 2), BTN (Big Ten Network), FX, FXX, FXM, Nat Geo, Nat Geo Wild, Fox News, Fox Business. In some regions: Fox Regional Sports Networks
• The Weather Channel: Local Now (rolling weather forecasts)
• YouTube TV members can also add Showtime for $11 a month and Fox Soccer Plus for $15 a month.
• Availability of local TV/live network streaming limited to residents of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia.

Prospective customers will have to tough it out with no access to AMC, HBO, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV/VH1, CNN, Cartoon Network, Discovery, TBS, TNT, PBS, Food Network, and HGTV among many other missing networks.

One potentially interesting feature – an unlimited cloud-based DVR service, is rendered almost unusable with the imposition of prioritized video-on-demand. In short, this means that once a video-on-demand version of the show you recorded on your DVR becomes available, you can no longer access your recording. Your only option is to watch the ad-heavy, on-demand version with advertising you cannot skip. In most cases, that will give customers about 12-24 hours to watch their DVR recordings before they become inaccessible, at least until the on-demand version is removed.

Wojcicki

That’s a challenging proposition when consumers have other choices including AT&T’s DirecTV Now, Sling TV, and PlayStation Vue. The premise of YouTube TV, like many others, is to appeal to cord cutters and cable-nevers — especially millennials.

“There’s no question millennials love great TV content,” said YouTube chief executive Susan Wojcicki. “But what we’ve seen is they don’t want to watch it in the traditional setting.”

What Wojcicki ignores is the fact millennials prefer to watch their shows on-demand. Relying on live television as the primary source of scripted television shows is already inconvenient and unnecessary. The viewing experience is increasingly an individual one, catering to the whims of a single viewer watching on a tablet, smartphone, or connected TV. Of all the websites on the internet, YouTube should already understand the trend towards individualized viewing better than most.

Just as important, YouTube TV is a lousy deal. Hulu subscribers can binge watch all the series they want with no ads for $11.99 a month. YouTube TV will charge nearly three times the price and force customers to sit through up to 18 minutes of ads an hour. Hulu doesn’t require customers to use Google’s Chromecast as the only stream-to-TV option either. A premium YouTube Red subscription also won’t get you a better deal or fewer ads. You may already pay to watch YouTube commercial free but now you will pay more to watch YouTube TV filled with ads.

Analyst Michael Nathanson said Google’s real goal here is to get into the television advertising market. Because customers will be held captive by a disabled fast-forward button, they will see Google-targeted ads playing in ad slots normally reserved for use by local cable operators. Getting a lot of people to watch those ads means YouTube TV will at least be generous about something. A subscription will include access for six accounts with separate login information, but only three users can watch simultaneously, if they bother.