There are public stations, cable stations, and pay stations in the United States, but what is the essential difference between these TV stations, Henry has lived in the United States for so long, and he can be regarded as figuring it out.

At present, there are five public stations ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, PBS (PBS is a non-profit public welfare television station, and CW TV has not yet been established), and the signals of these stations cover almost the entire United States, forming a huge television network, so it is also called the five major public broadcasting networks!

These public stations are equivalent to China's CCTV, Hunan Satellite TV, Zhejiang Satellite TV, and so on...... Almost everyone can watch it, and the TV station mainly makes money from advertisements and TV series and videotapes!

You may wonder why there are so few public stations in the United States, but in fact these stations have many sub-channels. During prime time, such as 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., other sub-channels will broadcast programs from public stations, while at other times, different cities have different ABC channels, and the content they broadcast can be different programs. ABC TV has more than 200 sub-stations.

Cable TV stations include CNN, HBO, cinemax, ***, etc., and some of them require an additional subscription to watch, so they are also paid stations!

Usually, TV stations have packages.

The first category is the most basic package: five major public broadcasting networks plus about 20 cable channels, this is a package that belongs to the poor in the United States!

The second category includes the five major public broadcasting networks and 70 cable TV stations, but the more popular cable TV stations such as HBO, showtime, starz, Cinemax, etc. are not among them, and the average American buys this kind of package!

The third category is that you can customize HBO, showtime, starz, Cinemax and even some pure ********, cinemax channels are basically "action blockbusters" and have no plot. Therefore, it is also necessary to enter a password when watching this kind of show to prevent children from watching it (you know......

Generally speaking, public broadcasting networks have a wide coverage, are more profitable than cable TV stations, and have more influence!

The principle of a public broadcasting network is to place a high-power transmitter in a central city. Then place a repeater at intervals (to strengthen the signal, because the signal transmission distance is too far to weaken), and other small cities can put a signal receiver and broadcast system. The average household only needs an antenna to watch this kind of public radio program! Unlike cable TV, if you want to watch a cable TV channel. It is very troublesome to lay coaxial cables to connect to homes, and the speed of customer development is also slow!

Compared to the two, the public broadcasting network clearly wins.

Henry was so impressed by the old televisions that at least one antenna was plugged into the back of the televisions. Some even have two or three antennas inserted, and the antennas are naturally specially used to receive television signals! However, with the development of cable television networks and the emergence of many good programs, the audience naturally wants to watch cable television stations, so they can only access them by wire (connected to the back of the television set or on top of the set-top box)! As for those public television stations, they are packaged and sold together with cable television stations. Therefore, in the city or the suburbs with better development, who still uses antennas to watch TV, basically uses wired access!

But. Although the public broadcasting network is more profitable, but the investment in the construction of the public broadcasting network is also huge, such as transmitters, repeaters, base stations, towers, all kinds of electronic equipment and concrete equipment, etc.; in fact, investment in equipment is only one reason, the main thing is that you have no construction qualifications at all, you need a lot of approvals to build a transmission station in one place, and you also need the permission of the landowner, without strong financial resources and connections, it is almost impossible to do it well!

Therefore, the use of coaxial cable is an inevitable choice for the development of cable television networks! Just imagine, fixed-line telephones, broadband, and television must be connected to the home. Why don't you get it together?

As a result, cable operators tend to be telecom giants as well! But that's after 1996!

As for television stations and cable television operators, they are two different concepts, and television stations are "program providers"! Someone must do the work of accessing coaxial cables, laying lines, and managing signals...... Who's going to do it? It's up to the "cable operator" to do it!

At a time when cable television networks had not yet developed, the three major television networks in the United States were themselves television operators. But now that most homes are using cable TV, cable operators have come into being!

With the development of science and technology, in addition to cable TV operators, wireless TV operators were born. In the future, the most famous is the US direct broadcast satellite company DIRECTV, which has always been at the forefront of the world in terms of direct television broadcast satellites and high-definition satellites, and has many of its own "direct broadcast satellites" with a market value of more than $50 billion! However, that was after that, and the current DIRECTV company had not yet been established, and it would not be until 1994......

In fact, Henry can also buy "live broadcast satellites" and engage in the operation of live television broadcast satellites! What's more, with the existence of the space exploration technology company SpaceX, the price of rocket launches can be much cheaper, and as for "live broadcast satellites," they can be purchased from other companies!

In the mid-80s of the 20th century, Europe and Japan successively established Ku-band live broadcast satellites based on analog technology, and until now, the technology has been very mature!

There are also quite a few companies in the United States that can produce live broadcast satellites!

Ordinary live broadcast satellites are equipped with one or two dozen high-power KU band transponders, each transponder can transmit 4 to 8 TV channels, and the system capacity is larger, generally can store one or two hundred channels. Think about it, buy a hundred or so live broadcast satellites, and then basically all the TV channels in various countries around the world can be watched, this is simply a kind of rhythm against the sky!

Who can compare with such a TV operator?

However, if this is really done, I am afraid that the satellite manufacturing company will not be able to close its mouth with a smile......

Henry thought to himself, at least until SpaceX could develop its own satellites. There is a saying that fertilizer and water do not flow into the fields of outsiders, so how can they send so much money to their competitors? How many of those who make satellites are not engaged in rocket research and development?!

Williams Telecommunications has the advantage of entering the cable operator industry, while Williams Film & Television Media Group can buy broadcasters!

In fact, all telcos are very eager to get into the business of cable TV operations, and Williams Telecom is no exception...... Unfortunately, between the 70s and 90s, the Federal Telecommunications Commission banned telecommunications companies from mixing cable businesses in order to protect the nascent cable industry and prevent monopoly telecommunications companies from using unfair competition to crowd out cable companies.

However, at the beginning of this year, a number of telecommunications companies in the United States, including Williams Telecom, formed an alliance, and subsequently filed a lawsuit in federal court on the grounds that the Federal Telecommunications Commission's policies infringed on freedom of speech, and eventually won the lawsuit! This victory eventually led to the promulgation of the "Telecommunications Act of 1996." Since then, the US telecommunications and television industry has been able to do whatever it wants, without restrictions, and completely free!

It's only 1992, so it's still a few years away, but Williams Telecom can prepare early...... Its subsidiary, CommScope Optical Fiber Manufacturing Co., Ltd., has begun to study the integration of three networks at this moment!

After the integration of the three networks, it can not only enhance competitiveness and provide users with better services, but also reduce costs!!

There are three important technical foundations for the integration of the three networks:

1. Mature digital technology, that is, voice, data, image and other information can be transmitted and exchanged by encoding into 0 and 1 bit streams, which is the basic condition for the integration of the three networks.

2. TCP/IP protocol is adopted. Only based on independent IP addresses can point-to-point and point-to-multipoint interaction be realized, and various IP-based services can be interconnected on different networks.

3. Optical communication technology. Only optical communication technology can provide sufficient information transmission speed and ensure transmission quality, and optical communication technology also greatly reduces the transmission cost!

IP telephony is an application in the triple play, and it is also one of the most important competitive areas for all telecom operators in the future.

IP phone, also known as Internet phone, is the use of the Internet as the medium of voice transmission, so as to achieve voice communication of a new communication technology, its cost is much cheaper than the traditional call price, the development trend is very rapid!

Currently, ICQ is developing the ICQ voice system "skype", which is the prototype of IP telephony applications...... At a certain stage of development, it is also possible to use the computer to directly dial the other party's phone number, and even "mobile phone to mobile phone" is also to use the IP phone function, so as to reduce the phone bill!

The emergence of IP telephony is undoubtedly a huge challenge for traditional telecom companies. Obviously, the cost of phone calls has been reduced, and the interests of telecom companies have been lost. But if you don't make changes, then users will run to the side of competitors and lose even more!

Henry summed up that the top priority at the moment is to speed up the pace of acquiring television stations, among which ABC ABC and TBS Turner Broadcasting are their own acquisition targets! However, these two companies are not cheap, Disney spent $19 billion to acquire ABC ABC, and Time Warner spent $7.6 billion to acquire TBS Turner Broadcasting! Among them, the acquisition negotiations were also protracted and took more than a year!

Fortunately for TBS Turner, Ted Turner himself has already had the intention of retiring! He wants to enjoy life, to live an idyllic life, to engage in environmental protection with peace of mind, and on his estate you can often see endangered wild animals such as wood storks, vultures, Canadian argali, black-footed ferrets, and black-tailed prairie wolfdogs, and he spends more money on wildlife conservation than he spent on $500 million to buy land!

ABC, on the other hand, has a bit of a tough relationship with Disney, and many of Disney's shows are broadcast on ABC. In fact, you don't have to think about it, once the news of the acquisition of ABC ABC comes out, then Disney will definitely be sideways......

(To be continued.) )