President Obama worries obsessively about anti-Muslim backlash in the face of extremism that he refuses to acknowledge draws its inspiration from the Islamic religion. At last week's "violent extremism" summit, Obama lectured America on its need for tolerance toward Muslims.
His concern is detached from reality. Statistics show that Jews, not Muslims, are more often targeted for assault and violence in increasing numbers worldwide. Even the Federal Bureau of Investigation recently reported American Jews were ten times more likely to be targeted for abuse than Muslims.
Despite the overwhelming evidence, no political leader has confronted the president over his moral equivocation over anti-Semitism. Obama's hand-wringing over prejudicial statements about Islam, stands in stark contrast to his callous dismissal of attacks on Jews, both here and abroad.
Violent anti-Semitic assaults in the United States increased 82 percent in 2013, the latest year for which figures are available. The numbers were provided by the Anti-Defamation League, a worldwide organization founded in 1913 to fight anti-Semitism. The president's concern has been muted.
While the media has been focused on the recent killing of three Muslims near the University of North Carolina, significantly less news attention was showered on the cowardly murders of three Jews gunned down outside two community centers near Kansas City last year.
But America's anti-Semitic incidents, while deeply disturbing, are a mere shadow of what is happening in Europe. Those senseless murders of four people at a Paris kosher deli last month were just the latest ruthless attack aimed at Jews in France.
Last year, eight synagogues were attacked in Paris. One synagogue, located in a Paris suburb, was firebombed by an angry mob of 400. A kosher supermarket and pharmacy were smashed and looted as crowds chanted, "Death to Jews."
This frightening rise in aggression prompted 7,200 French Jews to emigrate to Israel last year, twice the number for 2013. Despite this human flight, the apologetic European media has tried to downplay the wretched Jew-hating and attempted to blame the Jewish withdrawal on economic and social factors.
Conditions aren't much better for Jews outside France.
The number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United Kingdom reached the highest level ever reordered last year. There were 1,168 cases of violence, property damage, abuse and threats against Britain's 291,000 Jews. Britain's Home Secretary called the trend "deeply concerning."
In Germany last year, Molotov cocktails were lobbed into a synagogue, while a Berliner called on Allah to "destroy the Zionist Jews." There also have been ugly incidents in Frankfurt and Hamburg as Germany has been hauntingly reminded of the grisly atrocities from its past.
Seventy years after the end of the Holocaust, Jews are being forced out of Europe again. Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu urged Jews to repatriate to their home country after the most recent attack, a brutal killing of a Jewish man outside a synagogue in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Today 82 percent of the world's 16.7 million Jews live in either Israel or the U.S. France has the largest European Jewish population (475,000), but as noted earlier their numbers are dwindling. In 1939, there were 9.5 million Jews in Europe, compared to about 1.4 million today, according to Pew Research.
In Arab countries, Jews are leaving in droves. As an example, in 1948 there were 265,000 Jews living in Morocco, but their numbers have shrunk to 2,500. In Algeria, once home to 140,000 Jews, there is not a single Jew residing within its borders. Muslims in these countries are openly hostile to Jews.
In the midst of this Jewish exodus fueled by intolerance, the world has remained closemouthed, particularly this U.S. president. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, once penned the following admonition about the Nazis' evil campaign to exterminate Jews:
"Who would allow such a crisis to be committed? How could the world remain silent?"
World leaders today have no excuse for making the same mistakes governments did in the 1930's. If you turn a blind eye to hatred, it oozes from every twisted misfit until it consumes the world. Silence only guarantees the inevitable human tragedy will follow.
It is time for leaders, beginning with President Obama, to speak up in defense of Jews. The president can start by welcoming Benjamin Netanyahu with open arms to the United States on March 3 when he addresses Congress on issues facing Jews and Israel.
However, Obama has made it clear Netanyahu is unwelcome because of some silly protocol snit. If Obama snubs the Israeli leader, then he sends exactly the wrong signal to Jews at perhaps one of the worst times in Jewish history.
Today's anti-Semitism demands that world leaders stand with Jews against the zealots of hatred.
Monday, February 23, 2015
Monday, February 16, 2015
Terrorism: Obama's La La Land Strategy
President Obama and his administration are waging a clumsy campaign to shift America's focus from the rising threat of terrorism to the perils of climate change. In speeches, Team Obama has designated climate change as the biggest U.S. security threat. Not ISIS. Not even a nuclear armed Iran.
The climate change foil is just the latest failed attempt to deflect public attention from the burgeoning threat of Islamic terrorism. But the game plan has backfired. Polling data shows Americans are more concerned about terrorism and are convinced the administration has no blueprint to combat it.
With Americans demanding action, President Obama reacted last week with a half-baked, vague proposal to authorize the use of military force against the Islamic State (ISIS). But his overture was peppered with more cautionary language than a prescription drug label.
For instance, he repeated his mantra that Americans oppose another ground war like the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. The president reassured the nation he has no stomach for an "enduring offensive." He vowed the authorization would not be open-ended, insisting it be limited to three years.
In fact, the president spent more time telling Americans what he did not intend rather than providing a game plan for defeating the rising menace of Islamic-inspired barbarism. Moreover, the document was superfluous, since he has already authorized bombing ISIS targets without Congressional approval.
It is a dangerous game he is playing. He preaches "strategic patience" while offering no plan for deterring the Islamic scourge charring the Middle East. But in the president's mind, the country needs to move on because the U.S. has already won the war on terror. Many Americans are leery.
Bowing to a growing chorus of skepticism, the president recently dispatched National Security Advisor Susan Rice to the Brookings Institute to outline the administration's terrorism strategy. Instead of reassuring Americans, the speech left little doubt the president and his team are clueless.
"We can't afford to be buffeted by alarmism and an instantaneous news cycle," Ms. Rice said in an attempt to blame the media. She called ISIS dangerous, but protested it was not "of the existential nature we confronted in World War II." Her message: the Nazis were a lot worse than ISIS.
Following Ms. Rice's hollow speech, the White House released its own strategic vision, entitled "Fact Sheet: 2015 National Security Strategy." The document describes how America will "lead the world toward greater peace and new prosperity." It is a stunning piece of mindless navel-gazing.
As an example, one key tenant of the Obama strategy reads like this: "We will lead with a long-term perspective, influencing the trajectory of major shifts in the security landscape today in order to secure our national interests in the future." That sounds like drivel from a beauty pageant contestant.
Taking a cue from Ms. Rice, Obama decided the play the media-blame card, too. "What's that famous saying about local newscasts, right? If it bleeds, it leads, right?," the president bristled to a sympathetic reporter. He compared the fight against terrorism to the battle against big city crime.
"It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you've got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris," the president opined. His characterization of the Paris incident was a callous dismissal of anti-Semitism.
As is his custom, Obama stubbornly refuses to use the Islamic terrorism label. This was no random shooting at a kosher delicatessen. Yet the president's media guru Josh Earnest and those misspoken-mouthpieces at the State Department tried to defend Obama's depiction.
In less than 24-hours the public uproar reached a crescendo, prompting Earnest and the State Department propagandists to use social media to reassure everyone that the administration really, really did understand the killings at the deli were the work of Jew-hating terrorists.
It was another bewildering moment in what has become a frequent occurrence in these final years of the Obama presidency. The commander-in-chief has decided the American people are just too dumb to grasp his nuanced esoteric approach to dealing with terrorism, so he downplays its existence.
The problem for Americans is that Islamic thugs have not gotten the president's memo about their surrender. ISIS and other terrorist groups are flourishing, increasing their control over wide swathes of the Middle East and flaunting their plan to bring the fight to America.
A piece of paper green-lighting military force will not halt the spread of terrorism. Neither will a president who considers terrorism a figment of the media's imagination. Frankly, the biggest threat to American security is not climate change but the American president.
The climate change foil is just the latest failed attempt to deflect public attention from the burgeoning threat of Islamic terrorism. But the game plan has backfired. Polling data shows Americans are more concerned about terrorism and are convinced the administration has no blueprint to combat it.
With Americans demanding action, President Obama reacted last week with a half-baked, vague proposal to authorize the use of military force against the Islamic State (ISIS). But his overture was peppered with more cautionary language than a prescription drug label.
For instance, he repeated his mantra that Americans oppose another ground war like the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. The president reassured the nation he has no stomach for an "enduring offensive." He vowed the authorization would not be open-ended, insisting it be limited to three years.
In fact, the president spent more time telling Americans what he did not intend rather than providing a game plan for defeating the rising menace of Islamic-inspired barbarism. Moreover, the document was superfluous, since he has already authorized bombing ISIS targets without Congressional approval.
It is a dangerous game he is playing. He preaches "strategic patience" while offering no plan for deterring the Islamic scourge charring the Middle East. But in the president's mind, the country needs to move on because the U.S. has already won the war on terror. Many Americans are leery.
Bowing to a growing chorus of skepticism, the president recently dispatched National Security Advisor Susan Rice to the Brookings Institute to outline the administration's terrorism strategy. Instead of reassuring Americans, the speech left little doubt the president and his team are clueless.
"We can't afford to be buffeted by alarmism and an instantaneous news cycle," Ms. Rice said in an attempt to blame the media. She called ISIS dangerous, but protested it was not "of the existential nature we confronted in World War II." Her message: the Nazis were a lot worse than ISIS.
Following Ms. Rice's hollow speech, the White House released its own strategic vision, entitled "Fact Sheet: 2015 National Security Strategy." The document describes how America will "lead the world toward greater peace and new prosperity." It is a stunning piece of mindless navel-gazing.
As an example, one key tenant of the Obama strategy reads like this: "We will lead with a long-term perspective, influencing the trajectory of major shifts in the security landscape today in order to secure our national interests in the future." That sounds like drivel from a beauty pageant contestant.
Taking a cue from Ms. Rice, Obama decided the play the media-blame card, too. "What's that famous saying about local newscasts, right? If it bleeds, it leads, right?," the president bristled to a sympathetic reporter. He compared the fight against terrorism to the battle against big city crime.
"It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you've got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris," the president opined. His characterization of the Paris incident was a callous dismissal of anti-Semitism.
As is his custom, Obama stubbornly refuses to use the Islamic terrorism label. This was no random shooting at a kosher delicatessen. Yet the president's media guru Josh Earnest and those misspoken-mouthpieces at the State Department tried to defend Obama's depiction.
In less than 24-hours the public uproar reached a crescendo, prompting Earnest and the State Department propagandists to use social media to reassure everyone that the administration really, really did understand the killings at the deli were the work of Jew-hating terrorists.
It was another bewildering moment in what has become a frequent occurrence in these final years of the Obama presidency. The commander-in-chief has decided the American people are just too dumb to grasp his nuanced esoteric approach to dealing with terrorism, so he downplays its existence.
The problem for Americans is that Islamic thugs have not gotten the president's memo about their surrender. ISIS and other terrorist groups are flourishing, increasing their control over wide swathes of the Middle East and flaunting their plan to bring the fight to America.
A piece of paper green-lighting military force will not halt the spread of terrorism. Neither will a president who considers terrorism a figment of the media's imagination. Frankly, the biggest threat to American security is not climate change but the American president.
Monday, February 9, 2015
Faith Firestorm: Obama's Prayer Breakfast Speech
Reaction to President Obama's National Prayer Breakfast speech has drifted from withering criticism to scalding condemnation. In the span of 40 minutes, the president managed to rewrite history, insult Christians and setback religious tolerance 100 years.
It is a tradition for the president to speak at the non-denominational prayer event held annually in Washington since 1953, but no commander-in-chief ever created a firestorm like Obama. Past breakfasts were unremarkable and unmemorable occasions of non-partisanship and goodwill.
Obama, whose deity is the federal government, exploited the faith celebration to mock Christians. The president trotted out his undeniable biases on the role of Christianity in the world as not only an oppressor of human rights but a religion that carries out evil in the name of Jesus Christ.
In the context of the present-day atrocities committed by the Islamic State (ISIS), the president lectured the attendees on the wickedness of Christianity going back centuries. The castigation could just as well been ripped from the pages of a sermon by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the president's long-time pastor.
"Lest we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," the president scolded his audience of 3,600 with a jab of his finger.
Obama wasn't finished with his distorted history lesson. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ," he reminded the gathering.
His harangue followed on the heels of his admission that modern-day terrorists have perpetrated acts of brutality in the name of Islam. The president cited ISIS for its "brutal, vicious death cult that, in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism."
The president's sanitized description avoided graphic detail of the Islamic State's savagery. These jihadists chop off heads of innocent victims, they incinerate the bodies of caged prisoners, they ruthlessly murder gay people and they enslave young girls, cruelly raping them before killing them.
Equating Christianity to ISIS is a disgraceful hijacking of history, pointed out, noted evangelist Franklin Graham. He called out the president for implying that what ISIS is "doing is the equivalent to what happened over 1,000 years ago in the Crusades and Inquisition."
Graham pushed back: "Many people in history have used the name of Jesus Christ to accomplish evil things for their own desires. But Jesus taught peace, love and forgiveness. Muhammad on the contrary was a warrior and killed many innocent people."
Catholic League President Bill Donohue took on Obama's characterization of the Crusades. "The Crusades were a defensive Christian reaction against Muslim madmen of the Middle Ages." Most history books agree the Crusades were a response to the murderous Islamic invasion of the Holy Land.
As far as the Inquisition, Donohue called the president version a "fable." He wrote on the league's website that the "Catholic Church had almost nothing to do with it." It is historically accurate that a tribunal was established by the church in medieval times (12th century) to combat heresy.
However, beginning with the Spanish Inquisition in 1478, the movement was led by monarchs with various political and religious motives for pursing the conversion of Jews and Muslins to Christianity. These secular leaders were responsible for hideous crimes, including the burnings of heretics.
But the president was not done with refashioning Christian history. He blamed Christians for slavery and Jim Crow laws in the United States. Slavery was opposed by most faith groups and indeed it was abolitionist Christians that led the effort to ban the practice. No organized religion endorsed slavery.
Jim Crow laws, which mandated racial segregation, were mostly the handiwork of scheming Democrat Party legislators in the South during reconstruction. It was a bible-toting Christian, Dr. Martin Luther King, who led marches and demonstrations to tear down racial barriers.
That doesn't mean there were not individual Christians and Jews who did not use religion to justify slavery and segregation. There certainly were. But they were not following the teachings of Jesus Christ, who preached love, tolerance and inclusion.
The president has yet to come to terms with an unassailable truth. ISIS claims to adhere to a variant of Islamic teaching. They are not hijacking the religion, they are practicing a rapidly growing version of Islam. Even moderate Muslims are reluctant to refute this alternate interpretation of their religion.
Worst of all is the president's ignorance of Christian history. No doubt his viewpoint was molded by the black liberation theology of Rev. Wright, whose moral narrative fits an African-American-centric perspective far removed from mainstream Christianity.
To give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps the president knows better but he is determined to shift the public focus from the barbarianism of Islamic extremists at any cost. He might have taken his cue from the Muslim leaders he huddled with at the White House on the eve of the prayer breakfast.
In a conspiratorial move, the president deemed the meeting to be private, barring reporters and a pool photographer. When pressed for a list of the attendees, press secretary Josh Earnest refused to provide the media with the names and affiliations of the Muslims leaders. So much for transparency.
Clearly, in Obama's world, faith is not a force for good. Consider during the 2008 campaign when he criticized Christians in Pennsylvania of bitterly clinging to their guns and religion. He seems all to quick to dress down Christians while tiptoeing around the issue of Islamic jihad.
No wonder polls show many Americans still believe Obama is a Muslim. His faith is a private matter and this column won't add to the speculation. However, whatever his religion or lack of it, the president exhibits an unhealthy view of Christianity that informs his outlook on evil in the world.
His concept of Christian faith is at odds with most Americans. The more he lectures the country on Christian values, the more it creates divisiveness. Obama needs to climb down from his high horse and recognize the threat to the world's security is not Christianity but radical Islam.
It is a tradition for the president to speak at the non-denominational prayer event held annually in Washington since 1953, but no commander-in-chief ever created a firestorm like Obama. Past breakfasts were unremarkable and unmemorable occasions of non-partisanship and goodwill.
Obama, whose deity is the federal government, exploited the faith celebration to mock Christians. The president trotted out his undeniable biases on the role of Christianity in the world as not only an oppressor of human rights but a religion that carries out evil in the name of Jesus Christ.
In the context of the present-day atrocities committed by the Islamic State (ISIS), the president lectured the attendees on the wickedness of Christianity going back centuries. The castigation could just as well been ripped from the pages of a sermon by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the president's long-time pastor.
"Lest we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," the president scolded his audience of 3,600 with a jab of his finger.
Obama wasn't finished with his distorted history lesson. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ," he reminded the gathering.
His harangue followed on the heels of his admission that modern-day terrorists have perpetrated acts of brutality in the name of Islam. The president cited ISIS for its "brutal, vicious death cult that, in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism."
The president's sanitized description avoided graphic detail of the Islamic State's savagery. These jihadists chop off heads of innocent victims, they incinerate the bodies of caged prisoners, they ruthlessly murder gay people and they enslave young girls, cruelly raping them before killing them.
Equating Christianity to ISIS is a disgraceful hijacking of history, pointed out, noted evangelist Franklin Graham. He called out the president for implying that what ISIS is "doing is the equivalent to what happened over 1,000 years ago in the Crusades and Inquisition."
Graham pushed back: "Many people in history have used the name of Jesus Christ to accomplish evil things for their own desires. But Jesus taught peace, love and forgiveness. Muhammad on the contrary was a warrior and killed many innocent people."
Catholic League President Bill Donohue took on Obama's characterization of the Crusades. "The Crusades were a defensive Christian reaction against Muslim madmen of the Middle Ages." Most history books agree the Crusades were a response to the murderous Islamic invasion of the Holy Land.
As far as the Inquisition, Donohue called the president version a "fable." He wrote on the league's website that the "Catholic Church had almost nothing to do with it." It is historically accurate that a tribunal was established by the church in medieval times (12th century) to combat heresy.
However, beginning with the Spanish Inquisition in 1478, the movement was led by monarchs with various political and religious motives for pursing the conversion of Jews and Muslins to Christianity. These secular leaders were responsible for hideous crimes, including the burnings of heretics.
But the president was not done with refashioning Christian history. He blamed Christians for slavery and Jim Crow laws in the United States. Slavery was opposed by most faith groups and indeed it was abolitionist Christians that led the effort to ban the practice. No organized religion endorsed slavery.
Jim Crow laws, which mandated racial segregation, were mostly the handiwork of scheming Democrat Party legislators in the South during reconstruction. It was a bible-toting Christian, Dr. Martin Luther King, who led marches and demonstrations to tear down racial barriers.
That doesn't mean there were not individual Christians and Jews who did not use religion to justify slavery and segregation. There certainly were. But they were not following the teachings of Jesus Christ, who preached love, tolerance and inclusion.
The president has yet to come to terms with an unassailable truth. ISIS claims to adhere to a variant of Islamic teaching. They are not hijacking the religion, they are practicing a rapidly growing version of Islam. Even moderate Muslims are reluctant to refute this alternate interpretation of their religion.
Worst of all is the president's ignorance of Christian history. No doubt his viewpoint was molded by the black liberation theology of Rev. Wright, whose moral narrative fits an African-American-centric perspective far removed from mainstream Christianity.
To give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps the president knows better but he is determined to shift the public focus from the barbarianism of Islamic extremists at any cost. He might have taken his cue from the Muslim leaders he huddled with at the White House on the eve of the prayer breakfast.
In a conspiratorial move, the president deemed the meeting to be private, barring reporters and a pool photographer. When pressed for a list of the attendees, press secretary Josh Earnest refused to provide the media with the names and affiliations of the Muslims leaders. So much for transparency.
Clearly, in Obama's world, faith is not a force for good. Consider during the 2008 campaign when he criticized Christians in Pennsylvania of bitterly clinging to their guns and religion. He seems all to quick to dress down Christians while tiptoeing around the issue of Islamic jihad.
No wonder polls show many Americans still believe Obama is a Muslim. His faith is a private matter and this column won't add to the speculation. However, whatever his religion or lack of it, the president exhibits an unhealthy view of Christianity that informs his outlook on evil in the world.
His concept of Christian faith is at odds with most Americans. The more he lectures the country on Christian values, the more it creates divisiveness. Obama needs to climb down from his high horse and recognize the threat to the world's security is not Christianity but radical Islam.
Monday, February 2, 2015
Video Streaming: Cutting the Cable TV Cord
Millions of Americans satisfy their television addiction by subscribing to video services from providers such as cable and satellite companies as well as broadband firms Verizon and AT & T. However, alternative technology and a glacial shift in viewing habits threatens these firms' business models.
The broadcast subscription business was built on selling consumers bloated packages, which included dozens or even hundreds of channels for a hefty monthly fee. Many consumers wanted just a few premium channels, but the providers refused to sell their services on an a la carte basis.
If you wanted ESPN or HBO, you had to sign up for scores of other lesser-known channels that were bundled with those premium services. This benefited providers because it allowed them to charge higher fees and enabled them to offer programming that might appeal to only a handful of viewers.
That business model is under threat from a host of video streaming companies, including Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Roku and You Tube. There is a hodgepodge of other streaming web services with names like Crackle.com, Ifilm.com, Open-Video.org, UStream. tv, and Videosift.com.
Streaming media has be around since the 1990's. Back then video files were stored on websites for downloading to consumers. Dial-up Internet speeds and slow computers made the viewing experience less than ideal. Videos were choppy, often pixilated and blurry.
Today technology has drastically improved the consumer experience. Video files stored on servers, essentially giant computers, are dispatched in a continuous steam over lightning-fast broadband in a compressed format. The signals zip to devices equipped with decoders to convert data to video.
Consumers watch the videos in real time on an array of devices, ranging from televisions, to mobile phones, computers, tablets and media players. Many of these gadgets are equipped to handle high definition streaming, further enhancing the viewing.
These nascent services are offered to consumers for as little as $9 a month, a bargain compared to the average cable bill, forecast to be $123 monthly in 2015. Internet video service Netflix has grabbed the largest share of the streaming market with more than 31 million subscribers in the U.S. alone.
For a lot less than cable or satellite charges, viewers have instant access to movies, television channels, old television shows, sports and a host of other broadcast fare. Netflix is leading the way in creating original television series for its viewers and others are toying with the idea.
In 2007, the media research firm Nielsen found that only two million households in the U.S. had no television. Six years later, Nielsen counted more than five million homes without televisions. That doesn't mean people in those homes aren't watching video on a device other than a television.
These cord-cutters skew younger. Most are in their 20's and 30's and they have little interest in traditional television, often citing cost as a factor for not signing up for cable or satellite service. As a result, cable and satellite companies are losing hundreds of thousands of customers each year.
In a single quarter last year, traditional cable, satellite and broadband communications firms suffered a loss of 687,000 video subscribers. The previous 12 months marked the worst subscriber turnover in the industry's history. Cable subscribers dipped below 40 million for the first time in decades.
These deep pocketed traditional video providers are slowly adapting to the swiftly changing market dynamics. Dish Satellite recently announced a new streaming service called Sling TV, offering ESPN, TBS, Food Network, HGTV and Cartoon Network starting at $20 a month.
Others are following Dish's lead. CBS has unveiled plans for a streaming service for $6 monthly, which offers current and older CBS shows. HBO and Showtime are in the early stages of rolling out subscription streaming services.
Increasingly, content providers such as CBS are realizing they can make more money by dealing directly with consumers rather than relying on cable, satellite and broadband communications firms to deliver their programming. The old business model has been turned on its head.
Many in the industry still cling to the axiom that streaming video can't scale at cable television quality and therefore will never replace traditional TV. This conventional wisdom reminds one of the same experts who predicted consumers would never unhook their fixed line telephone for cellular service.
Today about 40 percent of Americans rely exclusively on mobile phones instead of landlines for their voice and data communications service, according to a study by the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings.
It is only a matter of time before video streaming will become the preferred choice for watching video programming. Unless today's providers change their business models, these firms will continue to lose customers and revenues, a death spiral that will end their dominance and turn them into dinosaurs.
The broadcast subscription business was built on selling consumers bloated packages, which included dozens or even hundreds of channels for a hefty monthly fee. Many consumers wanted just a few premium channels, but the providers refused to sell their services on an a la carte basis.
If you wanted ESPN or HBO, you had to sign up for scores of other lesser-known channels that were bundled with those premium services. This benefited providers because it allowed them to charge higher fees and enabled them to offer programming that might appeal to only a handful of viewers.
That business model is under threat from a host of video streaming companies, including Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Roku and You Tube. There is a hodgepodge of other streaming web services with names like Crackle.com, Ifilm.com, Open-Video.org, UStream. tv, and Videosift.com.
Streaming media has be around since the 1990's. Back then video files were stored on websites for downloading to consumers. Dial-up Internet speeds and slow computers made the viewing experience less than ideal. Videos were choppy, often pixilated and blurry.
Today technology has drastically improved the consumer experience. Video files stored on servers, essentially giant computers, are dispatched in a continuous steam over lightning-fast broadband in a compressed format. The signals zip to devices equipped with decoders to convert data to video.
Consumers watch the videos in real time on an array of devices, ranging from televisions, to mobile phones, computers, tablets and media players. Many of these gadgets are equipped to handle high definition streaming, further enhancing the viewing.
These nascent services are offered to consumers for as little as $9 a month, a bargain compared to the average cable bill, forecast to be $123 monthly in 2015. Internet video service Netflix has grabbed the largest share of the streaming market with more than 31 million subscribers in the U.S. alone.
For a lot less than cable or satellite charges, viewers have instant access to movies, television channels, old television shows, sports and a host of other broadcast fare. Netflix is leading the way in creating original television series for its viewers and others are toying with the idea.
In 2007, the media research firm Nielsen found that only two million households in the U.S. had no television. Six years later, Nielsen counted more than five million homes without televisions. That doesn't mean people in those homes aren't watching video on a device other than a television.
These cord-cutters skew younger. Most are in their 20's and 30's and they have little interest in traditional television, often citing cost as a factor for not signing up for cable or satellite service. As a result, cable and satellite companies are losing hundreds of thousands of customers each year.
In a single quarter last year, traditional cable, satellite and broadband communications firms suffered a loss of 687,000 video subscribers. The previous 12 months marked the worst subscriber turnover in the industry's history. Cable subscribers dipped below 40 million for the first time in decades.
These deep pocketed traditional video providers are slowly adapting to the swiftly changing market dynamics. Dish Satellite recently announced a new streaming service called Sling TV, offering ESPN, TBS, Food Network, HGTV and Cartoon Network starting at $20 a month.
Others are following Dish's lead. CBS has unveiled plans for a streaming service for $6 monthly, which offers current and older CBS shows. HBO and Showtime are in the early stages of rolling out subscription streaming services.
Increasingly, content providers such as CBS are realizing they can make more money by dealing directly with consumers rather than relying on cable, satellite and broadband communications firms to deliver their programming. The old business model has been turned on its head.
Many in the industry still cling to the axiom that streaming video can't scale at cable television quality and therefore will never replace traditional TV. This conventional wisdom reminds one of the same experts who predicted consumers would never unhook their fixed line telephone for cellular service.
Today about 40 percent of Americans rely exclusively on mobile phones instead of landlines for their voice and data communications service, according to a study by the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings.
It is only a matter of time before video streaming will become the preferred choice for watching video programming. Unless today's providers change their business models, these firms will continue to lose customers and revenues, a death spiral that will end their dominance and turn them into dinosaurs.
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