A century ago, stations owned by radio manufacturers broadcast to sell receivers. Seventy years later, TVs and radios appeared everywhere. As big as our investment in towers and transmitters is, it is dwarfed (20:1 to 40:1 per Copilot) by the public’s investment in receivers. Broadcasting’s business models have evolved with regulatory, social and ownership changes.
TV most notably now collects most of its revenue from retransmission fees, making an over-the-air (OTA) viewer worth less than half an MVPD subscriber. Half of radio’s distribution is streaming, often making a Web listener worth less than an OTA listener (streaming financials are diverse and complex).
'Creative Destruction'
Whether newspapers, magazines, movies, or electronic media; content has become easier/cheaper to produce and bountiful, fragmenting the audience. Businesses reactively resize to fit their revenue. We are not unique in experiencing this cycle. “Creative destruction” disrupts existing markets and industries paving the way for new products, services, and business models. The right sizing phase is probably the most painful for those functioning in any contracting industry. We have also experienced the amplifying effects of private equity and consolidation.
Now we face a paradigm shift. Merriam Webster’s defines a paradigm shift “as a fundamental change in the underlying assumptions, frameworks, or methods that a community, discipline, or industry uses to understand and operate in the world. It replaces an old model with a new one—not by incremental improvement, but by a wholesale rethinking of what is true or possible.”
Legacy broadcasting has enjoyed a beneficial extremely low friction user experience. Traditional receivers have two controls, on/off/volume and tune. Millions of these receivers still exist and work, but the natural replacement cycle is frequently replacing them with devices capable of an Internetized user experience.
If you have recently rented a new car and asked AI for help using the radio or bought a new TV only to find that OTA TV doesn’t happen without an internet connection and the manufacturer’s content partners like Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, Disney+, and Hulu have direct access buttons on the remote, while OTA broadcast is buried in a menu tree, you have experienced Internetization. Google TV/Android TV, webOS, Tizen, Roku TV OS, Fire TV OS, and Vizio’s WatchFree+/SmartCast, Android Automotive, Apple CarPlay, and proprietary OEM OSs and connected car backends can all be Internetized.
Until now, US broadcast hasn’t experienced a gatekeeper. It’s not unheard of.
Internetized? What’s That?
Until now, US broadcast hasn’t experienced a gatekeeper. It’s not unheard of. North Korean receivers can only receive North Korean stations. Our NextGen ATSC 3.0 encryption unnaturally constricts viewers. Further, audience data once limited to generalized ratings can now be very granular and personal.
Internetized receivers “unlock new untapped revenue streams” for manufacturers and feed the algorithmic big data industry. Until now, relocating eyes and ears to “new media,” was done by attraction. Making it difficult, if not practically impossible, for the audience to receive OTA broadcast and driving them to other services is coercive. Broadcast is only as good as the receivers are.
This is probably why some of America’s major sellers have entered the manufacturing and content business. At least one practically gives away TVs to create or enhance a continuing revenue stream. I recently took home (briefly) a TV that would not operate without an Internet connection, required six button pushes to activate a deceptively labeled OTA function that requires rescanning each time the TV is turned on, then erases the OTA channel map when turned off.
In nearly an hour with friendly customer service that didn’t sympathize with my plight, I was told that “OTA TV was going away, and I probably wouldn’t miss it after I got used to it.” I recently rented a new car—AI and last year’s Youtubes couldn’t tell me how to receive the local NPR station missing from the manufacturer’s connected back-end supplied station list. Eventually, I manually entered the frequency’s digits on a soft keypad. That radio also showed few, often only two, AM stations along RF rich I-95 even after dark. No way to scan the dial, just the manufacturer’s list of stations.
I suppose we are habituated to the Internetization of search engines that favor sponsored results, equipment that can only be repaired via Internet diagnostics with proprietary parts only they can install, and algorithmically driven social media monetized misinformation bubbles.
Even as we resize, nothing confirms the enormous importance of the broadcast ecosystem (the fusion of OTA/Internet/MVPD delivery) like this administration’s strongarm influencing broadcast messaging. Exceptionally, half of all political advertising continues to go to broadcast.
Realistically, because not all OTA receivers will be Internetized, we might adjust to losing in-car listening and living room smart TVs. Smart speakers are a godsend now, but there is nothing that prevents them from becoming more like smart TVs.
Regulations that limit the Internetization of broadcast are not unreasonable (notably, the EU is far less tolerant of Internetization exploitations than we are). Nor is product labeling that indicates the suitability of a receiver for OTA broadcast. Nor are business arrangements where we pay or trade for direct access buttons like Netflix and WatchFree+ enjoy. We could also promote OTA friendly receivers with the fervor we fight for retrans (“call your cable/satellite company and tell them you want…”).
Broadcasting could also be a lot more desirable, essential, and deserving of pinnacle placement. Advanced Emergency Alerting could mature to rival, then exceed emergency apps. Broadcast FM and TV could incorporate timing and location information to backstop and enhance GPS.
Fewer stations might result in better stations that don’t need 38-element mega breaks. It is both a good time to be leaving and a good time to enter an industry that could be experiencing the most interesting time in broadcasting’s history. While a lot is happening, a lot more will happen, and we have a front row seat, and every now and then a voice.
This article originally appeared in the October 2026 issue of The Signal, the Society of Broadcast Engineers bi-monthly member newsletter.
