Cable TV’s future is uncertain. The triple-play product — television, internet and telephone — is under attack. Two of the three offerings are especially vulnerable.

Telephone service is threatened by the increasing number of consumers abandoning landlines for cellphone-only service. This is why the cable companies have been talking with wireless phone companies about mergers and partnerships.

The television portion of the Triple Play is under attack by the streaming services — Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and now CBS All Access (with a new, first-run Star Trek series). The streamers are attractive, with their incredible amount of TV series and feature films, uncut and often commercial-free. Access on smartphones, tablets, PCs, TVs and Blu-ray Disc players is simple. Cable’s “TV everywhere” is still playing catch-up. Also, the amount of programming on the streamers exceeds cable’s VOD offerings. Complete seasons of series are a great attraction.

Now, a new threat from streaming services comes as content producers — suppliers to cable TV and satellite services — are launching direct-to-consumer streaming. The Walt Disney Co. will launch two such services in 2019, one for entertainment programming and one for sports. The entertainment service will be the exclusive streaming home of Star Wars and Marvel movies. The sports service will be programmed by ESPN. Turner Sports has also announced the launch of its own streaming service. Should the Time Warner-AT&T deal go through, look for more Turner services to go that route.

Look at CBS All Access, featuring the CBS broadcast network daytime, primetime and late-night lineups, sports, your local CBS affiliate and exclusive streaming-only programming. The consumer no longer needs cable or satellite to watch anything on CBS.

Networks of the big media companies — the new Discovery-Scripps, Comcast-NBCU, Viacom, Fox and others — are the foundation of cable and satellite channel lineups. When that programming is no longer exclusive, or even worse, taken away, what does cable have left?

The internet. The streamers are accessed in the home and out of the home on mobile devices on the internet. Cable, however, is not the only way to get to the web. There’s Google Fiber, AT&T and others.

So, again, what does that leave cable? It leaves something that executives don’t want to hear. Something they don’t understand and maybe even despise or don’t believe in. Something with a very long ROI — five, six, maybe seven years or more.
Hyper-local programming.

If you think about it, this is what the customer expects. Looking at it from their perspective, in the media market where they live, the local cable TV operator is another editorial voice. To the consumer, the cable operator is on the same level as the local TV stations, local radio, local newspapers, local magazines —with all the national media overlaid on top.

If all the local cable operator provides is public access, that’s perceived by the consumer as how the cable operator chooses to express itself. If the local cable operator offers a local news channel and/or high school football, for example, that’s better.

The consumer doesn’t know about ROI, budgets, TV production equipment and staffing. They don’t know how expensive and time-consuming content production is. It must be easy, right? The consumer can shoot video with their phone. They’ve seen video like that used on local and national news, the internet, home video blooper shows and other places. Their DSLR camera can shoot HD video!

If video is no mystery, then a cable operator offering high school football, for example, can present games in full HD with production values like the National Football League. After all, how hard is HD production if it can be done on a phone or the family camera? That is the perception.

There are local news and sports channels available in some markets. Time Warner Cable was a pioneer with NY1 News (pictured) in the largest media market in the country. What about Nashville, Tenn.; Salt Lake City, Utah; or Boise, Idaho?

Why not many more markets from more operators? The sooner the better. Have you seen your local affiliate’s newscasts?

Precious time squandered on “happy talk,” self-serving station “feel good” cause-of-the-week efforts and self-serving network TV program promotion. There’s barely any time for the local news of the day, and not much in specific communities in the market. Mainly just broad, market-wide news stories, not much on the neighborhood level. Not to mention the mistakes and poor quality of the news coverage.

Cable TV would do good to partner with local newspapers and/or radio stations to produce news.

Newspapers have the journalists, radio stations have small staffs, cable TV has the technology — and a channel — the arrangement benefits all.

The reality of the long ROI mentioned earlier comes from personal experience. It involves the production and airing of a couple of local programs on cable. One was a weekly high school football half-hour preview/recap show and the other a monthly program featuring a local racetrack. At the time, it was an effort to convince the ad sales department to give us spots to air for advertisers on a “bonus” basis. Months later, after both shows were gone due to personnel changes or budgetary reasons, ad sales was approached by clients interested in advertising in the shows.

It takes a while for programming like this to get established. By the way, the producer of both of these programs went on to become an Emmy-winning videographer at a pair of local broadcast affiliates in the market.

If cable TV gets serious about local programming, the channel for such content has to be adjacent to the local network affiliates. This demonstrates to the consumer that the cable operator is committed to local programming. Don’t banish it to the part of the channel lineup where the infomercials and Leased Access live.

In the eyes of the customer, placement near the local broadcasters makes the local cable channel an equal. Make no mistake, it will take years of work, money and talent to begin to equal the quality of a network affiliate. The programming cannot look like “local cable.”

Traditional cable TV with the triple play and streaming services will exist side-by-side for a while yet. When that changes, only cable TV can offer the localism that can change the cable operator from a utility to a media company.

Randy Smith is a 35-year veteran of the cable TV industry and most recently a production manager at Charter Communications in St. Louis, Mo. He has worked in local programming management for cable systems since 1982.

U.S. local advertising revenue is projected to reach nearly $150 billion in 2017, estimates BIA/Kelsey.  

With exciting opportunities opening up at a dizzying pace, local small-and-medium businesses (SMBs) around the country may be uncertain how best to maximize their local advertising. This presents an enormous opportunity for local TV cable operators (aka multichannel video programming distributors, or MVPDs).

Here are basic tips for any MVPD mounting a serious program to target new local SMB advertising clients:

1. Target the Right Audience: Most successful advertisers have a fairly strong sense of who they want to reach. But are your local SMBs aware of the latest tools available to reach customer prospects and cable TV’s emerging ability to help them reach specific demographic, psychographic and “behavior-graphic” audiences for their marketing message?

2. Know Your Competition: Local advertisers are, of course, best served when there is a robust complement of cable operators from which to select in a market. Your rivals may be competing based on cost or reach, but has their own “pitch” changed substantively in recent years? With the rise of data-driven capabilities fueling cable’s special combination of the power of big-screen branding and targeted messaging, MVPDs may have a fresher message and some are better than others

3. Use Your Digital Offerings to Complement a Client’s TV Campaign: Practically every study we’ve seen about crossplatform video campaigns reveals this: Marketers feel that investing in multiple media outlets enhances the effectiveness of their advertising. While digital-only advertising, for example, represents about 11% of our company’s total revenue, today we are seeing more than 70% of our clients using online advertising (and about 50% of them using mobile) as a complement to local TV ad buys. If you have an online and/or a mobile component to offer as part of your package, all the better; if this is not a strength for you, consider partnerships to round out your package.

4. Explain Digital’s Limitations: Digital advertising’s strengths include geo-fencing, retargeting, reaching a highly engaged audience and the ability to measure return on investment (ROI). But digital’s limitations — including click fraud, viewability issues, ad-blocker technology, imperfect targeting algorithms and juxtaposition with inappropriate or offensive content — all should underscore why marketers should not choose digital advertising in isolation.

5. Advise Caution with Social Media: Not only can SMBs not control their treatment — and even their message — on social platforms, but it’s become a regular occurrence for Facebook to reveal that it has overstated its metrics, for example, by a whopping 60 to 80% on time spent viewing videos! Similarly, social media has been plagued with well-documented issues of ad juxtaposition, with marketers’ messages appearing alongside undesirable postings. Advertising accountability should be a key component in differentiating digital and social media from the more reliable platform of local cable.

6. Your Prospect May Not Realize There’s Gold in Their Data: Do SMBs in your market understand that their own customer data file — however large or small — is a critical asset in building an effective ad campaign?

They may be surprised to learn their purchase and profile data can be matched with cable’s viewing data to better target the right customer.

With all the scrutiny of the shortcomings of digital and social media, and with the growing capabilities of data-driven cable targeting, we’re at a time when MVPDs of all sizes should be poised to go after those larger slices of the ad pie they richly deserve.

Mark Lieberman is CEO of Viamedia, a Lexington, Ky.-based cable TV advertising management firm.