AXS TV has acquired the rights to A&E's reality series Wahlburgers, which will launch on the service February 27, AXS TV said.

The series, which ran on A&E from 2014-2019, takes viewers behind the scenes of one of the country’s most high-profile restaurant chains, as chef Paul Wahlberg works to build a burger empire with the help of his own personal entourage led by his brothers Mark and Donnie, and their beloved mother Alma.

AXS TV will run four hours of the series each Sunday night beginning February 27.

“The Wahlbergs are one of entertainment’s most beloved families, amassing loyal fans across the realms of films, food, television, and music,” said Sarah Weidman, head of programming, development and multi-platform content for AXS TV in a statement. “Despite the success they have achieved, they are still the same humble boys from Boston at heart, and that undeniable charm shines throughout the hit Wahlburgers series. This show is the perfect complement to our programming roster, and I am confident our viewers are going to enjoy watching it on Sunday nights.” ■ 

Network, The 1976 film about a ratings-challenged news anchor who vows to kill himself on the air, and sees his Nielsen numbers skyrocket as he delivers loose-cannon jeremiads about politics and media and corporate America to viewers, is set to premiere on Broadway. Bryan Cranston plays anchor Howard Beale.

While the story is set four decades ago, the play — and the not-so-dated movie before it — raises some pressing and familiar issues about the media’s role in our lives today.

Beale is wrestling with the public’s dedication to the almighty box sitting in their family rooms. “This tube is gospel, this tube is the ultimate revelation,” he shouted on the stream-of-consciousness-driven Howard Beale Show, which took the place of his staid newscast. “This tube can make or break presidents, popes and prime ministers. This tube is the most awesome goddamn force in the whole godless world!”

The Howard Beale Show is something of a precursor to the personality-driven, soliloquy-rich content one finds on cable news today. The film, said The New Yorker, “was uncannily prescient about our outrage-fueled news-as-entertainment culture, foreseeing the likes of Sean Hannity, Jerry Springer and Laura Ingraham by decades.”

Every night, some 27 million to 29 million people tuned in to see Walter Cronkite deliver the CBS Evening News, according to Forbes magazine. Beale did a little better than the Most Trusted Man in America as his new program took off. As the anchor starts to become unglued, he’s visited by a ghost. He asks the apparition why he’s been approached. Because you have 40 million Americans watching, he is told.

People loved watching Beale’s “angry prophet” routine, but as happens with viewers, they lost interest over time. His boss, Diana Christensen — she’s played by Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany — tells Beale he’s “dropping like a stone” when his audience share falls below a 40.

Network chiefs today can dream about that 40 share. The average audience for the evening newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC stands at 5.2 million viewers apiece, said comScore TV Essentials, a 7% drop from the year before.

But that’s not to say people aren’t consuming awesome amounts of media. Last year, Fox News Channel generated some $2.67 billion in revenue, CNN tallied $1.59 billion and MSNBC took in $798 million, according to SNL Kagan. Seeking to reach its consumers on the go, Fox News launched its OTT product Fox Nation last week. For six bucks a month, users get on-demand programming starring the likes of star-polished personalities Tomi Lahren, Britt McHenry and Sean Hannity.

Fox News senior vice president of development and production John Finley likened the new channel to a combination of Netflix and Facebook Live. “It’s kind of a hybrid mix between the two,” Finley said, “in terms of format and offerings.”

It’s safe to say Beale would be blown away by Netflix, even though he would probably be disappointed by the platform’s lack of news. Netflix is spending close to $13 billion on original content this year, according to The Economist, way up from $8 billion a year ago. If one can’t swing the eleven bucks a month, one can simply stand in Times Square, a quick hop from where Network shows at the Belasco Theatre, and watch the massive digital billboard showing Netflix clips all day long.

Standard Deviation

Beale also lamented the breakdown in the lofty standards the news business once held itself to. “Television is not the truth,” thundered Beale. “Television is a goddamn amusement park. Television is a carnival, a circus, a traveling troupe of acrobats and storytellers, dancers and jugglers and sideshow freaks, lion tamers and football players.”

Speaking with The New York Times, Cranston — who, of course, played methamphetamine-making Walter White on Breaking Bad — shared his own thoughts on the state of news media. “We’re seeing it now, very clearly: agendas of different outlets, to promulgate their ideology,” he said. “Whether it’s liberal or conservative. It doesn’t matter, it’s out there. And you listen to the people who agree with you for affirmation, and you listen to the other side so you can get angry and shout at them.”

TV news today, Cranston added, is a “news-entertainment program.”

Fittingly, oversight of Beale’s program gets shifted from the news division to programming, with all the entertainment series. As programming chief Diana Christensen discusses the show with news president Max Schumacher, played by Tony Goldwyn, who portrayed the U.S. president on Scandal, she doesn’t think much of the network’s news standards. Its newscasts are “straight tabloid,” she says, mentioning a recent 1½-minute story about a naked lady riding a bike through Central Park. “I don’t think I’ll listen to any protestations of high standards of journalism,” Christensen scoffs. “If you’re gonna hustle, at least do it right.”

Speaking of U.S. presidents, Beale might be prepared to leap — rather than scream — out the window over a president who derides stories that criticize him as “fake news,” and famously denied a press pass to a CNN reporter he often clashed with. (Jim Acosta’s credentials were restored days later.) Just last week, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to express his desire for a federal news network, because, he said, CNN does not do a good job of portraying the U.S. A “worldwide” network would “show the World the way we really are, GREAT!” he said on Twitter.

The general public’s opinion of TV news isn’t a whole lot higher than the president’s. Some 50% of U.S. adults get news regularly from television, according to a study earlier this year from Pew Research. That’s down from 57% a year before that.

Around 46% of Americans turn to local TV for news, ahead of the 31% who use cable news and 30% who turn to broadcast network stuff.

And 43% of Americans often get their news online, while Pew said a whopping 93% of U.S. adults get at least some news online. Plenty of online sources are legit, with veteran reporters covering the basics of journalism. In the coming weeks, CBSN Local premieres, marrying CBS News’s four-year-old streaming channel with its local news outlets. WCBS New York is first.

But countless other online news sources fit the president’s fake news description.

Remote Vote

Christensen, Network’s network programming chief, says TV networks have little responsibility to deliver responsible, virtuous content. “We’re not in the business of morality,” she tells news chief Schumacher. “We’re in the business of business.”

Its TV network was just one aspect of the portfolio belonging to Communications Corporation of America, the fictional behemoth in Network. CCA presaged the corporate monoliths controlling the media today.

Can we hold our news sources to higher standards than Christensen does? After all, the viewers are ultimately the ones who decide if a news network thrives or dives. Might we take a more active role, with remote or mouse or phone in hand, in clicking off the outlets offering news that does not hit our standards?

Howard Beale implores his viewers to take a stand against the untruths he felt were streaming out of the tube back in the ’70s. “Turn off your television sets!” he howls. “Put an end to this madness. Strike a blow for sanity. Right in the middle of this show. Turn off your TVs and set yourself free, goddamnit!”

His bosses weren’t wild about that message from their ornery host, but it didn’t end there. “Get up out of your chairs right now, stick your heads out the window, and yell,” Beale memorably exhorts, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”

In 1970, cable MSOs served about 4 million homes, a small percentage of the U.S. residences they would ultimately reach in the decades to follow; The Brady Bunch was airing its second season, Abbey Road topped the charts; and three Corning scientists had just invented the first low-loss optical fiber, transforming the way the world connects.

Since then, enough fiber has been deployed to circle the globe 25,000 times and, according to the Cisco Virtual Networking Index, by 2021 the number of devices connected to an internet protocol network will be three times as high as the global population. Connectivity matters. From the life-enhancing power of information moving at the speed of light, to freeing the fundamental human need for connection from the boundaries of distance, we’ve only just begun to realize the rich potential of optical connectivity.

MSOs have long been at the forefront of network migration to deliver cutting-edge services and applications. They were among the earliest adopters of fiber in their networks, with TelePrompTer having first trialed optical fiber in 1976 for its “super-trunk” distribution in Manhattan. Less than two decades later in 1992, the first fiber-to-the-node designs were tested and trialed and hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) networks were born.

Shortly thereafter, in the early 2000s, telecommunications service providers began significant optical network investment, passing 35 million homes with fiber in the United States and connecting about 15 million fiber to the home (FTTH) subscribers. Fiber deployment to the network’s edge continues today at a feverish pace. Many of these operators are now further investing in fiber plant for 4G densification and 5G, driving substantial fiber density in urban environments to support new millimeter wave spectrum and lower-powered small cells.

Throughout these periods of fiber penetration into the access network, MSOs continued to expand their HFC network, now passing approximately tens of millions of U.S. homes. Services also expanded as video delivery on coax evolved into a primary broadband access medium, and HFC demonstrated continued ability to deliver a competitive advantage against legacy wireline alternatives. It is a tale of two cities in one rapidly changing market: legacy copper — sometimes over 100 years old and built at a time when telephony was its singular purpose — facing focused, necessary leaps to all-fiber; and the younger, robust HFC plant built for video broadcast and revolutionized by DOCSIS, facing more rapidly decrementing coax lengths to make use of higher frequencies and deliver faster downstream and upstream speeds.

Regardless of architecture, all operators in the industry are at an inflection point.

The combination of evolving consumer connectivity expectations, competitive landscapes in key markets, and the underlying macrotrend of fiber penetration deep into the network, suggest it is now more critical than ever to architect a quantified, detailed, and tactically-relevant transformation plan.

Decision-makers with vision and an eye on operating expenses are pursuing sustainable network transformation that grows their leadership position for the next decade in a rapidly evolving market. Given the wide range of options and the scale of investment at stake in this upgrade cycle, the network architects at Corning believe that now is the opportunity for leaders in the industry to challenge their teams, stakeholders, and advisors on topics such as:

• “Where, when, and how can the enterprise leverage gains in fiber access network efficiencies as a complementary investment to HFC upgrades such that we maximize competitive advantage and minimize regrettable spend?”

• “What factors in the plan ensure maximum return on investment (ROI) across business units for every capex dollar spent?”

• “Are the transformation plans(s) implementable at the necessary scale, and with what resources?”

• “What is the magnitude of operational savings made possible with optical plant that can be applied toward revenue-growing expansions of services, subscribers, and service areas?”

As industry leaders explore responses within the context of their individual business models, here are three considerations to bear in mind.

1. The Evolution of the Connected Experience Creates Opportunity for a Converged Business Case

Connectivity is increasingly transforming from static wireline to mobile or wireless delivery. As reported by Cisco, smartphone traffic will exceed PC traffic by 2020 and account for 30 percent of the total global IP traffic. While the 5G business case remains nascent, it is clear the competitive landscape is changing along with customer expectations.

Today, most operators structure their businesses around functional service silos: content, residential, business and wireless. Given wireless densification, upcoming opportunities in Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum, continued proliferation of Wi-Fi access points, mobile virtual network operator structures (MVNOs), and the revenue opportunities in business and residential services, a combined approach to building target services areas is too worthwhile to ignore. The savvy operator is considering the competitive power of a converged investment in the outside plant.

Our experience in the deployment of fiber access networks over the past 15-plus years shows that 50% to 75% of the cost associated with building new plant is attributed to labor — a nonfixed asset. Corning’s forward-analyzed converged architectures based on the same true costs indicate savings potential between 15 and 50 percent when service providers build a single optical network for multiple uses. Capital invested in scalable infrastructure can more advantageously serve the MSO when applied to a single, multiuse network rather than to multiple, purpose-built networks within a common service area. Consistent with these trends, modern connectivity solutions enable isolation between service types within the same optical layer while reducing total cost and easing service provider access to the converged access business case.

2. Millions of Homes Passed is a Long-Term Transformation and a Heavy Lift Worthy of Actionable Consideration

Coax gets short to go long: Many architectures supporting node+0, remote PHY and full-duplex DOCSIS place the node within a few thousand feet of residences. Service areas are shrinking from what was 500 or 1,000-plus homes per parent node to an average of fewer than 100 homes per child node. Depending on the service area density, this node split may result in as many as five to 20 child nodes. Some operators estimate all-in capex at $20,000 to $50,000 per fiber deep node. Quick division easily places anticipated capex as high as $500 per home passed, not including the additional plant conditioning necessary to support mid and high splits. In addition to upfront costs, the plant requires further investment in power supplies and batteries as the reduction of centralized powering at the headend, hub, or parent node is exchanged for less efficient distributed powering in the field.

With child nodes within 1,000 feet of the home, and costs between a few to several hundred dollars per home in child node service areas, a cost comparison to FTTH is both relevant and timely. Major communications providers have consistently averaged at scale all-in FTTH deployment costs at or below $700 per home passed across their service area footprints, and the figures continue to drop. The upfront cost similarity is striking; however a notable difference could involve the cost to connect a fiber subscriber, which is an additional expense not incurred in brownfield HFC when a coax drop is present.

The costs to pass and connect homes with fiber continue to decrease due to economies of scale and the labor-reducing efficiencies created by integrated optical solutions. With comparable first-installed costs, the advantaged opex for fiber networks, and with the maturation of linear IPTV offerings, MSOs now have line of sight to a compelling FTTH business case even in overbuild environments.

Preserve and leap with HFC-enabled passing gear: While traditional FTTH architectures were built to connect wide service areas in large-scale, fast-paced overbuilds, CATV operators face that constraint only by exception. The luxury of robust plant in traditional node+x architectures enables MSOs to much more strategically invest in scalable infrastructure. Two such examples are converged optical plant investment in select markets and residential FTTH designed around small node service areas that ease the operational lift and offer greater total cost-efficiencies as compared to historical mass-overbuild architectures.

Integrated connectivity solutions designed to service sub-256 home pockets allow for easy and phased use of transformation concepts:

(1) Preserve legacy HFC by splitting nodes only as needed and apply saved CapEx to full FTTH at scale in present day node-sized or larger pockets.

(2) Continue traditional node splits all the way down to sub-256 homes, then build FTTH node-by-node either (A) on-demand (surgical FTTH), or (B) with full-service area coverage.

(3) Node+0 with Remote PHY where node splits offer insufficient service improvement and FTTH is impractical to implement

3. Choices Made Today Impact Tomorrow’s Growth Potential – and Costs

When Hurricane Sandy tore through the Northeast, service areas around entire central offices had to be rebuilt. Rather than spend regrettably and brace themselves to repeat the cycle with the next big storm, operators replaced legacy copper with a fully passive, optical plant. The results have been a proof point for the industry, with the new networks being 70% to 90% more reliable, consuming 40% to 60% less energy, and ultimately delivering annual operational savings of nearly 60% since that transformation. More recently, Hurricane Harvey flooded huge areas of Houston in 2017, and in many instances, full optical communications infrastructure remained largely unaffected due to the inherent advantages that fiber has over copper in wet conditions. Once power was restored to homes and businesses — either over the power grid or through subscriber use of generators — connectivity immediately resumed.

To that end, industry contacts estimate that a powered HFC plant costs cable operators between $1,000 and $3,000 per route mile per year to power and maintain. With representative figures between 100 and 150 homes per route mile, the cost to maintain residential broadband service over coax can be between $15 and $50 per residence per year. While powered plant is an enormous strategic asset, it may most powerfully serve the MSO when optimized for applications that maximize competitive advantage and increase or diversify revenue. These opex considerations are significant contributors to the long-term value of optical transformation. Perhaps the FTTH ROI — better still, a converged optical access ROI — is shorter than once believed and within this upgrade cycle for specific service area demographics. Quantified and tactically relevant transformation plans will identify those demographics and phase their transformation.

Forty eight years after the first low-loss optical fiber was invented, the connected experience continues to amaze people and enrich lives, making it increasingly necessary to expand the reach of fiber in our always-on world. As we enter the Gigabit era, CATV operators face the opportunity to apply scalable infrastructure spend in a powerfully impactful and competitive manner. Collaboration that both challenges conventional perspective and delivers scale may be of far greater value than in years past, and can offer alternatives that may just bring a far greater return.

Cate McNaught is emerging applications market development manager at Corning Optical Communications. 

While the strategy doesn’t necessarily result in universally happy customers, employing broadband usage caps does appear to be an effective tool for operators interested in controlling the expansion of network usage.

According to data released by OpenVault, second-quarter broadband usage by customers on plans with usage-based pricing averaged 215.6 gigabytes per household, 12.2% less than the 241.9 GB per home used by customers without capped services.

Related: WOW!: We’ll Stay Cap Free

Homes with usage-based pricing also experienced slower growth of network usage—27.3% year over year vs. 36.6% for non-capped homes.

Notable: 3.1% of customers for non-capped services exceeded the 1 terabyte monthly threshold, on average, vs. just 2% for services with caps. A number of operators in the cable industry have adopted a 1 TB usage limit.

Overall, OpenVault said average U.S. broadband usage growth in Q2 grew by 31.3% year over year to 226.4 GB.

OpenVault collects, manages and analyzes high-speed data usage from network operators.