The dying role of cable television in schools
Sunday, August 24, 2014 at 12:14PM 
Our local cable television company in the past month has encrypted its digital signals. Each receiver now needs a special decoder in order to see a picture. To honor its charter with the city - that states it must provide each school with free basic cable service - the company provided each school one decoder box.
So now we have one television in each school media center that can get cable TV. And nobody, so far, has complained* although I expect a few teachers who liked taking in a ball game while grading papers while at school might miss a channel or two.
Does anyone in your school use cable television?
My sense is that the cable company is hastening its well-deserved demise. Already rarely utilized, cable television programming will go unwatched by this generation of students. Teachers will continue to move to streaming video via YouTube or commercial content providers.
*Actually, one administrator is adamant about getting cable back to his office. I am sure there is a serious educational purpose.
Reader Comments (4)
We went through this at the end of last year. The TV in the library is linked to all the TVs in the school, so everyone can watch -- the same channel. The custodians, so far, have been the biggest complainers, and the coaches in the weight room. But, just wait until the NCAA tournament! I'm convinced no one uses Cable for educational purposes. Or, if they do, they get the shows from somewhere else.
I don`t think that we really need it at school. School is for study and I cannot see a great educational value. It is possible to find nearly everything in the internet. It doesn`t matter what you are searching for, you just type if you need some kind of paper and you get it. The role of any teacher is to show students how to develop with the usage of technologies but not to become narrow-minded. So to my mind, TV is a waste of time and if you want to get information, search for it.
TV - as in cable might be a waste of time, but this year we are piloting TV's as projection devices vs. SMART Board/projectors in a couple of our classrooms. Have you done much with digital TVs as projection systems in the classroom? I know I see them in school board rooms and they are used for digital signage... but we have a new building going up in a couple of years, and I am not certain how many projectors we will be installing. Its very hard to predict even 2 years from now.
At home, we bought our first SMART TV last Black Friday. Then, several months later bought a Roku for about $40 and made our other TV smart too! Now, local cable company (who is also my ISP) has put a data cap on our household. 250GB. If we go over...we pay more. Sound familiar? Don't even get me started on cell phone providers!
I am guessing they are losing $ like crazy, on the cable side, due to companies like Netflix, Hulu, ect. and will make up for it one way or another. We have contemplated dropping down to basic cable and just using Hulu/Netflix services. We would be $ ahead but I just can't give up my Game of Thrones! :)
Right now, we have 3 people living in our house. We have 3 SMART phones, 3 iPads, 2 Computers (desktop/laptop) 2 SMART TV's, and an Xbox One. 3 People with 11 Internet devices. We haven't maxed our Internet - Yet - But I have a feeling that will change when old man winter rolls around and a Netflix marathon is a better alternative than going outside for anything....
Thanks for the comment, Annette. My guess is our experience with who misses cable will be about the same. Studies show cable is being pretty much held up by sports fans domestically as well.
All the best,
Doug
Hi Jen,
The TVs we've found that are actually large enough tend to be more expensive than the good old mounted projectors. Someday they might replace projectors, but not now, I don't think.
We dropped cable a couple years ago (we're big Netflx watchers too). Don't miss it a bit.
Take care and thanks for the comment.
Doug