Baldwin Wallace to provide cable TV streaming on a trial basis – THE EXHIBITOR

Baldwin Wallace has been broadcasting cable television, since when?

This year, Baldwin Wallace is bringing Spectrum University, a new cable streaming and on-demand service, to students who live on campus. With Spectrum University, students have access to 80 cable TV channels and on-demand movies and TV shows.

“As far back as I can remember, the university has maintained cable television,” said Greg Flanik, chief information officer at BW. But ten years ago, he said, the market began to shift from a coaxial cable connection, which plugs into the wall and streams content straight to a TV, to streaming TV.

Cable companies don’t produce their own content like some streaming services do. Instead, they buy content and package it to sell it together on a service. When the market changed, cable TV services had to adapt. And they did it by changing the medium.

This decision to switch to a streaming service had been in the works for three years after Spectrum Cable approached Baldwin Wallace about switching to media streaming.

“We sent out a survey to students saying, ‘If you had a choice, what would you rather have: would you like to have cable TV or would you prefer that we invest in more Internet bandwidth? “And the poll results were about 50/50,” Flanik said.

So, they decided to give it a try.

“We’re basically giving that a two-year trial period.” [starting this year]”Flanik said.” And then we’ll probably interview the students again and then assess and say, ‘Hey, does this have any value? Do you still love it? Or do you want us to buy more Internet, buy more wireless connectivity? ‘ ”

Telecommunications Director Deanna Mushat assists Flanik with contracts, meetings and information gathering.

“With anything with technology… they don’t like doing long-term contracts, because things change so quickly,” Mushat said. “You know there could be something better and bigger next year [for the cable service]. “

BW offers cable, Mushat said, “because it’s like your home. You know what I mean? When you come to school and are in your dorm room, it is basically like your home away from home.

There are several players in the cable industry. But according to Flanik, none of them included everything the school was looking for. To be able to watch sporting events and then get some of the traditional cable programming, a person must purchase multiple subscriptions to different streaming services, Flanik said. But then the goal of reducing the amount of money spent on television is not achieved since the bill for streaming services is almost equal to that for cable subscription.

“So we looked at Spectrum University, and we said, ‘you know, it’s really a one-stop-shop because all the sporting events are here, and then all the regular TV programming is here,” Flanik said. And then they also have on-demand content, where you can just watch certain TV shows. “

Another reason BW has switched to cable is that wireless internet has recently been upgraded on campus, Flanik said.

“Once [the students’] devices are on the network, they should have a pretty decent experience, provided they keep track of their updates and don’t have any malware or viruses on their machines, ”Flanik said. And that will allow them to stream cable TV to their devices and really allow them to choose how they want to consume the content. “

BW chose Spectrum University over other vendors because the school has previously worked with Spectrum, according to Mushat.

“Several years ago we set up a fiber connection with Spectrum,” said Mushat. “And it was a different way for them to deliver the [cable] service. So we kind of already had that backbone in place.

“Our network manager, our infrastructure manager for the network and the technicians from Spectrum, they worked together with all the logistics up to the configuration.”

There is a downside though: some content may be hidden when viewed off campus.

“They would prefer you to watch [certain content] on your TV here against [at home] so they could blacken it, ”Flanik said.

Any internet enabled device can access Spectrum University through the watch.spectrum.net website or the app available on any major app store. If you are using the app, Flanik said students should make sure to download the “Spectrum University” app and not the “Spectrum TV” app.