Peter Kafka

[Commentary] The cable TV business hit an important milestone in July: It turned into the Internet business. For the first time ever, the biggest cable TV providers has begun selling more broadband subscriptions than video subscriptions, according to a new tally from Leichtman Research Group.

This is directionally important. The future for the pay TV guys isn’t selling you pay TV -- it’s selling you access to data pipes, and pay TV will be one of the things you use those pipes for.

CBS is working on shows that you won’t see on CBS. Instead, the plan is for you to see them on the Internet, via video services like Netflix or Amazon’s Prime Instant Video.

If that happens, it means CBS will have opened up a new revenue source: In addition to selling its reruns to Netflix and its competitors, it will also be selling them brand-new shows those services can stream exclusively.

New data from analysts MoffettNathanson show that the pay-TV business lost about 300,000 subscribers in the second quarter. But that’s basically flat compared to 2013, and that’s a change from the year-on-year declines of the previous few quarters.

And after factoring in the housing market -- a key driver for pay TV -- the research firm concludes that “it appears that cord cutting slowed to an annualized rate of 400k homes, a meaningful deceleration and well below the peak (but still modest) rates of cord cutting seen in 2012.”

The most amazing thing about AOL’s business is the thing that drives AOL’s business: Millions of people, who started paying the company a monthly fee for Internet access more than a decade ago, who continue to pay the company a monthly fee for Internet access, even though they likely aren’t getting Internet access from AOL anymore.

Here’s how AOL makes money: Getting a shrinking number of subscribers -- 2.34 million this quarter, down from 3.62 million at the beginning of 2011 -- to pay an increasing amount -- the average AOL subscriber now pays $20.86 per month, up from around $18 a few years ago.

Not surprisingly, Time Warner told analysts not to ask it about Fox’s now-dormant $80 billion bid.

Instead, analysts asked Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, in several different ways, to explain why he rejected the deal.

If you like succinct versions, here it is: There’s really no point in us buying a big company or being bought by a big company, because we’re really big, and those deals are a mess. But never say never!

[Commentary] Television may have peaked, but it’s going to have a very long run ahead of it. That’s the thinking behind a series of big media moves in the past few years, where conglomerates that own big investments in TV have been doubling down -- or trying to double down -- by acquiring more TV assets.

Even if TV ad dollars are shrinking, TV still generates a lot of ad dollars -- that’s why Facebook, Twitter and everyone else on the Web wants a piece of the TV business.

Meanwhile, the fees that cable providers pay broadcasters for their programming, which had theoretically been threatened by Aereo, now look like they’ll continue to be reliable, high-margin cash-flow generators, after all.

Dish Networks, which says it wants to launch an Internet TV service in 2014, is getting closer to its goal: The satellite TV company has signed a deal with A&E Networks that lets it stream the cable programmer’s shows on the Web.

The deal gives Dish the rights to stream live and on-demand programming from A&E’s lineup of channels, which include A&E, History and Lifetime.

While Aereo generated lots of attention from the media world in the run-up to its Supreme Court case, consumers may have been less interested. Paperwork filed with the US Copyright Office indicates that the startup ended 2013 with 77,596 subscribers, spread out among 10 cities.

About 27,000 of those subscribers lived in the New York City area, which was Aereo’s first market, and launched in the spring of 2012. Boston, which launched in the spring of 2013, had 12,000 subscribers. The Atlanta area, which also launched in 2013, accounted for 10,000 subscribers.

[Commentary] So it looks like Aereo will have to fold up the tent. What else will happen in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision? Nothing. Which is a problem, both for consumers and for the media companies celebrating their victory.

Aereo’s legalized presence would have certainly given the networks and providers a reason to move much faster to provide their own specialized packages. Not “a la carte” TV, where a TV subscriber can sign up for Disney and Comedy Central, but not ESPN and MTV. But at least a slimmed-down offering with a range of options and prices.

Now we’re back to a world where the only incentive the TV guys have to move faster is the nagging fear that their growth has permanently stalled, and that their subscription rolls will decline as new generations of video-watchers enter a world where paying for TV seems ridiculous. That group of “cord-nevers” hasn’t grown big enough to show up on the TV Industrial Complex’s books yet. But it’s hard to imagine it won’t get there.

Amazon doesn’t want to sell books from Hachette Book Group. More for us, says Apple, which is taking advantage of the fight between the world’s biggest bookstore and one of the world’s biggest publishers.

Its iTunes store is promoting a sale on digital versions of popular Hachette titles, including upcoming books from James Patterson and JK Rowling. Apple won’t come out and say that, exactly.

But if you head to the iTunes book page, you’ll see Apple is highlighting a “Popular Pre-Orders: $9.99 or Less” section. Meanwhile, Amazon won’t allow customers to preorder digital versions of any of those titles, and generally isn’t selling paper-and-ink versions, either.

Beyond the fact that Apple’s happy to take advantage of a (much bigger) rival’s fight, what’s particularly interesting about the promotion is that one of the chief disputes between Hachette and Amazon is over pricing of digital books -- Amazon wants to push prices down; Hachette does not.