Tuesday, July 24, 2018

DePauw is Cutting the Cord - Campus Cable TV will be retired on August 3

The Cable TV service will be retired on August 3.


Beginning in Fall 2018, campus-wide Cable TV service will no longer be provided to student rooms and elsewhere on campus, including the Greek houses. 


Students and others who wish to watch shows with personal device (e.g., laptop, smart tv, tablet, etc.) can use their own subscription to an online service of their choice, such as Netflix, Hulu, Sling, YouTube TV, Sony PlayStation, and others.  As well, televisions with TV service for small group viewing will be located in living room areas of many University-owned living units and in various selected public areas.


HBO GO, which was part of the former Cable TV package,  will also expire at the end of August and will no longer be available after that.

If you are curious about which streaming service subscription might be best for you or for your students, the article “The Best Video Streaming Services of 2018” provides a useful comparison of several online services.

Why are we making this change?


Data shows that students predominantly watch TV online using personal (or shared family) subscriptions to services such as Netflix, Hulu, etc., rather than the campus Cable TV.

By eliminating unnecessary expenses for Cable TV services we can refocus the saved budget dollars toward much-needed Wi-Fi improvements in living units and elsewhere on campus.  Toward that, Wi-Fi upgrades in Longden, Humbert, Bloomington Street, Hogate, and Bishop Roberts residence halls are being completed this summer, and other areas will be targeted later in the fiscal year.

In a survey last spring, students overwhelming indicated that they most often watched TV on campus using an online service, while only six (!) students said they used traditional cable as their primary TV source. Correspondingly, the largest percentage of DePauw’s Internet bandwidth use is filled with streaming video (e.g., Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, etc.). That usage typically peaks during late afternoons, evenings, and weekends, when students are not in class and more likely to be in their rooms or elsewhere on campus watching videos online.

This decline in student use of the Cable service presented a timely opportunity to consider a change. So last spring we took this information to Student Government and the Office of Student Housing and worked together to explore the pros and cons of eliminating Cable TV on campus. With their support, we ultimately decided to move forward to retire Cable service.

As we prepare for the August 3 Cable TV shutdown, we have communicated with the incoming students and will continue to push out information to returning students and the rest of campus. We have also worked with Student Housing and several other offices to help them arrange alternative services in various places where televisions are available for small group viewing.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to let me know.


Carol.
Carol L. Smith ‘85, CIO
CIO@depauw.edu Information Services, http://www.depauw.edu/it/, @DePauwIT