Free TV for Multifamily Developers and Operators
Over the last several months we’ve received inquiries from multifamily owners and operators from outside our home state of Colorado. They were looking for solutions to replace the expensive bulk TV packages. In one instance the owner of an assisted senior living community in Indianapolis contacted us. The owner was dissatisfied with both the service and cost of SeniorTV. Because SeniorTV is built on top of DirecTV, the service would go out during snow storms which caused many complaints from residents and staff…especially when The Colts or the Hoosiers were playing.
The owner used an antenna at home to watch the major national and local broadcast networks and he wondered if there was a way to scale his single family home experience to his properties. As a cord cutter himself, he knew the service and cost benefits of switching to an antenna. But he did not know how to implement a similar solution for his residents. But after a Google search he found StreamWise Solutions Multifamily page.
Three things motivated his decision to call us: first, his own satisfaction of being an antenna using cord cutter; second, the desire to minimize TV outages; third, the costs of supplying TV went up every year. In terms of service it just didn’t work very well since the satellite dish was on the roof and when the snow came he could not easily get outside and bang snow from the dish. Furthermore, if there was a problem with the TV network equipment, the whole building would lose access to TV.
The other service issue was picture clarity. For some reason that even we couldn’t understand, Senior TV only came through in standard definition. And as anyone who enjoys TV knows, it’s hard to watch sports in standard definition when you have become accustomed to watching sports in high definition, especially if you are experiencing age related vision challenges.
But most importantly, the cost of supplying TV kept going up every year and the rise in costs did not include a simultaneous improvement of service or channel selection. Multifamily operators, just like single family home owners, must deal with the ever rising cost of retransmission fees. If you subscribe to TV in the USA, the costs go up every year whether you live alone or operate thousands of multifamily units.
Thankfully, we were able to help. First we flew out to the property to ensure that an antenna solution would work. Then, once so assured, we spent four days on site and completely removed the existing TV solution and got all 123 units hooked up to free TV. Now the residents see all the Colts games in HDTV and the operator saves close to $50,000+ per year on operating expenses. And because of the reliability of digital antennas, the multifamily maintenance staff can now spend more time on critical projects as opposed to troubleshooting annoying TV issues. Everybody wins.
