Cable Companies Want Bigger Share of Online TV Market 175
commodore64_love writes with news that a number of cable companies, such as Time-Warner, Comcast, and Cox, are trying to establish themselves as content providers on the web in addition to television. They are currently negotiating with HBO, TNT, CNN, and a number of other channels to bring their programming online exclusively for cable TV subscribers. They say they're not trying to develop "some enormous new revenue opportunity," but rather trying to compete with sites like Hulu, which provide shows for free.
"They pay networks a per-subscriber fee each month for the right to carry channels. But the cable companies have groused that they are paying for content that programmers are giving away for free on the Web. ... People aren't yet cutting the cord en masse - the Leichtman survey found that people who watch recent TV shows online every week are not more likely to give up TV service than other people. But the industry is heading off what could end up as a troubling trend. After all, the availability of free content online has befuddled other media industries, from music to newspapers. ... The cable companies and others involved in the talks for a TV service said their goal isn't to kill the online video goose, but to work out a plan that keeps everyone's business intact."
Eliminate the middle man (Score:3, Insightful)
And... (Score:3, Insightful)
A bigger share of the pie.
(with pie being money)
There is a reason that the FCC (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Time Warner is horrible.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Solution: Stop paying for cable.
I'm sure that the cable companies'... (Score:4, Insightful)
...growing implementation of data-per-month caps has nothing to do with free-and-legal streaming video, right? It's all about those bandwidth-hogging criminals, most assuredly!
Cable industry incompatible with 'net streaming (Score:3, Insightful)
The cable companies' business model is to charge for a connection to content. In the up-and-coming age of Internet streaming, that isn't going to happen. They need a paradigm shift if they're going to survive. The CBS and NBC sites are good examples of what can survive (although they're done quite poorly, IMO).
At this rate, cable co.s are going to become ISPs, and nothing more. If they can set up their own streaming sites, (with competitive offerings and commercials) some of them can survive as content providers. The Internet has a tendency to cut out the middlemen. The middlemen must now add value to persist.
Besides, the cable model is inherently unfair anyway. One both pays the cable co. and must sit through commercials. Most people won't admit that they're getting double billed, but they can feel it. They will migrate to better models as they become available.
They just don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Good luck! Meanwhile enjoy some real competition (Score:4, Insightful)
Cable retained users by offering more channels with fewer commercial interruptions.
As adoption skyrocketed, cable companies began tossing more and more commercials into the mix.
In 1986 the average cable show had 2 commercials in it; today popular shows have 6 minutes of commercials for every 5 minutes of content.
Do that in today's market and leaner, meaner companies with less legacy issues to tie them down will come eat your lunch!
Cable providers have already shown they don't have the spine to risk losing that programming, so they can't threaten to shut these studios out. They'll have to take a huge cut in profits by either paying them higher fees for exclusivity or lowering their commercials on live and offering more dependable, consumer friendly service.
If they try to up their bills satellite will eat their lunch, even if they manage to lock out hulu and netflix, and the higher their bills go -- especially with their bundling with internet service, the more customers they will lose.
There are those who consider the TV just superfluous and buy only net. if the cable company jacks up the tv portion of their bill they'll switch ISP's
For those whose primary purpose is TV, people, especially in this economy, might save their pennies for food/gas/mortgage and start giving pirate bay more patronage (and flowers : ] )
Tiered Internet, v2 (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that we are almost all on metered internet, they will offer 'reduced bandwidth rates' for local content, relative to their competition.
Re:This was my first submission to slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
They'll suck the money out of us one way or... (Score:2, Insightful)
Internet tv wont be a panacea to tv watching customers. You'll be able to have a streaming box like a Roku or a store and play box like a tivo that will get free or nearly free tv shows with re-play or re-download abilities if you dont get the show the first time, but then your cable internet bandwidth will jump through the roof and the cable companies will charge you double for the extra usage.
So instead of paying comcast $50 for cable tv and $50 for cable internet, you'll end up paying them $100 for high usage cable internet.
Directv and comcast will simply become larger broadband providers.
Seems like a smart direction to go in. Trying to shove 300 channels into a limited bandwidth in real time is pretty stupid.
Re:To Flamebait: (Score:2, Insightful)
Who decides what the 'opposing view' is - while we love to simplify things to the left and right dynamic, most issues are not (at least at a depth beyond sound bite) bipolar. For a talk by a 'supply side' economist, is the opposing view that of a Keynesian? How about a Marxist? Austrian School?
How does one handle Global Warming - Al Gore would have us believe that it is a one sided issue, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly would argue vehemently that there are two sides to it. Same story for evolution vs intelligent design. How about abortion - would anti-abortion advocates have to refute in the language of 'a woman's control of her body' or would a pro-choice advocate have to refute in the language of 'the unborn's right to life'? The ruling party (or at least their appointments) would be able to decide what 'fair and balanced' is, and I suspect that the results over time would far from 'fair and balanced'.
We also need to take the audience's preferences into account as well. How many who like Rush would change the channel if Keith Olbermann gave a response to every rant? How about getting a dose of Ann Coulter on DailyKos or MoveOn.org? It doesn't directly squelch dissent, but if putting on Rush would require someone who drove away your audience, would you still put him on? It is not direct censorship, but the market for these commentators would shrink if the rebuttal were required. I admit that some programs of this form have been successful, 'CrossFire' and 'Hannity and Colmes' come to mind, but as anyone who saw John Stewart's torpedoing of the former can tell you, it PROMOTES partisanship rather than informing the electorate. Given the amount of choice in sources of information available today, we should respect the preferences of the viewer/listener rather than pretend that we are back in the days of 3-4 stations that can decisively manipulate the populace.
The argument for the fairness doctrine is to have balance in talk radio. The argument against is largely that conservative talk radio is an 'alternative media' to balance NPR and most broadcast and print news.
The name does not always properly convey what the act intends See "Employee Free Choice Act", "Patriot Act", and assorted other Orwellian names.
Re:Time Warner is horrible.... (Score:2, Insightful)
How was this modded insightful? OP clearly addressed this point in his closing sentence!
And why do I keep Time Warner? They are the only cable and internet provider around me, for real. Ugh.
If it were possible for him, OP clearly states that he would prefer to view shows on his television, rather than having to resort to downloading them. He merely says that downloading has become his only option to view them at all, not his preference.
As for the second part of OP's statement, that you conveniently ignored, he explains the other reason why he still sends them money every month: he has no other ISP. If he wants his internet at all, he has no choice.
Yes yes, wouldn't it be fantastic if OP stuck it to Time Warner by canceling his service? Certainly they deserve it. But that won't help OP read slashdot tomorrow, will it? Time Warner has him right where they want him, bent over and de-pantsed thanks to local monopolies we paid them to build.
They think very highly of themselves ... (Score:3, Insightful)
... work out a plan that keeps everyone's business intact.
Sound familiar? The problem is, the consumer is not usually a part of such plans. Well, other than as a cash cow to be milked for all it's worth.
Re:To Flamebait: (Score:3, Insightful)
You are contradicting yourself. First you say that they want to force the conservative stations (which have the majority of money-making talk shows, according to you), then in the next sentence you say that most of the networks are liberal... therefore the liberals own most of the stations.
Most of the television networks are liberal. Talk radio is the only area that's dominated by conservatives.
Sorry, dude, but it can't work both ways.
No shit.
If the liberals owned most of the networks, but they were unprofitable, then they would sell them. That's what sane people do. If the liberals owned the networks that ran the conservative talk shows, and they were the only ones that made money, then the liberals probably would not want to shut them down. But if they did want to shut them down, they could do so without a fairness doctrine... after all, if they own the network they don't have to run the show.
They have. Liberal talk radio has never really taken off, so there are very few stations compared to conservative talk radio. Because the libs are unable to compete, in the interest of "fairness" they would force the stations that have conservative shows to dedicated the same amount of time to liberal shows in comparable time slots, which is essentially impossible since there isn't any money in liberal talk radio. The most popular liberal hosts on Air America only attract about 1.5 million weekly listeners, whereas Rush Limbaugh averages 14 million, and has been as high as 20 million.
The main thing that you are forgetting is that if the liberals owned most of the newtorks EXCEPT for those that ran the conservative talk shows, the fairness doctrine would still give equal conservative time to their own liberal views... if they wanted to shut down all the conservative networks, they would be shooting themselves in the feet, because the fairness doctrine would force them to allow equal time for the conservatives on the liberal shows!
No, it wouldn't. What would happen is that the stations would have to either reduce the length of, or cancel the conservative radio shows because they wouldn't be able to take the hit of airing hours of unpopular, unprofitable liberal shows.
In summary: what you say makes no sense at all. The fairness doctrine does nothing but give people a choice as to what they want to listen to, no matter who is running the show. And that is a good thing for America, whether you are a liberal or a conservative. The only way you could possibly believe that such a choice is a bad thing (unless you actually believe the delusion you were spouting), is if you are afraid of someone else's message.
In summary, you're wrong. The fairness doctrine is primarily about silencing Rush Limbaugh since the stations that air his 3 hour show would then be forced to air 3 hour liberal shows in comparable time slots, which they can't do because there is no money in liberal radio. They'd either have to cancel the show or scale it back, which is exactly why the Democrats want this back.
Re:To Flamebait: (Score:3, Insightful)
Morning and afternoon drive dayparts in radio are 4 hours each (6a-10a, 3p-7p) and even if you include the five hours of non-prime midday airtime in between, you're still looking at a 13 hour window, not even half of which is filled up with Limbaugh + Anti Limbaugh.
So lets do the math then. Limbaugh has the most popular talk radio show in the country, with 14 million weekly listeners, compared to the 1.5 million attracted by the most popular liberal show. Since Limbaugh airs from 3-6 on the west coast, 6-9 would have to be given to the liberal show in the same area. Suppose that the advertising on the 6-9 slot now sells for $750k/week, and the Limbaugh show goes for $1M/week. Given that the liberal show is only about 10% as popular, we'll assume that advertising would go for $100k/week. Therefore, in order to keep the Limbaugh show, it would cost the station $650k/week, effectively lowering the returns on the Limbaugh show to just just $350k/week because of the unpopular liberal show. Now if the station could get $750k/week for other content for that time slot, they'd make $400k/week more than they would with the Limbaugh show, because they wouldn't be forced to run the unpopular content.
Your argument isn't well thought out. The Fairness Doctrine is all about silencing conservative speech on the radio.
Is there a network neutrality conflict here? (Score:2, Insightful)
So, what is the value prop from the cable companies? I wonder if it is quality of service while trampling other internet traffic like P2P, gaming, VPN, music streaming, etc. These guys are your ISP and they are going to prioritize your traffic to their gain. And to think that cable companies try to play that network shaping is because of physical constraints and economics. Cable companies plain and simple have a conflict of interest in making decisions as to what is best for the network as they build out their business model. Let the market determine what apps will win out in the bandwidth wars by people's spending. Let technology adapt - not be artificially shaped by a business plan.
Another Net Neutrality supporter in the making (Score:3, Insightful)
They pay networks a per-subscriber fee each month for the right to carry channels. But the cable companies have groused that they are paying for content that programmers are giving away for free on the Web.
Hey Comcast (and AT&T, Verizon, Cox, etc). Turn around is fair play. You guys have been trying to figure out how to squeeze a few extra bucks out of content providers. But now it looks like you are going to become their bitches. I'm ROTFLMAO.
Re:To Flamebait: (Score:2, Insightful)
You can go scream as much as you want in the public square, but if you cannot afford to get to the public square, then no one is going to hear you. Just because the US enjoys freedom of speech, does not mean that you have the right to force others to hear it. I am wondering if you are an American. Capitalism is American - socialism is not. Get it straight. I guess you want to ignore economics. In addition, I suppose you are part of the audience that supports a 3.75 trillion dollar budget on top of an 800 billion stimulus bill with 350 billion left in TARP to spend. You are part of the crowd that wants to force future generations of Americans into economic slavery.