The Problem With Cable Is Television 334
Saul Hansell writes in the NY Times about how various services offered by cable companies affect their spending and their revenue. As it turns out, a lot of the cost increases and investment needs are coming from television and video services rather than internet connectivity. The scramble for high-def and rising licensing fees for programming seem to be the biggest headaches for Comcast and Time Warner right now. Quoting:
"By all accounts, Web video is not currently having any effect on the businesses of the cable companies. Market share is moving among cable, satellite and telephone companies, but the overall number of people subscribing to some sort of pay TV service is rising. (The government's switch to digital over-the-air broadcasts is providing a small stimulus to cable companies.) However, if you remember, it took several years before music labels started to feel any pain from downloads. As the sour economy and the Web start putting more pressure on the cable companies, they may be forced to consider breaking up the big bundles of channels they now insist that consumers buy and instead offer individual channels or smaller groups of channels on an à la carte basis."
Not the programming (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought the problem was that the programming sucked.
Re:Not the programming (Score:5, Interesting)
The tactic employed is to bundle "high quality" channels with "low quality" channels to ensure that if you want to buy the thing you are interesting you also have to buy a lot of crap that you don't are about. Selling individual channels, or smaller bundles, would mean you could probably ensure that what channels you get are those you actually want to watch; but it would also mean that a lot of marginal shows and channels would go out of business.
Of course personally I believe that this is pretty much inevitable and that shows and programming enjoyed by a smaller minority will have to find other ways to reach their targeted audience (like say the Internet). And it probably wont stop there either. In fact I would go so far as to say that over the next two decades the traditional way (in so far as something as new as cable can be said to have a tradition) of watching TV will change in many different ways. Using myself as an example I don't watch TV. Not because there aren't shows I would be interested in, but because I simply can not tailor my day around a programming schedule (nor am I inclined to buy a cable package and a Tivo like device). For me the only option when it comes to watching shows is getting them online (and I am sad to say the options for doing that legal is severely limited in my Country); so for the most part I just have to do without until reality catches up with technology and gives me options suited to my lifestyle.
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According to this [about.com], "Cable television, formerly known as Community Antenna Television or CATV, was born in the mountains of Pennsylvania in 1948." You must be ancient!
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3 points.
I guess the problem is that majority of programming suck,
What, you're not familiar with Sturgeon's Law [wikipedia.org]?
Critic: "Hey, 90% of science fiction is crap!"
Sturgon: "90% of everything is crap. What's your point?"
Selling individual channels, or smaller bundles, would mean you could probably ensure that what channels you get are those you actually want to watch; but it would also mean that a lot of marginal shows and channels would go out of business.
Channel-by-channel billing would increase the overhead for each channel, thus lowering the profit margin. With a slimmer margin, a channel needs more viewers to stay afloat. As a consequence, a lot of channels that you WANT to watch would go out of business, and we'd be stuck with a bigger share of that 90% and less of that 10%.
To use a slightly wide
Re:Not the programming (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought the problem was that the programming sucked.
Americans are a varied bunch -- a lot of us like a lot of very different things. For most people, the Food Network is a total waste of a channel, but I wouldn't trade it away. My old roommate loved the Golf Channel, about which I felt the kind of apathy that he probably felt for FoodTV. There is no /.ers seem overwhelmingly in favor of ala-carte pricing, but I'm quite skeptical that this will improve the quality of programming. Instead, I think it will move towards the same "top-10" mentality where money is poured into the small number of large earners while the bottom half is ignored, or worse. I would love to pay $5/mo "directly" for FoodTV (directly, in the sense that Verizon would see that cash flow and value FoodTV appropriately), but I fear the result.
Plus, I'm generally not a fan of the kind of balkinization that I feel this will produce -- people that view only the things they already know they like are unlikely to branch out and view something different. There's quite a bit of interesting wheat (in there with the chaff, of course) flipping through that large middle block of digital channels.
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I think you are right, people do have different preferences for cable programming.
Myself, for example, only watch Discovery, History, Sci-fi, and Comedy Central. My SO likes to watch the other reality tv channels. So what ends up happening is we pay verizon $130/month for premium programming, even though she only watches 20 of the 800 channels. In order to get those 20 though, we have to buy a whole block of channels we don't need.
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> Food Network, Golf Channel
IMO these sorts of niche channels will be the first to go under an internet video regime.
They only have a couple hours a day of original programming, the rest of the time is endless reruns and infomercials. It should be very easy to package together advertising-supported cooking or golf shows on the internet in a much higher quality format than cable.
The only technical advantage Cable has here is the convenience of dialing up channel 123 and watching some golf. As soon as web
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IMO these sorts of niche channels will be the first to go under an internet video regime.
Yes, no, maybe.
First question. If I were to go to the "internet" for the Food Channel or GolfTV, who would I pay to watch these "channels"?
In my area the internet channel would come from a) Verizon -- a television, internet, and phone provider or b) Cox Communications -- a television, internet, and phone provider. I cannot get these niche channels over the air. I could get them via satellite. So the only loser or outlier here are the satellite providers.
Second question. Why in the world do people "watc
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I dunno. I would like to suggest a "radical" idea.
Channels like "Food" and "Golf" should take cable out of
the equation. Since they already air commercials, they
should put themselves on the satellites unecrypted so
that anyone who wants to can tune in.
They could even allow cable services to rebroadcast the
signal so long as it's unmodified.
Unless it's HBO, the only thing I should be paying my
cable company for is the cost of repeating signal.
There should be none of this nonsense where cable
providers are forced
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learn the meaning of the term socialistic before using it ever again.
bundled programming is not socialistic, it has nothing to do with socialism.
Re:Not the programming (Score:4, Insightful)
... and roads and bridges and the police and firefighters and ...
I have news: its called "society". The only way for you to hoard 100% of your loot and not to ever pay anything for the privilege of participating is to ... stop participating. I hear the hermit cabins up in the woods somewhere in Montana are still going strong. Just make sure that you do not infringe on "personal space" of some other lunatic or he will accuse you of being a "Commie", and he probably has a working (unlike his brain) shotgun.
Oh, that's right, but you wanna participate, reap all the benefits of a society without paying a penny for it .... I get it, Mr. Free Loader.
Yes, yes, like all those who went under in the late 1940s through late 1960s when top tax rates were 90%, no? Oh, wait, was that not the most prosperous time in American history ever?
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These are all examples of loss of control over
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That is because US constitution is a general outline of government. No constitution of any country is capable of dealing with the actual details of governance. The AIG (rightly or wrongly) was given money because elected representatives attempted to rescue a nation-wide economy (nation-wide welfare being part of their exp
Re:Not the programming (Score:5, Interesting)
Quite right. It is no coincidence that most of them have fantasies of societal collapse followed by a "Mad Max"-type future where "real men" and their shotguns get to rule the day.
They never seem to get it that a "working" example of a "libertarian society" is ... Somalia. No functional central government to rain on the "real men's" parade there at all. Everyone there is free to conduct "free enterprise" any way they see fit. Curiously however, libertarian immigration to the Paradise in Mogadishu remains rather low.... perhaps not enough pamphlets at the weekly meetings at the temple of the Goddess Alyssa Zhinovievena?
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C'mon, you call it a libertarian example, and then completely contradict that statement in the next sentence by essentially saying it's anarchy instead. No functional government (i.e. no enforcement of property rights or civil rights) means a place is as just as unlike libertarian utopia as the Soviet Union was.
The libertarian fantasy is not anarchy. It's not Mad Max. It's 1
Re:Not the programming (Score:5, Insightful)
And of course you get to be the one making the decision as to what is "benefiting everybody", naturally, no? Like for example the fact that in many places a navy or an army does dick all because the terrain prevents any feasible invasions and at the same time a pandemic of heart-disease causing virus can kill far more then any foreign navy could manage. Or the fact that a society in which medical care costs are under control and removed from consideration of individual businessmen is actually more friendly to small enterprise, which then benefits "everyone". One could go on.
But all of this is besides the point that taxation in a democratic society is by definition legitimate. What the taxes are being spent on is a matter of debate. However one thing is clear: a society which does not take care of its weakest members is pretty much pointless. Because it is the whole point of society that in it individuals can count for help beyond their own means. Otherwise we all might as well head for hermit cabins and shoot each other on sight for "trespassing" (which by the way is many a "libertarian" fantasy).
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Because he did not. He lives in California, long ways from Canadian medical care of his old country, and is rich enough to pay all expenses out of his pocket. And like many celebrities, he gets to be "Canadian" only for the purpose of lunatic rants against us. Otherwise he is just another denizen of Hollywood. His cancer was diagnosed and treated where he lives: the USA. Canadian medica
Re:Not the programming (Score:5, Insightful)
No, its a fee that you pay for the privilege of partaking in society. Bob's new heart will enable him to go and make contributions which then might (or might not) affect you, but will affect someone else, who in turn might affect you etc. The alternative is dog-eat-dog jungle where all (but the richest assholes) who get sick die destitute. Sort of like America today...
Yes the nasty gubmint is giving away houses and cars to every illegal Mexican!
And don't forget all them illegal-alien-friendly channels on basic cable! Oh, wait, its actually a private enterprise that is making you pay for all them cable channels! Paragons of "free market", the agents of the "invisible hand"! Oh dear!
Re:Not the programming (Score:5, Interesting)
Cable set to the side. Forcing me to pay taxes and then using those taxes to benefit someone else is theft. Theft from me and my family. You think taxes are good, then defend taxes, don't dispute that they are theft though. If I stuck a gun in your face and demanded 20% of your money it would be armed robbery. When the government does it, it is called taxation. And I personally could not care any less than I do now, (zero), if Billy-Joe Bob gets anew heart or not. He could die before I walked across the road and pissed on him if that was all he needed. I also don't care if your mewling brats get an education or if your parents have to eat roadkill. Taking my money to benefit you and yours is fucking wrong,immoral and exactly what the founders of the USA were dead set against.
Then pack the fuck up and leave. Nobody is stopping you.
The United Arab Emirates have a 0% tax rate; perhaps you should consider immigrating there.
Re:Not the programming (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah! Fkin thieves! My landlord tried the same thing! He had the balls to come up to my door, in my apartment, and demand that I pay him (get this) "rent", which is newspeak for legally-sanctioned thievery! He then evicted me, which is completely 100% the same as someone stealing my own house at gun-point.
Uh, and, since I don't have anywhere to live, my car has been "repossessed", and my bank accounts have been "frozen", I kinda wish there was some way that I could get some support, y'know? I tried begging at my favourite businesses, but they didn't like me as much as they did, for some reason. If only there was a way to get a little bit of money, so I could start earning, and being an asshole again...
Oh well, a man can dream.
Re:Not the programming (Score:5, Informative)
Then pack the fuck up and leave. Nobody is stopping you.
The United Arab Emirates have a 0% tax rate; perhaps you should consider immigrating there.
Amen to that. The simple fact you consider taxation robbery, but put up with it every year, tends to discredit your claims.
Taking my money to benefit you and yours is fucking wrong,immoral and exactly what the founders of the USA were dead set against.
So completely wrong. "No taxation without representation" is not an alternate phrasing of "no taxation". Contrary to common thought, the famous example of the Boston Tea Party was in response to the British government reducing taxes on tea imports. The colonial smugglers who had been profiting from the higher cost of legitimate tea imports wanted to maintain the status quo; i.e. keep taxes high. I believe Benjamin Franklin was one of the people to publicly suggest the course of action opposed by the smugglers.
If there's going to be a long argument about what the founder's wanted, make sure you include the colonial / state constitutions wherever you cite the US constitution. If one thing's clear, it's that the limits on the federal government were largely to stop it from interfering with the states' powers over their citizens, which of course included taxes.
Re:Not the programming (Score:5, Informative)
This bit on the Boston Tea Party simply isn't true. While the British did reduce taxes on the East India Trading Co. in Britain to help reduce losses due to the smuggling of tax-free tea from the Dutch, the Tea Party was actually in response to multiple factors including the Townshend Acts which levied NEW taxes on the colonies (including one on tea) by the British Empire.
The Boston Tea Party had little to do with smugglers and more to do with a tax imposed on the colonies by an empire in which they had no representation and the fact that the taxes were used to pay local officials (which made colonials question their loyalty b/c they were paid in part by the crown) and the monopoly on tea held by the East India Trading Co.
For further evidence, there were protests over the Stamp Act and other similar laws imposed on the colonials by the empire. To imply that the Tea Party was a response by smugglers over losing profits instead of the culmination of years of anger by protesters over taxation rights is a gross misrepresentation of history. I suppose next you'll blame cause of the American war for independence on the opium trade.
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Well, strictly from the point of view of economics, completely empathy free, Bob's new
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Nice demonstration of how to fail to persuade your readers. Since you failed to give me an alternative definition of "socialism", I have no choice but to stick with mine. I work my ass off - either people get my money in the form of various direct-handouts - $25,000 in just this past year alone. ($15,000 if you exclude legitimate taxes like defense or roads.)
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>>>doesn't make enough money to treat it (often mutually reinforcing conditions), she should languish in poor health and/or die.
Everybody dies. If Bob did manage to get a new heart at age 85, he'll probably be dead at age 90 anyway from something else.* I know you probably think that's a cold-hearted observation, but it's simply a fact of life. Mother nature is a bitch and eventually kills all of us. Spending money trying to make citizens live forever is an impossible goal. I see no point in g
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which by my calculation would drop my bill from $65 a month to about $20 a month - an obvious boon for the average consumer.
(1) How do you know what your preferred channels will cost. Maybe they will be $10 each. No one has the slightest idea, including the cable companies, of how ala-carte pricing will come out in the end -- it will make for a hell of an interesting negotiation-time between the networks and the providers though!
(2) 40 channels? Seriously? The lowest tier plan here is like 250, proving only that "cost per channel" is a ridiculous metric that illuminates virtually nothing. The value of some channels (the ones wit
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Dish Network has the Family Pack for $19.99. That gets you 55 channels. Sure most are family orientated but you also get channels like:
DO IT YOURSELF
FOX NEWS CHANNEL
Outdoor Channel
RFDTV
THE SCIENCE CHANNEL
Or The Welcome Pack for $9.99 (23 channels)
Comedy Central
Home & Garden
Oxygen
AMC
TBS
MTV2
Boomerang
Discovery Kids
Learning Channel
MSNBC
Dish Network is moving to the small packages and it sells pretty good.
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>>>How do you know what your preferred channels will cost.
Because it's publicly available information that is published in the trade journals. My preferred channels charge:
50 cents Sci-Fi ...per subscribed home. Even if we assume an outrageous markup by Comcast to $2 per channel plus $10 service fee, that $16 pricetag is still a LOT better bargain that the 65 frakking dollars they currently charge for ~50 channels I don't watch. A La Carte benefits the customer and that's
60 cents USA
89 cents TNT
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In this time of recession, we need ways for people to cut costs, not socialistic anti-choice solutions that force people to buy junk they don't want.
For pay TV, you have at least to options, wherever you are in the country. (Cable or Satellite.) Possibly more, depending on what state you're in.
NONE OF THEM show a'la carte programming, because by their calculations they simply wouldn't stay in business doing so.
Imposing per-channel pricing on pay-TV providers is many things, but "capitalistic" it ain't.
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A choose-your-channels model would rock. Give me Nickelodeon (for our 5 year old girl) and The Weather Channel and you can keep the rest.
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The programming doesn't suck.
The geek simply projects his own tastes on the entire audience.
Looking Up-Market?
Watch for The Magnificent Seven and To Catch A Thief in rotation on MGM-HD.
An elegantly mounted spaghetti western? It doesn't get any better than Henry Fonda in Once Upon A Time In The West on HDNet Movies.
Forensic investigation?
True-Crime done right? Nat Geo and Discovery I.D., A&E's Criminal Investigation. aka The CIN channel.
Re:Not the programming (Score:4, Funny)
I think those "Dual Action Cleanse" guys have some unresolved psychological issues.
Brett
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I'm partial to the nymphomercials myself.
Gotta love spice.
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Well then, you'll be "Sayin' WOW Every Time!"
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They make great video remixes from them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWRyj5cHIQA [youtube.com]
-Check out Steve Porter's version ;D
standalone cable internet, please (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to pay for basic cable, and then pay an internet fee on top of that, even though I never watch TV.
If internet is less expensive to deliver than TV, why oh why won't the cable companies just let me buy what I want and need, without paying for the "basic tier" of trash?
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I once had Time Warner stand-alone cable. Don't they offer it any more, or do you have a different provider?
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True, but there may be a technical element to this. As in: I don't subscribe to any TV service, but I still get all the channels of "Basic Plus" cable. Try plugging your cable into the back of a TV sometime and see what you get. My understanding is that they have to put filters on your line to block the TV once they turn the line live with Internet service, and a lot of installers can't be bothered.
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Because they're largely an unregulated monopoly. The reason why they require you to pay for the basic tier is so that they can make more money. There may also be a bit of money from cable TV being used to subsidize the cable internet, but it's mostly a matter of profit.
The DSL here is a bit the same way, except that you get a $5 a month discount for having a phone line on top of the internet connection. That's a savings of ~$8.50 a month over having both. I'm guessing it has something to do with the way tha
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Because they're largely an unregulated monopoly.
Thats immediately a mod up here on slashdot, but this is simply not the truth.
Television in the US typically has at least 2 or more means of acquiring content. Cable (Cox, Verizon, and ComCast come to mind). In areas where these services are not available there is usually satellite or over the air. Probably less than 1% of the population has fewer than 2 of these options. This is NOT a monopoly.
Same goes with telephones. Why don't people complain that their phone service costs as much or more than inte
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>>>I have to pay for basic cable, and then pay an internet fee on top of that, even though I never watch TV.
No you don't. You could get DSL like I have. Only $15 a month.
Re:standalone cable internet, please (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, wait...
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If you live within the range of CATV internet, surely you live within range of a DSL hookup.
If not, then I suggest you call all 535 representatives and start lobbying for a bill to make DSL mandatory for any customer who requests it (just like phone service is now).
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If internet is less expensive to deliver than TV, why oh why won't the cable companies just let me buy what I want and need, without paying for the "basic tier" of trash?
Because they need to plug you into said basic cable system anyway. They don't have the hardware to filter out their "basic" channels from any box with a live cable feed, so they just make it part of the basic connection.
Time Warner, at least, has a "basic" package which is only the free-to-TW channels: the ones they get from the over-the-air broadcasters and things like C-SPAN which are intentionally free to all.
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Re:standalone cable internet, please (Score:5, Informative)
Where are the insightful and informative mods?!?
You must be new here... there are no insightful and informative moderators on /.
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That's exactly what I do. I have 10Mb down and 2Mb up FIOS in NJ and I pay $50 because I don't watch their TV. I use an antenna for what I can get and everything else is watched online.
Sure, the Verizon guy knocks on the door every week or so asking if we want a package deal, but the boiling oil is becoming more effective.
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Wow!
Well, it's cheaper to bring multiple services into your home per service obviously than just one.
Also, have you ever heard of volume or bundle discounts? Of course it's cheaper for people who get both services.
You aren't a rocket scientist are you?
Smaller Bundles (Score:2)
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Off you go, then [apple.com]. Put some money where your mouth is.
Re:Smaller Bundles (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Smaller Bundles (Score:4, Interesting)
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Personally I would be happy to pay Discovery money to be able to download or stream various programs they provide through the internet.
Save your money, get almost everything you want right here - http://www.getmiro.com/ [getmiro.com] - now available for more than just Mac.
I swear by it - I'm watching the Hubblecast HD right now (episode 27, in fact).
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If I'm paying then I don't want to see commercials. I don't want to pay for content I'll never view either. So no bundles, I just want to pick the channels I want. The channels must be cheap as in $(basic_bundle_cost/basic_bundle_channel_count).
So far no one is providing a service like this. iTunes has two of the three requirements, but it is not cheap. I can't afford $1.99 for a single TV show.
Re:Smaller Bundles (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't bother. They're turning to dumbed down dreck like everything else.
Re:Smaller Bundles (Score:4, Interesting)
Sour economy? (Score:3, Insightful)
The "sour economy" is not putting any pressure on cable companies. None. Most people today consider TV as essential as a cell phone or natural gas. And given the escapism angle, I'd guess most Americans would pay the cable bill with their last $50.
Re:Sour economy? (Score:4, Informative)
Bingo -- TV is for playing Wii and DVDs (Score:3, Interesting)
I haven't watched TV in ages, not since living in an apartment building that had basic cable service for everyone as an amenity. And even then I seldom found the time to watch aside from when the San Jose Sharks were playing (hockey for those scratching their heads). Now, the "TV" as in "the display device" is hooked up to the Wii and the DVD player, but "TV" as in "programming some big media company beams to my tuner" is unknown in this house. Why bother? I have plenty else to keep me entertained.
Che
Re:Sour economy? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would NOT pay the $50 bill. I've pulled the plug, and started using Online + Netflix to cut my monthly bill by some $100. Got rid of the Dish DVR, the dual-tv plan. Now we (in my household) all use laptops and two workstations with big screens. We still have one of the old NTSC TVs for playing video games.
Online TV Rocks!
On-demand TV has an interesting quality - when you discover a show you like, you can immediately jump to see past episodes you missed. Case in point: Heroes. I just discovered this excellent fantasy show, but jumping in "mid-stream" leaves lots to be desired. I'm able to watch past episodes all the way back to season 1, in order, on my schedule.
There is no combination of Cable/Satellite/DVR that will give you this.
The result is that I suddenly have a desire to explore, try new shows for a few minutes, see if I like it. Sure, the chances of me liking some new show are relatively small, but the payoff is so high!
It's a whole new way of doing TV made possible by a decent quality 3 Mb Internet connection, Hulu, Netflix, and Cast TV [casttv.com]
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If they broke up the channels a la carte (Score:5, Interesting)
What I want:
HBO
History Channel
MSNBC
CNN
CBC
BBC
Comedy Central
Showtime
Science Channel
PBS
Animal Planet (for my daughter)
Cartoon Network (for my daughter)
VH1 (for the wife)
That's it. I don't watch and don't care for the rest of it, because it's mindless brain drool, and a lot of what is on the stations I listed is also mindless brain drool, just less of it than elsewhere (like Oxygen, MTV, SPIKE, ABC/CBS/NBC, etc.). That's 13 channels I would watch, and watch at least once a week. I would pay a dollar a month for each. That would give them $13 a month they're not getting now. I would not pay more than $1 month, because frankly, TV is a big time suck and mind poison. but that's what I would do, and I am certain there are many people who agree with me.
I don't want the Food Channel. I don't want ESPN. I don't want "Desperate Housewives" or "American Idol". It's crap. I don't want it in my house.
But I am willing to pay for the good stuff, if I can be certain I will get GOOD STUFF.
RS
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Your $13 a month estimate is unrealistic. Cable companies that do provide a la carte charge a $10 flat fee, plus $1 per channel, so you'd be paying $23 a month.
By an interesting coincidence, that's how much Dish Satellite's cheapest service costs ($20). Maybe you should sign-on with them?
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In other words, he's a pissy twat who wants to pay an unrealistically low amount (totally ignoring infrastructure costs, etc.) rather than pay the already-stupidly-cheap rate.
Awesome.
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HBO costs money, it's probably about $12 a month, it's high because it doesn't have many ads. The same with Showtime.
It's unfortunate that each of the other channels require payment though, it's not as if they don't stuff the channel with ads, they are bad ads and they are repeated to the max.
You should be able to get PBS over the air.
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Other channels have ads, but because the ads don't generate as much revenue as on over-the-air channels (with less eyeballs watching), they charge a franchise fee so they can afford to stay in business.
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Normally, that's true, but I live in Canada...
RS
Re:If they broke up the channels a la carte (Score:5, Insightful)
...may be forced to consider breaking up the big bundles of channels they now insist that consumers buy and instead offer individual channels or smaller groups of channels on an à la carte basis
But I am willing to pay for the good stuff, if I can be certain I will get GOOD STUFF.
That's just the thing. You won't get good stuff for your $1/month. For me, à la carte channels aren't unbundled enough. Try unbundling to the show level. Oh wait. We have that. It's called the Internet, and bittorrent.
This is where their entire distribution model falls down. They have a channel called the SciFi channel (oops, SyFy, my bad^W wtfstupidmarketing) that is used to cablecast... horror movies and fantasy movies. There's precious little SciFi on SyFy. So if they were offering à la carte channels, SyFy might make my list, but in fact it wouldn't because there's too little content on it that is the kind I want. I have no interest in an endless stream of man-in-a-rubber-suit horror movies.
USA network used to broadcast the Highlander series. I liked it, despite their minor obsession with the correct "formula" for characters leading them to introducing their own Wesley Crusher-esque guaranteed-to-accrue-far-more-power-than-he-ever-deserves character. But the Highlander series is long gone and does USA have anything else I want to watch? I don't know. Their odds are so low that I haven't bothered to find out. So scratch them off the list.
And on and on.
You see where this is going. I want to treat TV exactly the way I treat books. I want 100% of the offering free from the library, and I'll buy the individual works that I like well enough to read(watch) again, but I'm paying no more than $5 for it (for the decrease in entertainment hours vs a $7 paperback), and I want 98% of that money to go to the people directly involved in creating the entertainment ('cause that's where publishers are going to end up one day too). The studios are a giant parasitic growth on the back of the creative types capable of assembling a movie and I'm not interesting in feeding a parasite.
I see the Internet as the death of television as we know it. We'll see more episodic content where the producers don't proudly trumpet the fact that they have no plan at all for the story arc and denigrate their predecessors who did (I'm looking at you Battlestar Galactica), because the networks that screwed with shows in a vain effort to please sponsors and audiences simultaneously will no longer exist. Maybe we can get a spiritual successor to Babylon 5 that doesn't get strangely squashed and stretched by the vagaries of networks, canceling and optioning on a whim.
In short, the Network Age is passing and the Studio Age is upon us. The studio controlled by the creative types will create our entertainment and the distributors that have a stranglehold on the industry will evaporate, supplanted by a vastly more efficient distribution system.
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The only problem I see is this:
If the Networks can't make money, then how do the studios? You can only profit on scarcity. Ubiquity makes things free. Networks charge advertisers because of the scarcity of the viewer who is tuned in to that network. They can charge for their eyeballs. If the Studio goes directly to the web, how do you gate that any better than a network would?
TV is in a similar place Music was in the later 90s - 2000 with the dawn of Napster. video files
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The short answer is the $3 million pricetag is doomed.
The long answer is that a substantial fraction of the $3 million pricetag gets eaten by the parasitic network. Another chunk of it goes for luxuries. The new distribution model will force the new studios to cut out the fat. The days of the bitchy star with three personal assistants who get their names in the credits are numbered. The star who commands a hundred million dollars is going to vanish. Stars will get paid about what the writer and dire
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Perhaps famous actors shouldn't be paid tens of thousands of dollars per episode. Why should they be getting the equivelant to my yearly income to make a half-hour show (sorry, 20 minutes and advertising).
And don't even get me started on movie stars or sports in general.
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PS. The cable companies pay HBO more than $1 per subscriber. You'll have to up your offer if you want anyone to take you seriously.
PPS. (Really should have reread my original before posting, oh well), American Idol and Desperate Housewives are both available for free OTA.
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You can get the vinyl anywhere - gemm.com is a classic place to find it.
their canonical works (the first 4) are available on CD from Amazon and just about anywhere, really.
The script? You'll have to go to abebooks.com and find an ancient copy of "The Big Book of Plays".
It's worth it though...
RS
DTV and cable (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think there should be a "drop cable - switch to OTA" campaign.
- Same or better crisp clear picture!
- Same amount of quality programming! *
- Unbeatable price of $0.00!
(* None)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
My upgrade to over-the-air DTV has spoiled me. I watch it on a standard analog CRT, which is nothing special, but then when I go over to my brother's house I can't help noticing how "blurry" his cable television looks. DTV costs me nothing whereas he's paying $60/month for a blurred image.
The one drawback of over-the-air is the finicky reception, which means sometimes you want to watch channel 6, but it isn't there. Oh well.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Jesus, try HDTV. They have a full 22Mbps bandwidth over broadcast for a super sexy HD picture (that they can fill to the max) but over cable it's much less (don't know where to look it up).
So that means that they have to compress the hell out of HD Cable... if you ever get a chance to watch a sports game over antenna vs. cable, you'll notice a huge difference.
To be fair, I don't know how they handle the HD OTA channels over cable (234 is Fox DTV in my area) - it might be the original compression, but I doub
2 words - Rabbit Ears (Score:3, Funny)
Why should I pay cable companies for a badly compressed copy when I can get it over the air with that $40 antenna I bought 15 years ago?
It't not like there's all that much worth watching on TV anyway - my dogs watch more TV in a day than I do in a month.
The grouping is from the content providers (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a fan of cable companies. Not in any way.
But the problem with the groupings right now is that the content providers force certain groupings. For example, if you want to offer ESPN and ESPN2 (what cable company could afford not to), then Disney says "okay, if you want to offer ESPN and ESPN2, that'll $2.40 per month per subscriber". Which is $2.40 which goes straight to your cable bill. But then they say "well, but we have this new channel, ESPNU (or Classic or Disney Kids 5 or whatever), if you offer that channel IN THE SAME PACKAGE AS ESPN, we'll give you ESPN+ESPN2+ESPNU for only $1.40 per month per subscriber".
So each year, the providers will basically force another channel into their bundle this way. So each year, each of these content providers is raising the amount of money they get from each subscriber. And the cable companies have to offer big bundles in order to meet the requirements from the content providers.
Furthermore, it gives all the advantages to the big companies who already have lots of channels in your package. They can launch a new channel easily while the small guys are locked out since the bandwidth is already being chewed up by the big guys' new channels.
The internet is definitely the disruptive technology that will stop this. That is, if the cable companies and content providers don't find a way to prevent you from streaming video directly.
There's no technological reason why this bundling is necessary. It's just because the companies (cable and content providers) have found it to their advantage so far. I feel it would strongly benefit the customers to enforce an end to this bundling.
Re:The grouping is from the content providers (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, of course. And you got one of the more important points, i.e. forcing new channels into more homes, so the content providers can seel teh ads for more. But I think you missed one of the key points - that by including at least one thing in each package that *someone* wants, the cable companies get paid for ALL the content, which they can then use to pay off all the providers. That's why package include, say "Lifetime Movie Network", "Speed" and "Sprout" all in one. People who are seriously interested in getting the Speed channel are not the target demo for LMN! But you can sell the entire package for a high cost to everyone who wants Speed, everyone who wants LMN, and everyone who wants Sprout, for far more than you could sell the individual channels al la Carte. The providers get the same money from the cable providers, and the cable companies get more money from subscribers, 3. PROFIT
Brett
There's no technological reason... (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no technical reason for lots of things. That's why it is called marketing, in this case, and not technology.
But if it weren't for marketing, a lot of our technological toys would not be economically feasible. I don't know the numbers but I suspect this is true for programming too.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup. Specifically, ABC won't let the cable company provide you with ABC via cable, unless they stick the extremely expensive ESPN in the cheapest tier of channels above basic cable. Once all the other corporate behemoths pull the same demands, you end up with today's 50+ channels at $50+.
If you remember, it took several years ... (Score:5, Funny)
However, if you remember, it took several years before music labels realised they had the perfect scapegoat on which to blame a failing business model that relied too heavily on back catalogue material as a prime revenue stream, and an extremely low level of quality regarding contemporary content.
Fixed that for ya!
television channels are so last century (Score:5, Interesting)
If the telecoms want to make real money out of IPTV they need to stop subscribing to rights to channels and instead buy up their own material and repackage it for their own subscribers, else all they are doing is relaying terrestrial TV to an audience that can already get on
If may come as a surprise to the telecoms that IPTV is a bandwidth hog, but not the rest of us. What they need to do is provide a high definition broadcast grid for live video, the rest to be provided in a peering arraignment to the local ISP switching center. The consumer then selects from a list of older tv progs and movies and they are delivered overnight to a DVR [pvrweb.com] or set-top-box.
You pay for what you watch when you watch. Latest movie, ok top dollar, old movie, $1:00 a time. You also pay for online game subscriptions, video telephone, research and reference like the Wolfram|Alpha [wolframalpha.com] project.
Of course even 'passive viewing' is old century for the current wired generation, they're more into making and being in their own personal movie [youtube.com]
See also:
Regular columnist Bill Thompson wants it all. And he wants it now. [bbc.co.uk]
WMC gets the final nail in its coffin (Score:2, Insightful)
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Cable TV vs Internet (Score:2, Interesting)
No free cable yet? (Score:2)
Wait, does that mean the eXtenze hasn't paid for free cable delivery to all homes in the US yet?
BTW, how can such an obvious, mind-numbing scam be allowed on TV? Oh, wait, we do broadcast political speeches, too.
I'm not convinced ... (Score:2)
... that Cable is in trouble in any way, or at least not yet, and please, let's limit the conjecture to a decade, which is the entire railroad age in tech terms.
Anyone remember 1994? Remember how you felt about Record Companies in 1994? Try to be honest, folks ... I know there's a 50/50 you hate them this morning, but let's keep in mind that this was the year a CD burner for your computer cost $2,000, down from last year's $10K.
I'm going to suggest you thought they were the guys who brought you CDs from gre
analog cable is big block to à la carte basi (Score:2)
analog cable is big block to à la carte basis and still even now most areas are still have 30-70 analog channels.
so maybe when analog is cut down to just Locals + PSA and maybe stuff like the weather channels. Then we may see la carte. Sat tv can do it now if they want to.
The current business model cannot/won't hold up (Score:5, Interesting)
reverse that (Score:4, Insightful)
No "groups"!!! (Score:2)
Not the issue - not at all (Score:4, Interesting)
Welcome, once again, to another episode of cable operators complaining about internet delivery and content bundles. All together now - (sorry, I'm very snarky today) - cry me a river.
The real issue is that all of the current non-OTA TV delivery systems have bitten off much more than they can chew.
So far as I know, NO ONE in the USA is offering HD content as advertised:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Lite [wikipedia.org]
http://www.highdefforum.com/directv-forum/29158-hd-lite-directv-picture-quality.html [highdefforum.com]
http://www.satelliteguys.us/dish-network-forum/51978-facts-about-hd-lite-e.html [satelliteguys.us]
http://forums.joeuser.com/309174 [joeuser.com]
http://www.tvnewsday.com/articles/2009/04/22/daily.4/ [tvnewsday.com]
(I recognize that some of the above links seem to target satellite TV, but if you read through two things become apparent: users are equally slamming cable, and neither satellite nor cable has their arms around a solution.)
Like it or not, the #1 driver for a cable subscription is TV - and they already cannot deliver on that.
I'm not a big sports fan (but so what if I am or not?), but I can reliably report this: during a hockey and a basketball game, I DVR'd OTA and my so-called high-def service of same channels. Hockey results: OTA clear, puck actually disappeared with paid service. Round-ball results: OTA clear, paid service unable to distinguish if foot over line or ref was blind during slo-mo playback.
And here's some technical anecdotes:
1. Your channel package choice or size of bundle won't impact anything, it's backbone limited.
2. When I upgraded to "HD" satellite, my house's RG-58 didn't cut it due to bandwidth limits on the RG-58. The '58 was ok for the short wall-to-TV pigtails, not otherwise.
3. They can fiber this and cable that and MPEG-4 the other, but no one is supporting the infrastructure to get the job done.
And a real big issue - once you've made the grade to premium cable or premium satellite, and you've replaced your TV - name your reasons, they're all valid: a) I want a new one, b) new TV standards and my set is getting old anyway, c) time to branch out and support my computer and Hulu, HTPC, et al, in the living room - you'll replace that TV with an HDTV and you'll go with the HD package from your for-pay provider (cable or satellite). The HDTV is an investment-grade purchase, just like your PC (any flavor), and the HD programming is too small an incremental price increase to pass up.
Here's the invective we can now look forward to: if you're complaining about your TV quality, you'll be told the bandwidth suckers using torrents are to blame. If you're complaining about your internet service, you'll be told that the primary service is directed at TV quality. Either way, do not expect that the future holds a world where you're really going to get what you think you're paying for.
Mark my words.
(PS - No apologies to those not interested in HDTV, or TV - you're not the big market to these companies, and that's all I'm ragging on - I'm not dis'ing anyone's lifestyle or entertainment choices. HTH.)
Why do you think they're backing new laws? (Score:2)
Big problem with ala carte cable (Score:3, Insightful)
The big problem with allowing individual channel selection is that there are plenty of channels out there that exist because of the way channels have beein funded, selected and supported.
So you want a channel dedicated to science fiction shows, movies, etc. You need to sell it to the cable companies and if a significant number agree to carry it - and pay for it - your job is done. You can get financing based on that and it really doesn't matter what the individual customers think. Some of them will watch and it is a ratings game from there on.
Switch to an ala carte model and this changes quite a bit. First off, any channel that exists today will be immediately taken down unless you have customers signing up for it. Probably within the first couple of months. This isn't like ratings where passive viewing is conidered "viewing" and done by sampling. This will be if you don't opt-in for the channel you don't support it. And without people paying for SciFi channel specifically and intentionally, it and many others will just disappear.
Sounds fair, doesn't it. What about BET? Do you really believe there are enough viewers of the Black Entertainment Network channel to keep it afloat in an ala carte environment? What about the Golf Channel? How about the Food Network? Maybe these cable channels should never have existed in the first place because they don't have a dedicated viewer base. But you can assume that it would not be in Viacom's interest to continue BET when there isn't the revenue to support it - no matter how much Jesse Jackson threatens. SciFi channel is pretty much dead meat as well. Eternal Word TV Network (EWTN) is gone. Same with just about any other channel with a narrow demographic.
Similarly, the rules of the game for starting a new channel will be completely different. Sure, a large media powerhouse might be able to subsidize a new offering for a while to see if it takes off. But nobody else will be able to, because it will take lots of money and a very uncertain future to do it. Lots of risk. Just the sort of thing VC money has been running away from lately.
Absolutely, ala carte channel selection is a solution, but we need to understand what the problem is first. It doesn't solve any of the current problems and just creates a bunch more. It might reduce the average consumer cable bill - in fact it probably will. But it will certainly decrease the number of channels available and make it almost impossible to bring a new (really new) offering to cable networks.
The one possibility would be that this wouldn't affect DirecTV and Dish Network - they could then introduce new channels based on selling it only to their management.
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The value in these channel is not for you, it's for the advertisers.
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You do know that MTV/CNN/ESPN are generating the money that pays for many of the lesser-watched channels that you probably enjoy, right...?