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I hate to defend the MAFIAA, but they really should post a link to the original video in the summary. We should watch what they put out before biasing ourselves with a (probably very accurate) edited version of the video. I'm a believe that more information is better than less. We can't form good opinions of ignorance.

That being said, the original video is crap. You can watch it here.

http://www.viacom.com/news/Pages/anti-piracy.html

Many do not realize that ESPN is already the single most expensive channel on their cable or satellite line-up.

You pay a flat fee for expanded cable but your cable company buys the rights to these channels in bundles from the international megacorps that own whole groups of channels. For instance Viacom owns Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1, Spike, etc. Disney owns Disney, ABC (broadcast), ABC family, SOAPnet, etc. In most cases the cable company is given an all or nothing offer from the parent corp.

ESPN is already the most expensive channel to buy the rights to it and failure to carry ESPN would mean death to any cable or satellite system. Can you imagine a cable company that did not carry Nick or MTV? Can you imagine a cable company that did not carry ESPN? No one can.

You know how your cable bill increases each year? Most of that increase is due to the rates being raised by the networks to the cable company. If the gloves were to come off in these negotiations, who is the 800 lb gorilla, Charter or Disney? (Hint: Disney).

This is just one more example of large media companies putting the thumbs screws to smaller communication companies. Personally, I NEVER watch ESPN or visit their website but I pay them anyway. I pray for a legally enforced a la cart model for both cable/sat companies AND their subscribers. Most consumers are unaware of this therefore it is unlikely to change.

Data sources:


http://www.viacom.com/ourbrands/medianetworks/Pages/default.aspx

http://corporate.disney.go.com/corporate/overview.html

Another company to purposely avoid.

Better than just avoiding them...let them know how shitty this is.

http://www.viacom.com/contact/Pages/default.aspx

"Another company to purposely avoid."
Agreed, but your going to have to carry a big list in your pocket.
http://www.viacom.com/ourbrands/Pages/default.aspx

Here's a list. They've got their hands in a lot of different areas, it'll be tough to avoid them entirely.

Those ten companies aren't really competing, they are controlled by a small group of individuals. Most board members sit on the boards of several companies.

Would you care to prove that? Say, by naming the board members of each company then pointing out each board a person sits on. Start with say NBC, or more correctly General Electric which owns NBC. Then name what boards other than Walt Disney, which owns ABC, Steve Jobs sits on. Now about CBS, owned by Viacom, here's Viacom's board of directors.. To make is easier here's Disney's board of directors. Here's GE's Board of Directors.

I bet you won't find many directors that sit on more than one media company's board of directors, never mind "several".

About the source, I'll just say that when you start with a desired conclusion, it isn't hard to come up with data to support it. Reason isn't interested in finding out if free markets are they best, they take that on faith. They are out to prove what they already believe.

Exactly what I expected, you rag on who did the study not on what faults, if any, the study had despite my having asked you not too do so. Even opposed scientists critique research and studies not the views of the opposing scientists.

Comedy Central is Viacom, the people who bring you MTV, VH1, . They're not small. From the Viacom factsheet at http://www.viacom.com/view_brand.jhtml?inID=13&sec tionid=2

COMEDY CENTRAL, television's only all-comedy network, is a 24-hour, advertiser-supported, basic cable comedy service available to more than 87 million viewers domestically and is the #1 network in primetime among men 18-24, as well as a consistent top 10-rated network among all adults 18-49. A leader in delivering content to everywhere you need to be, COMEDY CENTRAL has broken beyond the traditional boundaries of the living room to offer cutting-edge originals both online, through the network's broadband channel MotherLoad, and on-the-go via arrangements with all the major wireless carriers. COMEDY CENTRAL is also involved in producing nationwide stand-up tours and boasts its own record label, which includes the platinum-selling album Dane Cook: Retaliation and the Grammy-nominated album Lewis Black: Luther Burbank Performing Arts Center Blues. In addition, the network operates one of the most successful home entertainment divisions in the industry, generating the top two best sellers in the TV-to-DVD market with the releases of seasons one and two of the cultural phenomenon, Chappelle's Show. Other hit series include South Park, RENO 911!, The Colbert Report, Drawn Together, Mind of Mencia and, of course, the Peabody and Emmy-winning The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. With such a diverse array of hits and methods to deliver the funny, only Comedy Central gives you more ways to laugh.

Does anyone really think GE is liberal? They must be if NBC is liberal because GE owns NBC. How about Disney? Disney owns ABC. And until January of this year Viacom owned CBS. Are all these companies liberal?

Hello,

Howard Stern actually called into an interview Michael Powell was doing with KGO radio in San Francisco last October. Interesting enough, one of Howard Stern's main complaints was the FCC was preventing Viacom from buying stations.

More information (MP3, transcript) can be found at Boing Boing.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

Honestly, there is a good bit of life in the Star Wars Galaxy. Take a notice of the Jedi and Sith Wars in the Knights of the Old Republic or the rumored Spielberg Star Wars Miniseries.

The "Rise of Vader" done in HDTV format would be impressive due to Speilberg getting his directing/producing chops in made for TV movies and a wealth of experiance.

With the animation studio ready and there is plenty of Star Wars lore to be explored. The difference between the Lucas Empire and Viacom is that LucasFilm/Arts/IML/Skywalker Sound/Lucasfilm Animation is all in house and focused on Star Wars while Star Trek is nothing more than a former Desilu Production under the Viacom Empire.

You can't say it's "on MTV" if it airs on Comedy Central, that's just boneheaded. Besides, as far as I can tell the two stations are siblings, not parent/child.

Everyone's been posting Jim Louderback's premonition of TiVo's death like it's the Gospel, and so I feel compelled to tell you exactly why Jim (a reporter who's been naysaying the TiVo for years) is wrong, and that punchy three-word headlines don't equate to a balanced market analysis.

The simple reason TiVo will live is because TV is intimate. People want ownership of their experience, and they want ownership of the resulting media. This is exactly the opposite of what cable and satellite companies want.

Of course TiVo as a standalone appliance will fade away as Decoder-PVRs become common, but they'll grow into three other markets: The referenced cable/satellite set-top boxes, DVD-R burning hybrids, and as an integrated component of television sets. Two of these hybrids are already on the market (DirecTiVo and two different DVDiVos) and the third, Toshiba and Phillips TVs with integrated free 'tivo lite' will be here by Christmas.

Saying that Cable-PVRs will squash TiVo is like saying that cable squashed the VCR, when in reality it made it much stronger. For all the benefits that a cable PVR has (that it seems cheaper because the cost is built into your monthly charge), there's no content provider in the world who would ship a device that would record to DVD, and no network that would deign to be included in a service that did.

Recording to a DVD isn't as easy as recording to a tape, and this is where an integrated 'export this show to that disc' solution really shines. If you're going to buy a DVD anyhow, the incremental cost of adding PVR functionality is a gimmie. And yes, within the next 4 years it will be an incremental cost.

TiVo is source independent. Cable, satellite, bunny ears or closed-circuit TV, TiVo is your box. As each content provider has their own proprietary system, if you change providers, you have to change systems, a shift as big as switching from Mac to Windows. Oh yeah, and your shows are gone, too. It's content lock-in, and it's one of the big reasons Dish Networks wants you to use their box, so leaving their fold is more painful, even when they suddenly drop CBS, MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon because of a contract dispute.

As long as content providers carry copyrighted material on their networds, they'll be hobbled by the demands of organizations like the MPAA and Viacom who will use all the leverage they have to inhibit the end user's ability to export to any portable digital media. Standalone PVRs and in-TV PVRs are farther outside their control, and as that control is flexed, PVR customers will flock to these options.

TiVo-in-TV, which Sony plans to market later this year, is another gimmie. It will provide a free 3-day window to the future, with an inexpensive up-sell to season pass functionality. The TV-TiVo-DVR box is probably about 24 months away.

Jim's main point is that TiVo will fail because the costs of enteing the market and delivering product are dropping rapidly, but this is likely why they'll succeed. TiVo will never be a Yahoo or other conglomorate, but they will become a platform standard with a steady revenue stream. When prices fall uniformly, users flock to the best solution, not the cheapest. Getting PVRs into peoples hands cheaply, on the backs of other products is exactly why the market will succeed, and when the market succeeds, TiVo will likely be at the top of it, based on product quality.

True, you won't have to buy a $299 box for your parents to bring them the light, but when you see the glow in their eyes, talking about the magic recording TV they bought at Best Buy last month, you can bet it'll have a little guy with two antennae and no arms stickered onto the remote.

Disney (Who also owns ESPN) has a stranglehold on all cable networks

It looks like Viacom and Dish have setteled after only 36 hours. See the Viacom Press release

Dish is standing by it's offer to knock $1 off bill for this month and is giving subscribers 1 free PPV movie.

But they already hit up DirecTV earlier this year.

As for DirecTV's vs. Dish, all I know are these few things:

1. My DirecTV HDVR2 has dual tuners which record at the same time. I have heard that Dish Network's DVR only has one tuner.
2. My neighbors, who are currently with Comcast, say they used to have Dish Network, and really hated the customer service.
3. I have always been very happy with DirecTV's service. The video quality is good, the cost is low, and the customer service has always been great. In fact, DirecTV ranks #1 in customer satisfaction among cable and satellite customers.

The industry is going to hate it.

Blockbuster is the industry.

From viacom's fact sheet:

"With programming that appeals to audiences in every demographic category across virtually all media, the company is a leader in the creation, promotion and distribution of entertainment, news, sports and music."

Viacom controls what we watch on tv and see outside our own little worlds. Blame them, they decided saturday morning could no longer exist.

And guess who owns the media?

I wonder...

And you're not even blaming the real conglomerates either, like Viacom, AOL-Time Warner, and the three other major groups whose names I don't recall, that hold 99% of all the record labels, television networks, magazines, newspapers, et al.

Top Three Guaranteed ways to earn unwarranted karma:

~#3~

"MTV (TRL) / VH1(Top20) contribute to the downward spiral the industry is in..."

The last time I checked, Viacom didn't own any record labels. For being such an integral part of the devolution of music, they aren't that attached to it.

~#2~

"... the music industry only offers pre-selected artists... making a mockery of the whole system..."

The record labels can use their marketing muscle to promote the hell out of an artist, but if music listeners (consumers) deem the music to be bad, no amount of marketing can keep said artist in the limelight for too long. Artists may artificially be placed at the top, but without sales & popularity, they don't stick around.

~#1~

"...the music out there today sucks... no wonder music sales aren't stellar anymore..."

Easy to say when you think myopically. Yet, Slashdotters like to mod this kind of trite comment up. Why? I have yet to figure this out. This sort of comment is simply a stab at the mainstream, spoken from someone high upon a perch of musical elitism.

Typical American cheering for the underdog... until the underdog gets too popular. (insert eye-roll here)

In due fairness, Comedy Central is jointly owned by Viacom (yeah, that other mega-entertainment company) and HBO (which is an "AOL/TW Property", of course).

It is all over comedy central too. I watch that channel more than any other (by far) and Impostor is being promoed to death on that channel as well.

I would have thought comedy central, sci-fi, and dimension (film distributor) was all owned by the same company, but that is not the case, so actual money did change in promoting this movie.

Sci-Fi is owned by USA Networks (which was just bought by Universal/Vivendi, the same company that owns mp3.com)

Comedy Central is owned by Viacom, says this site.

Dimension is owned by Miramax, which is owned by Disney -- says this site and this site.

I don't watch too much tv, but you would think that Disney would plug the movie on ABC and ESPN, which it also owns, especially since they are hurting for cash right now. Why not promote in house?

How is this related to Impostor? Only tangentially. But be aware of the Big Six media companies. Three are involved in this film. It's more than six, but the other companies are AOL/TimeWarner, Sony, NewsCorp, and Bertelsmann (of Napster fame).

Others would add GE to the list, because they own NBC.

In any case, the entirety of our information and entertainment world comes nearly exclusively through those 8 companies.

both are owned by viacom

along with about 10 others

viacom's website, with scrolling list of companies under it's umbrella

I was starting to believe in Viacom, the owner of Comedy Central and, thus, Battlebots. Though I had my doubts, at first, Viacom actually seemed to be doing non-evil things with Comedy Central.

But, maybe I should have seen this coming. After all, Viacom owns such atrocities as MTV. Even worse, in my mind, is that they also own Blockbuster, which is driving out mom-n-pop video stores through unfair practices with the movie studios (Blockbuster gets the physical videos for wicked-cheap in exchange for profit sharinng with the studios). So, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised.

I was starting to believe in Viacom, the owner of Comedy Central and, thus, Battlebots. Though I had my doubts, at first, Viacom actually seemed to be doing non-evil things with Comedy Central.

But, maybe I should have seen this coming. After all, Viacom owns such atrocities as MTV. Even worse, in my mind, is that they also own Blockbuster, which is driving out mom-n-pop video stores through unfair practices with the movie studios (Blockbuster gets the physical videos for wicked-cheap in exchange for profit sharinng with the studios). So, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised.

I was starting to believe in Viacom, the owner of Comedy Central and, thus, Battlebots. Though I had my doubts, at first, Viacom actually seemed to be doing non-evil things with Comedy Central.

But, maybe I should have seen this coming. After all, Viacom owns such atrocities as MTV. Even worse, in my mind, is that they also own Blockbuster, which is driving out mom-n-pop video stores through unfair practices with the movie studios (Blockbuster gets the physical videos for wicked-cheap in exchange for profit sharinng with the studios). So, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised.

that compares pretty well to viacom's list.

-Jon

I think radio right now is the best it's ever been. After my local radio station, 99 . 1 HFS , got bought by Viacom, they starting bleeping out the word "gun" in songs they play ("he brings a BLEEP to school"). If these "three companies" are bringing censorship to the world, how is radio "the best it's ever been [sic]"?

I'm no expert, but it sure seems like all the change has been good!

Disney does own ABC, but who owns NBC, CBS, UPN, etc..

UPN and CBS fall under the Viacom umbrella, which includes Paramount Pictures, Paramount Home Video, MTV, VH1, TNN, Showtime, The Movie Channel, Flix, Blockbuster, Nickelodeon, Simon & Schuster, United Cinemas International among other companies.

NBC is owned by General Electric, and other media connections include MSNBC, CNBC, Snap.com, Xoom.com.

Fox is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., whose holdings in the US include 20th Century Fox Studios, Fox Studios, FX, Fox Sports, Fox Family, Fox News, HarperCollins, LA Dodgers, New York Post, TV Guide, and others. News Corp also owns cable company Sky Broadcasting in the UK and many newspapers in the UK and Australia.

And most of us should know the connections that the WB network has considering the coverage the Warner Bros/AOL merger has received in the past few weeks.