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SBC Considering Buying DirecTV
Guppy06 writes "Throwing their hats into a ring that includes News Corporation, Cablevision, and General Electric, this NYT article (yadda yadda yadda) reports that #2 Baby Bell SBC is interested in buying DirecTV. After federal and state anti-trust authorities shot down DirecTV's purchase of EchoStar recently, their purchase by a corporation that already has its own state-mandated telephone monopoly is... "interesting" to say the least. Those of us who dislike government monopolies are left hoping either News or GE wins this one (if a sale even takes place)." One of the other suitors for DirecTV has been Murdoch's Fox.
Rupert Murdoch owns News Corp of which Fox (the network with the Simpsons) is a part. News Corp also owns many newspapers, the Fox News Channel, and lots of sports stuff. Just a heads up Hemos.
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WideOpenWest is a good example of what a cable company can do when you get RID OF SBC-like overhead. Background: WOW bought the failed Ameritech cable unit from SBC some time ago - now they are profitable and offer rates half of the competitors.
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Here in Indiana, we've gotten horrible service from SBC. Over the last 3 years I've probably had about a dozen service calls required for our phone service, all of which were due to their system (nothing wrong inside our house). Their technicians failed to show up when promised, and at one point we had no phone service for over a week (and no, there weren't any unusual circumstances like extensive storm damage in the area). Granted, a satellite system should be less service-intensive, but I'm a happy DirecTV customer who doesn't want to send another dime SBC's way!
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I think Fox is owned by News Corp., so they wouldn't be "another suitor", and if I remember correctly, it was Echostar buying Directv, not the other way around.
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SBC wouldn't know how to treat a customer properly if their existance depended on it. Unfortunately they can pretty much do what they please, as they have near monoploy status now. I would hate to see Direct-TV fall to them.
As for me, I'm now in a baby-bell free zone, and love it.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
DirecTV is a great business. They are
sucessful pioneers, do good things and
make money. Why sell out? The management
and engineers of Hughes should say "no"
to a sale. GM stock holders should vote
no also. Just say "NO!"
Actually News Corp owns Fox.
Ummm who modded this up? With DirectTV you do get the networks (often you get their broadcasts from both the east and west coasts, which is kind of cool if you miss something).
What you don't get is your local TV station's programming. So you miss your local news, and things like local information on the Weather Channel, as well as independent stations in your area. That's a long way from saying you don't get the Simpsons.
Also, a friend of mine who has had DirectTV in the past (I don't) told me that you can petition them to carry local channels in certain areas and that they'll usually do it if enough people are interested.
The Anti-Blog
Your first paragraph doesn't clarify anything. Hughes/DirecTV is owned by GM (General Motors) not GE (General Electric).
As the story correctly states, GE is considering buying Hughes.
1. You do need a new IRD and a triple-LNB dish, but aiming the dish isn't considerably harder than aiming the standard dish.
2. DirecTV also offers Showtime in HD. You won't get your local stations in HD, but can continue to recieve the standard feed of your local stations. Also, several HD-capable DirecTV IRDs also include a built-in tuner for local OTA HD stations. Add a standard antenna, and you have local stations in HD.
None of the terrestrial cable systems that I am aware of are currently offering HD signals. AT&T here won't even indicate when or if they will start carrying HD feeds.
DirecTV has to add additional satellites to add capacity. Local terrestial carriers have to upgrade their distribution networks to add more capacity. Where's the difference?
I can't comment on Time Warner's quality, but I can on AT&T in this area. AT&T cable has frequent dropouts on many digital channels, and horrible pixelation everywhere. Analog channels are fuzzy and ghosty. My DirecTV picture has never dropped out, even in the worst weather, and pixellation is minimal on everything I watch. AT&T can't compete on price, either. I have a comparable set of channels as my in-laws down the street, yet I pay about $15 less for my service than they do for theirs, even after including the charges I pay for additional recievers (2 at $5 each) - which they would also have to pay in order to recieve digital cable on more than one set (assuming they had more than one TV).
I'm a happy DirecTV subscriber. I don't yet have HD-DirecTV at home, mostly because I am unwilling to give up my TiVo. Now, if someone builds a box which integrates TiVo service, DirecTV standard and HD tuner, and a local OTA HD tuner, I'll buy it.
You're essentially advocating a "cloud" model, with various municipal entities maintaining the infrastructure in between.
Case in point: the local power company here maintains the lines and such, but lots of companies pump power into the grid from various points.
It almost works this way with DSL. You get an ATM connection into the cloud, then you have a PVC that takes you to the ISP's premises. The trouble is that the phone companies are running the competition out of business.
There's also the more complicated matter when you have ANOTHER cloud, and a separate set of ISPs that hook into that. That's the Covad situation, and even then they still run over the same copper wire plant owned by the telco.
It may take a "final overbuild" in some areas to get free of the telco monopolies. You put in the second system, then let everyone connect in and sell services across it. Let the market take care of the rest.
What you don't get is your local TV station's programming. So you miss your local news, and things like local information on the Weather Channel, as well as independent stations in your area. That's a long way from saying you don't get the Simpsons.
This is also not necessarily true. I not only get my local channels, I get them as the same numbers that they'd be on from broadcast.
If you're in a sufficiently large market, you'll get your own local channels. Atlanta is a sufficiently major market for this, dunno how large an area has to be to be a "major market" but it's not just New York and LA. If you do get your own channels, you don't get the east-and-west-coast feeds.
If you don't get the local channels, you'll get a feed for each network, probably both an east coast and west coast version.
Either way, you get the Simpsons.
To bring this sort of back on topic: My take on the SBC or News Corp buyout is better SBC than News Corp. While SBC may suck in many ways, the idea of having the satellite company owned by the folks who generate some of the content sounds anti-competitive to me. In two years, I see myself saying, "Gee, I wonder why all the non-Fox channels went away..."
I work at DirecTV. We really really want to carry local channels in every market, we just can't yet. Every damn day I work on some kind of upgrade aimed at carrying more locals.
And yes, if enough people in an area petition, they get moved up the list of where we go next...we've don't about the top 50 markets and want to try to do them roughly in order, but we have definitely skipped a few to move to areas with more subscribers/interest.
Sunday ticket is the reason most people even have Directv. By the way, who doesn't have the option of Directv? Unless you have big trees in your yard or don't live in the US, you have the option.
GM has been looking to spin off DirecTV for years now. They want to pare down to a core business (cars), that's why they sold the satellite division of Hughes. They were at first reluctant to let go of the rest, though many of us (I'm a stockholder) think the division wouild do much better on its own. It's certainly not doing well with GM; the stock has fallen for 2-3 years now. GM has appeared indecisive -- a problem with big automobile companies and another reason to pare down.
... depending on whether one wants to stay with the company longterm. I hope they don't screw their subscriber base that has taken so long to build. Murdoch does have a rep for greed.
Bummer the Echostar thing didn't fly. I think that honestly would have been good for consumers. It was the rural customers without cable alternative that were the primary snag, though you'd think something could have been worked out. I don't like the idea of one company owning both cable and satellite businesses.
Some time ago, Rupert's News Corp wanted to buy GM (the whole thing!) as a way to get to DirecTV. The price wasn't right IIRC.
That doesn't mean any old buyer is a good idea
What did the article author mean by "government monopolies"? I missed the gov't element here.
As a dish network and HDTV owner, I disagree. I am somewhat worried about a satellite monopoly, but I feel that a combined Dish/DTV company would be the best competition for cable TV. That is the real competition, satellite vs. cable TV. Satellite's biggest problem is bandwidth, and having two+ companies broadcast the same bits for every channel is not a good use of the limited number of orbital slots available. When you add in HDTV and the must-carry rules for locals, you end up with a big bandwidth crunch for satellite services. Newer technology like spot-beam satellites will help, but that only goes so far. Combining the satellite companies would give them the bandwidth they need so that everyone could have locals, and the number of HDTV broadcasts could increase as well.
Odd. We call them every month to pay the bill and never have more than a 2 minute hold time, and changing packages is a breeze. We got Netflix and dropped HBO - the bill that came out 1 week later reflected the changes and new invoice amount.
I like DirecTV. I hate SBC. Let's keep them seperate..