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An Essay On Subscription Television
dpu writes "Who would pay $1.99 to download a television episode that only costs about $0.0014 to see on cable? This is a short essay on the current and past state of subscription television, and a hope for the future. It skips a lot of points that the thinkers among us might care about, but it does the math and drives a nail into Big Content's pinky toe."
I remember a time when having 'cable' meant that we didn't have to watch commercials. It seems difficult to avoid them these days.
Who would pay $1.99 to download a television episode that only costs about $0.0014 to see on cable?
Why pay $14.99 for a novel when you can walk out of the library with it for free?
Content creators need to be assured of recompense for their work. Until someone comes up with a better way of assuring payment for digitally-reproduced work, the system we have is...all we have.
because if I only want to watch 4 shows a month thats $8 rather than $30 a month
I haven't RTFA, but I could give three reasons.
1. You're paying not to see commercials
2. You're paying for the convenience of seeing whenever you want
3. You're paying for the infrastructure needed
The prices are high as they are with any "new tech". As I see it, this is still an "early adopter" price.
I also question the maths involved here. Is he watching cable 24/7 to get those prices?
There's one born every minute
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If average person watches TV for 4 hours a day, that is 120 hours a month. With $60 a month to Comcast that means it 50c per hour of TV, with ads. If you consider that ads run anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes out of hour, lets say at average 20 minutes, you get about 80 minutes of TV for a dollar, which is subsidized by ads. I don't know how much Comcast pays to the content providers and how much ads will pay. But you are willing to pay at average 50c per TV show episode, while watching ads. So you are paying 4 times as much for no ads. Now for the author of the article and for me, if you watch about 4 shows at average, that is 20 episodes a month at the $60 for Comcast this makes $3 per episode. I think that looking at it this way, iTunes pricing is a steal. Not counting the fact that there are off-season periods when you still pay subscription to Comcast, but don't pay anything on iTunes.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Isn't this basicly pay per view, just for television series instead of movies and sports events?
Also, as another poster mentioned previously, not having to watch commercials is a BIG thing for me.
If I could pay $2 per episode for content that was guaranteed to be ad-free, DRM-free (or free enough that it doesn't hinder my fair use efforts), persistent (meaning it doesn't get deleted out from under me), and included added-value content like commentaries and behind-the-scenes features, I would.
Oh wait, it's called buying it on DVD.
And until these newfangled methods of obtaining TV can provide what those shiny coasters can provide, I'll stick with buying the shows I want to watch repeatedly on DVD, and PVRing the ones I only want to see once.
Im of the oppinion that they should make TV available over the internet to watch whenever I want to. If i can have it available to me whenever i feel like it i dont care if there are commercials. The two reasons im downloading all series im watching are:
Because i can decide myself when to watch it.
Because i can start downloading them and watch them as i download them.
Make this available to me through leagal means with quality and ill even watch the commercials, but it have to be _easy_,available and free(to start using, im paying through commercials)
The same reason people are willing to pay 99 cents for a music file they could download free from Kazaa, or willing to pay $3.99 for a gallon of milk at the gas station they could buy for $2.50 at the grocery store just a few blocks away.
It's shocking news to both content providers and pirates, but most people have money in their pocket and they don't mind spending it on things that they like when it is made convenient to do so. They are particularly happy to spend more when it saves them time and gives them a guarantee of quality, both of which are major motivators of buying songs/TV shows rather than simply getting a radio or cable hookup.
Keep in mind that if you want to watch particular shows and don't have an infinitely flexible schedule, you'll need to include the price of a TiVo or something similar to make sure you're recording all those "cheap" shows. And you'll have to wait for a rerun or a DVD to be released if you missed an episode.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
The current revenue of a company like Comcast comes mainly from the money paid by subscribers, that is true. However, only a fraction of that money goes to the TV networks, most of it goes to pay for infrastructure and such. The reason that the TV networks get none of the money is, quite simply, because they get their finance from commercials. Another model for delivery, like the one suggested in the article, would give no reasons for networks to give the low/nonexistent prices that they currently do to Comcast. Although I do believe that the subscription television probably is something that we might see in the future, I hardly think the article is slashdot-worthy. Slow news-day anyone?
I'd happily take a $1 per channel per month service, with no limitations and all channels offered.
I hate to say it, but even still many people would pay $30-50 per month, it adds up. This seems like a win-win situation, but cablecos are arses.
"Who would pay $1.99 to download a television episode that only costs about $0.0014 to see on cable?" Who would pay $0.0014 to see it on cable while you can download it on your favorite torrent site for free?
I'm happy to pay a dollar or two if I can download an episode of 24 straight after it airs. The only reason I don't do this at the moment is because Apple (Apple fanboys: note that Apple has refused to sell songs without DRM when requested by the artist - Apple loves DRM) and Fox have decided that they will only sell me encrypted media.
I think there's a huge market for "put your CC details into this website and we'll give you an unencrypted file download link". The iTunes Store was around by the time AllofMP3 started getting popular, but enough people use AllofMP3 for it to bother the RIAA significantly. Why don't these people just use iTunes? Because AllofMP3 give their customers exactly what they want.
Of course a big part of the reason that cable is so cheap per show is that they show advertising. To answer all those people who are bitching about having to pay for cable when it has commercials I want to point out that you pay a relatively small amount for quality (and many not so quality) cable shows because of these commercials. Sure you can argue that the locally inserted commercials by the cable company are a needless waste (but remember cable has far fewer customers than phone so they must split up the cost of their network over fewer people) but if you want big budget shows with high production values you either need to charge the way HBO does (10-15 bucks per channel per month) or fund them with commercials.
.2c. Given a 30minute program has 6 minutes of commercials that means about $1.20 of commercials (I suspect this might be a hit high but still roughly on target). Throw in the costs of the lost commercials from reruns (how frequently have you seen the same program a second time?) and the $1.99 price begins to seem relatively reasonable. Remember the viewers that are being lost to download aren't the people who are leaving their TV on while they do something else, they are the valuable viewers who are watching closely.
I suspect others will point out that the amount the advertiser is paying per viewer is much smaller than the cost of say an iTunes download hence it should be economical to have relatively cheap commercial free download, e.g., each downloader just needs to cover the total amount an advertiser would have paid to get commercials to you. From my quick google research it seems likely that the cost per impression in the male 18-34 age group (also the download group) it is about
If you are willing to watch commercials in your download then it's a different story but if you aren't you have to ay to replace the money the commercials would have brought in.
Also these sort of pay per show model is only ever going to be an alternative to the normal model never a replacement. Sure we will pay for commercial free versions of our favorite shows we follow but most TV watching is done casually (I wonder if there is anything on) and no matter how much you bitch about commercials I doubt you would pay to watch a show just because you had 30minutes to kill but you will watch a show with commercials for that reason. We vote with our actions and those say we want a flat rate model that lets us watch shows for no extra cost when we feel like it.
It's just the same way that people bitch about ads at the start of movies but no matter how much people bitch they never go spend an extra $2 to go to the theater with less ads.
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Whether you agree that $1.99 or $2.99 per show is a good deal, directly paying for shows allows something amazing to happen. * It allows audiences to pass money DIRECTLY to television creators. * And that model is more honest and fairer than the advertising model which currently dominates broadcasting. It is a way better model, and better TV would be the outcome. It has the power to transform the type of shows being made because it makes television-makers directly accountable to their audience. Program makers would not have to pander to the needs of the network or the advertisers, but would put the audience first. Shows which have a small enthusiastic audience would not be dropped. Reality shows would have to stick in advertising land, because no-one would pay for that crap. Of course the networks and advertisers are fearful of being cut-out of the market. So while they still have power, they'll attempt to drive the prices of download TV ever higher. This is going to get interesting. C
Between my wife and I, we watch the following shows on a regular basis: (Winter): - Battlestar Galactica (Sci Fi, 1 hour, 26 hours per year with commercials) - Rome (HBO, 1 hour, 26 hours per year with no commercials) - The Office (NBC 1/2 hour, 12 hours per year with commercials) (Spring): - The Sopranos (HBO, 1 hour, 26 hours per year with no commercials) - Big Love (HBO, 1 hour, 26 hours per year with no commercials) (Year round): - The daily Show (Comedy Central, 1/2 hour, 150 episodes per year with commercials) - The colbert report (Comedy Central, 1/2 hour, 150 episodes per year with commercials) All told, that adds up to 416 hours that we actually care about per year. I'd estimate that we also watch about 100 hours or so of miscellaneous stuff (discovery health and the occasional sci fi miniseries). We'll round here and say 550 hours of programming per year, total. This would cost us $1100 from iTunes or whatnot, but it costs us $720 from comcast. In my case, the numbers are highly skewed because I watch the daily show and the colbert report; if I didn't, iTunes would be a much better deal (assuming that there was a really great way to get the content to my television set, of course). "Season passes" to most of the shows I listed above can be bought from iTunes for $30-50 each. I'd gladly pay $350 a year for the 7 shows over what I pay for comcast. -
Competing with free means two things. First, you need to provide a quality product. No commercials, high definition, good bit rate, no DRM. Then, you have a product that is as good or better than free. The reason I don't buy DVDs is that when I want to watch a film, I want to watch a film and not commercials etc. 99 hours of "bonus content" generally does not add any value for anyone except hard core fans. I don't really care how they made the trees in LOTR.
The second thing big content needs to do is get the price right. People pay for their internet connection, cable TV, maybe a premium Usenet account etc. because they want to download content. So, like it or not, they already paid and can get TV for no extra cost. If you want more money out of them, it had better not be too much and you had better make the buying experience damn good (i.e. very high speed downloads, no special software required). It has to be simultanious with the first showing on TV too.
Oh, and never forget, just because you spent a lot of money making it doesn't mean it's worth a lot. Your content has to be good, not expensive. Make old BBC Horizon programs from the 80s available for 20p, and I'll bite.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I know from previous slashdottage that ads pay most of the burden from TV, so
time for some fast googling:
A national TV spot averages $350k for 30 seconds
A popular show like Idol gets 30 million viewers
Let's say a more typical show gets about 500,000 viewers. Let's say 15 minutes an hour are paid ads, so that's $10M per show, paid for by 0.5M viewers, or about $2 per viewer.
Sounds about right, within a factor of 2 or so.
Writing an essay that proposes a plan for a more fine-grained payment structure for big content providers: +4, Interesting
Writing an article that uses hard math to show how $1.99 generates more revenue for content providers than subscription/advertising currently does: +5, Informative
Writing your 3rd blog post about how you feel you should pay less for television because of bogus math and then posting it to slashdot with a tagline so awe-inspiring that the editors put it on the front page without even reading the article: Priceless
In any case... I can watch my boxset of Firefly DVDs without seeing any ads, and there are several episodes in it which were never aired. I own several other series on DVD as well.
Fun fact: the most expensive DVD boxset I own costs less than (the hours of time I would have lost watching ads) * (my hourly wage).
Just visit:
http://www.mininova.org/cat/8
http://thepiratebay.org/tv
And download whatever episode you want in H.264 HD with optional subs
A crime without victims
Or I guess you could copy just the movie file to a DVD-R(W).
Yeah, sure if you watch every show on every channel every hour every day. But who can watch 36000 episodes per month and still have time to submit articles to Slashdot?
the entire world of media communications is going through a very interesting evolution - caused by all these wondrous file sharing applications. Soon enough the p2p generation will grow and take over the world. This is a generation that expects to pay nothing for music and video. Why pay for something - when all you have to do is click your mouse thrice and you're in Kansas? this is no longer about pricing - this is about metamorphosing completely.
Locksmith
Personally, I would love to pay an extra $2 for a theater with no ads... but there aren't any. And I use a HDD recorder for casual stuff and buy DVDs for stuff I like. Oh wait, I watch the weather network live...
For the same reason people pay $8 or more to buy a movie that's 4 times the length of a t.v. show.
The author of the essay seems to have made the common fallacy that viewers of tv shows are the customers of those who produce tv shows.
In fact, the customers of tv stations are those who buy advertising time. The viewer is the product which the stations sell to their advertisers. The programs are merely the means towards gaining lots of viewers to be sold.
It works a lot like farming. The tv station is the farm. The viewers are the vegetables, grown in the field, harvested, packaged and sold off to the consumers (the advertising agencies). The programs are the fertiliser that helps all this happen.
Just like in real farming the best way to ensure a full harvest of vegetables is to spread them with liberal doses of shit.
Cable changes the picture a little - the vegetables actually pay for the shit they get covered in - but the idea of ad-free pay-per-view is just not compatible with the industry as it is.
Tv stations at the moment really don't care whether or not you like their shows except in so far as you watch them and the ads they contain. Anything that makes it easy to avoid ads undermines the business model completely and would have to have the promise of instant and huge revenues to get them even thinking about it. This will only happen if a completely new player enters into the market, takes it by storm and the rest are forced to follow. The start-up costs are massive though and I just can't see it happening anytime soon.
"I watch about four different television shows on a regular basis - Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, and typically a current reality show (which is Grease: You're The One That I Want right now)"
*blink*
OK - of all the content on a full menu of cable or sat, this is the sum total of what you find compelling?
I know there's no accounting for taste, but you're hardly their typical demo.
Most of us are paying full price for a house and really only using three rooms and reallly only for a half the day at best. What's up with that raw deal?
You pay the $1 or 2 to listen or watch whenever you want, as often as you want. No one's holding a gun to your head, and it's an alternative to buying DVR etc. This is a vaguely similar argument to the music sedction, usually pointed at Apple - thet they're "forcing" you to adopt their model. Wrong. There are many music providers. being the market leader is not the same as being an unregulated monopoly.
Which leads us to the cable company. They deregulated cable AFTER the wires were laid down, and unlike the local telcos who are merely the custodian of the infrastructure and must let anyone send their info over the copper, the cable companies have no established way of letting anyone else down the coax. The satellite system is similar - as long as the financial agent owns the pipe, it's their ball and they can go home.
About the only thing I'd change about any video delivery model is make sure it's a la carte, for the sake of scaling down rising cost. The industry is claiming that it will cost a bajillion dollars per person to do this, but that's what they said about seat belts, air bags, ABS, flying car^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H personal cell phones and DVD players.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
We were much better off before TV came along. People socialized more then and got out and did things. Since the advent of TV and air conditioning people have disappeared from the porches and the yards and streets. Today we too often do not feel its safe for the kids to get out and play, to wander the streets or even the fields. A child and even adults can learn a lot that way. When people socialized more they had the opportunity to get to know their neighbors and discuss the world. Today its too often that everyone just mimics what the mass-media puts out during their brief discussions with others. People had hobbies, games, and social events to keep them busy with their spare time if they wanted to be entertained or busy. We still have a lot of this but mostly its commercialized now and like cable and satellite TV the costs keep going up. Soon the poor may be priced out of this, unfortunately so will the dopeheads. An old TV with an antenna or rabbit ears with receivable signals did have its uses, will they disappear with digital? How many televisions will be hitting the landfills and who knows where else?
People get too wound up in the boob tube as well. Kids don't respond to their parents too often when watching TV. Parents too often are too distracted by the television to properly interact with the children as well. Frankly when a beautiful woman can sit down naked next to her husband who is watching a sporting event and not be noticed unless she gets up and blocks the view only to be told to move, something is wrong with this picture. Wives have been known to get angry enough at this point to destroy the TV or rip the cable out of the wall and yes it has happened. Mind you women can get overly wrapped up in TV too, just like their kids and husband. Sex and conversation always seem to increase during blackouts, how much of that would you surmise is because the TV is off? How many have met their neighbors for the first time during a blackout?
If television completely disappeared then their would be lots more people outside again. Porches, verandas, gazebos etc would start reappearing with people sitting on them doing various things while watching the world go by or talking to a neighbor, watching the kids play, etc. This in all likelyhood would increase the safety of our streets for ourselves and our children. News obtained from your friends, relatives and neighbors often include good news as opposed to the media's hard core attention to the bad and thus increases optimism. When playing games and socializing people tend to think more, conversation skills become desirable and motivational. With the television off those with the space to work with might even take up gardening again. If they plant fruit and vegetables then in all likelyhood they will get safer, tastier and healthier foods that way. Perhaps I am being a bit optimistic that people will leave their air conditioned homes to do all this but even if they don't their will likely be more dominoe, card, chess, etc games then are currently as well as dinners, dances and other social events if TV would just disappear. Of course with the internet its a strong possibility it would just get more time, but the internet can still be an improvement over television.
*marginally offtopic but its still my opinion on the subject as I threw out the TV and cable company years ago and wish many more would do the same.
Exactly, Im not really sure why this is news... From a buisness point of view its obvious. They get ad revenue when you watch TV. If you download an episode not only are you NOT seeing ads, you are potentially 1 less person watching the episode live, and thus generate less revenue from the live air. You can't really look at this from a consumer point of view and work out some outlandish calculations and say "Im getting ripped off by buying online."
;)
This brings up another point I found odd about the article. The guy is bitching about paying too much for cable (because he only likes 4 shows) and paying too much to download. If he feels TV is such a ripoff wait for the DVD's! DVD's in my opinion are decent deals (many will argue this) but when you compare minute to minute/dollar to dollar TV DVD releases are cheaper. You can get 24 Season 5 for 40dollars CND NEW, which is roughly 18hours of TV + any extras (the box didn't say how many mins, but there is the standard cut scenes, making of etc.) I have seen DVD's which are upwards of 35dollars CND that brag about 6-8hours of extra footage on top of the 3 hour movie. 11 hours 18+. If this guy is so concerned with saving money why doesn't he contrast the DVD costs of his shows. Usually you pay extra to see something right away
For those of you who would see the end of the cable companies, consider a few more points... Cable companies have to pay a franchise fee to the territory they cover. Your local government soaks them for huge fees, just to be there. Then, the phone companies frequently rent pole space to them, so they don't have to double the number of poles. They pay insane amounts of taxes to local, state, and federal governments, provide jobs, and maintain a fair amount of internet infrastructure as well. I have no love for the cable advertising world, but it drives a fair amount of commerce.
If you're such a delicate genius that you can't possibly spare the time it takes to skip commercials, perhaps you should get your ass back into the lab and finish curing cancer.
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
120.00 per month for 2 boxes comcast.
12 months.
1440.00 per year
The signal to noise ratio comcast has reached is pushing me to go to itunes for a la carte programming and dropping the cable.
I have 500 channels of the most dumbed down fearmongering sales oriented dreck and I am paying for it?
If I can buy John Stewart and a couple of shows full season, why in the hell do I need to allow this propaganda tool that cable tv has become, into my house?
Do I need to see Cheney lie in HD to know that it is happening? The man has not uttered a true phrase on camera since 1989!
I suspect I would be hard pressed to spend 1440 over a year even at itunes prices.
*"Cogito Ergo Liberalis"*
Your comment that it is "uninterrupted" by commercials and therefore "a model other than advertising" is disingenuous.
The comparison is "story with commercials" (model with advertising) vs. "story w/out commercials" (model other than advertising) and movies fall squarely in the "story with commercials" camp. They simply show the commercials back-to-back for a good 10-15 minutes before showing the story.
[off topic]Contrary to popular belief, milk prices at a 7-11 are almost always cheaper than at the grocery store. It turns out that 7-11 wants you to stop in to buy a gallon of milk, hoping you'll pick up a lotto ticket, pack of smokes, or dirty mag on the way out. Grocery stores, on the other hand, know you never come in for just a gallon of milk, and charge accordingly.
Check it out, and YRMV, but this is what I've found to be the case in New England states.[/off topic]
You illustrate my point perfectly. You find commercials annoying and complain about them but it doesn't sound like you stop watching TV when you don't have a DVR. Heck I suspect you don't even care enough to change which shows you watch based on differences in the length of commercials.
We clearly do have a choice. Different theaters get to choose how many ads they show before the film (though the film has some control over this too). Certainly the studio and the theater together have this control and if people were stopping going to that theater or those films because of the number of ads they would reduce them.
This is even more obvious on TV. Different channels (in consultation with affiliates) can choose to allocate commercials as they see fit. If ABC could make more money by stealing viewers from NBC by offering fewer commercials they would do so.
Just look at the radio stations where people DO care enough about commercials to change which channels they listen to or skip away. Their FM stations vigorously compete on how man and how frequent their commercials are.
It just seems to me like all this grousing about commercials is like complaining that the free T-shirt you got at E3 has some companies name all over it. Commercials are how we pay for our TV and people's actions reveal that they would rather pay the price in commercials than in cash or in worse programs.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Maybe you do in the abstract but I suspect when you go to the theater you don't bother to think about which theater has fewer ads. Different theaters do have more or less ads but even the people who bitch the most about the ads pick their theaters based on location, size, or theater quality never number of ads. I mean hell at the movie theaters if you care enough you can just show up a few minutes late but most people seem to prefer taking their seat early and not rushing to avoiding the commercials.
In fact I tend to think that while people like complaining about previews they actually appreciate them. They don't like the previews themselves but they like the buffer zone of time that lets them buy candy or stop in the restroom (hence why these previews are also worth a whole lot more money than most ads to the theater).
Also the bit about 'more than their job' isn't quite right. We have psychological needs for different sorts of things through the day and watching TV (even commercials) is down time that is necessery to do one's job. I mean if they really didn't like commercials they could just get up and go somewhere else for the 5 minutes.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Whenever these topics come up many of us seem to agree that TV sucks, yet somehow the issue remains worthy of debate. Why hand over more money for rights-handicapped mediocrity? Do we for some reason feel we require television in order to fit into our culture?
Personally, I'm saying "to hell with it!" I just stripped my cable package down to nothing but Internet, and I can't imagine regretting it. While it's true that I may not be hip to the latest watercooler joke, but I bet I'll survive the trauma.
TV needs me more than I need TV. Let them sweeten the deal before I come back.
These stories are free but worth money.
Also you can download all that from torrent for free. (Well you have to pay for your connection) ... But you get a) no DRM b) free c) no commercials ... And if you say that this is somehow damaging the content producers then that's just BS because you either have cable already which you aren't going to drop ... or you don't have cable. Also torrent releases appear _after_ the shows air. Btw I have no idea why anyone would pay 60$ a month for cable ... where I live it costs 5$/mo ... (it's not pirated or anything it's from a respectable company)
... its a freaking sweet deal. I pay for the stuff I want to watch (Heroes, 24), and everybody else gets to pay for "We Put Twenty Attention-Starved Coeds On an Island and Drama Happened".
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
I've heard of better and worse versions, but I'd far prefer product placement only, rather than full ads. All Big Media is driven by money, so I'm not going to expect Free as in Speech from a commercial show.
... because he wanted a bowl of wings... I'll accept that because at least in my area, there are no other choices for bowls of cheap LukeWarm DeadBird ... er, Fried Chicken Wings.
Certain vendors have exclusive sales deals with particular sales outlets, so if someone went to the Kentucky Chicken
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I stopped reading when he claimed VHS looked better than DVD.
I watch about 3 shows a week. That's about $6 a week which equates to $24 a month versus my cable bill which is $45. If I buy them through iTunes I also don't have to watch the ads.
Obviously this is a DEAL for me.
While I think $1.99 is a bit too high a price, I'm happy to pay that for each episode of Battlestar Galactica and Monk that I download from the iTunes Store. (Which means it isn't really "too high", I suppose.) At it's very worst (a month with new episodes of both series every week), it would cost me $19.90, which is cheaper than it would cost me to subscribe to a cable or satellite service that includes both programs. Over the course of a year, it costs me an average of only $7.30 a month. And if I get tired of watching Baltar cry, I can cancel the service at will.
If I were to discover a few more series that I can't get over the air and start buying them from iTunes, the economics might start to shift, but it's not as if I'm sitting around wishing I had more teevee to occupy my time. For someone who watches about an hour a day of TV, most of which is available free over the air, the iTunes model makes perfect sense, and a cable/satellite subscription makes none.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
You are averaging the cost of cable vs. the total number of shows?
How about averaging the cost of cable for the much more limitted set of Shows You Actually Want To Watch.
With all my channels, there are about 10 shows I watch. At $50 a month, one show per week, I am already paying $1.25 per show - with lots of commercial interruptions and wasted time.
$1.99 for a TV show with no commercials, HD, downloadable, watch it when I want too, and even have 1.20% speed increase with sound correction,
even cheaper per show if I buy the whole season? - it is a Bargain!
Economics like this could have kept FireFly in production, it was just a show that way ahead of its time, but behind the curve...
Cable / Dish / etc is dead, so 1990s, something only old people watch.
Direct download to your PC/laptop/handheld/iPod - a much better deal, as long as you have the storage space.
1TB drives keep coming down in price, just what you need for whole seasons of Star Trek or The Young and The Restless...
If you only really care to watch 1 or 2 shows, then even the basic cable subscription (say, $20) is going to be more expensive than paying $1.99 / episode to download the show ( 2 bucks * 4 new shows a month = 8 bucks, 16 bucks for two shows ).
And on top of that, no commercials to wate time on, no schedule to keep or PVR to buy, etc etc.
Cable is only a better value for people who watch a lot of TV. I have digital cable, and the movies package, several other packages, etc etc. I pay over $90 a month for my cable. I love it, and think I get good value (I watch a lot of movies), but I can easily see the other side as well. I have friends and relatives who haven't had cable TV in years and are perfectly content to watch their 1-2 shows a week downloaded.
To each his own. There is never going to be a pricing model that fits everything. It's the same reason there is both subscription cell phone coverage, and PayGo cell phone coverage.
Both cable and pay-to-download are here to stay IMO.
Family of four, two teenagers, four TV's. No deal. Free wireless broadcast TV. Imagine that? Choice of cable providers? No. Choice of which stations, with variable pricing? No. So, because folks are routinely getting soaked,pay per view of public broadcast TV can be a deal. Best scam, ESPN. They get paid advertising, get paid by the cable companies for every subscriber, watching or not. They charge for content on the website, and now want to charge the ISP's too. Having live programming, they look very solid. Digital cable boxes give all viewing info to the cable co, which they sell. For this we are charged extra. It is horrible, out of control.
Time-Warner's perspective:
If Time-Warner gives 200+ channels for $40 per month, then they are charging about $0.00028 per hour of programming per customer per month. If they have 60 million customers, they're bringing in $16,800 per hour of programming per month. So if a given 1-hour episode shows up in two months, and is played six times in the first month and twice in the second, that episide has grossed $134,400.
The customer's perspective:
My roommate watches almost 28 hours of TV per week. Over the course of a year, that's 1,456 hours and costs $480. So each hour costs about $0.33. Most of that cost is subsidizing shows he doesn't watch and doesn't want to watch.
Some additional comments:
Assuming 60 million customers, and a "repeat rate" of 6 for each show on average, there are 24,000 original hours in Time-Warner's month. We can guesstimate that those customers have 120 hours per month to watch the episodes they want. If the customers divide evenly (they won't, but we're talking on average here), each of those original hours will have 30,000 customers.
To make $134,000 on 30,000 customers would require a price of $4.47 per episode.
(And if there are 3 million customers, each episode is currently making $67,000, and to make $67,000 on 15,000 customers would also require a price of $4.47 per episode - it works out to that regardless of the original number of cable customers.)
At that price, 120 hours of original programming a month comes out to $536.40 per month.
This also assumes that the same amount of advertisement subsidizing is occurring - without commercials, the price needs to be even higher to make the same profits.
I only watch three tv shows and three complete seasons of those shows would cost me $70. This is much cheaper than paying £131.50 (approx $250) for an annual tv licence, and that's not even taking into account the Sky subscription I pay so I can see the shows in a timely fashion.
this really irritates me. if you download a full season of a show (itunes for example) you sometimes pay 40 - 60 dollars for a season. the prices on downloads are a rip off. if they (they meaning all of them, itunes, microsoft, and all the content providers) cut their prices in half, people (especially me) would download 3 times the content. i liked macgyver when i was a kid, and i wouldn't mind downloading a season and watching it, but not for $60. am i wrong??? do you all think that season 1 of macgyver should cost as much as a brand new episode of 24??? or another example is battlestar galactaca. the original episodes are as much as the NEW scifi channel episodes. it's about sqeezing as much money as they can out of every consumer.
in the words of dave chapelle........ "greedy bastards!!!"
Cable providers have sophisticated enough two-way networks that it shouldn't be that difficult to charge exactly how much people want, to the tune of $2/month per channel, if you don't want that many.
The channels I would watch on cable or satellite are ones that are only available on the higher tiers of programming. But, in order to get them, it means I'm saddled with a dozen "family" and "kids" channels, two dozen "news" channels, numerous channels akin to "lifetime" and mtv, mtv2, mtx, vh1 and its sisters, etc. As well as literally between 4-5 Spanish stations I am not interested in on cable, all the way up over a dozen on satellite. This means that in order to watch IFC and Fuse (i do occasionally watch Fox and USA also) I'm using about 1% of what I'd be receiving, and paying full price for it. Effectively, those channels are costing me $25/month each.
One satellite subscription service (selling 4DTV subscriptions over C-Band) does offer al a carte programming but they have less than 100k subscribers nationwide and many of the networks aren't renewing contracts with them, because it isn't worth their time. They charge a very small fee monthly. But, you need a 10 foot dish...
I understand programming bundles exist to subsidize the foreign-language channels and special-interest channels that nobody would ever pay for in their own time, but that's why I'm not a subscriber. I get enough channels (even in HD) with a good rabbit-ears antenna and that's how it is going to stay.
I have yet to see my MythTV infrastructure sleep, go to the bathroom, etc. And, in fact, it has no trouble 'watching' half a dozen channels at the same time. Or more, should I want it to.
And is it also going to record every repeated show? I thought not, yet you are still paying for even the repeats. And cable, if nothing else, LOVES to repeat shows. That's why I don't subscribe anymore and just buy shows of iTunes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Here's why I think what the content producers (Viacom, Sci-Fi, etc) don't want a per-episode model. Currently they get you to subscribe to the whole she-bang. You find new content through their promos and advertising. The content producers like this model because they can keep you around (and they get guaranteed income) even if they produce stuff you really don't like that much. Basically they keep you "hooked" (an admittedly divisive term) paying every month to watch some stuff you REALLY want to see, but keep you interested with other stuff you might not be willing to pay for, but will watch anyway because there's nothing else on.
With a pay-per-episode model, they'd lose the market of people that aren't willing to pay for junk movies and other stuff people aren't willing to pay for. They make a bit of money off the advertising of the junk, so losing you as a viewer is bad for them. Plus, they might suddenly not have some shows that you REALLY want to pay for, so they lose the ability to keep you on as a customer. They'd also have a lesser ability to advertise new shows to you, since a lot of finding a new show to watch is to just turn on the TV and see what you like (plus advertising when you're watching something else and think "hey, I should try that show". If you have to PAY to try some new show.. you're going to be a lot less adventurous. My point is a lot of the marketing of TV is centered around it being "free" to try something new.
So why do the cable channels allow per-episode content at all? Because they've seen the whole "download individual episodes over the internet" phenomenon, and realized there's this large market of people that only want to watch one show, but don't want to pay the $40 a month for basic cable. So they want to tap this market, but not let it affect the market of loyal cable subscribers. Thus they set the per-episode cost high to try to get the downloaders and potential downloaders, but the loyal subscribers would never want to pay such a high fee. They also figure it might be a way to get new subscribers. Set the fee high enough that if you like the content enough and buy enough of it, you might eventually just decide to subscribe to basic cable instead because it's cheaper, or the same price.
AccountKiller
Apple fanboys: note that Apple has refused to sell songs without DRM when requested by the artist - Apple loves DRM
No, Apple loves usability consistancy - if eveyone allowed DRM free music, they would drop it like a rock.
The iTunes Store was around by the time AllofMP3 started getting popular, but enough people use AllofMP3 for it to bother the RIAA significantly. Why don't these people just use iTunes? Because AllofMP3 give their customers exactly what they want.
Showing that some people are happy to rip off the artist to get a better level of quality than straight up P2P, and that they are willing to hold thier nose over the lack of morals in paying anyone for music who does not feed money back to at least the artist.
A better example is eMusic, which is not ripping off artists but also lacks DRM. They seem to be doing pretty well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
True, movie trailers are commercials, but they are highly targeted commercials, unlike the untargeted commercials that look like they were ripped straight from AMC or TNT or any of the other basic cable channels that show movies. People who consume ad-supported or partially-ad-supported media tend to prefer targeted commercials to untargeted commercials. As I see it, the utter lack of targeting in recent cinematic commercials is what drives people to complain.
I don't understand why video stores don't let me download commercials for free, then get some kickback from the product targeted by that cimmerical.
After all, then the product maker knows someone downloaded it who probably wanted to watch it. And the revenue from the commercials could offset and lower the cost of other shows sold on the system.
If you think this is crazy consider that AdCritic used to be a great free source of commercials but the cost of bandwidth made them go pay. Lots of people love to see commercials, just on thier terms.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Including iTunes Store?
Who wants to discuss eleven-year-old TV around the water cooler?
...and they (the content creators) will figure out way to burn the candle at both ends. After all, that's exactly what happened with cable.
Ask somebody with a single-digit-year-old child.
I also get the feeling that I just don't place $20 of value on being able to watch a specific movie any time I like"Mommy, I wanna watch Sin-duh-weh-wuh!"
I would love to be able to pay $0.50 for a throwaway six hour license to watch a programWould you love for your kid to be able to spend this $0.50 on demand?
Ha, amateur! When I'm watching something where the dialog is the main thing and I don't care too much about the acting or action (except maybe during certain parts) I'll watch it at the first FF speed on my TiVO (3x normal speed) with closed captioning turned on.
The first few times I tried it, it was hard to keep up, but now I don't have any problem. 3x is a bit fast for the CC system to work, sometimes it falls behind and starts garbling things, so when the dialog is coming fast I drop to normal speed here and there to let it catch up.
Some CC jobs are better than others. I like where they keep all the dialog in a scrolling stream at the bottom of the screen, that's easy to read. Often it is on one side of the screen for one person and the other for the other, which I suppose is easier for old folks to follow but it makes it harder to read at 3x speed. The worst is where it is on the top and bottom (I don't get that) But if I miss something I can always jump back a bit to catch it, if it is important enough.
I wouldn't watch something complex where missing one detail will ruin the payoff down the road, but for comedies and crappy stuff that's just good enough to record but not worth wasting enough time to watch in normal speed, it works great.
A typical 2 hour movie on cable has about 1 1/2 hours of non-commercial content. If I keep it at 3x speed for the whole movie, I can watch it in a half hour. I never quite get it that fast but I've seen plenty in 35-40 minutes.
Plus it engages my brain a bit more, I'm actually paying close attention to what is going on because it is moving so fast. Normally my mind wanders a lot during slow parts of shows, sometimes I have to go back and watch the last minute because I've totally spaced out thinking about something else and realize I've missed something important.
In many geographic areas in North America, residential customers who do not already subscribe to cable TV cannot get an Internet connection faster than 48000 bits per second down, 24000 up. How useful can you be to a torrent if you are stuck on dial-up?
So really the root of the problem with most people's calculations are that they assume that watching one show means watching four episodes of that show every single week of the year. This is vastly inaccurate -- shows go on hiatus during the holidays, and shows only have a limited number of episodes per season. So really to do the proper calculation, you need to look at what it will cost you per year. If you get a season pass to your two shows, it will cost you probably $70 to $90 or so depending on the shows. If you can get basic cable for $20/month (and normally it's at least $30), you're saving yourself at least $150/year. So unless you watch seven shows or more, it's probably cheaper to buy them off of iTunes. This of course assumes you don't just watch random tv episodes from random shows all of the time, which of course you couldn't do without paying on iTunes.
He lost me when he thought VHS was higher quality than DVD because if he looked real close, he could see occasional compression artifacts. To me, VHS *is* a compression artifact, and a pretty huge one.
I would happily pay $2/episode for downloadable episodes of my favorite shows I could play when, where and how I choose, especially if it allowed niche market shows to continue and not be destroyed by stupid distributors (any number shows and Fox, for example). That's basically what the DVDs cost...
I will not watch, even for free, postage stamp, streaming in fits, enforced commercial crap as NBC is presenting. I haven't watched commercials in shows since I got a TV with a remote and a mute button, and I'm not going to start now. If they want me to watch commercials, they can make creative ones like the current Apple ads, and many superbowl ads. I'll happily go watch them. Just not in the middle of other shows.
The key to fighting piracy is making legitimate viewing easier than pirating and charging reasonable prices. I believe that most people actually do want the shows they like to continue and will willingly support them if they can and it's not painful to do so. Right now, it's painful to do so. When that's fixed, piracy will resume its place as a nuisance, instead of being the showstopper.
UK residents have been paying television fees since TV started. First, most of the original TV broadcast channels were governement run. Second, the population has grown up used to this.
You forgot to figure in how much your computer costs, as well as your internet service. Ok, say someone gave you the computer and you are using your neighbor's open wireless... you are still spending your time to search the trackers and find what you want, then you have to wait to download it. Time is money. Assuming your time is valuable, this isn't "free" either.
What a stupid statistic. It costs $50+/month to get cable. That's only cheap if you watch a lot of it. Some of us have lives.
Strangely enough, on my anime DVDs - which usually show the quick warning and go right to the menu before I can push the button - there are frequently trailers in a menu in the "extras", and I watch them. Sometimes more than once, if they're good. Yet I've never watched any of those "unskippable" ads on Hollywood DVDs longer than it took to click my remote. (And if I couldn't do that I just mute it and walk away until it reached the menu - at least, for a rental. If I'd paid to be treated that way I'd be really pissed.)
The cable company doesn't produce content. You pay your cable bill for _ACCESS_ to the content. Yes, the cable company uses some of your monthly fee to pay to carry the channels they give you, but that fee, again, is paying for the ability to access the content.
Wow, such heated debate. Not a lot that I can add to the conversation except that I'm running a blog about ditching cable for a combination of recording over the air television and using iTunes, called ditchingcable.com.
For me, while I'm recording OTA television, I do supplement the recordings with an occasional download and a subscription to the Daily Show.
A few things to consider
1. Do you watch reruns?
I don't. So, that really throws off the numbers. Networks and cable channels alike tend to run their repeats at the same time (summer time, holidays, etc). When I'm not paying for cable, I'm not paying for those times of year.
2. Do you watch sports?
I don't, but if you do, you're kind of screwed without cable television. Monday Night Football isn't even on broadcast television anymore. And good luck finding hockey or basketball at all.
For folks like me, who like television but can't be bothered with ads, reruns, sports, schedule conflicts, and appointment television, I can't imagine life before PVRs, but now, I'm really wondering why I paid those high cable bills for something that I used so little.
Cheers,
Randy Stewart
Ditching Cable
A while ago, a friend pointed out an article to me which dealt with exactly this topic. If I still had the link, I'd post it, but it's been lost in the ether.
The basic premise is this: The author puts forth a new sales model for TV viewing: Sponsorship. He came upon the idea while watching a show and noticing all the "empty space" at the top and bottom of his screen. He realized that this space could be sold. So, for example, Pepsi could sponsor this week's episode of Battlestar Galactica. They'd get to put their logo on the screen for the entire show (like the "bugs" that TV stations currently have). Viewers could subscribe to a show (or set of shows) and get the content via P2P, direct download, or DVD mailed to their homes.
I can't remember all the particulars of the economics, but the article was rather specific on how and why this would work. Advertisers would only pay for actual downloads/discs mailed, and producers could charge more because it's guaranteed that every instance being paid for is an actual viewing of the advertising content.
The one major problem the author points out is that this model would eliminate TV stations, since they're little more than advertising middle-men (they produce almost nothing--a local news show or two--and spend the rest of their time matching advertisers to content).
In a way, it's going back to the original model for television: Companies sponsor a show, and viewers watch them for free.
The author even mentions that P2P would be the *preferred* method of distribution, since the producers don't have to pay for all of the bandwidth (or shipping in the case of mailed DVDs). And since the ads are integral to the image, there's no worries about commercial-skipping, etc.
The industries involved would have to change their business models, but in the end, almost everyone comes out ahead.
While I agree that iTunes over charges, programs on TV, Cable or Sat Cable cost more than the annual subscription fees.
.020 cents per ad. Typical shows have more than 20 ads, hour long shows even more.
Each and every one of the ads that runs, contributes some revenue to the show.
Advertisers pay for each and every viewer as ads are based on CPM (Cost per thousand).
Typical TV shows have CPM prices of $5 to $20 per thousand viewers. Or 0.005 to
In fact the cost of the TV shows on iTunes should be => the total cost of the ad (for 1 viewer) + the cost of transmission + some reasonable fee to apple; which IMHO is $2
http://www.hawknest.com/
By the tooth fairy!
Believe what you will but don't try to justify your actions with weak arguments like these.
Even if they did actually deliver money to the artists, who are they to decide what is a fair pricing? The artist, not even the label was ever involved in any kind of pricing talks and so what AllOfMP3.com is doing is just as morally "upright" as me selling CDR's on the street corner and telling them I'll give them a penny on the dollar if they bother to look me up.
I don't think what they are doing is illegal at all, just as sure as I am that it's wrong to buy from them. And all I had to do was say "I wonder what I would think if someone was actually selling my songs for money without asking me anything about it".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
About a year ago I thought about this subject, and came to the conclusion that for downloadable shows they could charge about 80 cents for an hour show without advertising, and make the same as they do now when they show it on an over-the-air broadcast network. If they left the ads in, they could make it available for free, just like they do with over-the-air broadcast.
Of course, they'd be stupid to charge even that much for what could be considered either:
a) promotional (hey, cool show! Now I'll watch it!)
b) supplemental (I already am a fan and watch the show, but I missed an episode)
c) extra (I wouldn't watch the show anyway)
Only if you are
d) replacement (I'll watch the show on my computer instead of on TV)
would it make sense to charge for it. Even for case c), you'd be better off not trying to screw down and squeeze every last cent out, you'd do better to try and convert people to being fans of the show. If they don't, you don't lose anything you weren't getting anyway, and if you do, woo-hoo! If you charge, those people won't be paying.
So instead they charge $1.99. Yes, they find a lot of suckers who will pay that, but they could maximise their profits a whole lot more if they brought that price-point down to approaching free. Ah well, old business models and all that...
http://offtheshelf.nowis.com/index.cfm?ID=13
You are given the ability to watch any show on any channel. You can watch 1 second of each channel and keep changing the channel. You are not paying on cable for the right to watch each show. You are paying for the availability to watch the show if you choose. Lets say you have 60 channels. If the average show is 1 hour (probably less) then you get 60 shows per hour you can watch. That means you have 60 * 24/7 = 10080 shows per week. Lets say 4 weeks in a month. That gives 40320 shows per month. At $60 a month that costs you 0.0014 cents per show.
This guy is an idiot but I basically agree with him. He's an idiot for complaining about digital broadcasts and then demanding that his one show be delivered in high def. He also blames the content providers for digital broadcasting but it is a law brought in that even the content proiders have to live with. It's costing them money too.
Having said that I can see an all on demand micropayment world for TV viewing in the future. What will the charges be? That's easy; whatever the market will bear.
I RTFA, and the guy is doing the math from the consumer side, not the production side. Consider the ramifications of paying $0.12 per episode for television. Since people here seem to like Battle Star Galactica, and the article's author mentioned is specifically as something he watches, we'll use that as the example. Here we go:
1.) Assume that an average episode of BSG attracts 10 million viewers.
2.) Each viewer pays $0.12 per episode.
10 million X $0.12 = $1.2 million per episode.
Now I'm guessing that the average episode of BSG costs much more than $1.2 million to produce. Therefore, if we use the $0.12/episode cost the author is asking for, BSG could not be made. At $0.12/episode, we will only be producing crappy sitcoms that can appeal to a wide enough audience, and only a few of these total so as not to distribute the viewer pool too widely. So you can pay $100/month to watch the 4 shows you like with the option to watch hundreds more at no extra charge, or $10 a month for maybe 10 shows you don't like and will only watch because nothing good gets made anymore.
Now the numbers above are completely fictional, I have no idea what the average viewership of BSG is, or the average cost per episode. If anyone can find these two items of information, we can calculate the minimum cost per episode to a viewer for BSG to be produced. I'm guessing it'll be closer to $1.99/episode than $0.12/episode.
http://www.mhall119.com
Now the numbers above are completely fictional, I have no idea what the average viewership of BSG is, or the average cost per episode. If anyone can find these two items of information, we can calculate the minimum cost per episode to a viewer for BSG to be produced. I'm guessing it'll be closer to $1.99/episode than $0.12/episode.
It's harder to do with cable than broadcast, because cable channels get per-viewer subscriber fees for their revenues in addition to advertising. The subscriber fee is for the whole channel, so they can decide how the apportion it to a particular show.
For broadcast, it's basically around 60 to 80 cents that advertisers pay per viewer for a popular show. For broadcast, a solid popular show gets around 10 million viewers. Cable ratings are much lower. Battlestar Galactica specifically gets around 2 million viewers on a good night. But since it's on cable, they can still afford it since they have those subscriber fees.
Subscriber fees for the Sci-Fi channel are 16 cents per month per subscriber, and they have 79.88 million total subscribers, so $12.8 million a month. How much of that to apportion to Battlestar Galactica? That's what makes this hard. Flat per hour division gives you roughly $18,000 per hour. Cable ad rates are like $6500 per 30-second spot (who knows if the Sci-Fi channel can command a higher rate?), and assuming about 20 paid 30 second spots per hour (don't include promos, PSAs and the like), you get $148,000 revenue for an episode of BSG.
So: ~$150,000 revenue per show / ~2 million viewers = $0.075. Seven and a half cents per viewer is what they are happy to take in to show you BSG (they haven't canceled it, so they must think it's worth it). So it seems closer to your guessed at 12 cents than the $1.99. Don't worry for the media companies, they're swimming in profits.
now can someone send me the next 1.5 weeks of Daily Shows and Colbert Reports?
Thanks for the math, the 2 million average viewers in much lower than my assumption. I would be very surprised if they could produce BSG for an average of $150,000 per episode, I'm guessing that if they only bring in that much in advertising and subscription fees, BSG is spending money brought in by other SciFi shows, which are mostly syndications anyway.
http://www.mhall119.com
Thanks for the math, the 2 million average viewers in much lower than my assumption. I would be very surprised if they could produce BSG for an average of $150,000 per episode, I'm guessing that if they only bring in that much in advertising and subscription fees, BSG is spending money brought in by other SciFi shows, which are mostly syndications anyway.
It most definitely costs more than $150,000 per episode. Couple million per episode is around the figure, though I can't find any sources right now. But it obviously still works for them (hasn't been canceled yet). One obvious way is that it is subsidized by other shows, like you mention. They might also consider it an "investment" to build their brand.
But another thing to consider is I don't think Sci-Fi channel is the direct producer of BSG -- I know for sure that earlier series were at least co-productions with Sky. So as such, they don't have to directly worry about paying for the production costs. The "BSG Production Company" makes the shows, and they need to worry about how to pay for it. One way is to sell episodes to Sci-Fi (we don't know for how much) for which Sci-Fi will make some ~$200,000 per episode per airing. Another is to sell the same episode to Sky for I don't know how much, then to resell it to NBC when it's a hit, and also sell merchandising, and DVDs -- the point is, it's their problem to figure out how to make a profit vs. production costs. Selling digital copies direct to viewers could certainly be one more method, and the price point can be as low as free (as they actually did with some episodes), or 7.5 cents, or 80 cents, $1.99, or even $10. Which price point maximizes profits, that's the question. I don't think $1.99 is that point. They could sell a hell of a lot more IMO if they priced it in the 10 cent, 25 cent, 50 cent range, the upper of which would still be more than it brings in per viewer on cable, and around what it would bring in per viewer on broadcast.
There's money to be made here, they just haven't figured it out yet.
Who would pay $1.99 to download a television episode that only costs about $0.0014 to see on cable?
Let me guees 800 channels x 24 hours a day for 30$ per month??
The only sport I watch is Formula-1: 17 races a year usually in 3 hour shows.
In the old (pre-download) days, to watch F1 in my area I needed "SpeedVision-2". My cable provider will give me access to SV2 only if I get the "Advanced Super Sports Package" for 26.95$ per month, or 323.40 per annum (+tax).
323.40$ for 17 shows of 3 hours each, or 6.34$ per hour of show, and double per hour of race if I skip the pre and post show, since I get better news online anyway.
No thanks. I am getting used to the strange English accent of the races I get online, and the US commentators are a real joke anyway "Why these guys insists on turning right is beyound my understanding".