Time Warner Recommends Internet For Some Shows

EdIII writes "The dispute between Time Warner and Viacom over fees seems to be without any resolution this year. Time Warner faces the possibility of being without content for almost 20 channels. Alexander Dudley, a spokesperson for Time Warner, is fighting back: 'We will be telling our customers exactly where they can go to see these programs online,' Mr. Dudley said. 'We'll also be telling them how they can hook up their PCs to a television set.' Why pay for digital cable when many content providers are now providing it on demand via the Internet? Not to mention the widespread availability of TV shows in both standard and high definition on public and private torrent tracker sites. It is entirely possible to watch television with no commercials or advertising with only an Internet connection. So getting your content via the Internet is not exactly free, but it certainly isn't contributing to Time Warner or any other cable providers' revenue stream. The real question is why Time Warner would fight back by so clearly showing how increasingly obsolete they are becoming and that cable providers are losing their monopolistic grip on media delivery." If no agreement is reached, those channels are supposed to be dropped just after midnight tonight.

Comments

FiOS

[oahazmatt]

I just warned Bright House (essentially Time Warner, both affected by this) that if they actually subtract stations from me they had best be prepared to adjust my bill accordingly or I would switch to FiOS, which just made itself available in our area. I already got a canned response telling me to use websites. I might switch anyway.

Re:FiOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Careful though... Time Warner's agreement with Viacom just happens to be expiring right now so make no mistake about it that Viacom will come to Direct TV with the exact same inflated demands which they are now asking of TWC when that contract expires as well.

So anyone who's solution is to go with FIOS or Direct TV just be forewarned that Viacom will be at those doors rattling their chains before too long. Plus, chances are that with their TWC revenue gone (which Viacom is already adding into their 2009 profit projections), Viacom will be asking for even bigger pay days from these companies to make up the difference.

Re:FiOS

[BlueBoxSW.com]

So if Viacom got $2.25 per subscriber for these channels in 2008, and is asking $2.50 in 2009, how much are you going to refund to users? If it's more than $2.50, you're better off paying Viacom, if it's less, people will laugh at you ("take away the best 10% of my channels and knock 2% off my bill?")

Re:FiOS

[KutuluWare]

What this means in English is that if the cable provider sells ESPN to someone, they must buy ESPN to resell it (obviously) but must also buy ESPN2 (and others). However, there is nothing that requires them to actually provide those chanels to anyone. So, they can easily sell and provide ESPN and only ESPN to anyone they want. They just have to charge the cost of ESPN plus extras or they will lose money on it.

So you're saying the cable companies should *pay* for channels no one wants, *charge me* for the channels no one wants, but not actually *give me* the channels no one wants?

In your mind, that scenario makes *more* sense than just sending the channels they have down the wire and letting me decide not to watch it?

Why?

[lbmouse]

"The real question is why Time Warner would fight back by so clearly showing how increasingly obsolete they are becoming and that cable providers are losing their monopolistic grip on media delivery."

Because they are also TWC via Road Runner.

Incoming DDoS attack

[volxdragon]

I forsee a DDoS attack on Viacom servers by the masses of users redirected there by Time Warner. Funny actually, because it will drive up Viacom's costs if they have to bring additional servers or bandwidth on-line to handle the load (unless they do something draconian like block all Time Warner address blocks :)).

Think about how many shows you really watch

[SuperKendall]

I dropped cable because I did the math, and for the few shows I was interested in watching it was cheaper to buy the shows on iTunes than to pay for cable.

If you think about it any given show is only $8/month (4 episodes at $1.99 each), and generally do not last a whole year. You can have quite a few shows in the line for less than the price of a normal cable subscription.

And of course, there are the multiple free avenues that range in legality from Hulu to torrents (someone needs to make a torrent client called Zulu to turn that into a great line).

As another poster here noted, Time Warner would probably be fine just becoming your value-added internet service provider even if they don't add much programming on top of that.

Now of course, none of that advice probably applies if you watch a lot of sports. In those cases, I don't know there are really good alternatives other than frequent trips to a bar...

Re:But what about bandwidth caps?

[Aranykai]

Just how many shows are these people actually watching? An hour slot usually encodes to less than 700MB. At 250GB per month, assuming half of that was TV, they have:

250GB x 1024 = 256000MB
256000 / 700 = 365.7 Hours

That would be over 13 hours of TV a day, every day for a month. Right...

Re:Videos will be disabled

[Faylone]

Wait, so the ONLY way I could access the shows would be...through piracy?

Re:But what about bandwidth caps?

[Belial6]

What I don't understand is why people think that everyone's mind is so feeble that TV is a distraction. Seriously, getting snooty about other peoples choice of entertainment doesn't make you smart.