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Cable Companies Want Bigger Share of Online TV Market
commodore64_love writes with news that a number of cable companies, such as Time-Warner, Comcast, and Cox, are trying to establish themselves as content providers on the web in addition to television. They are currently negotiating with HBO, TNT, CNN, and a number of other channels to bring their programming online exclusively for cable TV subscribers. They say they're not trying to develop "some enormous new revenue opportunity," but rather trying to compete with sites like Hulu, which provide shows for free.
"They pay networks a per-subscriber fee each month for the right to carry channels. But the cable companies have groused that they are paying for content that programmers are giving away for free on the Web. ... People aren't yet cutting the cord en masse - the Leichtman survey found that people who watch recent TV shows online every week are not more likely to give up TV service than other people. But the industry is heading off what could end up as a troubling trend. After all, the availability of free content online has befuddled other media industries, from music to newspapers. ... The cable companies and others involved in the talks for a TV service said their goal isn't to kill the online video goose, but to work out a plan that keeps everyone's business intact."
How about we eliminate the middle party fees and go right to the source. everyone wins!
~ Ron Fitzgerald
A bigger share of the pie.
(with pie being money)
During LOST on ABC this week my cable cut out five times....in the first fifteen minutes of the show.
I instead just waited for the show to be over, then downloaded the HD scene release from one of those internet sets that let's you do that, instead of watching the choppy version from my digital cable box that I pay a lot for per month.
Time Warner customer service is terrible also. They had no idea what was wrong with my box. Replaced it. And the same thing happened this morning when I watching the news....so I just listened to news radio this morning instead of local TV news.
If Time Warner and these other companies expand into the online realm of audio video media entertainment are they going to carry the baggage and problems that they have on cable already? Are we going to have to pay for 1,000 internet channels when we only watch at most ten of them? Is the digital cable guide never going to be available? When will they start upping the subscription rates and not telling anyone? Will they force the user to purchase a CD from Time Warner with the software installed to watch the online videos so that they can charge an installation fee?
I pay for cable but I almost download everything I watch now besides live sports events, and even then with the reliability of my cable box, I've been turning to radio more often than ever.
Maybe people have other experiences with different cable and satellite TV providers, but Time Warner is tremendously horrible. And why do I keep Time Warner? They are the only cable and internet provider around me, for real. Ugh.
... has historically worked hard to keep content carriers (ISPs) and content providers (television show, movie & music makers) completely separate. IMO, allowing cable companies to become content providers as well as ISPs violates that principle. It carries too much danger of a few companies controlling all content. One of the historical fears is that not only does this have the effect of monopolizing content, it allows too few companies to control the news.
Infect your subscribers PC with DRM and Spyware. Hey, it worked for Sony.
If my cable company would let me sign into some site (which I would get access to because I pay for the cable in my house) and watch tv episodes, I'd watch it on that site over a site like hulu. Of course, that all depends on which has better quality, fewer commercials, etc.
I travel a lot, so in lieu of a slingbox, I'd appreciate the added feature of being able to watch the service I pay for when I'm on the road.
...growing implementation of data-per-month caps has nothing to do with free-and-legal streaming video, right? It's all about those bandwidth-hogging criminals, most assuredly!
Information wants to be free -- but informants want to be paid.
I don't recognize a single word. Nice editing. LOL. :-) - The key point of my submission is that YOU WILL NO LONGER BE ABLE TO WATCH SHOWS FOR FREE on sites like tnt.com, abcfamily.com, et cetera because the shows will be placed behind a wall, and only cable subscribers will be able to access them. Non-cable homes (such as myself) will no longer be able to watch ad-supported online shows like the Closer, Kyle XY, or Monk.
The cable companies argue that, because they pay subscriber fees (25-90 cents per home per channel), they should be able to control who does, and does not, have access to online TV shows.
Aside -
Frankly, when I read this in my hometown paper, it made me rather angry. It's bad enough Comcast has a monopoly over cable lines, but now they want a monopoly over internet TV watching too? I've been watching Monk and Kyle XY on usanetwork.com and abcfamily.com for awhile now, but it appears I won't be doing that after Fall 2009 arrives. They will be sealed behind subscriber-only access.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
People have wants that aren't being met. Cable companies have the power to grant those wants. Why aren't they doing something about it!?
Here's #1: People want to watch their favorite shows on their own schedule. Sure, DVRs are a partial solution, but they only work if the customer remembers to set it up properly. Cable companies have had 'on demand' for years now, but instead of using it to keep their customers happy, they throw a few crappy programs on it and charge. Why!? That would totally stop a lot of people from watching online.
Instead of just throwing money at the problem, they should be thinking like a customer for a change.
If they would make CableTV fun and reliable, I would probably stop watching online and start paying for a cable line again.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
The cable companies' business model is to charge for a connection to content. In the up-and-coming age of Internet streaming, that isn't going to happen. They need a paradigm shift if they're going to survive. The CBS and NBC sites are good examples of what can survive (although they're done quite poorly, IMO).
At this rate, cable co.s are going to become ISPs, and nothing more. If they can set up their own streaming sites, (with competitive offerings and commercials) some of them can survive as content providers. The Internet has a tendency to cut out the middlemen. The middlemen must now add value to persist.
Besides, the cable model is inherently unfair anyway. One both pays the cable co. and must sit through commercials. Most people won't admit that they're getting double billed, but they can feel it. They will migrate to better models as they become available.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
It's amazing how adept the media companies are at shooting themselves in the feet. They've come a long way with sites like hulu such that it is now more convenient to watch shows legally than illegally. If they change that by acceding to the cable companies' demands, the only result will be more piracy and less revenue. Cable companies are going to have to realize at some point that their primary function of providing access to a lot of content that most of their customers aren't interested in isn't going to last much longer, and that they are going to become just another pipe into the home. Attempts like this to forestall the inevitable are going to fail in the long run.
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
Problem was they were also my ISP so I was screwed for awhile.
Cable retained users by offering more channels with fewer commercial interruptions.
As adoption skyrocketed, cable companies began tossing more and more commercials into the mix.
In 1986 the average cable show had 2 commercials in it; today popular shows have 6 minutes of commercials for every 5 minutes of content.
Do that in today's market and leaner, meaner companies with less legacy issues to tie them down will come eat your lunch!
Cable providers have already shown they don't have the spine to risk losing that programming, so they can't threaten to shut these studios out. They'll have to take a huge cut in profits by either paying them higher fees for exclusivity or lowering their commercials on live and offering more dependable, consumer friendly service.
If they try to up their bills satellite will eat their lunch, even if they manage to lock out hulu and netflix, and the higher their bills go -- especially with their bundling with internet service, the more customers they will lose.
There are those who consider the TV just superfluous and buy only net. if the cable company jacks up the tv portion of their bill they'll switch ISP's
For those whose primary purpose is TV, people, especially in this economy, might save their pennies for food/gas/mortgage and start giving pirate bay more patronage (and flowers : ] )
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Now that we are almost all on metered internet, they will offer 'reduced bandwidth rates' for local content, relative to their competition.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
today popular shows have 6 minutes of commercials for every 5 minutes of content.
That is bullshit. The typical prime-time hour long show has 39-42 minutes of content,leaving only 18-21 minutes for commercials. That is a ratio of 1 minute commercial for every 2 minutes of content. I know this because I edit the commercials out before watching and I use the "time remaining" counter in my video editor as a sanity check that I got all of the commercials.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
to work out a plan that keeps everyone's business intact.
Well, I'm sure that's close to what he meant to say...
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I just download TV episodes from BitTorrent. Much more convenient, I don't have to install some shitty Windows only software filled with security holes, no commercials, and I have full control over the files I download.
I usually download a ~349Mb TV episode, and copy it to a flash drive. I then bring the flash drive downstairs, plug it into my PlayStation 3, and enjoy watching the shows in HD.
Or sometimes, if I know I won't have time to watch the show because I know I'll be busy all day, I'll run the video file through a converter and copy it to my MP3/Video player, and watch the TV show when I have a bit of free time.
And the legitimate, legal customer is limited to watching a video that's interrupted by commercials, confined to a small Flash window, etc etc.
You know, I am really tired of this. The fairness doctrine did not squelch dissent. It demanded for equal time for opposing views... no matter who supplied the original opinions. That is the opposite of "squelching dissent"... what it does is allow everybody to get some word in. Without it, you get situations like in this last election, in which some people were simply excluded from debating the issues. THAT is "squelching dissent"... and is exactly the kind of situation that the fairness doctrine prevents.
The people who oppose equal time are the people who are afraid of dissent. There simply is no other logical explanation.
Honestly. My cable company just raised my bill per month by $10, so I canceled my cable all together. If they're complaining about internet stealing all their business they should take a look at the sort of terrible programming they're offering. I wanted 3 extra channels on my cable package, but I couldn't just get just those channels, I had to get an additional 200 channels I didn't want and an additional $30 on my bill. The internet's rightly stealing their business because when you go online you can watch whatever the hell you want whenever you want. It's a pretty clear case of an anachronistic business model complaining that the new better ways are digging into their bottom line.
I have nothing compelling to say
One day the networks will bypass the terrestrial affiliates and go straight to cable/satellite. That will open up a lot more airtime they can show commercials. But even cable is another middleman they'd like to bypass. Once full definition video on demand over IP becomes truly feasible and universal, the networks will go straight to the Net, the hell with the cable/sats.
My wife and I recently bought our first HD flat screen TV. We were about to call Comcast to add HD to our cable plan. Then we stopped and asked ourselves a question, "How much more enjoyment will we get from watching shows we already watch but now in HD?" The answer, for us, turned out to be almost nothing. So now we were stuck with stretched and obviously pixelated non HD programming on our new HD TV.
So we asked ourselves another question, "How many of the shows that we watch aren't available online as full episodes (many in HD)?" The answer again, for us, turned out to be almost none.
So we dropped all cable TV (cable package, DVR, and on-demand) and only kept internet. We then signed up for Netflix 3 DVDs with Blu-Ray and on-demand for only $17 a month. We then bought an LG Blu-Ray player that hooks into your Netflix account and allows you to stream any Netflix on-demand show to your TV. LG even recently released an upgrade where now we can browse YouTube and watch any video.
Looking back, we would never go back to cable. We're perfectly happy with the selection of entertainment Netflix and online sites give us and very much enjoy watching TV on our terms with almost no commercials (most network TV websites use commercials... though Netflix doesn't, of course). Plus, we went from almost paying ~$80 for HD cable with a DVR and an on-demand box to only $17 a month (plus the Blu-Ray player we bought) and are much happier with our TV.
What's poetic justice in all this is that Comcast is providing the bandwidth for us to stream all of their competitor's content. Makes me realize why cable companies are vehemently against net neutrality. I hope they never win that battle.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
Can you get over the air (OTA) or are you stuck? It is more reliable IMO.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
You are absolutely right of course. Interestingly, I time it by DVD releases that I watch while on the treadmill. For example, Star Trek (TOS) from the 1960's episodes are 50 minutes long. So apparently there were 50 minutes of "show" to 10 minutes of commercial. Star Trek TNG from the 1990's is 45 minutes of "show" to 15 minutes of commercial. Psych (2nd season) is 43 minutes of "show" to 17 minutes of commercial. I think the worst I have seen so far is 40 minutes of "show" to 20 minutes of commercial.
For me it is very interesting though to see how they foist more and more commercials over time. I'd like to have that 50 minutes of show per hour back!
Internet tv wont be a panacea to tv watching customers. You'll be able to have a streaming box like a Roku or a store and play box like a tivo that will get free or nearly free tv shows with re-play or re-download abilities if you dont get the show the first time, but then your cable internet bandwidth will jump through the roof and the cable companies will charge you double for the extra usage.
So instead of paying comcast $50 for cable tv and $50 for cable internet, you'll end up paying them $100 for high usage cable internet.
Directv and comcast will simply become larger broadband providers.
Seems like a smart direction to go in. Trying to shove 300 channels into a limited bandwidth in real time is pretty stupid.
comcast already owns "theplatform"
that's what most of the "big players" (hulu for one) in the "internet tv" space are using to host/deliver all their cool little internet tv apps anyway.
funny how that works isnt it ? :)
Far as I know, Hulu is owned by NBC. They already own the content. They can do what they want with it. Comacast (and other cable companies) don't own content. They can't do anything with something they don't own (or license). It's that simple.
But also, I don't know why the cable companies want to have a website for internet TV. They say it's not for revenue, and it certainly couldn't be, a big website like Hulu costs a lot to develop, and while I like Hulu, it doesn't make me think any more or less of NBC, or earn them any goodwill.
Yeah, they make money from advertising, but it can't come close to what it cost to develop the site.
Cable companies don't deserve a piece of the online pie! They already have 1 monopoly!
Reminds me of something I read back when TNG was first on the air, about how it cost so much to make that Paramount was selling most of the advertising time in order to pay for it.
I don't use Netflix just for streaming, but I moved my plan up a notch just to have access to it.
I can't say I'm burning up the tubes streaming stuff, but I like it when I do.
I feel the price I pay is a fair price, so I can see a business model that does charge for a connection to content.
What isn't going to happen is someone paying 69.95 a month for low quality video just to stream it to a laptop.
This is where they will miss the boat. It doesn't have to be free. People will pay for things if the price is right. I'm on a fairly tight budget but I've been a Netflix customer for well over a year now.
transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
That doesn't make sense. TNG was syndicated, it was one of the first shows to be distributed only in syndication. One result of being syndicated is that the only source of revenue is payments from the syndicating stations.
I had one of the bundles with TV, internet, and phone service. I cancelled it all back in August. I was getting ready to take on a project at work that was going to eat most of my time. And I got to looking. I was spending about $140 per month for all of it and really only watch 3 TV's show that I could purchase for $40 per season at iTunes. I had internet at work, and much faster than at home, and I had my cell phone. So I just cut it all off. And I can't say that I've missed it that much.
I love watching St. Louis Cardinals baseball. $110 and I get to watch all the games live over the internet via MLB.tv. So basically, I get all the entertainment I want for about 2 months of what I was paying.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Why isn't this multicast? You send the multicast stream once from the source, ISP/CableCos get it, insert commercials, then they can multicast it to the end users to save to hdd.
Torrents should only kick in when your primary disribution isn't running, the end users or the cable co do not need to upload for normal distrubtion. In fact, I really don't see any reason why they should ever kick in. Direct download would be more efficient since the distribution point is at the ISP/CableCo, not over the Internet.
What about those of us that got fed up with the sleezy billing practices of Time Warner and now use DirectTV? I wouldn't pay a cable company a penny for anything.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
I just wanted to mention that I'm part of the trend.
I got tired of paying $63 a month for cable when most of the "live TV" I watch are major network shows. I download South Park and a few other cable only shows, and don't even watch them on their normal cable channels.
So I went to Radio Shack and got a nice VHF/UHF yagi. I put it in the attic pointing in the direction of the antenna farms.
The result? Beautiful HD picture from all the local stations and national networks. And it costs $0.
I canceled cable the same week. If I find myself missing cable channels (I haven't yet) I can always go satellite for those channels which is cheaper anyway.
Cable will lose subscribers if they don't provide better value. These things are the first to go when the crunch hits the pocketbook.
... work out a plan that keeps everyone's business intact.
Sound familiar? The problem is, the consumer is not usually a part of such plans. Well, other than as a cash cow to be milked for all it's worth.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You may not believe it, but it's true.
Now they're finally admitting the real reason for the bandwidth caps: they do not want to lose their cable TV monopolies.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Exactly what I came in here to say. If you make money from providing the medium, you shouldn't also be in the message business -- and vice versa.
(Way past) Time to start enforcing anti-trust legislation again.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I know this because I edit the commercials out before watching
Could you maybe, you know on your last day before layoff or retirement, "forget" to edit the commercials back in. It feels good to break a rule know and again, wouldn't you agree?
In TFA, The cable co's position is flawed. Offering streaming content online days or weeks after they are broadcast over cable is not exactly the same thing. They should just stream their content online to those that wish to use that as an alternate or additional method to receive their basic and premium content. Offer a Live internet cable broadcast stream. Like Hulu, but live, and a whole selection of channels basic and premium, "broadcast live online", and archived content also available.
The original reason -- and the ongoing reason -- for the "fairness doctrine" is that money should not rule what is being broadcast over what is, after all, a public medium. It may be the case that "conservative" or "republican" talk shows are more profitable. Hooray for them. But it is also true that in general, it is the Republicans and the Conservatives who have the most money to make them profitable... whether through donations or outright funding.
While the radio stations are to some degree competitive, one should remember that the airwaves are PUBLIC, licensed to those stations as public media, and the fact that one company is more profitable than another should not determine what kind of political speech is being played to the public by those stations, nor how often. The very idea is un-American. That would be as though someone who found the most profitable use for river water could take all the water in the river. Public airwaves and airtime are like the river water... for use by all.
The public deserves to have time to hear all -- or all reasonably sane -- views. People should not be excluded from political discussion just because a network does not care for a particular candidate's views... as happened in this last Presidential election. To do such makes a mockery of the principles on which this country was founded. It was never intended that money should buy political speech.
You seem to forget that the "fairness doctrine" worked JUST FINE for decades. And since its passing, things have been demonstrably worse. It is not as though this were a radical idea that did not work. It is in fact a mainstream idea that DID work.
I shell out big bucks and take almost every channel Comcast has to offer over a fiber optic connection. Yet the movie selection is awful and very repetitive. Their cable service is also marginal.
Instead of giving them larger shares of the entertainment market it is high time that we have choices between numerous cable services to our homes. Competition would drive quality upwards and drive prices downward.
Nevertheless, "only 18-21 minutes for commercials" with 1:2 ratio is just sick, don't you think? Especially for paid cable services. I'd assume your post was intended to be ironic, but the mods didn't notice.
If you call them on it "oh no sir, we don't filter anything". Um, yeah, right. Where's my BS flag?
18-21 minutes for commercials. That is a ratio of 1 minute commercial for every 2 minutes of content.
Wow. I knew it was bad, but I didn't think it was that bad. Good thing I don't watch television any more. How do people put up with trying to watch a show while being bombarded by obnoxious ads that add up to half the length of the shows themselves?
work out a plan that keeps everyone's business intact.
Isn't that called a trust?
Why would a content creator/publisher NEED an exclusive internet distributor? Why wouldn't they build out their own delivery channels over the internet and let people subscribe directly?
So, what is the value prop from the cable companies? I wonder if it is quality of service while trampling other internet traffic like P2P, gaming, VPN, music streaming, etc. These guys are your ISP and they are going to prioritize your traffic to their gain. And to think that cable companies try to play that network shaping is because of physical constraints and economics. Cable companies plain and simple have a conflict of interest in making decisions as to what is best for the network as they build out their business model. Let the market determine what apps will win out in the bandwidth wars by people's spending. Let technology adapt - not be artificially shaped by a business plan.
They pay networks a per-subscriber fee each month for the right to carry channels. But the cable companies have groused that they are paying for content that programmers are giving away for free on the Web.
Hey Comcast (and AT&T, Verizon, Cox, etc). Turn around is fair play. You guys have been trying to figure out how to squeeze a few extra bucks out of content providers. But now it looks like you are going to become their bitches. I'm ROTFLMAO.
Have gnu, will travel.
Where the hell did you get that idea? That is exactly the opposite of what I was saying. Geez. Try reading for a change.
Maybe he's refering to the pop up advertisements and banners that pop up over the show, and how they now squish the credits down to a corner of the screen to show even more ads? Plus the animated, opaque, full color water marks? I could very well believe that some channels have some kind of ad or branding on the screen more time than not nowadays.
Who's decent? Liberal/libertarian/conservative isn't the limit of the political spectrum. Every single person has there own opinion and by your principle no one would be allowed to posit an opinion without allowing everyone else to chime in.
That said fairness has nothing to do with the cable as the FCC has no right to control jack shit over cable.
One solution is to separate the Internet Service Provider from the Content Provider.
Let the cable companies become the ISP and focus solely on that. A decision like this would allow them to simplify their business and maintenance model. Since content is becoming cheaper to access then why bother trying to get guaranteed revenue from it. If you have 1 Million customers and you charge them US$100 per month for 50/10 d/u you're pocketing $100 Million in revenue PER MONTH. You cannot tell me that amount of money, if used properly back into the infrastructure, does nothing to support and improve a cable-based internet infrastructure.
The content providers, not having to worry how the customers get the content, could then make their revenue from regular access (revenue based on advertising; e.g., ABC does this) or premium access (revenue based on subscribers; e.g., HBO does this now). This gets them direct access to the consumer and immediate feedback; no need to go through the Nielsen's anymore to find out what people want. Look at who is actually buying episodes or whole seasons. ROI from consumer to content provider is faster.
TOS and TNG are actually 51 and 46 minutes worth of show, when you include the credits (which is the norm).
Towards the end of Voyager's run, the showlength was dropped to 43 minutes. If Star Trek Enterprise was still airing, it'd probably be reduced to 41 minutes like all the other shows (CSI, Lost, et cetera). And then there's shows like Fringe and Dollhouse that are bucking the trend by returning to a 51 minute-long show.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Wish I could mod informative. I dont have the exact times but going off of feeling I think that Terminator: Sara Connor Chronicles and BSG also are going back to longer shows. At least it feels like I have to hit the fast forward on my DVR less often.