Slashdot Mirror
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."
... 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.
Solution: Stop paying for cable.
...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.
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 ----