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The Problem With Cable Is Television
Saul Hansell writes in the NY Times about how various services offered by cable companies affect their spending and their revenue. As it turns out, a lot of the cost increases and investment needs are coming from television and video services rather than internet connectivity. The scramble for high-def and rising licensing fees for programming seem to be the biggest headaches for Comcast and Time Warner right now. Quoting:
"By all accounts, Web video is not currently having any effect on the businesses of the cable companies. Market share is moving among cable, satellite and telephone companies, but the overall number of people subscribing to some sort of pay TV service is rising. (The government's switch to digital over-the-air broadcasts is providing a small stimulus to cable companies.) However, if you remember, it took several years before music labels started to feel any pain from downloads. As the sour economy and the Web start putting more pressure on the cable companies, they may be forced to consider breaking up the big bundles of channels they now insist that consumers buy and instead offer individual channels or smaller groups of channels on an à la carte basis."
I thought the problem was that the programming sucked.
I have to pay for basic cable, and then pay an internet fee on top of that, even though I never watch TV.
If internet is less expensive to deliver than TV, why oh why won't the cable companies just let me buy what I want and need, without paying for the "basic tier" of trash?
... but not many. I'm not that into TV, and get by with the minimum necessary to satisfy the rest of the family. Being able to pick and choose a la carte might get the cable companies more $$ from my pocket. Having to purchase them in great blocks guarantees my wallet stays shut.
I've been saying for years that if they offered a sort of Science/Technology/Learning bundle (i.e. Discovery channels, Learning channels, History, Military), I'd sign up in a heartbeat. What I don't want to do is pay for MTV, ESPN, and a couple of hundred other channels in which I have no interest. Perhaps the cable industry will have to change a lifelong habit and start giving a damn about what their customers want?
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
back in the day we'd schedule our lives around television. an hour of your life was set aside to find out who shot JR. everything is on demand now. with the exception of American Idle, we'll get to it when we get to it. The viral nature of youtube clip popularity and the popularity of tivo'ing should put producers on notice -- consumers will come to you, not the other way around.
The "sour economy" is not putting any pressure on cable companies. None. Most people today consider TV as essential as a cell phone or natural gas. And given the escapism angle, I'd guess most Americans would pay the cable bill with their last $50.
What I want:
HBO
History Channel
MSNBC
CNN
CBC
BBC
Comedy Central
Showtime
Science Channel
PBS
Animal Planet (for my daughter)
Cartoon Network (for my daughter)
VH1 (for the wife)
That's it. I don't watch and don't care for the rest of it, because it's mindless brain drool, and a lot of what is on the stations I listed is also mindless brain drool, just less of it than elsewhere (like Oxygen, MTV, SPIKE, ABC/CBS/NBC, etc.). That's 13 channels I would watch, and watch at least once a week. I would pay a dollar a month for each. That would give them $13 a month they're not getting now. I would not pay more than $1 month, because frankly, TV is a big time suck and mind poison. but that's what I would do, and I am certain there are many people who agree with me.
I don't want the Food Channel. I don't want ESPN. I don't want "Desperate Housewives" or "American Idol". It's crap. I don't want it in my house.
But I am willing to pay for the good stuff, if I can be certain I will get GOOD STUFF.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
"As the sour economy and the Web start putting more pressure on the cable companies, they may be forced to consider breaking up the big bundles of channels they now insist that consumers buy and instead offer individual channels or smaller groups of channels on an à la carte basis."
What kind of dream world do you live in? I give this about as much chance as happening as anything else that the cable companies would do to "improve" service (ie. giving a crap). Anything short of a federal mandate filtering down from the White House through the FTC wouldn't change their current practices of price gouging and various ongoing false claims of bandwidth throttling and whatnot.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
Possibly OT, but when I installed a little outdoor DTV antenna the other day, I was amazed by how many stations I got. I'm wondering: as stations start taking advantage of the extra stations (you know, running more programs rather than running HD and SD stations with the same programming plus a weather channel) will large numbers of casual TV users decide the monthly cable fee isn't worth it?
Mod points: Guaranteed to remove your sense of humor.
Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
Why should I pay cable companies for a badly compressed copy when I can get it over the air with that $40 antenna I bought 15 years ago?
It't not like there's all that much worth watching on TV anyway - my dogs watch more TV in a day than I do in a month.
The money the cable operators pay for the rights to channels like MTV, CNN and ESPN eats up just under $4 of every $10 they take in selling video service.
I could easily do without any of these channels. If they make up the bulk of the cost, it's a sham because there is so little value in anything these channels offer. It's not that the problem with cable is television (as a medium), it's that there's too much crappy programming and it costs too much to license.
I'm not a fan of cable companies. Not in any way.
But the problem with the groupings right now is that the content providers force certain groupings. For example, if you want to offer ESPN and ESPN2 (what cable company could afford not to), then Disney says "okay, if you want to offer ESPN and ESPN2, that'll $2.40 per month per subscriber". Which is $2.40 which goes straight to your cable bill. But then they say "well, but we have this new channel, ESPNU (or Classic or Disney Kids 5 or whatever), if you offer that channel IN THE SAME PACKAGE AS ESPN, we'll give you ESPN+ESPN2+ESPNU for only $1.40 per month per subscriber".
So each year, the providers will basically force another channel into their bundle this way. So each year, each of these content providers is raising the amount of money they get from each subscriber. And the cable companies have to offer big bundles in order to meet the requirements from the content providers.
Furthermore, it gives all the advantages to the big companies who already have lots of channels in your package. They can launch a new channel easily while the small guys are locked out since the bandwidth is already being chewed up by the big guys' new channels.
The internet is definitely the disruptive technology that will stop this. That is, if the cable companies and content providers don't find a way to prevent you from streaming video directly.
There's no technological reason why this bundling is necessary. It's just because the companies (cable and content providers) have found it to their advantage so far. I feel it would strongly benefit the customers to enforce an end to this bundling.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I agree, but so much of the stuff on History and Discovery anymore is just more reality shows.
Ideally, you could subscribe and pay per program, and I could watch "How It's Made" during prime-time whether advertisers like it or not.
And I demand a pro-rated refund for "shark week".
However, if you remember, it took several years before music labels realised they had the perfect scapegoat on which to blame a failing business model that relied too heavily on back catalogue material as a prime revenue stream, and an extremely low level of quality regarding contemporary content.
Fixed that for ya!
They just don't get it, we don't want to subscribe to a hundred channels. What we do want is watch what we want when we want and not have to subscribe to half a dozen services on top of our ISP fees.
.. Television. I mean, for me, why pay extra to watch television on the Internet ?
.. :) It depresses me as to all the innovators can see as to the future of the Internet, television and adverts. Back to the sixties I guess :)
If the telecoms want to make real money out of IPTV they need to stop subscribing to rights to channels and instead buy up their own material and repackage it for their own subscribers, else all they are doing is relaying terrestrial TV to an audience that can already get on
If may come as a surprise to the telecoms that IPTV is a bandwidth hog, but not the rest of us. What they need to do is provide a high definition broadcast grid for live video, the rest to be provided in a peering arraignment to the local ISP switching center. The consumer then selects from a list of older tv progs and movies and they are delivered overnight to a DVR or set-top-box.
You pay for what you watch when you watch. Latest movie, ok top dollar, old movie, $1:00 a time. You also pay for online game subscriptions, video telephone, research and reference like the Wolfram|Alpha project.
Of course even 'passive viewing' is old century for the current wired generation, they're more into making and being in their own personal movie
See also:
Regular columnist Bill Thompson wants it all. And he wants it now.
Lets face it: the Windows Media Center PC concept has been faltering for its entire existance, and even now in the Windows 7 Release Candidate it still fails to provide anything even remotely compelling. The fact that it will not tune ClearQAM cable channels even when equipped with a capable tuner makes it about as useful as mammories on a fish. Why there has been no anti-trust investigation into the obvious collusion between Microsoft and the cable companies over this issue is a mystery to me.
Your $13 a month estimate is unrealistic. Cable companies that do provide a la carte charge a $10 flat fee, plus $1 per channel, so you'd be paying $23 a month.
By an interesting coincidence, that's how much Dish Satellite's cheapest service costs ($20). Maybe you should sign-on with them?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
My first issue with the cable company came when they took SpeedTV (before it became a NASCAR station, ugh.) and made it part of a 'sports package' back in 2001. I had no want of the other stations they wished to 'push' to me as a subscriber, so we didn't pay for the new package. Since then, I have stopped using cable, and have been using such services as hulu and others which are perfectly capable of providing adequate entertainment over my 'turtle-slow' DSL line (note not using cable internet). I am not a promoter of nor benefactor of hulu, but wish to say it might be a better business model for the cable industry than what it currently has in place.
To quote: (and you better know by who)
"We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons..."
I am sorry, but why should we pay a premium for what is already publicly available?
-cb
I do not have Cable right now, and probably won't for many years to come. I would if I could subscribe to your lineup for $13 a month.
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
Wait, does that mean the eXtenze hasn't paid for free cable delivery to all homes in the US yet?
BTW, how can such an obvious, mind-numbing scam be allowed on TV? Oh, wait, we do broadcast political speeches, too.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
HBO costs money, it's probably about $12 a month, it's high because it doesn't have many ads. The same with Showtime.
It's unfortunate that each of the other channels require payment though, it's not as if they don't stuff the channel with ads, they are bad ads and they are repeated to the max.
You should be able to get PBS over the air.
I highly doubt they would unbundle cable TV packages (what the customer wants)... their track record indicates they would attack the problem by throttling web video instead, perhaps adding a second tier of internet service for twice the price (the opposite of what the customer wants).
... that Cable is in trouble in any way, or at least not yet, and please, let's limit the conjecture to a decade, which is the entire railroad age in tech terms.
Anyone remember 1994? Remember how you felt about Record Companies in 1994? Try to be honest, folks ... I know there's a 50/50 you hate them this morning, but let's keep in mind that this was the year a CD burner for your computer cost $2,000, down from last year's $10K.
I'm going to suggest you thought they were the guys who brought you CDs from great bands who played great music and sometimes engaged in some out-of-control promotion where the main result was they got some butt-ugly DJs laid by way of backstage passes and free coke. Or you didn't buy CDs and had no opinion at all.
Now, look at the cable company. This year, 1994, 1984, whenever. You hate them, don't you? You hated them ten years ago, didn't you? Two decades ago? I know I did.
So, I think it's clear that the cable company is not threatened, and is happily engaged in making bucketfuls of cash of what they see are many future customers. Don't forget how they are considered essential services by the poor, who cannot afford babysitters and couldn't get one every day for 10 times the price of cable. Maybe you can, but the poor cannot, believe me, do without cable.
When the cable company indicates it's worried, by actually answering the phone, showing up, telling the truth, and giving you what you want, then you can say they are in trouble, because that would be a radical change in business model dictated by doomsday scenarios from the moderately clued-in staff, wherever they may be. Until then, it's business as usual, and although they probably won't be letting us in on the secret, trust me, they have a plan for this and every other foreseeable issue in the near future.
After 2019, maybe that changes.
analog cable is big block to à la carte basis and still even now most areas are still have 30-70 analog channels.
so maybe when analog is cut down to just Locals + PSA and maybe stuff like the weather channels. Then we may see la carte. Sat tv can do it now if they want to.
What "I" want/would pay for...is anecdotal. The chasm between Broadcast and Distributed prevails. "You" don't watch such'n'such but advertisers have bet dollars others do. Circling the dial is indicative and instructive of what humanity you share inclusive of age, taste and intelligence. The math used to measure and maximize the behavior of a demographic is a battle of trade secret equal to military campaign.
Would were! Should is! Could be! And live a hundred times three.
Of course this is a generalization, but in the main the paradox is that free content usually ends up not being worth paying for because quality producers won't make it for long leaving largely low cost/low quality content over the long run. Quality producers and distributors stick to channels where the business model provides a sufficient fee structure (ad revenue, subscribers fees, etc.) via channel control to provide them revenue and profit. But consumers will only pay for content they value--both in quality and speed. The problem right now is most US internet connections are mostly too slow to provide high quality and delivery speeds that will command cable TV-level fee structures for advertising and subscriber fees. The US is way behind the EU in this. So the cable companies and telcos have a huge investment in infrastructure ahead of them before they can profit in the general market. Which is why they want a tiered internet--to phase infrastructure in slowly and match costs and revenues better to stay profitable. Their greed early on has them no painted into a corner--but you can bet they are figuring out how to make to consumer fund their rescue.
...may be forced to consider breaking up the big bundles of channels they now insist that consumers buy and instead offer individual channels or smaller groups of channels on an à la carte basis
But I am willing to pay for the good stuff, if I can be certain I will get GOOD STUFF.
That's just the thing. You won't get good stuff for your $1/month. For me, à la carte channels aren't unbundled enough. Try unbundling to the show level. Oh wait. We have that. It's called the Internet, and bittorrent.
This is where their entire distribution model falls down. They have a channel called the SciFi channel (oops, SyFy, my bad^W wtfstupidmarketing) that is used to cablecast... horror movies and fantasy movies. There's precious little SciFi on SyFy. So if they were offering à la carte channels, SyFy might make my list, but in fact it wouldn't because there's too little content on it that is the kind I want. I have no interest in an endless stream of man-in-a-rubber-suit horror movies.
USA network used to broadcast the Highlander series. I liked it, despite their minor obsession with the correct "formula" for characters leading them to introducing their own Wesley Crusher-esque guaranteed-to-accrue-far-more-power-than-he-ever-deserves character. But the Highlander series is long gone and does USA have anything else I want to watch? I don't know. Their odds are so low that I haven't bothered to find out. So scratch them off the list.
And on and on.
You see where this is going. I want to treat TV exactly the way I treat books. I want 100% of the offering free from the library, and I'll buy the individual works that I like well enough to read(watch) again, but I'm paying no more than $5 for it (for the decrease in entertainment hours vs a $7 paperback), and I want 98% of that money to go to the people directly involved in creating the entertainment ('cause that's where publishers are going to end up one day too). The studios are a giant parasitic growth on the back of the creative types capable of assembling a movie and I'm not interesting in feeding a parasite.
I see the Internet as the death of television as we know it. We'll see more episodic content where the producers don't proudly trumpet the fact that they have no plan at all for the story arc and denigrate their predecessors who did (I'm looking at you Battlestar Galactica), because the networks that screwed with shows in a vain effort to please sponsors and audiences simultaneously will no longer exist. Maybe we can get a spiritual successor to Babylon 5 that doesn't get strangely squashed and stretched by the vagaries of networks, canceling and optioning on a whim.
In short, the Network Age is passing and the Studio Age is upon us. The studio controlled by the creative types will create our entertainment and the distributors that have a stranglehold on the industry will evaporate, supplanted by a vastly more efficient distribution system.
Do you people actually think that the cable companys will pass on the savings if they allow us to actually choose what we want to view?? LOL,not a chance. The prices will sky rocket to make up for the lost income from forced bundeling.
Jack of all trades,master of none
There's no technological reason why this bundling is necessary.
There is no technical reason for lots of things. That's why it is called marketing, in this case, and not technology.
But if it weren't for marketing, a lot of our technological toys would not be economically feasible. I don't know the numbers but I suspect this is true for programming too.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
the problem with television is cable. not the other way around. I remember growing up as a kid and always having cable television. flipping through tons of channels and only watching a few of them. even after living on my own for a while, moving in to new places and such, getting the cable setup was always at the top of my priorities as far as my utilities are concerned. then one day I said fuck it. I get off work at 5pm, drive 30 minutes back home, and I have a lot of shit to take care of when I get home. clean up a bit, take care of my plants, fish, cats, make dinner for my wife and I, then finally get some time to relax. after taking care of the things that need to be attended to, I can't justify spending $30, $40, $50+ on cable television. DTV has probably been the best thing that has ever happened to me. I don't watch TV enough to need cable, but the television I do watch is perfectly fine and entertaining. in particular, PBS broadcasting is something I think everyone should indulge into a little bit more. yes I thought it was boring and there were too many telethons at first, but then I realized that their primetime television is of very high quality, educational, and is enjoying to watch. it is just my opinion of course, and I'd never take away people's Family Guy, Lost, Prison Break, CSI, and all the other mindless television shows, but I figure if you're going to watch TV, you might as well learn something from it and it might as well be free.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
You won't get good stuff for your $1/month. For me, à la carte channels aren't unbundled enough. Try unbundling to the show level.
I agree with this notion of resolution at the show level being more worthwhile to the casual viewer. Pay for what you want rather than what someone's idea of what you want.
However, this per show pricing model breaks down with the current distribution mechanism, i.e. cable companies. To cover their costs, they assume all subscribers are watching all channels 24 hours a day. By dividing out what's actually watched from the total billable/viewable content available and charging based on use doesn't cover costs.
In other words, and more simply, regardless of what content you receive (via pay per view, pay per channel, pay per package), for the venture to be self sustaining, income must remain the same and, therefore, subscribers (assuming the same subscribers remain with the service and there is no churn) will always pay the same (modulo premium services).
In the ala carte model, this equates to less content for the same price. The consumer still loses if the cable companies costs don't go down with the change in billing practices.
Other channels have ads, but because the ads don't generate as much revenue as on over-the-air channels (with less eyeballs watching), they charge a franchise fee so they can afford to stay in business.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
There were VCRs back then also. I think that the difference in what you describe was more likely due to wide interest and excitement about the series. Fans (and there were a lot of them) wanted to know ASAP what happened, not wait to view the video tape after all their friends had discussed it already. Which comes back down to the question of whether programming content has become just too crappy for anybody to give a damn.
I feel the same you do but lets take it one step further and just stream it online and do away with cable television, for most of what I watch I can watch the episode that night or the next day on the channel's website for free(with commericials) so perhaps we could pay the 1$/month to watch our tv commercial free? i mean if it was all online the cableCo's wouldnt have to spend the money broadcasting everything all the time, more of an on demand structure, but even this would require them isps/cableCo's to upgrade their infrastructure
lol
"Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead."
Did you have the vinyl of that?...I would have worn mine out, but had it memorized before then.
Normally, that's true, but I live in Canada...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Pay attention now:
He will not pay $23.
He wants to pay $13.
He's willing to pay that much, so long as he knows he isn't subsidizing channels he won't watch.
Dish is not worthwhile.
I want à la carte. Period. Get rid of this "bundling", which is nothing but profiteering.
Welcome, once again, to another episode of cable operators complaining about internet delivery and content bundles. All together now - (sorry, I'm very snarky today) - cry me a river.
The real issue is that all of the current non-OTA TV delivery systems have bitten off much more than they can chew.
So far as I know, NO ONE in the USA is offering HD content as advertised:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Lite
http://www.highdefforum.com/directv-forum/29158-hd-lite-directv-picture-quality.html
http://www.satelliteguys.us/dish-network-forum/51978-facts-about-hd-lite-e.html
http://forums.joeuser.com/309174
http://www.tvnewsday.com/articles/2009/04/22/daily.4/
(I recognize that some of the above links seem to target satellite TV, but if you read through two things become apparent: users are equally slamming cable, and neither satellite nor cable has their arms around a solution.)
Like it or not, the #1 driver for a cable subscription is TV - and they already cannot deliver on that.
I'm not a big sports fan (but so what if I am or not?), but I can reliably report this: during a hockey and a basketball game, I DVR'd OTA and my so-called high-def service of same channels. Hockey results: OTA clear, puck actually disappeared with paid service. Round-ball results: OTA clear, paid service unable to distinguish if foot over line or ref was blind during slo-mo playback.
And here's some technical anecdotes:
1. Your channel package choice or size of bundle won't impact anything, it's backbone limited.
2. When I upgraded to "HD" satellite, my house's RG-58 didn't cut it due to bandwidth limits on the RG-58. The '58 was ok for the short wall-to-TV pigtails, not otherwise.
3. They can fiber this and cable that and MPEG-4 the other, but no one is supporting the infrastructure to get the job done.
And a real big issue - once you've made the grade to premium cable or premium satellite, and you've replaced your TV - name your reasons, they're all valid: a) I want a new one, b) new TV standards and my set is getting old anyway, c) time to branch out and support my computer and Hulu, HTPC, et al, in the living room - you'll replace that TV with an HDTV and you'll go with the HD package from your for-pay provider (cable or satellite). The HDTV is an investment-grade purchase, just like your PC (any flavor), and the HD programming is too small an incremental price increase to pass up.
Here's the invective we can now look forward to: if you're complaining about your TV quality, you'll be told the bandwidth suckers using torrents are to blame. If you're complaining about your internet service, you'll be told that the primary service is directed at TV quality. Either way, do not expect that the future holds a world where you're really going to get what you think you're paying for.
Mark my words.
(PS - No apologies to those not interested in HDTV, or TV - you're not the big market to these companies, and that's all I'm ragging on - I'm not dis'ing anyone's lifestyle or entertainment choices. HTH.)
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
The only problem I see is this:
If the Networks can't make money, then how do the studios? You can only profit on scarcity. Ubiquity makes things free. Networks charge advertisers because of the scarcity of the viewer who is tuned in to that network. They can charge for their eyeballs. If the Studio goes directly to the web, how do you gate that any better than a network would?
TV is in a similar place Music was in the later 90s - 2000 with the dawn of Napster. video files are still much larger, and it will take the next gen of bandwidth increases to make SD (standard Def) video easily transmissible through the interweb thingie. The generation after that will make HD doable. as it is, "HD" over the web is hideous.
We're not quite to where a movie can be DL'd in a few minutes. But add a few zeros to the bandwidth and we will.
Then ubiquity decimates your business model. So, how do you pay your actors, your crew, yourself?
A decent TV drama is going to cost at least $3 million an hour, minimum. 10 episodes is $30 million. A 20 episode year is $60 million. If you get 1 million people to watch it, that's $60 a head...
And that's for something trivial and mindless like TV drama. Something that is necessary to the functioning of society, like a working journalism community, the costs are pretty intense - hundreds of people getting paid every day, day after day.
So, how do you charge for that, outside of a network system?
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
In other words, he's a pissy twat who wants to pay an unrealistically low amount (totally ignoring infrastructure costs, etc.) rather than pay the already-stupidly-cheap rate.
Awesome.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
PS. The cable companies pay HBO more than $1 per subscriber. You'll have to up your offer if you want anyone to take you seriously.
PPS. (Really should have reread my original before posting, oh well), American Idol and Desperate Housewives are both available for free OTA.
You can get the vinyl anywhere - gemm.com is a classic place to find it.
their canonical works (the first 4) are available on CD from Amazon and just about anywhere, really.
The script? You'll have to go to abebooks.com and find an ancient copy of "The Big Book of Plays".
It's worth it though...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The short answer is the $3 million pricetag is doomed.
The long answer is that a substantial fraction of the $3 million pricetag gets eaten by the parasitic network. Another chunk of it goes for luxuries. The new distribution model will force the new studios to cut out the fat. The days of the bitchy star with three personal assistants who get their names in the credits are numbered. The star who commands a hundred million dollars is going to vanish. Stars will get paid about what the writer and director get paid, and none of them will get paid more than your typical successful novelist (not Steven King).
Will there still be star power? Probably. But the new top 1% are going to look a lot more like the rest of us and a lot less like multi-millionaires.
I haven't watched TV in ages, not since living in an apartment building that had basic cable service for everyone as an amenity. And even then I seldom found the time to watch aside from when the San Jose Sharks were playing (hockey for those scratching their heads). Now, the "TV" as in "the display device" is hooked up to the Wii and the DVD player, but "TV" as in "programming some big media company beams to my tuner" is unknown in this house. Why bother? I have plenty else to keep me entertained.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
TV over the internet is coming. Thanks to netflix, it's advancing faster than most people had thought. The biggest hurdle is going to be live broadcasts, but the way encoding is going those should be no problem in the near future. So the real problem is going to come from the government (surprise surprise) when they pass some form of "net neutrality." Like all government programs, this proposed "freedom" will end up simply locking in the current internet service providers and will close the door on any new competition that would allow actual net neutrality. You see, when live TV over the internet is available and a particular company starts to block it, people will simply change service to the internet provider that doesn't block it. With the government involved, that won't be possible, because they will have enough hooks and red tape and kickbacks involved to make sure no new competition is allowed.
~ now you know
This is the same fight that all the 'AA's are fighting. Control of the distribution channels.
When they lose the control of what to force down your throat, they lose the profit margins they can rape you for. And folks, that's bad business..for them.
We have basically have 2 television broadcasters: The national broadcaster SABC (which is free) and a private satalite based system DSTV (+- 80$). More and more local content is being made and is being broadcast mainly by SABC. It is mostly rubbish. DSTV, however licenses a bunch of American and British channels and content. Due to the terrible state of broadband here (I wish I could get 50 GB a month. It is more like 3 GB on average.), watching TV is the only sustainable method of content delivery (that and leaching at lan parties).
Perhaps famous actors shouldn't be paid tens of thousands of dollars per episode. Why should they be getting the equivelant to my yearly income to make a half-hour show (sorry, 20 minutes and advertising).
And don't even get me started on movie stars or sports in general.
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
The big problem with allowing individual channel selection is that there are plenty of channels out there that exist because of the way channels have beein funded, selected and supported.
So you want a channel dedicated to science fiction shows, movies, etc. You need to sell it to the cable companies and if a significant number agree to carry it - and pay for it - your job is done. You can get financing based on that and it really doesn't matter what the individual customers think. Some of them will watch and it is a ratings game from there on.
Switch to an ala carte model and this changes quite a bit. First off, any channel that exists today will be immediately taken down unless you have customers signing up for it. Probably within the first couple of months. This isn't like ratings where passive viewing is conidered "viewing" and done by sampling. This will be if you don't opt-in for the channel you don't support it. And without people paying for SciFi channel specifically and intentionally, it and many others will just disappear.
Sounds fair, doesn't it. What about BET? Do you really believe there are enough viewers of the Black Entertainment Network channel to keep it afloat in an ala carte environment? What about the Golf Channel? How about the Food Network? Maybe these cable channels should never have existed in the first place because they don't have a dedicated viewer base. But you can assume that it would not be in Viacom's interest to continue BET when there isn't the revenue to support it - no matter how much Jesse Jackson threatens. SciFi channel is pretty much dead meat as well. Eternal Word TV Network (EWTN) is gone. Same with just about any other channel with a narrow demographic.
Similarly, the rules of the game for starting a new channel will be completely different. Sure, a large media powerhouse might be able to subsidize a new offering for a while to see if it takes off. But nobody else will be able to, because it will take lots of money and a very uncertain future to do it. Lots of risk. Just the sort of thing VC money has been running away from lately.
Absolutely, ala carte channel selection is a solution, but we need to understand what the problem is first. It doesn't solve any of the current problems and just creates a bunch more. It might reduce the average consumer cable bill - in fact it probably will. But it will certainly decrease the number of channels available and make it almost impossible to bring a new (really new) offering to cable networks.
The one possibility would be that this wouldn't affect DirecTV and Dish Network - they could then introduce new channels based on selling it only to their management.
This "debate" has been going on for a long time. The problem with the current tiered model is that cable providers are forced to pay for services that many users don't want because large segments of the customer base want them. So, Comcast can't negotiate their licensing prices based on the fact that only X% of users want those channels. CNN and ESPN packages account for a huge portion of the typical cable bill (about $8 as I recall).
With a la carte pricing, these content providers won't be able to leverage the need to service all-or-none in their pricing.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I would not pay more than $1 month, because frankly, TV is a big time suck and mind poison. but that's what I would do, and I am certain there are many people who agree with me.
There aren't enough folk who agree with you for the provider to make a profit. Sure, there're getting $13 more in revenue than they're getting now -- but they'd have more than $13 a month in increased expenses from doing so.
And I'm kinda amused that you listed "Comedy Central" and then bemoan all the rest of the crap on TV. I mean, you listed a channel whose business plan is "funny crap."
TV is a big time suck and mind poison.
I agree. TV, work, school, meals, bathroom breaks, and sleep too often get in the way of Slashdot.
Incidentally, I don't read books very often because even Slashdot takes a back seat to "one more page".
The operating cost of providing broadband service is low and getting lower. At Time Warner, the cost of connecting to the Internet and other direct costs of providing its high-speed data service fell to $33 million, down 18 percent. That represents just 3 percent of the revenue it collects for broadband service. But it doesnâ(TM)t include the capital expenses needed to upgrade the network. Comcast reported $120 million of costs for high-speed data service, down 13 percent from a year ago. That represents 6 percent of its data revenue.
So apparently bandwidth costs are going down, but U.S. cable companies still wont offer high bandwidth that other parts of the world have, and whats more, they want to cap bandwidth for those who use their service the most. Then again, who's going to stop them? Most cable companies have a monopoly where they operate, and can pretty much screw their customers without fear of competition.
into three companies: (1) cabling infrastructure that is leased to anyone; (2) content generation and provision; (3) ISP that leases (1). Right now (2) is causing my price for (1) and (3) to rise disproportionally. I am paying more and more for my monthly bill because of (2), which I use the least of the three services.
Problem with A La Carte is that the bottom lines always ends up with more dollars spent per channel then you do under the bundles. And you can expect all your favorite channels to hit prime fees while NPR withers a dies.
You might not like NPR, but what will happen eventually is the programs will become even more ratings driven then they are today. Which means the really bad things that have happened ABC, CBS, NBC will be propogated throughout the rest of the channels. Which also means they will converge into the same mindless one liner drivel that they all do with no attempt to market specialization but market capture by shooting for the Least Common Denominator (drinking, sex, hot rods).
TV will fade away as a good idea gone bad and webcasting will form the new media, with commercials, lots of them.
Under webcasting they can do tiered pricing on how many commercials you want to pay not to see. Which can also get really expensive.
Public Library. Good stuff.
The real problem with the cable companies (and, unfortunately, even their competitors) is that they've stuck with their legacy monopoly model of service. Their objective isn't to give you want you want. Their objective is to sell you the packages they create.
Here, I just picked up cable service again and got the DVR from my cable company. It is littered and strewn with tons of junk channels. And I mean truly junk channels. I believe I marked over 200 channels to be skipped in the interface.
Of course, you can't say no to the cable company. When you mark 200 channels to be skipped, they still show up in the electronic program guide, cluttering it so much that it is really hard to use. But each channel that you see that you don't have is a selling opportunity.
This explains why they have not one, but three different channel numbers, scattered throughout the channelspace, for their on-demand service. (In addition to all the PPV channels, the porn channels, sports channels, special event channels, etc etc.)
Even when I pay for a huge package of channels that I don't want, they still manage to take away my ability to remove the ones I don't want.
Thanks, Cox. You've gotten better, but you still don't serve me. You make me serve you.
PS: Yes, I'd be happier if I abandon their DVR offering. Even after all these years, and all the revisions, it still isn't made with the end-user in mind. So very sad. Now if I could only pay for only the channels that I want.
At 1$/channel with no minimum number of channels (and no dumbass "you need to rent our decoder for 20$+ per month" requirement either), I wouldn't mind other shows that much.
At 1$ per channel per month and an average of 30 days per month, that's under 4 cents a day. Even if you only watch one show per day per channel, that's cheap.
Can I give you a high five? Same channels I prefer, same ideology as well.
>>>He wants to pay $13.
Well too bad. If he lives in one of those towns that offers a la carte, he's going to have to pay a ~$10 baseline fee PLUS the channels he chooses. If he wants to limits himself to just 3 channels, then he'll get the amount he wants but that's the only way.
This is no different from my old Cingular cellphone which charges $9 flat fee, plus 25 cents a minute. Even if I make absolutely no calls, I still have to pay the base.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Hey, you forgot Fox News...
People will be expecting a pro rated price when that just isn't possible. It's like buying a single can of soda vs. a 12 or 12 pack: the single price will always be more expensive than buying in quantity. Let's sat a company has 100 channels and you only want one. Well you aren't gonna be paying 1/100 the bundle price, it'll be more like 1/6.
Here's an example of a net program: The Remnants
Interesting article, I recommend reading it.
The show is done ULTRA-cheaply - $25k for 10 episodes, using no-name actors, and everyone making a few tiny dollars.
Are you going to get really good convincing acting? No. Are you going to get first rate camerawork? No. Mixing? No. Audio. Nuh-uh. You're going to get something that looks better than what some bloke staring into a webcam gives you, but equally far from a professional job with pro actors and crew and post.
IS that what you want to watch?
So, let's pretend that on-camera talent is half the cost, so we'l pay them scale, and so we're down to 1.5 million. You now have cameras that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The actors aren't making much, but they're willing to go for this experiment. You still have 150 people involved, and they all need to get paid. So, if they all make some craptastic wage (say $30k) for ten episodes, then we're talking 150 x 30k / 10, you're still talking $450k PER EPISODE, or $4.5 million for the series, and this is with people making significant sacrifices, because you do the series, and WHERE are you going to get your next job? And When? That's why the wages are higher in creative industries, and the stress level is astronomical.
So, let's say we give them all $50k for ten episode season. Then it's $7.5 million for the season or $750k per episode. And we haven't even touched promotional costs...
And this is no exaggeration: film and TV are the most expensive and complex works of art people have ever developed. It is expensive and time consuming and difficult. It is fun and exciting when you're doing it, but it is a tough and cutthroat business.
"You can see all the stars
as you walk along Hollywood Boulevard.
Some that you recognise
Some that you've hardly even heard of.
People who worked and suffered
and struggled for fame.
Some who succeded
and some who suffered in vain."
That's a fact. Unfortunately, it is fed by the audience who thinks:
"I wish my life was a non-stop
Hollywood Movie show
A fantasy world of celluloid villains
And heroes.
Because Celluloid heroes
never feel any pain
And Celluloid heroes
never really die."
Profit is made from scarcity. If you want something to exist, it has to be profitable (not wildly - just make your damn money) and if the business model fails, then that work disappears.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Your numbers are squirrely.
First, the $100k camera is a joke and always has been. The old film cameras that had to use fancy optics to both capture the image and provide a view-finder might have cost a chunk of change to build, but they did not cost even close to that much. The modern all-digital fancy cameras are simpler and for damn sure don't cost that much to build. The equipment is subject to ultra-high markup, due mainly to what I shall dub the Monster-Cable-Effect. A semi-niche (thousands, instead of millions of units) product sold to a market with entirely too much money. When the market doesn't have the money, the ultra-high markup manufacturers go away. We can live with that. Consumer-grade digital cameras are within shouting distance already. It wouldn't take much to equal the quality.
Second, you're playing some really fancy games with the wages. You're billing all 150 people to your series of 10 for an entire year of work at that craptastic wage. It's considerably more likely that we'll get 24 episodes in a year, since we're talking about the American market, but even with a yield of 24 episodes, none of those 150 people are going to be working the whole year.
Producing finished video is largely a serial process. Shooting happens. Effects happens. Cutting happens. Mixing happens. Music happens. Many of those things have to happen in series. Visual effects that depend on footage can't be created until the footage is shot. Cutting can't happen until all of the footage is assembled, including effects. Sound mixing also requires the footage. Music can sometimes require the cutting to be complete. When it doesn't, it still requires finished shots with effects, for timing.
Principle photography for a typical drama TV episode can be finished in a week. After that's done, the actors might be completely finished with their involvement. For a soap opera, I'm betting they are finished. For another series type, effects might want them to sit for a few stills to use in digital effects work. That takes an afternoon. Mixing might want them to re-record some of the dialog. Another afternoon. Then they're done.
The other tasks for an episode go the same way. Each person's individual contribution doesn't take all that long.
You're charging $30k for 10 weeks of work per person, not 50 weeks of work. That's the kind of thing that I'm saying is going to go away.
Finally, let's say I stipulate your numbers, outrageous as they may appear to those of us who have to work for a living. The Womanizer video by VenetianPrincess on YouTube is sitting at 12.9 million views as I write this, and it's nothing but a parody video. To my admittedly jaundiced eye, it looks as good as half of the professional videos that might be seen on VH1 (or MTV, back when they played any music). Collect even a dollar from each of them and you've paid for your series. Or, to take my numbers, collect $5 for a novel worth of entertainment. Now you've paid your $7.5 million for the more generously compensated series more than 8X over. Even the market adjustment I'm predicting can pay for your numbers with a ton of room to spare. That leaves lots of room for less successful attempts that can still make money.
Your Hollywood accounting is going away. Nice try though.
I don't want "Desperate Housewives" or "American Idol". It's crap. I don't want it in my house.
FCC regulations require you to receive channels over cable/satellite you'd normally receive via antenna. Those two shows are on networks, so unfortunately you can't opt out. :)
You could probably program your TV or receiver to skip them though, when you channel-up and channel-down.
Comment of the year
Take everything you said here, subtract commercials, and apply it to P2P torrents. P2P torrents (via Vuze/Azureus or whatever flavor you prefer) supplemented with Netflix and Hulu, mean that you don't even need cable TV.
The Netflix business model is the future of video entertainment - one low price for all you can watch, using either physical media or internet delivery.
If the xxAA were smart, they would buy The Pirate Bay and charge a $14.95/month subscription fee for private torrents.
At that price, piracy goes away, quality goes up, artists make money and everyone accepts the inevitable.
Oh, and for what it's worth, Apple (iTunes Music/Video store) would be majorly annoyed...
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Solution: Drop all the channels above the basic tier from analog cable. Every channel you drop from analog cable also means more bandwidth for more digital channels (good when the cable companies want to offer more HD channels)
On analog cable only keep:
Channels you are required to have by law (broadcast networks like ABC, public access, etc)
Channels where the license with the owner of the channel requires them to be on analog cable
Channels where the channel is paying the cable company (i.e. home shopping etc) and where that revenue would drop if they were not on analog.
and maybe a few others like weather channel which are in the "everyone gets this channel" tier.
Everything else would go. Analog would have just one tier that everyone gets.
does USA have anything else I want to watch?
monk
the series is ending this summer - hopefully on a high note as I don't think they are being forced out as it is one of their standout shows - try the pilot on for size or a few episodes
I thought by now we would have integration of TV and computer. They are very slow to change. The programming doesn't suck. There is a lot of good stuff out there, and a HUGE variety. However the television companies are very hesitant to change. We have tons of bandwidth going to waste. There should be some form of integration of TV and internet. Why Comcast doesn't fully invest in things like Fancast, or create a similar site that collects TV and streams it, and gets the bandwidth out there to deliver it is beyond me. Comcast could KILL its competitors by combining the TV and Internet. Combine the two biggest time wasters into one convenient device. Turn your cable box into an entertainment computer.
Open Source: Eroding the Digital Divide
"As the sour economy and the Web start putting more pressure on the cable companies, they may be forced to consider breaking up the big bundles of channels they now insist that consumers buy and instead offer individual channels or smaller groups of channels on an à la carte basis."
Until the people that write these articles get the facts straight and discover that it's the content providers like ESPN/Disney, Scripps, Discovery, MTV Networks, Fox, NBC, and others that REQUIRE the carriage of so many channels in basic and DO NOT ALLOW a la carte channel purchasing the sooner there will be an actual change.
"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats." --Howard Aike
And I want to pay $1.23 for 700 channels and "hi-speed" internet.
Doesn't means it's anywhere near realistic.
Yes, bundles are a problem for some people whose viewing tastes are eclectic. I am more upset about the quality of the programming. Many people's issue with TV is the lack of quality programming. This is exacerbated by the number of channels that dilutes the talent pool of producers and writers. Hence the number of reality shows and these really suck. My other gripe is the quality of the signal itself. In my area comcast is selling HD programming but delivering it at 1080i. I imagine this may be a bandwidth problem.
Dish Satellite's cheapest service provides none of the channels he listed, save PBS. Plus, it is compressed all to hell. I just canceled it myself, and went to OTA broadcast.
They are not seeing revenue declines because people are not actively canceling subscriptions in favor of the alternative. As fewer and fewer potential new customers avoid subscribing to the service their revenue stream will be effected. The same thing happened to the music industry. Revenues from CD purchases dropped steadily until the 10-30 age group was completely replaced, where it tanked.
If that is not a sign that the current model is doomed to failure then the companies are blind and the industry deserves death. IMHO death by bunga-bunga is what they deserve.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Since HDTV became the norm, I have no need for cable. I only had cable for one or two channels I couldn't get over the air. Now that I can get a clear picture with a small antenna, cable isn't worth it at all.
1879 comes with all that "you're not allowed to secede" baggage. Yes, slavery sucks and it's probably not all that practical or smart to leave the union. But in the libertarian fantasy, the people of a state are certainly allowed to reject a government, and do so as they chant Locke-ian platitudes about government only being legitimate if the governed consent to it. That's just basic democracy.
1879 is gonna rub some libertarians the wrong way. But I guess either slavery prohibition or legitimate federal governance has to go. Pre-civil-war or post-civil-war: pick your poison. Both have problems, so which ever you select, you're going to need some revisionism to turn the uglier real America into fantasy America (which is totally awesome!).
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I recently skimmed over a very interesting email conversation between the CEO of Boxee (a net based content aggregator) and Mark Cuban, a cable bully. Besides reminiscent of the infamous Linus-AST flame, it's a great illustration of the point of view of the cable industry... and how, I would say, they're marching steadily to a slow demise.
To do list for Windows
put the home home shopping in clear qam as well as the weather Channel as they like have a weather star / IntelliStar any ways. And also put the weather Channel HD in clear qam as well when they get the IntelliStar / Weatherstar HD.
It will be nice to have weather scan in clear qam as well. As well weather scan HD when it comes as well.