Slashdot Mirror
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 guess the problem is that majority of programming suck, or at least that the broad scope of programs available through a cable package is so diverse that many only enjoy a small handful while the rest that falls outside the individual field of interest is uninteresting.
The tactic employed is to bundle "high quality" channels with "low quality" channels to ensure that if you want to buy the thing you are interesting you also have to buy a lot of crap that you don't are about. Selling individual channels, or smaller bundles, would mean you could probably ensure that what channels you get are those you actually want to watch; but it would also mean that a lot of marginal shows and channels would go out of business.
Of course personally I believe that this is pretty much inevitable and that shows and programming enjoyed by a smaller minority will have to find other ways to reach their targeted audience (like say the Internet). And it probably wont stop there either. In fact I would go so far as to say that over the next two decades the traditional way (in so far as something as new as cable can be said to have a tradition) of watching TV will change in many different ways. Using myself as an example I don't watch TV. Not because there aren't shows I would be interested in, but because I simply can not tailor my day around a programming schedule (nor am I inclined to buy a cable package and a Tivo like device). For me the only option when it comes to watching shows is getting them online (and I am sad to say the options for doing that legal is severely limited in my Country); so for the most part I just have to do without until reality catches up with technology and gives me options suited to my lifestyle.
The Long Now Foundation
Quite right. It is no coincidence that most of them have fantasies of societal collapse followed by a "Mad Max"-type future where "real men" and their shotguns get to rule the day.
They never seem to get it that a "working" example of a "libertarian society" is ... Somalia. No functional central government to rain on the "real men's" parade there at all. Everyone there is free to conduct "free enterprise" any way they see fit. Curiously however, libertarian immigration to the Paradise in Mogadishu remains rather low.... perhaps not enough pamphlets at the weekly meetings at the temple of the Goddess Alyssa Zhinovievena?