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ABC Pulls Channels From Cablevision
wkurzius writes "Cablevision and ABC have failed to come to an agreement after two years of negotiations, and as a result ABC has pulled all their channels from the Cablevision lineup. The dispute is over $40 million in new retransmission fees that Cablevision says they won't give to ABC. On the other side, Cablevision has been accused of not being fair to their customers despite pocketing $8 billion last year. 'The companies immediately published press releases Sunday morning, blaming each other for failing to reach a deal. Cablevision subscribers on Twitter expressed their frustration, saying they shouldn't be deprived of ABC shows, including the Oscars on Sunday, because of a multi-million-dollar deal gone awry. Competitors such as Verizon Communications took advantage of the dispute. The company launched television, newspaper, and online ads offering Cablevision customers speedy installs to subscribe to its FiOS television service along with $75 gift cards, highlighting a fierce war for subscribers in the valuable New York market.'"
Al la carte, please.
You want to know why your cable bill is so high? This is why. Cable stations (and now network stations) charge cable companies to carry their channels. So they get paid whether you watch their content or not!
It is these deals that keep things like Hulu from happening because why would a cable station offer their program for only advertising revenue online when they can get fixed monthly revenue plus advertising over cable/satellite.
And this is why your cable bill is so high. You are paying for channels whether you watch them or not. And due to big bundles, you're paying for a lot of them.
Meanwhile, the cable (and satellite) companies make these big bundles so they can hide the cost of carrying these channels by making you think you're paying for breadth of content. Mostly, you're actually paying most of it for 5 ESPN channels! And that's great if you want to pay that much for ESPN. But the rest of us need more choice.
Each channel should be individually tallied so you know how much you're paying for each channel. If you feel the channel is worth the price, you pay for it. If you feel it isn't worth it, you can not pay for it. And if enough channels don't get picked up by people, they will realize they can't just get free money, they have to provide content people want to watch, and once they do that, they won't care if they get their viewers from cable companies or Hulu.
This would be preferable to seeing larger and larger bundles pushed on us.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Your example illustrates to me a difference between radio and TV however.
I, probably like many folks, enjoy a wide array of music: industrial, rock, jazz, talk, reggae, electronic, 80's, etc.
However, there is a much smaller array of TV show genres I enjoy: the major networks, PBS, science (like Discovery/TLC), Food, Syfy, and History. I will NEVER want to watch: online shopping, soaps, Spanish/foreign language, sports, kids (Disney, Nickelodeon), MTV, CSPAN, BET, E!, Fox News, Golf, Halmark, etc. Making me pay for these is a waste of my money.