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ABC Kills Next-Day Streaming For Non-Subscribers
jfruh writes "ABC shows are available for free to anybody with antenna on the day and time they're first broadcast. But if you want them at any other time, it's getting harder to see them unless you pay someone. The network had previously made free ad-supported streamed versions of its shows available on its website the day after they aired, but now they're shifting that back to a week. Next-day streaming is still available if you have a cable or Hulu Plus subscription, showing the extent to which "broadcast" networks are dependent on subscriber fees."
I, personally, watch very little on the 'big four' networks, however this trend is a disturbing one -- especially for those of us in markets that aren't served by all the networks. My market has no NBC, so the only way for us to get their content is to wait for it on their web page, or to pay someone. We have no other legal choices...
bork bork bork!
The biggest commonality of cable cutters (including me) I know is that they don't watch or care about "live" TV. The difference between a day and a week is nothing to them. DVRs changed a lot of peoples watching habits and these people aren't paying the premium anymore.
Look at Redbox, does a 90 day DVD release delay help sales? Not likely, you just shift what I watch 90 days in the future.
... will ensure they don't buy anything. Similarly, making it hard for people to watch will ensure they don't. If they do want to watch, more will look for torrents (amongst other things) than go back to the stone age days (before PVR's, etc). People nowadays will not bother being inconvenienced unless you have awesome stuff - although it's not my cup of tea, Apple is an example of where people will stand in line for hours and be inconvenienced.
I wouldn't say ABC shows are worth putting off tennis practice (or whatever hobby you have) for. This will not end well.
This is move is going to lose me as a viewer, not push me to subscribe to cable.
I have netflix. I get TV over the air. This sort of access was the only way for me to watch current shows other than at their prescribe transmission time. Other networks have made it "enter your cable bill number" to access this content as well.
I guess they don't want me, and those like me, to watch their shows at all.
I am certainly not going to subscribe to overpriced pile of crap that is basic cable. I grant you can get some good stuff by going specialty cable, but that is even more $$ on top of basic. I am almost never home at the right time to watch it "live" over the air. So count me and countless others like me off the viewship list. This is move is going to lose me as a viewer, not push me to subscribe to cable.
Bu-bye.
Waiting a week / month / year is fine. I accept the business model at play here... Milk the wallets of those who can't resist instant gratification, and find some nominal revenues from everyone else. It's just... I hate the ad interruptions. I'd gladly pay for Hulu Plus... if there were no ads!
Hooray for not understanding the advertising model.
It's not really "free" to watch OTA - you have the show interrupted every few minutes by commercials, which cost you time. The problem here is that OTA broadcasting costs pretty much the same whether it goes to one TV or one million. All they pay to do is vibrate the air[1]. Cable's not that different. With Internet streaming, however, each individual connection typically costs more.
The solution is to fix the medium, IMHO. Big networks and content producers should be pushing for less expensive bandwidth or, even better, for working multicasting. :)
[1] yeah, I know how radio actually works, but I'm trying to make a point here.
As an added bonus all the ads will be stripped off. Sorry ABC, you blew your opportunity to make money off my eyeballs.
If only there were a way to get my favourite TV shows soon after being broadcast, preferably in high-definition and without commercials, so I could watch from the comfort of my couch at my leisure.
Trolling is a art,
Content creators and providers want to get paid. If their fees seem too high or their contract terms too onerous don't view the content. I'm sick of people whining about it. As wonderful the concept is you don't have a free right to the creative effort of others.
Time shifting is no longer the "killer feature," time shifting IS television. This is the equivalent of a TV station in the 1950s saying "we will no longer be offering moving pictures with our radio programs."
I have not watched TV on a network schedule for a decade, and my children don't even have the concept of a "TV Schedule".
Fighting consumer demand is difficult, fighting consumer default expectations is suicide; especially in Entertainment media, where the whole world can turn on a dime, except you.
Seriously. $75 to $100 a month for cable? Haven't done that for years. $8.95 a month for Netflix, plus a bit of Pirate Bay to top up the offerings. You tell me what makes more sense.
Although honestly I'd be happy to pay say $25-30 a month for some hybrid of the two - at least for news channels.
Of course the downside of not watching cable or network TV is that you really appreciate how horrible advertising is. Easily the most painful part of going out to a movie.
Three Squirrels
Did you know producing and marketing high quality TV and movies costs money? Shocking news!
Oh, the AC you're responding to knows all about the advertising model. And he or she is completely correct. If you're getting something for free, you're not the customer. In fact, you're most likely the product. And in the case of the advertising model, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT. The advertisers are the customer. The content is merely bait to attract product. Now what's the product? Simple. Ears and eyeballs. Or to be more specific, exposure to ears and eyeballs. Your ears and eyeballs being exposed to the advertisers. So do you now understand what "you're not the customer"?
Clicking an addon on XBMC, joining a public swarm 15 minutes after airtime or googling it to find which file locker to stream or download it? How stupid for them to cut another revenue stream.
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If ABC wants me to watch their junk they'll have to pay ME. My eyeballs are not free.
It was never free, or even free-ish. It was just that is used to be paid for by someone else (the sponsors). In turn, you, the viewer, 'paid' the sponsor by watching his ads and maybe buying his product. If you are not willing to 'pay' the sponsor, then he is not willing to pay for you to be able to watch TV for free. Quite simple. Quit acting like something has been taken away from you, or that the TV networks are somehow greedy by still needing to be paid for what they produce.
It is a major inconvenience when watching shows that have an on-going story line. You either have to watch the episodes out of order or stop watching the broadcast shows all together and watch all on-line if you miss even one episode. And what in the world does it accomplish for ABC? It only makes over-the-air broadcast TV less attractive to viewers. It hurts local affiliates (if viewers choose to just watch the rest of the season on-line 8 days later when they miss an episode). ABC just annoys people with this with no up side.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Time Warner has not owned Time Warner Cable for several years. Other than whatever royalty deal Time Warner has with Time Warner Cable to allow them to continue using the "Time Warner" name and the "Road Runner" IP, they have nothing to do with each other - except that Time Warner Cable is one of the independent TV distribution systems that Time Warner want to get paid by for having it distribute the various cable tv networks of Time Warner's Turner and other cable TV divisions - channels like HBO, Cartoon Network, CNN, Turner Classic Movies, etc.
Your "owns a lot of cable stations" is inaccurate and ambiguous? Do you mean, "owns a lot of cable systems"? If so, you're wrong, as I've explained. Time Warner does not own cable systems at all anymore, the entity called Time Warner Cable is an unrelated company.
Do you mean, "owns a lot of cable networks"? In which case, yes, HBO's owner owns quite a few other cable networks.
Your argument either works or is totally invalid, depending on what you mean. There is no such thing as a "cable station". CNN is a "cable network" owned by Time Warner, "Time Warner Cable of North Carolina" is a cable system owned by Time Warner Cable. The interests of Time Warner vs Time Warner Cable are not aligned.
HBO Go becoming independent, in terms of subscription availability, from having to also have HBO-the-cable-network subscription, might be a net positive for Time Warner the owner of HBO. It might be a negative to Time Warner Cable, because it would remove an "upsell package" opportunity of bundled or special deal premium network sales at huge markups. It would just be more bits, like Netflix or Amazon or Hulu.
But it might be a net positive for Time Warner Cable, and for Charter Cable, Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-Verse, CenturyLink DSL, as providers of high-speed broadband internet (ok, allegedly high-speed allegedly broadband allegedly internet, really minimal speed barely-broadband walled-garden). It might encourage more people to get high speed internet and to upgrade the speed and or monthly total data transfer allowances, because now Game of Thrones without TV.
I believe it would be the latter. But I believe that the cable system executives believe it would be the former, at least the ones that are originally/primarily cable-tv systems that then added data. I have no idea what the cable network and broadcast network executives feel about it.
Personally, I'd like every entertainment series available unbundled, released on the "broadcasting network" servers on a specific schedule, but available continuously after that "street date"/"air date". I'd like to be able to get Sleepy Hollow without having to get American Idol. I'd like to be able to get that Fox Network series without having to get a Chthulu Plus subscription. But if I found I liked enough series that were on Hulu, as one of their options, and that a Hulu Plus subscription was the most economical way to get them, then I'd like that option. If I instead only wanted to buy one series, I'd like the price to be very low, and I'd like it available simultaneous with "home network" air date and time. If it's on ABC broadcast network Tuesday at 8pm EST, I want to be able to start streaming it at 8pm EST that same Tuesday. Even if I'm in the Pacific Time Zone. Or in the Uruguayan Time Zone and IP block. (which I am).
Oh, and a pony.
But note I never said I wanted it to be totally free-as-in-beer. Well maybe the pony.