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Time Warner Deal Is How Comcast Will Fight Cord Cutters
An anonymous reader writes "This NY Times articles makes the case that Comcast's planned acquisition of Time Warner Cable is part of a strategy to fight back against the millions of people ditching cable subscriptions. 'The acquisition rests on the assumption that as people cut back on their monthly TV plans, the cable lines coming into their homes won't lose their value.' The idea is that switching away from cable TV will simply make consumers more beholden to their internet connections, and removing (i.e. acquiring) the competition will let Comcast raise rates without losing customers. The article concludes, 'The steady price increases in broadband rates cast a pall over any cord cutter's dreams. It's possible that you might still save money now by cutting off your cable. But if you plan to watch a lot of TV over the Internet, don't expect to save money forever.'"
What up to now has been unlimited data for one price over cable will become a set of plans with different rates for different data caps. For those who have been screaming about a la carte channels on cable, you'll effectively get them - you'll only pay for what you watch. But it will be on a GB basis, not a channel basis.
It's the shitty content. I got rid of cable because I don't actually watch TV any more. Call me a Luddite but I actually read books more then ever. I guess they better start investing in firemen and flame-throwers.
I wish they would stop misusing the term "cord cutting" for not subscribing to television while still getting Internet via cable, as it is confusing and stupid. The term originally came about as people stopped paying for land-lines and used their cell phones exclusively instead, and there it made sense.
In this case, as the article points out, "In most American households, the cable cord is the fastest conduit for broadband service. This suggests the canny strategy by which those once-inescapable cable providers might combat the rise of cord cutters: The cable giants will simply become even-more-inescapable Internet giants."
Well duh, it's been that way for a long time. You aren't "cutting the cord" by saving a few bucks by not paying for television but still getting Internet over cable. Even 10 year ago, it was like a $10 difference to not get basic cable. Where cable is losing the big money is on all the premium bundles.
Is not be messing with the price all the time.
Somehow, mysteriously, the price changes slightly every month and it's always up.
Once the promotions are gone, it creeps up a bit every month. (The promotion ending for '1 year sign up price" is a big jump.)
Eventually, people start looking at the bill trying to figure out how to reduce it. That act, is what kills them. You don't want people thinking about the bill, you want them to just pay it.
I'll be dropping the TV / Movie portion of my cable in a month or two (summer means outside, and moving to a single abode again). But I wouldn't if it wasn't $45 a month more than it was when I moved in.
To something like QR-1125. That will stop most of the cable cutters.
i remember when cable internet first came out i the 90's it was like $100 for 1mbps
now it's like $50 for 20mbps on time warner
at this point broadband prices will increase some. the customer base is maxed out. very little new customers out there. and costs are increasing with salary raises, etc
"and removing (i.e. acquiring) the competition will let Comcast raise rates without losing customers."
Nobody in America currently has a choice between Comcast and Time Warner. I hope the DOJ rejects the merger because the resulting company is too big. But the amount of competition in the cable internet market would not change at all.
the reason cable bills go up and no one has a choice of channels is because Disney, Discovery, Viacom and everyone else constantly raise prices and only offer their channels in one big bundle. and always add more channels.
when a channel is blacked out on their TV people always blame comcast or direct TV. they should be blaming the channel owner for wanting too much money and not giving any choice of channels.
comcast might not be a saint, but a bigger comcast will mean that any time a channel owner wants a price increase they risk losing more than half their revenue during the blackout. in the past they would pick a small carrier for the price raise since the effect on revenues was pennies
Cut my cord last year. At the rates they charge and the intermittent and barely-broadband service they provide, I can live without their content.
It wouldn't surprise me if these parasites quietly call cord-cutters "deadbeats", just as credit-card companies call customers who pay their bills every month "deadbeats". It'd jive with their big-business culture of greed and entitlement.
What happened to US antitrust law, anyway?
As somebody who is planning to cut their Cable TV connection soon I would just like to say*:
- The amount of advertising has become annoying.
- The repetitiveness of the advertising is frustrating... [Anybody need Life Insurance? Anybody?]
- The content I want to watch just doesn't seem to be there, or has diminished in quality - Personal / Biased opinion, I got Cable TV for the Sci-Fi and Documentary channels.
- The price always seems to be going up, if only by a few dollars at a time.
- I haven't had a pay rise in a while and generally the cost of living seems to be increasing, I have less money in my 'entertainment' budget.
I'm mostly finding myself using the internet for gaming (Battlefield and GTA), Youtube, and procrastination (/.). Fix some of the points above before you punish me for how I use the internet.
Private torrents, private torrents, private torrents.
The idea that this is a strategy to remove competition would be valid IF there was ever more than one choice for a cable company. Each cable company already has a monopoly on the markets they control. All they gain by acquiring a "competitor" is a larger sphere of influence.
Turner gained monopolies by promising a life long education system via cable TV and he created channels to prove it. Now that those channels aren't educational, all the exclusive access contracts along those lines are now null and void based on the original terms. Ask you city why they are violating the contract terms and not allowing other carriers.
The only way I've been willing to deal with a price increase is when they offer me a stupid amount of extra bandwidth. Oh you want to give me 25/10 service for $5 more? Sure. Oh you want to give me 25/25 service for $1 more a month. Heck yeh! You are offering 100/65 for $35 more a month......FUCK YEH!!!!
Comcast's idea: we are raising your rates by $5 this year and we are throttling your connect to 7/1. Me: Go fuck yourself and cancel my account. Comcast: wait?! what?!
Just the past amount of bad blood I've had with cable companies would keep me from doing business with one again. When I bought my house, my real-estate lady thought I was nuts, I checked out all the houses she was going to show me to see if they had cable or FIOS for service (the area around Tampa is broken up into little monopoly zones with either one or the other) and refused to go look at houses that only had access to cable.
As far as having to "pay" things are moving so fast that in 10 years most of the new shows are going to come from any of the old broadcasters. Comcast doesn't represent so much as a horse buggy whip factory, but a store that specialized in selling and delivery horse buggy whips.
If the government is going to allow for basically a single regulated entity to control the majority of cable and internet service in the US, maybe they should just nationalize it and cut out the middle man. After all, what is the difference between a single provider that the government says what it can and cannot do and the government just doing it? Didn't the US learn enough with the "too big to fail" model? This merger has disaster written all over it. If anything, instead of consolidations, they should be breaking up these megacorporations to have more competition, not less.
I love that they use their current collusion as an argument for why the merger should be allowed. ''We're not in competition now [because we've divided the market between us], so competition won't be affected.''
Can't wait to see which corrupt asshole gets a cushy new industry job this time. Oh wait, they fixed that by flipping it around, haven't they?
What you guys need is something akin to what happened with BT here in the UK - Arms-length separation of the infrastructure and the service. Sure, you may only be able to have one cable provider in the city, but if they have to sell non-discriminatory access to other ISPs at the same rates as their own consumer division, then you get the healthy kind of competition. There's a thriving ISP market in the UK, only downside is the big boys keep hoovering up the smaller ones that do too well, meaning if you want to stay away from the big boys you have to keep finding and migrating to a new small one every few years. :(
BT has these rules because of its ex-monopoly status, but personally I think it'd make perfect sense to apply the same rules universally. BT Retail should be able to provide service over Virgin Media's cable infrastructure in an area if that's the most cost effective way of doing it - don't limit my service options to the infrastructure provider's.
Boo.
Verizon is spending tons of money upgrading last mile to optic fiber. AT&T is already pitching cell tower to home connections. Companies who would be adversely affected if cable companies get too powerful in controlling the distribution channels will fund competitors.
But, in the end, instead of a monopoly we might end up with a duopoly or at the most three choices for home to internet connections. Still I hope this merger does not go through. Cable monopolies could do plenty of damage before viable competition emerges.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
As a so called cord cutter they way I see it is the cable companies are leveraging their cable TV monopolies to dominate the ISP/Telecom markets. The real anti-trust push should not be to stop the merger of comcast and time warner but to require separation of services in an area where a company has a monopoly. That is to say make them spin off their core networking and content distribution services into a separate company/corporation.
"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."
Where I live, my DSL is topped out at 1.5Mbps/.5Mbps (Metro Atlanta, GA) with AT&T at $40/mo. IF I want faster Internet, I will have to buy AT&T UVerse: TV, Internet, landline & phone or a business package.
Competition for regular DSL? None. My choices are just cable TV: Comcast.
Fortunately, my DSL is adequate for NetFlix but I can't do much other than stream movies.
and have 2 rate increases on internet services in the same year with no additional speed increase.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Future cost of cable will be this:
$150 per month for cable TV + internet
$140 per month for internet only
Enjoy your options.
As president of my HOA, I allowed Verizon to install FIOS capability to every unit in my complex, for free.
Now, we are not as a community beholden to Time-Warner, but can switch to Verizon as a provider of all things digital (internet, TV, and phone).
Both are desperate to sell you "packages" of services, rather than just internet. Screw them. I call once a year and threaten to ditch them for their competitor. The result is a rate reduced by about 40%.
I do not own a television, nor do I use a land-line phone. I just want internet. Well, that sort of logic falls short with their telephone salespeople. The only threat that works is, "I will totally cancel service from you and will go to your competitor."
"As we are going to suck you dry dear customer, and once we control all mainstream content creation and distribution, we will decide how much we screw you."
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The problem is the cable is not going to be the only fast route into your home forever. Some people with good coverage are already using a home-based LTE router as their only internet connection. As this becomes more widespread and 5G starts rolling out, the cable companies will have another contender to deal with besides FTTH offerings. The nice thing about wireless as well is typicallty a region is served by more wireless providers than cable companies, so more competition will help keep prices low.
Where cable is losing the big money is on all the premium bundles.
Which they combat by slowly moving commonly viewed 'basic' channels to the next level bundle.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I didn't stop getting cable because of the price, it was mainly due to being sick of commercials and the fact that the little programming I enjoy is all online now. Money just wasn't ever a factor for me when doing this is my point.
No matter what Comcast says, they won't be able to provide the content that their users want. The people now know of the great vast world. The tens of thousands of TV channels and the many new things that would have otherwise not have been available without the power of the internet. Sure, you can say "I could have lived happy without 2girls1cup" and so could I, but things like Anime don't really play on cable TV and when they do they are usually dubbed (horrible!) or they cut out the good stuff. Anime isn't the only thing that they lack of but my point is, cable TV is mostly fluff and reality shows. I don't care for either. If I could subscribe to a "discovery channel" package with history channel I would be happy. But I'll be damned if I have to pay an extra $140 a month just for the 3 channels that do matter to me. Where cable companies are going wrong is creating package tiers, but I guess it's the only way for them to survive. Out of the US, cable costs about $3/mo. for like 200 chanels and HBO/Cinmax. I'd rather not spend an extra $20 on top of my premium subscription just for HBO.
I'm not sure exactly, but the average household in the US is something like four or five people. At five people per household, that's 200 million folks. Also, there are something like 20 million college students. Is any 30,000 student university with a subscription a single sub, i. e., one bill a single sub?
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
"But if you plan to watch a lot of TV over the Internet, don't expect to save money forever."
Let me stop you right there. If you live in certain areas of the country and pay for Netflix, it's likely you aren't watching ANY TV over the internet with the recent CDN/peering issues going on.
"It's possible that you might still save money now by cutting off your cable. But if you plan to watch a lot of TV over the Internet, don't expect to save money forever.'"
You certainly won't save any money by adding cable.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
How about Municipalities or States laying publicly owned fiber next to the publicly owned roads and then having private companies deliver services over those cables so we eliminate the natural monopoly?
We can run fiber to any number of "central offices" where private companies install their gear to deliver voice, video, data...etc.
Installing multiple cables to deliver the exact same service seems like a waste of resources.
If Comcast is paying $1B to cover a region, and another $100M a year to maintain it, it'll pay that regardless of whether it keeps or loses 50% of its customers. And likewise a competitor will pay exactly the same.
The cost structure you assume is exactly the opposite of what actually happened when phone service was deregulated to allow competition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_carrier Costs to maintain the shared wiring infrastructure were split amongst each operator (ILEC, CLEC) rather than multiplied by each additional operator as you suggest.
So, I attended the Streaming Media West conference last month, and one of the things I came away with was how the existing players (Hollywood, cable companies, etc.) are adamant about ensuring an "orderly transition to IP-based delivery." That is an exact quote from one of the over-the-top (OTT) sessions I went to, where over-the-top refers to content delivered over IP directly to the user from someone other than the broadband provider (e.g., watching a movie from Netflix instead of from your cable company's video-on-demand service).
This is very much the point of the "TV Everywhere" systems by which you login with your cable or satellite credentials in order to watch cable/satellite content on a mobile device or set-top box (iPad, Roku, etc.). It's basically a rear-guard action against the cord-cutters: we'll let you watch the same content on any device, provided you pay the same price for it. Keep paying your cable bill, even if you don't watch cable.
I wrote a long blog about the show here. But taking it back to the Comcast / Time Warner deal, the competitive issue is not in individual markets (where, indeed, there's usually only one cable company), but in the power of a combined Comcast / Time Warner to keep creatives in the old system, by using caps, throttling, predatory pricing, and other dirty tricks to hamper genuine Internet TV.
Presumably, once the Justice Department comes to understand the antitrust implications of this deal, they'll immediately launch an investigation. Of Apple.
Nobody in America currently has a choice between Comcast and Time Warner.
You are being myopic. The channel owners currently have a choice between Comcast, Time Warner Cable, etc. The networks would have far less ability to get the http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/03/business/media/cbs-and-time-warner-cable-end-contract-dispute.html?_r=0 kind of positive (for them) outcome like CBS did in their dispute with TWC if ComTWC controlled access to the combined set of advertising viewership.
One of the things the Comcast/Time Warner press agents have been pushing is that there is no loss of competition because Time Warner and Comcast have no market overlap.....what? Does that set anyone else's alarms off? How can the two biggest cable companies in the US have zero market overlap? The obvious answers are A - Collusion B - Regulatory capture C - All of the above.
So the real question is not how the merger is going to reduce competition, but why the merger is not going to reduce the current lack of competition.
What's really needed is a system of universal connection to the Internet in the US. Virtually every building in the US is connected to the power grid or to copper telephone wires. It would be great if either of these could be used for Internet connections but it appears that physics seems to limit it's use for really high speeds. In my neighborhood with DSL I might get 1.5 Mbit/s down and 0.7 Mbit/s up. No way could this be used for HD video streaming. Electric utility lines as a carrier seems to have other limitations such as RF interference in some situations. Not sure about speed. The solution must be some kind of universal connection which may require a new technology.
As a side note: I was talking to my 93 year old mother-in-law who lived in rural Iowa and when she went to nursing school in the"big city" in the late 1930's she had just gotten electricity in the farm home. She didn't know how to plug things in or turn on a switch which upset her instructors. It wasn't until REA, a government agency, electrified rural America that rural folks got electricity. That's around 40 years after Edison electrified a small part of NYC. Indeed, we need a RIA - Rural Internetification Administration to do what the Rural Electrification Administration did in the 1930's. If that could be done in the 1930's in the midst of the Great Depression, it can be done today in an era of economic plenty.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Maybe dish and directv should join up as well to be able to take on comcrap.
Cell Phone service comes with a bundle of minutes. Not everybody uses all of theirs. (Not all companies roll them over either) You are essentially subsidizing the minutes for other users.
The same is true with Cable TV. They give you a bundle, not all of which you will use, but others might. You subsidize the interests of others.
However, I am personally disgusted by seeing Comcast be allowed to buy Time Warner Cable. The cable industry there are already too few players and its going to be a monopoly(worse than it already was).
Yes and the population density in Mexico City is what? Of course you can have multiple providers in Mexico City, Tokyo, New York, Hong Kong etc.
Until it costs more to opt out of TV I don't see the point. Plus when I had cable I watched about eight channels total and you can't get all of them without buying a higher tier plan, so basic plus HBO won't do much for me. Not to mention that even though the majority of TVs in the US are HD and getting HD service from any pay TV company costs extra. I understand the bandwidth problems, but basically they're selling substandard services as the standard and standard at a premium. Is it just me or does this article have a maniacal tone to it?
During the time I had a cable modem the increased speed went from 4mbps to 4mbps and near the end it would be out hours every day. We lost the dedicated IP addresses we had early on, and every time somebody would buy our local cable company the quality would get worse.
Perhaps for you things have improved, but for some of us things haven't improved in years. I think speeds have improved somewhat, but now there's a cap on comcrap connections that didn't used to be there.
But, how do you explain how pathetic the service is even in urban areas? The best uncapped service I can get around here is 5mbps, and I live in the middle of one of the most connected cities in the US. I'm lucky, up until recently, some neighborhoods were still hobbled with 1.5mbps service.
There is no problem here for intelligent people.
Deregulation forced the AT&T monopoly to allow clecs to hook into their switches for long distance service. It's also what allowed free selection of ISP's if you had DSL. Regulate these cable monopolies before you start seeing price per Gb like they have in Australia.
Why is a company 'fighting' its customers desires? It would be one thing if the idea of reduced cost internet service was financially impossible to support, but that just is not the case. Witness the comparison to broadband pricing in other countries. To make things truly silly on that front there is a lot of talk about the service providers double charging bandwidth... that is charging the consumer for access and the content creator for delivery. Absolute madness in terms of what a healthy market for cable and/or broadband service should be. Also, I have never quite understood the cord cutting phrase for internet service. It makes sense when cutting landline phone service in favor of cellular but not with regards to internet service and it never has. LTE is the first wireless technology that might be a viable alternative but it really doesn't have the capacity to absorb a mass migration. Serious population level uses of bandwidth is still entirely reliant on landline connections. Instead of cord cutting I'd say it is more about rejecting the entire TV model of content consumption in favor of a more customer oriented experience. The scheduled commercial broadcast model made sense prior to the advent of the internet. Now there is a much better solution and the old way really needs to adapt to the new realities of technology. Instead of fighting services like Areo, Netflix etc... these companies should be embracing them. They will win eventually.
As for the issue of Comcast or Verizon choking services like Netflix, The FCC needs to get off its keister and fix the debacle it made of net neutrality. There are some days I really wish Google/Apple etc... would band together for a hostile takeover of the last mile trolls and reduce them to dumb pipe service providers to lower the access bar for all the content they aggregate. For them a low margin dumb pipe ISP environment would seriously pump up their content distribution capabilities because more folks could afford more access. It seems pretty obvious the telecom industry still holds to much sway over the congress critters to think government will ever roll back their current 'entitled' last mile troll position on its own. In fact they will likely end up being a puppet used by telecom to fight tooth and nail against any such attempt... witness the growing body of legislation directly hindering google FIOS efforts. Someone seriouly want to defend those actions as being 'in the publics best interest'?
Unsurprisingly, I am one of the folks that ditched cable TV. Even when I realized it was an insignificant price drop I still insisted on internet only service. I believe cable TV is broken and has been since they introduced commercials on top of paid subscription. Even so I got a cable subscription once I started living on my own pretty much because it was what you did. Then I realized at one point I hadn't turned on the TV in several months (Everquest) and when I did it was almost painful to try and sit through a typical broadcast. It became absolutely galling to me to pay 90+ dollars a month to be bombarded by advertisements. Even premium channels like HBO now bombard you with a significant percentage of advertisement (of their own materials, but advertisement no less). Back when they started you paid your fee to have movies movies movies and more movies. These days any given channel is dishing out something like 20% advertisements and that is if you do not consider the product placement sequences that are now common and unavoidable through any medium. An example of that method is on Bones when Booth and Bones talking about features in Ford vehicles while they 'drive' to or from something on the show. In and of itself I have little problem with that. But when they then break to a ford commercial it is enough to make me want to put a fist through my TV. Arrrrggghhhh.... Charge me, use commercials, or do product placement. Pick ONE. Using all three is just greedy.... worse than that it is a deal breaker. It made it such that it was no longer something I wante
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
That's a lower-end new laptop, or a mid-level new computer for grandma, so... how is that not affordable?
...and avoids most of the data-cap voodoo crap we deal with. So... no, not entirely FUD. It's pretty likely they'll leverage huge price spikes in and claim it's due to the costs of the merger. :P
And thus we return to downloading. Maybe Netflix should start thinking about a DVR option. Stream once, save for later use. (Rhapsody?). Or, and this is just a crazy thought, they keep their prices reasonable so everyone doesn't jump ship from something that is readily available. We will always find cheaper alternatives, or invent them, so at least they're driving innovation.
I wish Google would offer their fiber connectivity to North Carolina cities. That would at least offer an alternative.
Time to reregulate telecommunications. Private enterprise has essentially left us Comcast as a sole "choice" in large cities for cable/ internet and Direct TV as a satellite provider. Competition is gone and monopolies are born. So much for a free market.
Comcast/Xfinity and Time Warner cable service territories don't overlap much. So if you want cable, which ever one is in your neighborhood is the one you would have signed up for.
What will be stomped out* is the ability for each company, particularly Time Warner's content partners to access Comcast's customers via streaming services rather than a direct cable connection. The content owners are effectively trapped behind one network operator who can demand a bigger cut of the business.
*Assuming the FCC doesn't defend network neutrality, that is. If customers can bypass the cable TV service and stream whet they want over their broadband, competition will continue. By 'defend network neutrality', I envision rules that would have the likes of Verizon answering to the DoJ over issues like Netflix throttling. How this issue will be settled will say far more about content pricing for the consumer than who runs the cable up to my property line.
Have gnu, will travel.
My parents live in Kentucky and they can only get internet access from one company. They're paying around $50 a month for a 4d/1u Mbps connection. Lately speeds have dropped so it's about 1-1.5 down and 0.26 up. My folks have been calling the company to complain, but they have no other options.
Cable companies don't compete with each other, they have their own territories. There's nothing stopping them from raising rates without hypothetically losing customers now.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
You don't need any in-depth analysis to figure out what's going to change.
Look at Time Warner's internet service prices:
http://www.timewarnercable.com...
$15/mo for 2Mbps.
Then look at Comcast's internet service prices:
http://www.comcast.com/interne...
$40/mo for 3Mbps.
MORE THAN DOUBLE THE MONTHLY PRICE, FOR JUST ENTRY-LEVEL INTERNET SERVICE.
The competition between cable and DSL has kept prices down for years. But now, with Verizon switching to FIOS with even more astronomical entry-level internet prices, you will have NO CHOICE in the matter, but to pay much more than you do now, for slower service. How many people are going to just go without internet, when they only occasionally browse the web, and their cheapest option is $40+? Comcast is trying to rape my mother...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Comment is full of wrong.
Time Warner has not owned Time Warner Cable for several years. Time Warner is some ongoing licensing royalty from the "Roadrunner" intellectual property "beep beep", but otherwise they have no connection at all. Next month it will be 5 years since TWC was fully independent of Time Warner. Try to keep up.
In fact, "Time" likely won't be part of Time Warner before long either, in that they're looking to spin off that group. But the Cable Company is already long gone away from Time Warner (oh, and AOL isn't part of it either, in case you're still confused). Thus TWC, which Comcast wants to buy, does not own any cable program networks at all. No CNN, no TBS, no Cartoon Network, no HBO. That's all part of the "Warner" part of "Time Warner", not any part of the cable company.
You're equally ignorant about the scope of Comcast's fully-owned NBC Universal, which is ridiculously larger than "NBC/NHL/MLB". I assume that you meant NHL Network and MLB Network, not the actual sports leagues. MLB network is only partly-owned by NBC Universal's NBC Sports Group; Time Warner Cable (OK, that's Comcast too if this goes through), DirecTV, Cox Communications are the other minority owners, while Major League Baseball itself is the majority owner. NBC owns 5.44% per Wikipedia. On NHL Network (USA), NBC is the only minority owner, but has just 15.6% with the National Hockey League owning the rest.
Meanwhile you ignore: USA Network, MSNBC, CNBC, Bravo, NBC Sports Channel (formerly Universal Sports), Oxygen, E!, SyFy, Esquire Network, UniversalHD, and a bunch more networks that are both on -2, -3, etc. OTA digital subchannels and on cable like Chiller, Cloo, Sprout, etc. That's just the NBC Universal Cable Group. Don't forget all the OnO (Owned and Operated) NBC TV stations - far fewer than the overall NBC broadcast network total affiliates, but the big-market ones like LA, SF, NYC, and many more are owned by NBC itself. Which means owned by Comcast.
Plus, Universal Studios.
Oh, and Jay Leno just left NBC. Yes, again. Try to keep up.
Even more wrong, with your: "the fight has... been with... Viacom..." in that the big recurrent CBS fights are with CBS, which is way more than CBS old-people-TV network. Viacom and CBS split apart years ago, which means all those "Viacom" TV networks and properties? They belong to CBS (which also owns CNET, ZDNET and lots of online properties too). In fact, CBS now owns "Star Trek". Which is why my paragraph-opener sentence should be read Shatnerized. Yes, the network that turned down Star Trek in the 1960s, saying "We have one of our own we like better - Lost in Space", now is the owner of the "Star Trek" intellectual property. Paramount, which is part of Viacom, has absolutely nothing to do with "Star Trek" other than having some remaining rights to it as a motion-picture-only property. Many of those "Viacom" channels you're thinking about? They're now CBS. Such as the "Showtime Networks" group of channels. The MTV Group is still Viacom.
You really need to follow what is actually happening rather than that outdated Facebook "meme" infographic of "These Six Companies Own All Our Media".
The whole thesis is a remarkably stupid idea. Time Warner and Comcast are NOT direct competitors. They are MONOPOLIES in differet markets. They already have the ability to screw with you if you are trying to cut the cord. You probably have no where to go.
PERHAPS you can flee from your local cable monopoly to your local phone monopoly. MAYBE.
All this does is increase the number of cities where Comcast has a monopoly. Ultimately, the real impact of this will likely be with negotating with content providers. Comcast might be able to go all Walmart on Disney.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
What he said. The truth is, I never had cable TV for those reasons, and this: Remember, the deal was commercials = free TV. Cable started out with no commercials (yes, it did - except for the network channels), but they slowly began adding them in, until now, where there are more commercials on cable channels than on network television. Of course, TV watchers are a docile group to begin with...
When was that ever "the deal" as opposed to "what you wanted to be the deal"? Cable used to be called CATV, for "Community Antenna TV" and was primarily a way to bring television programming into areas that were geographically un-served by TV, usually due to actual geological / topographic reasons. Places like Ithaca, NY, or Breckenridge, Colorado, where no way in hell is a TV signal from Syracuse or Denver is getting into them through the hills down into the valleys. Later, urban canyons like NYC where not everyone had the ability to put up any kind of outdoor antenna - not because of regulations as much as real estate realities, and indoor antennas suffered from horrible multipath. I've lived in all three of the places I mentioned, laughably tried to get OTA TV in them, and have been a cable subscriber in all of them at one point or another. Getting "content" without commercials was never the deal - it was getting content, at all.
Later, the idea of "cable channels" started taking off, and what we now think of as the "basic tier" of cable stations began to show up. Watching "USA Night Flight" back in the day, then the launch of MTV with actual music videos. Along with the "Arts and Entertainment Network" that had plays, classical concerts, opera, not dysfunctional yahoos. Whether or not these extra stations had commercials, there was never any "deal" that "your cable bill pays for the content", CATV was a distribution method. Then the "pay tv" channels like HBO became popular. You can't pay for HBO without paying first for the "CATV" distribution subscription. In 2014 that's a dumb idea, but back then it wasn't - you were paying for the pipe, and now that you had the pipe, you could also pay for premium content. Given that "pay tv" is either "pay by having commercials" or "pay by having a CONTENT fee", I don't see a difference.
Your strawman argument against cable is flawed. You never understood the deal. You weren't paying for the pizza, you were paying for the delivery of the pizza.
Comcast doesn't offer low or fixed pricing on bundled television and internet services to long time customers. They charge you a higher rate after six months to a year, and most bundles include a premium channel that they will charge your for once the deal window expires. They also charge for each additional line into a home receiving a television signal, and a rental fee for the box required to receive their signal.
This type of marketing strategy coupled with increasing prices for services is what has caused "cord cutting". In most cases, new customers will find themselves paying only a few dollars more a month for television at first. Give it a year or maybe two, and those customers will find themselves paying double just to receive the same service. Comcast purchasing Time Warner isn't going to offset "cord cutting" because they will continue to use the same unsuccessful marketing gimmicks they have for the last decade. I would rather order a pizza or two than continue giving money to a greedy company for an overpriced television service that I don't watch anyway.
This article says a whole lot of nothing. Net neutrality is a joke. If I'm going to be saving $10 by going internet access only, I'm still saving $10, although I'm not cutting the cord in any event. If they can get away with charging me almost as much as the suckers who need their QVC and HSN, then it still communicates that I want high speed internet more than any conventional cable offerings and serves to illustrate just how much value costumers place on broadcast or cable tv these days. The real problem is a technical one, not a regulatory one: how do you give people more choice in broadband communication without pissing those same people off by digging up their yards and nearby roads? The hack in a trance who wrote this article can't answer that question.
My biggest concern is with them owning NBC too. Olympics extras are online but you also need to subscribe to the higher plans to watch it. I have ISP and local tv via comcast and that isn't enough $$$. So I'm blocked. I can't even buy access.
So they own the cables and content. Then they decide who can watch. It will limit choice.
First, my immediate response, as a Time Warner customer was, "well, we're canceling then. I literally would prefer to deal with Satan than Comcast." That's not an abuse of the word literally: I mean in all serious that the Morning Star, enemy of man, font of lies and evil has a better business track record than Comcast, and I would be more likely to extend him the benefit of the doubt. This means we're ditching cable, internet, and phone from Time Warner.
Second, AT&T still sells internet connections. As do others if we really need to move to a smaller firm. And that's just because we've so far been too lazy to set up either of our devices as a cell modem or link it to a larger screen. Mobile phones make the land line and the cable lines have a lot less value. Comcasts' proposition -- that cable is inherently valuable even with shitty service provided to relatively few true television-viewers -- is already on very shaky terms.
Third, the wife and I immediately re-evaluated how much TV we watch. We quickly came to the agreement that we DVR more than we ever watch, that most of those could have been received over-the-air from networks, and that we really aren't that interested in most of them anymore. Most of the time we ignore the DVR-ed material to binge on classics and series on Netflix, new releases on Red Box, or just plain, old-fashioned, 3-seasons-on-sale-for-$15 DVDs. We can do with a lot less in terms of cable.
In the short run, people who will be most affected are families that can't imagine ditching the Disney Channel. In families without adolescents yet, I think a lot more people will just be too cheap to ever -start- on the Disney Channel. Their strategy, like every Comcast strategy, is short-sighted.
Forever I can live without it.
And in Los Angeles over the air tv aint bad. I bet a little technology could go a long way to make a big come back as millions cut the cord.
Only one reason to have cable you want its ok tv porn.
You want to know whos wife is a freak on your street look for the dish.
So they are already banking on jacking up the cost of your internet connection. Oh so you want to "cut the cord" but you still need high speed internet, we can continue to provide that service for you.
I see why Apple pretty but shelved the Apple TV idea.
That would drive consumer prices down.
Here in Alaska, GCI the cable tv/internet company has data caps, for the average net user these are not a problem, unless you download a lot (most likely tv programs) or want to start streaming tv.
ACS the POTS/DSL provider here has unlimited DSL plans, and makes a point of rubbing it in GCI's face in their advertising. If you;re a heavy downloader or want to cut the cable and stream TV it''s pretty obvious where people go.
DSL companies should see this is their golden opportunity to get more customers or even offer package deals with netflix and hulu?
I won't subscribe to cable, but I'll gladly pay WWE $10 a month for access to all their shows, Pay per Views, and back catalog of stuff.
While there is other stuff I like on TV (I download it anyways), I find the price of Cable TV to be horrible. But I'll gladly pay $10 a month for access to the few shows I like to watch, plus the PPV's that I never could afford (but downloaded the next day), and I'll get them in HD that is way better then any HD Cablecast has ever sent.
This is how we fight cable companies, when the various shows/networks decide stream it to you for cheap.
Be seeing you...
From ADSL to dsl2plus, now my phone company has upgraded to VDSL and its a small south east phone company that so far has never had usage caps or filters anything.
I've tormented 250-400 gigs per month which includes torrents as well as hosting a storage server for friends and family.
VDSL I have 22 megabit down / 2 megabit upload
I'll never switch to cable, one reason is in my town there is no cable alternative. The only cable TV is analog cable offered by city hall billed on utility bill, or satellite TV.
I chose neither my VDSL plus landline is $55/month. I dont own a cellphone as none of them will let me get one as I ruined credit when I was 18. I'm 37 and it strangely still follows me, sprint wanted $1500 deposit/ we dont have any AT&T towers nearby and verizon wanted $600 deposit.
But my town offers free 3 megabit wifi on 5 old cell towers so I use my nexus 7 and Skype for mobile calls, landline for all else.
I love VDSL and even if a cable provider came in town I'd still refuse to switch, as on VDSL I got 5 static IPS for 5/month and I've ran my own servers and connected my old ham radio repeater auto patch to my home phone to use as my own personal VoIP to landline service :-)
This is where I'd like too see the defacto monopoly of cable companies broken by making them common carriers. Basically, do what the gov' did to telecos creating the iLEC and cLEC system. This way other carriers can buy fiber and get on the wire.
for many cities, the cable lines are actually owned by the municipality and managed by the cable company, so this would be a somewhat simple transition. DOCSIS already has the ability to allow this explicitly in the standard.
Not much worth watching on TV these days anyway. Hasn't been much for a while.
Between Redbox, NetFlix and Hulu I have enough entertainment on demand and don't waste my time watching crap by 'channel surfing'.
So cut the cord to the last mile (street.) Remember an antenna on the rooftop? Well they still work, GREAT TOO If you're into watching TV...
And since they are all high def channels it looks better than Time warner's analog channels.
The major networks are supported and watch the rest through the internet.
The WiFi towers are sprouting up around here like crazy How about where you are? I think it's going to be a price war I hope
I was wishing the broadcast medium would get new players in the HD market since there are so many digital channels available now.
Yes I know they were auctioned off by the FCC but they are hardly being used yet. If everyone went backwards in time...Free TV
Maybe that's where we should wish TV would go. Everyone put up (antennas) It's great and free every month!
Ok you still have to put up with Viagra and Vagina wetting agents commercials, until we all protest to our congress.
This whole medical sales soapbox is sickening isn't it? They are selling fear, just listen...don't buy, but protest.
Agreed, competition only works if competitors are actually competing against each other as opposed to competing together against consumers. I've lived throughout the county in suburban sprawls, major metros, and even small 25k cities, and it's often the same situation. I typically get one choice, which varies depending on what zip code I go to, but it is that one choice. If there is an alternative, it's far less an option, and the main company knows it. We need regulation of prices and standards of service.
How you do it right is as follows:
The physical cable is a natural monopoly, so you regulate it. Force the cable to it's own company. That company is then given the job of keeping the physical layers operational. They rent the access to the customers for "content" providers, ISP, anyone the customer want's to have "on the other end" of his cable. Customer pays for the "other end", and those companies pay the physical layer company. The physical company charges the exact same for each customer, just enough to develop the network and to keep it updated. The are a monopoly, and therefore tightly regulated and watched. It can be a priveta company, it just won't be a stockmarket superstar, because the regulation limits their profits.
And don't try to tell me this doesn't work. It works very well anywhere it's in use.
Finland is less dense tha US, and still get better prices. Trying to claim density means anything is just bs.
just the result of a bunch of Ayn Rand cultists
Don't look now, but you just labeled yourself a jackass. Why? Because the idea of a free market existing under the biggest, most expensive, most powerful government in world history is utterly laughable. What we have in the US is a haphazard mix of corporatism, socialism, and fascism. Capitalism is merely the smokescreen they use to cover up the real policies.
Amazon Instant Video is not the same thing as owning a Blu-Ray. Event he Amazon Unbox is DRMed worse than Blu-Ray. Your general point is correct but that specific example is wrong.
You don't need to be an AV geek to see why Comcast's complaints about Netflix et. all burdening their lines is utter bull.
Cable is measured in households, not individual people. The subscriber numbers are probably significantly higher than your seeing. Charter and Comcast will own over 2/3 of the US populations Cable/Internet connections when this goes through.
For significantly reduced speeds, on lines subsidized by the American taxpayer, just like the cable companies. Many areas don't even offer this as it has to be close to the transmission source to even work at reasonable speeds. So once again you're paying more for less.
Uh what? Kids shows? Are kidding me? Netflix has hundreds of them, the PBS kids app on Roku costs nothing. They have a separate Kids section on Netflix on the Roku3. Amazon Prime and Hulu have tons more and it still costs $20/mo less than cable, with no commercials. Sports, you *can* get online, but you're not paying the subsidized rates that you do with cable. My 4 year old daughter is apparently more savvy at finding kids shows on our Roku than you are. Congratulations, you are not smarter than someone who hasn't made it in to kindergarten yet.
Most laws are stupid. That's how cronyism works. The government is far more enemy than friend...as is has been always.
Multiple companies deploying identical physical infrastructure is a waste of time and money. It's a logical application of a regulated monopoly. The way to regulate it effectively is to require that the owner of those lines isn't allowed to distribute the services over those lines. They have to lease access to the lines at a standard rate structure to all service providers who wish to operate in that region. That's how we manage the power grid in Texas, and in Houston I have over 100 electric plans to choose from.
Your kind of thinking is what stalled the entire telecom industry until Judge Green killed off the "natural monopoly" AT&T. Competition brought you alternate long distance carriers like MCI, the cell business (A car phone cost $400 a month at that time from AT&T).
Regulation stalls progress. If there are no incentives to do wild and crazy stuff (like money), nobody does it. The reason Comcast is doing so well is because they buy the rights to be the single source from government. And if you tax them, as you suggest, prices will go up, not down.
Honestly, there isn't enough content to matter. I'm not into sports. I'm not into any of the content that sells on cable. If all sports athletes, pro or college, died and their sports canceled, I'd never miss any of them or it at all. Same for all reality shows. Same for all "news" (i.e. propaganda and lies) - don't need - all could all disappear and my life would be no different. So my "cord" is still cut and there's nothing they can do about it.
Thats what this about, Time Warner can't handle people trying save money, so their letting ComCast do the nasty fighting back in away. MONOPOLIES is right turm with this, we need more companies competing, unfortunately, there not much we can do. There so many cable lines/fiber-obtics you lay before it becomes unafforable. We'll have pay sooner or layer, higher internet prices or higher cable. Its going to come down to picking your poison.
What I find the most interesting about government corruption is just how cheap these bastards are! $89K??? Really? This is the 21st century. You aren't even gonna get a phone call from me until you give my secretary $89K! Comcast alone has a market cap of 139.5 BILLION so unless I start hearing offers ending in million, you can just go the fuck home :D Congress really is full of cheap ass whores. You can't even buy a decent Maserati for $89K.
I am certain he was referring to CxO salaries- not the installers/techs/admins. Everyone knows the blue collar guys wages have been flat for quite awhile but every quarter from most every segment of industry we hear about all of the cash those big boys rake in while they cut quality, service, or quantity. Golden parachutes and all that. Otherwise, I like your post!
The term is SHEEPLE and just like the idea you espouse regarding said sheeple being zombies, when I see a poster use the term sheeple as an insult (is there another use?) I instantly know you're a conspiracy theory loon.
I think you just want to keep pointing out that the guy used "very little" instead of your preferred "few". A mistake that you didn't catch btw, Zontar did. That doesn't stop you from hammering away at that bent nail though. This brings to mind a scene in Family Guy Star Wars where Han forgets C3PO's name while introducing him to Lando. He just keeps repeating C3PO as if it were a period that should be used at the end of a sentence. While he was doing it in an apologetic manner, you appear to be doing it to be a superior douche. I will point you to your signature. While you may have not directly come out and ad hom'd, you've slyly slipped one in there hoping no one would notice. A hypocrite on Slashdot???? SAY IT AIN'T SO!
Hello, you've reached Comcast Time Warner! I am an automated assistant. Please tell me how I can direct your call.
"technical support."
I'm sorry, I cannot transfer you to technical support until i know which service you are having trouble with.
"internet".
I'm sorry, I didn't understand.
"Youtube and Netflix stopped streaming video."
You said "Video". If you calling about our Time Warner / Universal / MSNBC premium content, I can connect you to our XFinity Entertainment account representatives.
"Technical support. Internet. Internet technical support."
Are you calling about Comcast Time Warner XFinity Home Internet Cable Television?
"Technical Support. Support. Tech support. Internet"
I'm sorry. Let me transfer you to technical support.
*ring* Hello, comcast!
"Hi, I can't seem to stream any content that isn't from Time Warner."
"Hi, yes, thank you for your call. Have you installed the xFinity AnyVideo Driver?
"The what?"
The xFinity AnyVideo driver. It allows you to watch video content from any approved internet streaming video provider, not just Comcast Time Warner XFinity content.
"So i have to install more software to watch Youtube on your network?"
Yes, Youtube is one of our approved content providers. Currently our AnyVideo driver is Windows 8 only.
"Okay, I'm running Linux Mint but i could probably get that open in WINE."
"You said L...L..... *click*
We're sorry the Comcast Network does not support Desktop Linux. Have a nice day. Goodbye!
ROTFLMAO @ "Chumpy" -> http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
(You sure "talk a good game" -> http://games.slashdot.org/comm... but you can't even produce a MERE SCRIPT!, windbag...)
You aren't even on the leve of a "script kiddie", & full of HOT AIR!
You certainly won't reply there in that 2nd link I posted either, as that would remove your downmods to my posts like this one you can't validly disprove or justify your downmod on -> http://games.slashdot.org/comm...
Oh, I suspect that IS the case here (simply logging out of a registered account & trolling by ac is a common troll trick around here OR using alternate registered 'luser' accounts sockpuppets to do the job will also, & Lumpy is LOADED with those & trolling - which doesn't matter: He PROVES he's all talk, no action (or skills, OR brains, lol))
(You're all TALK, & NO action "CHUMPY!)
* :)
(You know it, I know it, & so does anyone reading AND laughing their asses off @ you now... lol!)
APK
P.S.=> Answer the question in the subject-line Lumpy - since you had to "eat your wrods" in the 1st link above flavored with your FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH + the "bitter taste of SELF-defeat", lol...
... apk