Price Dispute Means 800k Customers Lose TV Channels In Sweden (telecompaper.com)

Z00L00K writes: Due to a conflict between the cable operators and the channel providers, 800,000 to 900,000 customers will lose some of the most-viewed TV channels in Sweden, among them Eurosport, Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. Additional customers in Norway will also lose channels. This is caused by a considerable hike in price for the channels from the provider Discovery Networks. However the amount of money involved is still kept secret for negotiation and business reasons. "Telenor Broadcast arm Canal Digital said Discovery Networks has told it that it will withdraw its channels from Canal Digital Sweden and sister company Bredbandsbolaget from 01 February. This follows Discovery's attempts to raise prices and pay for a number of channels that viewers had not chosen. This will affect their approximately 800,000 customers while a new contract is negotiated. Telenor Sweden customers will not able to watch Kanal 5 or the other Discovery channels until a deal is reached." Considering that Sweden has a population of almost 10 million the impact is noticeable.

Comments

Re: And nothing of value was lost.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was somewhat amazed by the claim that Eurosport was one of the most viewed channels here. So for fun I went to mms.se to check how they did yesterday. Three of their shows climbed above 5000 viewers, with one peaking at 35000. Most were in the 1000-2000 range.

Affects about 1 000 000 viewers in Norway too

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue is even bigger here in Norway, where it affects almost 1 000 000 customers. Since our population is about 1/2 of that of Sweden, it means that almost 20% of Norwegian TV customers are currently missing all of DIscovery Networks channels, including several national ones.

Re:Time to give the consumer total choice

[Bourdain]

In a sense you're right but at the same time, it's a better value than most any other [bundled] channel in that it
1) has no commercials
2) wide variety of content all on demand
3) costs less than any other channel available a la carte
4) offers multiple stream plans

you can always go pure a la carte but that's oddly more expensive in the form of buying just what you want from amazon

TV DIED with LONG paid for ads by the consumers.

[MindPrison]

TV is DEAD, long live the TV.

Advertisement revenue on traditional TV has been on a downhill run - the short term solution puts the FINAL nail in the coffin for TV, and that is the ...ok then, we'll just increase the number of ads and cover our usual income that way.

In Sweden (or Norway, Denmark etc.) we pay for 3 licenses:

1) The National TV license. This one is MANDATORY if you have a television. It's roughly 300$ a year, and you can't opt out unless you have NO TV or RADIO.
2) The second license is the one you pay for your subscription channels, that is...if you want something BESIDES the NATIONAL "we-will-kill-you-with-culture" channels.
3) The THIRD license is the forced Advertisement which consists of pretty exactly 5 minutes of ADS (30-50% Casino/Gambling ads) and 2.5 minutes of ADS and SPONSORS for the TV channels next tv programs, which they will repeat over and over until you're a dumb monkey salivating as you try to reach the remote, now that finger pressing is just a body-twitch.

The worst part is that you PAY for all of the other stuff and STILL get forced to watch those horrible repetitive Casino-this-gamble-that ads.

I rarely watch "broadcast" television anymore, I usually spend my time on the internet, and/or watch PAID for documentaries and movies on Netflix and other services where I can TURN off the goddamn ads!