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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.
I'm one of the affected Norwegian customers, and frankly couldn't care less that some channels are gone. What -I- want to know, is why I cannot buy broadband without having to pay for a lot of nonsense TV content. No one in my family watches TV anymore, and the consumer authorities have already pointed out repeatedly that this bundling practice needs to stop.
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.
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.
Logarithmic TV FTW !
Same in the United States where there is a dispute between COX Communications and Nexstar Broadcasting. As of Jan 29th, all CBS, NBC, MyTV, and many
other stations have been dropped by COX. Show me the Money!
Discovery used to be pretty good, maybe 15 years ago. Now it is all reality TV with fake drama to disguise the fact that the same things happen over and over. It went from being one of the best channels to one of the worst, or maybe it's just in the middle because most of the rest suck just as bad. I know I'm going to get backlash for being one of those guys, but I'll say it anyway: ditch your TV subscription and get your shows over the air and online. Yes, yes, I'll concede you may want satellite if you live out in the boonies because OTA is out of range and you can't get decent internet speeds.
Price Dispute Means 800k Customers Lose TV Channels In Sweden
Slow down, Mr Headline. They haven't lost them yet.
This follows Discovery's attempts to raise prices and pay for a number of channels that viewers had not chosen.
Huh? Discovery wants to pay for some extra channels?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Given that it would be trivial for consumers to be able to pick the channels they want individually on a website and then pay for them for them individually, the fact that bundling is still occurring is a sign that there's an industry here that deserves disrupting. And lo - Netflicks is doing exactly that. Let's hope for some legislation to mandate a 'pick the channels you want' option...
The subscirption TV model in use today is bulky, expensive, and antiquated. Now excuse me while I go back to watching Netflix.
The quote in the summary is literally the entire article. The added text around the quote actually makes the summary quite a bit longer than the linked article.
This happens all the time in the US whenever there is a pricing dispute. Eventually the two sides compromise. I hope this isn't the same "Discovery Network" as the one from the US, because their channels are all garbage now.
This has also happened in Finland. Apparently the cable companies were not allowed to warn customers beforehand because of some sort of NDA.
She: Hey, are you a traitor? Me: No, I'm atheist.
Ah. Alas another example of the law of supply and demand failing because the client is not the client and the supplier is not the supplier, as everything is forced through middlemen.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Eurosport here in Austria Eurosport has lost some of its cable providers already. They wanted to enforce an Analog transmission for the upcoming years while literally all local cable providers cut the analog cable transmission by this year to make way for more HDTV channels and GBIT Cable Internet. So the result was that Eurosport was kicked out from the local providers due to corporate stupidity from Eurosports side.
People are sick of these perpetual price increases. Cable is the only product I can think of that is constantly decreasing in value yet always increasing in price, well above the rate of inflation.
Enough is enough.
I cut the cord back in July, and I've not missed it. And better yet, my dollars are no longer fund channels like MSLSD or CNN.
Corporatism != Free Market
You really owe it to yourself (literally) to check TV Fool and see if you can get OTA TV. A $75 antenna and even a lifetime TiVo pay back very quickly. If your living situation allows an external antenna, or if you can get it with an inside antenna, do it. I don't know if this works in Europe.
Levels of depression are plummeting.
Television is a medium, so called because it is neither rare nor well-done. -Ernie Kovacs
Don't make a deal. Tell them and the rest of the cable industry to **** off. Sick of having to pay a higher price because I have to get sports channels and other garbage bundled with what I actually want to see. Until a la carte comes along, cable can suck it.
A la carte won't change anything. They'll just make you pay 1 or 2 channels as much as the 50 (2 good channels + 48 garbage ones) channels you're watching right now.
What needs to happen is price reduction across the board and it ain't happening. So the only alternative is for customers to ditch cable and to use something like Netflix or spend the money to rent the 2-3 good tv series that come out each year.
The only people that are truly fucked either way are those adicted to live sports channels. For these customers there is no hope at all, it's cable or cable. Oh and don't forget the lube.
Eurosport
Or at least it would be if I still watched linear TV
Even if you don't watch sports, a lot of other people do. Is anything other than linear TV efficient for sports?
This kind of thing happens all the time in the USA. It will eventually get resolved, but it could take anywhere from a few months to a year or two. What always happens here is that in the end the TV content provider lowers the price they want and the cable TV provider finally agrees to pay a slightly elevated price. I'm sure Sweden will be exactly the same.
You really owe it to yourself (literally) to check TV Fool and see if you can get OTA TV.
That doesn't help when popular sports are exclusive to traditional multichannel pay TV. I don't know about the Swedish TV market, but in the United States, most of the NHL (ice hockey) playoffs are on NBCSN, and the NCAA division 1 men's basketball playoffs (branded as March Madness) are on TBS this year.
Season tickets cost more than cable, and you miss away games and the post-season. And if the team that you follow is not the team in your city, airfare alone makes it impractical to attend any match. This could be the team associated with the university from which you graduated or which your child attends, the professional team in the city in which you grew up, the professional team to which your favorite player was traded, or a major league team if you live in a city not big enough for a major league team.
So the only alternative is for customers to ditch cable and to use something like Netflix or spend the money to rent the 2-3 good tv series that come out each year.
"Rent"? Since when do video rental stores exist in most markets? I thought Blockbuster closed.
I really wonder who really still will be affected by losing TV channels. It is a situation of abundance of turds, not a damn channel has good programs...Even National geographic has the fucking reality shows under the banner of wait for it..."science"... Really, news for who, slashdot? We do give a flying fuck for TV channels...they are outdated technology and produced on the cheap, pure garbage.
again?
Last year, same issue, different channels:
http://www.sydsvenskan.se/kultur--nojen/700-000-hushall-kan-mista-tv-kanaler/
Urge to kill... rising...
So a few thousand Swedes might lose access to Shark Century, Ice Road Fuckwits and Cannibal Hillbillies of Alaska?
Oh, the humanity!
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
You're stating what's obvious to nerds and people who are aware of alternatives, but for the rest of the world, things like Netflix are just words they hear a few times per year.
So yes, the more the old telecom powers lose their grips on their markets by asking for more money instead of less, the more alternatives are getting known by necessity.
Maybe we should send Mr. Spock to these negotiations.
Yes, I know... RIP, Mr. Nimoy.
I find it surprising people still watch TV.
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
I see what you did there.
Coming soon to computers in your area: a more consumer-friendly, untraceable Torrent interface.
TV is DEAD, long live the TV.
...ok then, we'll just increase the number of ads and cover our usual income that way.
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
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!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
The loser culture of the nerd is being expunged from society
Really? You must be from Planet Geek. Mostly neither respected nor listened to by your bosses, seen as a replaceable cog - the sooner the better, and boring as all hell for the rest of society to talk to.
Why? Too narrow focus. Look at the negative reaction to posting stories that aren't immediately nerdy-geeky, like this one. Cable companies in Sweden still wanting to bundle channels so that people have to pay for shows they don't want. Do YOU like to pay for something you don't want? Or bait-and-switch, like "unlimited bandwidth(some conditions may apply, offer void if blah blah blah, bandwidth charge of $X for each megabyte over Ygig, etc.)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
..and an entire nation re-discovers Netflix..
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
Logarithmic TV FTW !
I'll see your logarithmic and raise you an exponential TV.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
...in the long run. No cable company should ever have paid anything for any channel or broadcast that carried advertising. Either ordinary (ad supported) channels or premium (no ads) channels. Period. Now look what a mess we have. Cable companies caused this, and when they first did, they weren't even competing with anyone.
News for nerds who share a home with jocks.
Hold on there. We haven't got to power series yet.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Now, there's no need to go off on a tangent!
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
News for people interested in digital services, the markets they operate in, the trends in those markets and the people impacted by them.
Or news for people that don't fit your narrow facile binary segregation of the population.
In Sweden, it is the existence of a receiver within the household that counts. If have a TV or a DVD player that contains a receiver (my DVD player is also a DVR) then you would have to pay a license. There is a max of one license per household though in case you would have multiple devices.
A year ago, the mandatory TV license applied also to PCs because they could be connected to the Internet and so it was reasoned that they could receive TV over the Internet that way. ... Except that not all PCs were able to actually playback the content.
I have a neighbour who has chosen to not own any TV, who had only a netbook -- which was too underpowered to play web-TV -- but she still had to pay the mandatory TV license for that. Ridiculous.
Thankfully, common sense prevailed and the rule was changed.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Cable companies in Sweden still wanting to bundle channels so that people have to pay for shows they don't want. Do YOU like to pay for something you don't want?
This demonstrates two misunderstandings of the system. First, what makes you think prices would go down if you got only the channels that you wanted to watch? They wouldn't. There are fixed costs that everyone has to cover. Add in the cost of changing the billing system to deal with ala carte, and the number of customer support people who would have to be hired to deal with billing errors and churn.
Second, everyone gets channels they don't watch in this system, so while you think you are paying to subsidize all the channels you don't like, so does everyone who watches those channels but not the ones you do like. Everyone thinks they're subsidizing each other, and in a sense they are. Remove the subsidies from everyone and everyone would pay the same. In fact, those who watch less popular channels would have to pay more since there would no longer be a subsidy from the others.
Someone else pointed out that even Netflix bundles, and the only counter to that was someone who pointed out how great Netflix was for other reasons, as if that excused the bundling.
Unfortunately, if you do ever get a cable system that only carries the popular stuff and doesn't force anyone to pay for things that nobody would watch, I suspect that you'll be unhappy. I'd bet that the things you like most are not the most popular channels. I can pretty much prove that. If you don't like what the OTA channels have on them, then every show they carry is an example of something that is popular with more people than what you want to watch. If what you wanted to watch was that popular, it would be on OTA. And no, public TV is not an example of this process, since public TV content is not determined by general popularity, it's determined by the popularity amongst donors.
Truth hurts, doesn't it?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Their fixed costs would be lower because they wouldn't be spending money on producing or buying shows that don't have enough viewers to justify it. Supply and demand 101.
I've been 100% OTA for decades. I don't *need* to watch any particular show.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Their fixed costs would be lower because they wouldn't be spending money on producing or buying shows that don't have enough viewers to justify it. Supply and demand 101.
Failure number 3: just because you don't want to watch a certain channel doesn't mean nobody else wants to watch it. Cable companies buy product, so they don't save in production; they still have to pay the producers. Their costs don't go away just because you don't order a channel ala carte.
I've been 100% OTA for decades. I don't *need* to watch any particular show.
That's nice. You're now part of the group that pops up every time cable programming is discussed who tells us that we should just drop cable because you personally get by without it just fine. We're all glad that you get by with just OTA, but other people have other tastes and wants. I don't particularly like coffee, but I don't tell others how they ought to stop drinking it.
My experience with OTA is that I get 7 channels -- none of them major broadcast networks -- on a good day. Usually it is 5, and one of those is the public TV system rebroadcasting the public radio station. YMMV.
In Norway though, it's similar in that it's the presence of a receiver that counts, BUT you can have your receiver disabled and not have to pay the TV-license. Which you can't in Sweden. There's nothing stopping you from using a screen without a receiver and just watch Netflix etc. though (radios fortunately no longer count).
And it wasn't actually common sense in in the TV-licensing authorities that changed their interpretation of the law. It was the court clarifying the interpretation for them. The licensing authority were taken to court and lost. Chalk one up for judiciary, where evidently common sense was more common.
Stefan Axelsson
Come off it - if enough people were watching it, it would be worth it. A lot of these bundled programs are crap filler produced at low cost, to pad the number of programs offered.Get with the times - this has been a known problem since the last century.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
In Denmark the TV license is mandatory if you have any device that can watch national TV. Since national TV provides streaming with support for phone, tablets, and computers, there are very few households who do not have to pay the license.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?