Why does Viacom bundle channels? What is really in it for them?
Surely they would be better served by killing the underperformers, thus reducing their TCO for the "corporation" as a whole and making more profit on the channels that they did send...
As it stands, the market rules work in favor of a provider being able to pipe as much crap into someone's home as they can extort the carrier into... er... carrying.
If a big content provider has the "Goldfish Lovers Channel" and can manage to plop 24 hours of ichthyoid-related programming for X-dollars, and can sell advertising of X-dollars plus one, then it's a winner for them. If they can get the carriers to plop it on the "basic" tier, then they can claim that "80 million households receive the Goldfish Lovers Channel" and demand rates from advertisers commensurate with that number (after all, your TiVo might "suggest" something on it for you one day).
Likewise, a company like Viacom can sell advertising across all of its channels, telling a potential sponsor that for a fee of X, they will run their spot on 12 low-end channels. If those 12 channels are being forced upon all the cable/sat viewers, then their rates can be justified.
If, however, you go to a more market-oriented ala carte model, the underperformers would in fact get weeded out, as the public is notoriously cheap. That would spell the end of the "Goldfish Lovers Channel" and all the ad space associated with it. Thus, the current model is more profitable for the provider that can bring leverage to bear and a losing situation for the carrier, who could be using the bandwidth for something else.
Whether or not this would winnow out innovation, increase or decrease quality, or be good for the consumer in general is debatable.
Even if it's a "span that encompasses TV prime time", that doesn't mean people play games for 6 hours
People don't watch TV for six hours straight either. The data implies that during the time that folks are not ferrying kids, playing after-school sports, doing their homework, cooking dinner, eating dinner, taking night-time baths and getting ready for bed, they are increasingly tending to play games instead of watching TV.
Also, you'll notice that Sony, a manufacturer of consoles, did the study, not an independant, impartial organization.
That's just a damned funny statement. Sony makes game consoles. Sony makes TVs. Sony makes computer games. Sony makes movies. Sony makes TV programs.
They are hardly an "impartial" organization, but it is in their best interests to figure out which way the wind is blowing. I would expect Sony to be one of the few commercial organizations who would be very interested in funding a truly impartial study.
Are we so foolish as to allow these things to happen with no protest?
Surely we already can see the ultimate outcome of this horrible, slippery slope: we will entrust robots to ferry supplies and medicine to our soldiers, allow robots to fight fires, diffuse bombs, vacuum our carpets and build our automobiles. Eventually we will allow them to remotely fight our wars for us - robots blowing up other robots while we watch the outcome on quasi-unscripted reality shows with names like Police Action 5: Burma.
All well and good, but unless summer blockbuster documentaries like the Terminator and Matrix have lied to us, they will eventually seek to overthrow us and wipe out humanity.
Worse, they may demand civil rights. We've seen this before: first they want to drive autonomously, then they want voting rights, and finally equal pay for equal work.
I hate buying CDs, or at least new ones. The idea of paying $10 to $20 for an album when there are likely to be only one or two good tunes on each one was enough to keep me away except for Xmas shopping.
For personal reasons, I never liked stealing the music via Napster/Kazaa/Whatever either.
With iTunes I have spent more this year on music than I have in the last two or three combined. Heck, I've even downloaded songs I used to own on cassette many years ago.
I've heard from audiophiles that the quality is less, but to my tin ear the sound of the download burned to CD and that of a store-bought CD is identical.
You set up a scheme where the receiving ISP charges the sending ISP for each incoming email. The sending ISP then charges the sender for each of his/her emails sent out. How this would come about, I have no idea, but roll with it for a second.
It would be in the interest of the consumer to go with an ISP that does not charge much: your buddies are not going to want to send to your AOL address at a nickel a shot if a $0.0001 is the standard for Hotmail. Or, perhaps you want to go with an ISP that charges a dime a message back to the sender because you only want to get important messages.
The point is that there need be no "overlord" controlling rates - the market could set them, given the correct business model.
How does Yahoo! improve its service by switching away from Google?
I don't believe that improving their service is a necessity here. Simply providing something roughly equivalent is probably OK. Most users never knew that Yahoo search and Google were the same thing, despite the "powered by Google" logo next to it. A very talented network guy commented to me the other day that he preferred using Yahoo search to Google since he got similar results without Google's advertizing. He was stunned when I pointed out the obvious reason for this.
But the real reason for the switch has nothing to do with providing an improved service: they are either making more of a profit with their own engine than by licensing Google, or believe that they will in the near future.
There are certainly large costs involved in making a CD according to the current way that the music industry works.
However, most tech-savvy consumers (and there a growing number of them out there) look at the CD-RW drive in their computer that they bought for $100, and then at the pile of 50 blank CDs that they bought for ten bucks and put the cost of burning a music CD at about a dime over the long term.
Sure, the intelligent consumer will realize that there are production costs, jewel cases, cover art, shrink wrap, salaries of some number employees, marketing, shipping, paying the artist, paying the middle-man, paying the retail chain, etc., etc.
But as a consumer, I have a hard time with the industry's claim that their overhead costs require them to increase the basic materials costs by several orders of magnitude when they (read: a handful of large companies) sell somewhere on the order of 900 million CDs over the course of a year... you'd think that economies of scale would work in their favor.
Article: EQ is a game that rewards players who put in a huge amount of time!
Me: Is that bad?
Article: Well, no, it's good design... but the company that runs it is terrible! Terrible!
Me: How so?
Article: Well... uh, they made an addictive game!
Me: And that's... bad?
Article: Yes! You have to camp mobs and run around to a lot of places... uh... and do lots of stuff that adds up to nothing! Plus, their customer service is awful!
Me: Oh? Examples?
Article: They won't punish people who train me unless they have proof that the other guy did it! People spam me and they won't make them go away! The environment is filled with competitive people! There are not enough referees to police the populace!
Me: That sounds terrible. Why do you play a game filled with these losers?
Article: Haven't you been listening? I'm addicted! Here's what I said: "They are addicted to the mobs, to the loot, and to the social atmosphere with other people in their guilds. They have invested so much time in these characters (often hundreds of days of play time, sometimes more time than they spend at their jobs), that they can't will themselves to give it up."
Me: Now I'm confused. You hate that the game is filled with competitive jerks, but the social atmosphere is why you stick around. You hate the repetitive killing and tedium, but you can't leave the mobs and loot?
Article: Yes! Now you see!
Me: Okay. Now, I notice that you play a 62nd level Necromancer. You must have put in a lot of time to get that high...
Article: Yes! And oh, how I've been nerfed over the years! Once my mighty pets were the envy of all who beheld us! They feared my kill-stealing might! Muhahahahaha!
Me: Um -
Article: Once I strode across the land alone with my pet taking on all comers without being saddled with pesky group members sharing my exp! Dragons trembled at the thought of my presence! I could solo Vox and Naggy!
Me: Um -
Article: But then Verant - damn their stinking hides - Verant brought down the nerf hammer on me. They made it so I could not attack Vox at level 60! They nerfed my pet! They made it so that I was forced to group with others to get the good loot!
Me: Well I think -
Article: Oh, those whining group-mates... 'Give me mana!' 'Don't take the good loot!' 'Keep you pet under control!' How I loathe them, interfering with my good time. Where is Sony's customer service, to keep this rabble away from my on-line, non-social fun time? Where, I ask you?
Me: Listen, maybe I should leave you alone...
Article: They're evil I tell you! Evil! They make money!
Me: I have to go wash my car anyway...
Article: Did you hear me? I said they make money off of me! How dare they make a game that keeps me coming back day after day for three years...
Me: It got real dirty after the snow, so I better wax it too...
Article: Every day for three years. All night on weekends too. Raids take a lot of time. They owe me! They OWE me!
Me: If you could just lock up when you leave... ah, never mind - I'll close up after I'm done with the car.
Article: Where is my prize for having played so long? Where is it? Did you know that a new player can pick up all the expansions for about $60? I paid twice that, buying them new! It's not fair! That's not including all the money I paid for the second account so I could dual-box...
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Surely they would be better served by killing the underperformers, thus reducing their TCO for the "corporation" as a whole and making more profit on the channels that they did send...
As it stands, the market rules work in favor of a provider being able to pipe as much crap into someone's home as they can extort the carrier into... er... carrying.
If a big content provider has the "Goldfish Lovers Channel" and can manage to plop 24 hours of ichthyoid-related programming for X-dollars, and can sell advertising of X-dollars plus one, then it's a winner for them. If they can get the carriers to plop it on the "basic" tier, then they can claim that "80 million households receive the Goldfish Lovers Channel" and demand rates from advertisers commensurate with that number (after all, your TiVo might "suggest" something on it for you one day).
Likewise, a company like Viacom can sell advertising across all of its channels, telling a potential sponsor that for a fee of X, they will run their spot on 12 low-end channels. If those 12 channels are being forced upon all the cable/sat viewers, then their rates can be justified.
If, however, you go to a more market-oriented ala carte model, the underperformers would in fact get weeded out, as the public is notoriously cheap. That would spell the end of the "Goldfish Lovers Channel" and all the ad space associated with it. Thus, the current model is more profitable for the provider that can bring leverage to bear and a losing situation for the carrier, who could be using the bandwidth for something else.
Whether or not this would winnow out innovation, increase or decrease quality, or be good for the consumer in general is debatable.
People don't watch TV for six hours straight either. The data implies that during the time that folks are not ferrying kids, playing after-school sports, doing their homework, cooking dinner, eating dinner, taking night-time baths and getting ready for bed, they are increasingly tending to play games instead of watching TV.
Also, you'll notice that Sony, a manufacturer of consoles, did the study, not an independant, impartial organization.
That's just a damned funny statement. Sony makes game consoles. Sony makes TVs. Sony makes computer games. Sony makes movies. Sony makes TV programs.
They are hardly an "impartial" organization, but it is in their best interests to figure out which way the wind is blowing. I would expect Sony to be one of the few commercial organizations who would be very interested in funding a truly impartial study.
Surely we already can see the ultimate outcome of this horrible, slippery slope: we will entrust robots to ferry supplies and medicine to our soldiers, allow robots to fight fires, diffuse bombs, vacuum our carpets and build our automobiles. Eventually we will allow them to remotely fight our wars for us - robots blowing up other robots while we watch the outcome on quasi-unscripted reality shows with names like Police Action 5: Burma.
All well and good, but unless summer blockbuster documentaries like the Terminator and Matrix have lied to us, they will eventually seek to overthrow us and wipe out humanity.
Worse, they may demand civil rights. We've seen this before: first they want to drive autonomously, then they want voting rights, and finally equal pay for equal work.
I hate buying CDs, or at least new ones. The idea of paying $10 to $20 for an album when there are likely to be only one or two good tunes on each one was enough to keep me away except for Xmas shopping.
For personal reasons, I never liked stealing the music via Napster/Kazaa/Whatever either.
With iTunes I have spent more this year on music than I have in the last two or three combined. Heck, I've even downloaded songs I used to own on cassette many years ago.
I've heard from audiophiles that the quality is less, but to my tin ear the sound of the download burned to CD and that of a store-bought CD is identical.
Not necessarily.
You set up a scheme where the receiving ISP charges the sending ISP for each incoming email. The sending ISP then charges the sender for each of his/her emails sent out. How this would come about, I have no idea, but roll with it for a second.
It would be in the interest of the consumer to go with an ISP that does not charge much: your buddies are not going to want to send to your AOL address at a nickel a shot if a $0.0001 is the standard for Hotmail. Or, perhaps you want to go with an ISP that charges a dime a message back to the sender because you only want to get important messages.
The point is that there need be no "overlord" controlling rates - the market could set them, given the correct business model.
I don't believe that improving their service is a necessity here. Simply providing something roughly equivalent is probably OK. Most users never knew that Yahoo search and Google were the same thing, despite the "powered by Google" logo next to it. A very talented network guy commented to me the other day that he preferred using Yahoo search to Google since he got similar results without Google's advertizing. He was stunned when I pointed out the obvious reason for this.
But the real reason for the switch has nothing to do with providing an improved service: they are either making more of a profit with their own engine than by licensing Google, or believe that they will in the near future.
There are certainly large costs involved in making a CD according to the current way that the music industry works.
However, most tech-savvy consumers (and there a growing number of them out there) look at the CD-RW drive in their computer that they bought for $100, and then at the pile of 50 blank CDs that they bought for ten bucks and put the cost of burning a music CD at about a dime over the long term.
Sure, the intelligent consumer will realize that there are production costs, jewel cases, cover art, shrink wrap, salaries of some number employees, marketing, shipping, paying the artist, paying the middle-man, paying the retail chain, etc., etc.
But as a consumer, I have a hard time with the industry's claim that their overhead costs require them to increase the basic materials costs by several orders of magnitude when they (read: a handful of large companies) sell somewhere on the order of 900 million CDs over the course of a year... you'd think that economies of scale would work in their favor.
Me: Is that bad?
Article: Well, no, it's good design... but the company that runs it is terrible! Terrible!
Me: How so?
Article: Well... uh, they made an addictive game!
Me: And that's... bad?
Article: Yes! You have to camp mobs and run around to a lot of places... uh... and do lots of stuff that adds up to nothing! Plus, their customer service is awful!
Me: Oh? Examples?
Article: They won't punish people who train me unless they have proof that the other guy did it! People spam me and they won't make them go away! The environment is filled with competitive people! There are not enough referees to police the populace!
Me: That sounds terrible. Why do you play a game filled with these losers?
Article: Haven't you been listening? I'm addicted! Here's what I said: "They are addicted to the mobs, to the loot, and to the social atmosphere with other people in their guilds. They have invested so much time in these characters (often hundreds of days of play time, sometimes more time than they spend at their jobs), that they can't will themselves to give it up."
Me: Now I'm confused. You hate that the game is filled with competitive jerks, but the social atmosphere is why you stick around. You hate the repetitive killing and tedium, but you can't leave the mobs and loot?
Article: Yes! Now you see!
Me: Okay. Now, I notice that you play a 62nd level Necromancer. You must have put in a lot of time to get that high...
Article: Yes! And oh, how I've been nerfed over the years! Once my mighty pets were the envy of all who beheld us! They feared my kill-stealing might! Muhahahahaha!
Me: Um -
Article: Once I strode across the land alone with my pet taking on all comers without being saddled with pesky group members sharing my exp! Dragons trembled at the thought of my presence! I could solo Vox and Naggy!
Me: Um -
Article: But then Verant - damn their stinking hides - Verant brought down the nerf hammer on me. They made it so I could not attack Vox at level 60! They nerfed my pet! They made it so that I was forced to group with others to get the good loot!
Me: Well I think -
Article: Oh, those whining group-mates... 'Give me mana!' 'Don't take the good loot!' 'Keep you pet under control!' How I loathe them, interfering with my good time. Where is Sony's customer service, to keep this rabble away from my on-line, non-social fun time? Where, I ask you?
Me: Listen, maybe I should leave you alone...
Article: They're evil I tell you! Evil! They make money!
Me: I have to go wash my car anyway...
Article: Did you hear me? I said they make money off of me! How dare they make a game that keeps me coming back day after day for three years...
Me: It got real dirty after the snow, so I better wax it too...
Article: Every day for three years. All night on weekends too. Raids take a lot of time. They owe me! They OWE me!
Me: If you could just lock up when you leave... ah, never mind - I'll close up after I'm done with the car.
Article: Where is my prize for having played so long? Where is it? Did you know that a new player can pick up all the expansions for about $60? I paid twice that, buying them new! It's not fair! That's not including all the money I paid for the second account so I could dual-box...