Hate Paying for Cable? Here’s Why.

All Things Digital: MediaMemo ^ | March 8, 2010 | Peter Kafka

[TomGuy]

Love grousing about cable TV? Then I’ve got a list for you. It comes from industry analyst SNL Kagan, and I came across it via a research note Barclays Capital’s Anthony DiClemente sent out last week.

DiClemente was arguing that the bundled approach to cable TV–whereby subscribers get dozens or even hundreds of channels for one big fee, no matter how many networks they actually watch–wasn’t going anywhere for quite some time. If ever

[bcsco]

I have Comcast. We searched through the channel lineup last night (for the show name) and found nothing other than the standard Food Network.

[TomGuy]

I swear, every 60 minutes of air time is consumed by 25 minutes of commercials.

If you watch TV programs, say from the 70s, on Hulu, you will note that they are about 48 minutes in duration.

Today, a typical hour-long program has only about 39 minutes of actual content. Late last year, the programmers decided to expand their advertising content by about 3%, thus decreasing content from about 42 minutes to 39 minutes.

I use a 30-second skip when I DVR a program. Some programs have up to 8 minutes of advertising and public services messages during a single break.

Content is only something to fill the gap between advertising breaks.

[tlb]

>>>This is a chart of what cable services are paying for various channels

The chart is what the cable company pays, not what the consumer pays TO the cable company. Interesting information.

[Leo Farnsworth]

FWIW FoodTV - the Food Channel is HD on Dish Network (and I imagine on DirectTV as well).

It looks good most of the time, though older shows are displayed in a ‘panorama’ format where the center is actual size and the sides are stretched to fit your screen.

[ConservaTexan]

This is a great system for the cable channels. Force people who would never consider using your product to pay you for it anyway. A La Carte would be the end of most of the junk on cable and would force the handful of Bravo, MSNBC, CNN and Mexican Anal (?) viewers to pay their fair shair. No wonder the media supports socialism, it is what keeps their industry going.

[mlocher]

Thanks for the information. I guess it is an oligarchy, so to speak.

[bcsco]

I’m with Comcast. Satellite isn’t an option with reception issues for me. And Verizon doesn’t come here.

There’s some talk about our local power company (yes, we have one...) possibly getting into the cable business. They already provide high-speed wireless Internet, have for years. But that talk remains just that.

They say they have a cable provider up in Wisconsin willing to link into the fiber network we’re tied into, we’d have to handle the routing this side of the State line. But last I heard, that’s just, well, talk...

[kevkrom]

Yeah, the point wasn’t to say “go DirecTV/Dish!”, but that the network is broadcast in HD. It’s your cable company that isn’t “going HD” with the channel, not the network. Yet another reason to hate the monopolistic b****rds.

[antiRepublicrat]

I see a lot of money I could save off of that list.

[oh8eleven]

thus decreasing content from about 42 minutes to 39 minutes.
That essentially puts the content to commercial ratio at 2:1. For every two minutes of show you get one minute of commercial. Despicable.

If you watch TV programs, say from the 70s, on Hulu, you will note that they are about 48 minutes in duration.
Yes, I know exactly what you mean. BTW, I watch All in the Family once in a while and noticed it was Archie's neighbor, Jefferson, who was the real racist.

[Gay State Conservative]

Although I haven't counted,the package I now have has,perhaps,300 channels or more.My cable provider (Verizon) offers,I'll bet,400+ channels...I guess that fiber optics system has enormous capacity for TV channels *and* internet speed.

Of the 300,or so,channels I have I watch,at most,15-20.A la carte should save me big $$$ but there are one or two that I *do* watch that are obscure enough that they might go away in an a la carte world.

[bcsco]

Yet another reason to hate the monopolistic b****rds.

I hear ya...

[onona]

You are spot on; and my two cents....I have 6 channels in Hindi. What the hell am I supposed to do with that ?

[discostu]

It’s a natural tendency of companies in similar markets to conglomerate. It used to be most of these channels were competitors, VH1 was started by Michael Nesmith to try to beat MTV for stealing his idea, but eventually somebody gets the upper hand (possibly through market action, maybe by getting bought by a company looking for horizontal expansion) and buys the competition. As long as the combined company won’t be a monopoly the FTC won’t stop it. The entertainment industry has always been like this, some of the best known companies in entertainment (Time-Warner, Chess-Checker-Argo, Elektra-Asylum-Nonsuch) are the product of this merger trend. Entertainment tends to be very high on overhead, but a lot of that overhead can be eliminated by combining companies. Instead of a dozen companies all having their own studio buildings to run various “news” style shows you can run all the ESPN/ ABC/ Disney “news” shows out of 1 or 2 building. Instead of a dozen companies having top shelf editing facilities all the Discovery channels can run out of 1 or 2 buildings.

Then of course there’s the leveraged selling to cable companies, it’s a lot easier to sell ESPN Classic with its hundreds of possible viewers packaged with ESPN than by itself.

[chrisser]

The lack of an a la carte option is the reason we have rabbit ears.

The main channels I want are Fox News, History and Speed TV. To get all three means going to the second or third tier of standard channels (whether cable or satellite), and I’m not paying $50/month or more for a bunch of stuff I don’t want and won’t watch. Heck, I’m not even home most of the day except for the weekends.

So the handful of broadcast channels, or, increasingly, the Internet is where I go.

I say screw ‘em. If they won’t give me what I want, then they won’t get my money. Simple as that. Doubly so with the political slant in every media outlet these days.

I just wish some company some where would target the market of people like me, whether via Internet or some other medium.

[edh]

“We’ve been cable free for years. We don’t even have a TV. Don’t miss it at all.”

I’m going cable free in May once our Fios agreement expires. I’m sick of wasting so much money on the 3 or 4 channels we find ourselves watching anymore. Netflix + local TV is more than enough for me anymore ... and I’m 36 years old :-)!

“I have been up to 2 a.m. in the morning with “24” saying, “Just one more episode!” :-)”

My wife and I had that same problem a couple of years ago. Pretty much watched the first 4 seasons of “24” for the first time ever on DVD back-to-back.

Same thing happened to us watching the first 3 seasons of Lost for the first time.

I didn’t start watching Battlestar Galactica (the new one) until a few months before the final episode. That was incredibly fun to watch back-to-back.

The time it took to switch DVDs after a cliffhanger was painful ... I couldn’t imagine having to wait months for a resolution :-)!

[K.B.7]

I'm not sure where you got your information but it is not entirely accurate, and no I don't work for a cable company. I work for an integrator and our job is to update cable company headends and telco central offices.
Lets take ESPN/Disney for example. Not only do operators have to pay for each channel individually, they also have to carry second tier channels they don't want AND have pay for those also. That's why there are so many channels no one cares about.
OK, Comcast, Charter, Time Warner, etc decide $4.08 is too much for ESPN and refuse to pay. Disney doesn't budge so the operator drops ESPN from the line-up. It would take a grand total of 5 minutes for their CSR’s to be overwhelmed with angry customers. The programmers know this so they just wait the operators out.
But don't fret. If your patient enough you'll start seeing voice, video, and data sold in blocks of usage instead of the current “broadcast” package. For instance, 40 hours of on-demand video product (TV series, movies, sports), 40 hours of Internet access plus unlimited voice for $X. As soon as the competition between switched digital video and IPTV plays out (IPTV will eventually win) I think something similar to what I described will take place.

[TomGuy]

On my extended cable (Cox), hardly a week goes by that at least one of the channels isn’t showing Independence Day or Men in Black or about a dozen other movies that have been repeated ad nauseum.

[1raider1]

Force people who would never consider using your product to pay you for it anyway.

Considering that all it takes is a phone call to your cable provider to stop their service; how are you being forced to do anything?

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

That essentially puts the content to commercial ratio at 2:1. For every two minutes of show you get one minute of commercial. Despicable.

That's what you get with the commercial broadcasting model we have in the US. The whole business model is built on delivering eyeballs to advertisers. Programming is just a cost. And it's a cost that has risen at a time when advertisers are cutting their marketing budgets.