D-0ne: Plenty of satellite subscribers skip getting local channels from Dish or Direct and get them over the air with an antenna.
It’s what all pay TV companies have to deal with…if all of a sudden a company wants to start charging for something that’d been free before, they can either take the reaming, pass it on to the customers, or bludgeon them to death with bad PR.
As a satellite customer, I prefer the third option.
“If your cable company that is charging you 60$-140$ a month for TV didn’t have your local channels would you buy it?”
Unless the cable company is trying to insert their own advertisements in place of those from the KXAN, it is monumentally stupid for KXAN to ask for anything more than whatever additional costs may be accrued by working with the cable company.
I can see why local stations want money from intermediate service providers – DVRs that cut out the commercials automatically, are are destroying how local stations make money.
Wow, I’m suprised that a company that wants to be respectable published such a website and claimed responsibility for it.
If I were in their area, I would switch off their service and move to a satellite provider just to spite them for trying to manipulate their customers.
Ratings are still based on on Nielsen rating. Unless you have a Nielsen devise connected to your tv, you don’t count. And most people don’t have a Nielsen device.
Unless the DVR is connected to a Nielsen device you don’t hurt the tv company
“Wow, I’m suprised that a company that wants to be respectable published such a website and claimed responsibility for it.”
It’s par for the course. Some entity tries to strong arm the cable company, or the cable company tries to strong arm them, and the other side replies in kind. It’s only a matter of time, if it isn’t already going on, before the back and forth extends to newspaper and radio ads.
In the Midwest we’ve had similar blowups over both the NFL network and the Big Ten network wanting to get carried by Comcast, and Comcast only wanting to foot the bill in such a way that they could pass it on as part of some upgraded sports tier.
If you’re a sports fan at all you probably noticed the same thing going on nationally with the NFL network. The NFL’s PR people would put out stories about how the Green Bay Packers game wasn’t being shown in Green Bay or the New York Giants game wasn’t being shown in New York. The reason? The games were being carried exclusively on the NFL network and the local cable operators didn’t want to fork over as much as the NFL wanted.
This is the first I’ve heard of it with a local station, and I find it very surprising since the business model for an “over the air” station is to sell advertising in order to provide “free” content rather than charge a content fee to providers. It doesn’t really make sense to cut off viewers from a product you give away “free” over the air, just because the cable company charges for their service. It’s routine for magazine publishers to give away a huge portion of their printed copies for free or below cost, just to keep subscription numbers up, because they make more from advertisers than from you buying the magazine.
Some one brought up the concept of DVRs and how they change the advertising strategies, but you don’t need cable or satellite to use a DVR, it just makes it more convenient since the schedule info and the content can be passed through the same signal.
This is a fairly common thing nowadays. I’m a DirecTV subscriber, and there has been an extremely long fight with the local stations to allow DTV to carry their HD signal. Yes, I have over 100 HD channels.. but they aren’t the local ones! Unfortunately I live in what is most likely a small market for DTV so they aren’t exactly in a rush to get something done. The same thing happened with cable here a couple years ago, but that was resolved reasonably quickly.
KXAN makes money off of ads, ad rates are set by number of viewers. They just lost a bunch of viewers.
Time Warner makes money off of ads and subscribers. Only they don’t sell ads on KXAN, just some cable only channels. They have the same number of subscribers.
I wonder which one can hold out the longest? FCC doesn’t like cable, so maybe that’s KXAN’s real plan.
Ogrebears Says:
“dartwick DVR don’t make tv companies lose money.
Ratings are still based on on Nielsen rating. Unless you have a Nielsen devise connected to your tv, you don’t count. And most people don’t have a Nielsen device.
Unless the DVR is connected to a Nielsen device you don’t hurt the tv company”
KXAN is owned by Lin TV which owns 29 TV stations in 17 markets (lintv.com). Also from the same site comes:
“LIN TV Corp., along with its subsidiaries (“LIN TV” or “the Company”), is one of the largest television station groups in the country. The Company creates and delivers superior local news and community stories, along with top-rated entertainment programming to 9% of U.S. television households, reaching an average of 11.5 million households per week.”
Over the last decade, due to FCC deregulation of ownership rules, there has been a consolidation of ownership of local stations. Gone are most of small owner/operators replaced with a more corporate structure.
Also during this time there has been a steady decline in viewership of local stations. The number of cable channels has exploded, drawing the viewers’ attention away from the local channels and lowering their ratings. Lower ratings equals lower ad revenue, their primary income source.
I think what we are seeing is the first volley in a push by the new corporate owners to find a new revenue source as well as use the power of numbers to negotiate deals individual stations couldn’t. KXAN can afford to operate, at least for a time, off the TW network because they have 28 other stations from which to draw funds.
To paraphrase a quote from Ghostbusters, local television is dead. Many networks, including NBC, put much of their content on the web for free downloading (though, not SNL – if you’re a Knight Rider fan, however, you’re okay). And the only “local” programming is the nightly news, which has been dying a slow death for a while now, including national news broadcasts. Given that the only other thing a local channel offers is thrice-nightly repeats of The Simpsons, I don’t see them surviving for long.
As for whether these station groups can force a better deal with cable and/or satellite companies – not happening. Time Warner is still much, much bigger than Lin TV, and all this fuss over KXAN is going to be just the start of things. What happens if/when TW decides to dump *all* of their stations? Then, they are totally screwed.
That and don’t forget NBC wiped out the Barney Frank part of the scene where they make fun of him and his rich friends. They also keep removing it from YouTube whenever anyone loads that scene.
Bowing to pressure from government officials anyone? I thought it was the job of comedians to make fun of and stand up to governments as well as anybody.
about 1 year ago
Cable companies want to sell copy righted over the air broadcasts and pay the owners of that material almost nothing.
If your cable company that is charging you 60$-140$ a month for TV didn’t have your local channels would you buy it?
about 1 year ago
Why bother watching the idiot box at all, anyway?
about 1 year ago
D-0ne: Plenty of satellite subscribers skip getting local channels from Dish or Direct and get them over the air with an antenna.
It’s what all pay TV companies have to deal with…if all of a sudden a company wants to start charging for something that’d been free before, they can either take the reaming, pass it on to the customers, or bludgeon them to death with bad PR.
As a satellite customer, I prefer the third option.
about 1 year ago
“If your cable company that is charging you 60$-140$ a month for TV didn’t have your local channels would you buy it?”
Unless the cable company is trying to insert their own advertisements in place of those from the KXAN, it is monumentally stupid for KXAN to ask for anything more than whatever additional costs may be accrued by working with the cable company.
It’s truly a case of killing the golden goose.
about 1 year ago
I can see why local stations want money from intermediate service providers – DVRs that cut out the commercials automatically, are are destroying how local stations make money.
about 1 year ago
Wow, I’m suprised that a company that wants to be respectable published such a website and claimed responsibility for it.
If I were in their area, I would switch off their service and move to a satellite provider just to spite them for trying to manipulate their customers.
about 1 year ago
At least I can still watch Heroes on my rabbit ears!
about 1 year ago
dartwick DVR don’t make tv companies lose money.
Ratings are still based on on Nielsen rating. Unless you have a Nielsen devise connected to your tv, you don’t count. And most people don’t have a Nielsen device.
Unless the DVR is connected to a Nielsen device you don’t hurt the tv company
about 1 year ago
“Wow, I’m suprised that a company that wants to be respectable published such a website and claimed responsibility for it.”
It’s par for the course. Some entity tries to strong arm the cable company, or the cable company tries to strong arm them, and the other side replies in kind. It’s only a matter of time, if it isn’t already going on, before the back and forth extends to newspaper and radio ads.
In the Midwest we’ve had similar blowups over both the NFL network and the Big Ten network wanting to get carried by Comcast, and Comcast only wanting to foot the bill in such a way that they could pass it on as part of some upgraded sports tier.
If you’re a sports fan at all you probably noticed the same thing going on nationally with the NFL network. The NFL’s PR people would put out stories about how the Green Bay Packers game wasn’t being shown in Green Bay or the New York Giants game wasn’t being shown in New York. The reason? The games were being carried exclusively on the NFL network and the local cable operators didn’t want to fork over as much as the NFL wanted.
This is the first I’ve heard of it with a local station, and I find it very surprising since the business model for an “over the air” station is to sell advertising in order to provide “free” content rather than charge a content fee to providers. It doesn’t really make sense to cut off viewers from a product you give away “free” over the air, just because the cable company charges for their service. It’s routine for magazine publishers to give away a huge portion of their printed copies for free or below cost, just to keep subscription numbers up, because they make more from advertisers than from you buying the magazine.
Some one brought up the concept of DVRs and how they change the advertising strategies, but you don’t need cable or satellite to use a DVR, it just makes it more convenient since the schedule info and the content can be passed through the same signal.
about 1 year ago
This is a fairly common thing nowadays. I’m a DirecTV subscriber, and there has been an extremely long fight with the local stations to allow DTV to carry their HD signal. Yes, I have over 100 HD channels.. but they aren’t the local ones! Unfortunately I live in what is most likely a small market for DTV so they aren’t exactly in a rush to get something done. The same thing happened with cable here a couple years ago, but that was resolved reasonably quickly.
about 1 year ago
KXAN makes money off of ads, ad rates are set by number of viewers. They just lost a bunch of viewers.
Time Warner makes money off of ads and subscribers. Only they don’t sell ads on KXAN, just some cable only channels. They have the same number of subscribers.
I wonder which one can hold out the longest? FCC doesn’t like cable, so maybe that’s KXAN’s real plan.
about 1 year ago
Ogrebears Says:
“dartwick DVR don’t make tv companies lose money.
Ratings are still based on on Nielsen rating. Unless you have a Nielsen devise connected to your tv, you don’t count. And most people don’t have a Nielsen device.
Unless the DVR is connected to a Nielsen device you don’t hurt the tv company”
lolz
about 1 year ago
KXAN is owned by Lin TV which owns 29 TV stations in 17 markets (lintv.com). Also from the same site comes:
“LIN TV Corp., along with its subsidiaries (“LIN TV” or “the Company”), is one of the largest television station groups in the country. The Company creates and delivers superior local news and community stories, along with top-rated entertainment programming to 9% of U.S. television households, reaching an average of 11.5 million households per week.”
Over the last decade, due to FCC deregulation of ownership rules, there has been a consolidation of ownership of local stations. Gone are most of small owner/operators replaced with a more corporate structure.
Also during this time there has been a steady decline in viewership of local stations. The number of cable channels has exploded, drawing the viewers’ attention away from the local channels and lowering their ratings. Lower ratings equals lower ad revenue, their primary income source.
I think what we are seeing is the first volley in a push by the new corporate owners to find a new revenue source as well as use the power of numbers to negotiate deals individual stations couldn’t. KXAN can afford to operate, at least for a time, off the TW network because they have 28 other stations from which to draw funds.
about 1 year ago
GE vs. Time Warner. This is like the nazis and communists fighting: Can’t tell who to root for, but no matter who loses it feels like a victory.
about 1 year ago
To paraphrase a quote from Ghostbusters, local television is dead. Many networks, including NBC, put much of their content on the web for free downloading (though, not SNL – if you’re a Knight Rider fan, however, you’re okay). And the only “local” programming is the nightly news, which has been dying a slow death for a while now, including national news broadcasts. Given that the only other thing a local channel offers is thrice-nightly repeats of The Simpsons, I don’t see them surviving for long.
As for whether these station groups can force a better deal with cable and/or satellite companies – not happening. Time Warner is still much, much bigger than Lin TV, and all this fuss over KXAN is going to be just the start of things. What happens if/when TW decides to dump *all* of their stations? Then, they are totally screwed.
about 1 year ago
That and don’t forget NBC wiped out the Barney Frank part of the scene where they make fun of him and his rich friends. They also keep removing it from YouTube whenever anyone loads that scene.
Bowing to pressure from government officials anyone? I thought it was the job of comedians to make fun of and stand up to governments as well as anybody.