The Economics of TV Providers/Distribution

[Regs]

businesses making money?

oh man how dare they! how dare they force me to pay for something!

oh wait ... they don't.

Me and you are going to open up a bottle of scotch and talk more about this one day, but not right now! Your choices are your business. If you think economists, marketing, businesses, policy makers and the like, do not influence purchasing decisions of the masses, then obviously your naive to think people started smoking for medicinal purposes in the 1930's and High fructose corn syrup is digested the same way as pure cane sugar. Welcome to the real world sir, I hope you find yourself in it one day.

I just want to know where the money is going and why people are obviously still paying so much! That's it! It's not going to fiber optic lines that have been laying dormant for 20 years, or for acting scholarships, or for TV shows on-demand (Without subscriptions).

What are we valuing here when people are willing to pay so much for so little? When people vote for tax cuts (yet do not know where the money is actually going or how it is used in the first place) then pay for 120-200 dollars for cable TV!

 

[Ns1]

Me and you are going to open up a bottle of scotch and talk more about this one day, but not right now! Your choices are your business.

I just want to know where the money is going and why people are obviously still paying so much! That's it! It's not going to fiber optic lines that have been laying dormant for 20 years, or for acting scholarships, or for TV shows on-demand (Without subscriptions).

What are we valuing here when people are willing to pay so much for so little?

shows cost a shitload of money to make and distribute and then you got shareholders on top who want a return on investment.

But really, the answer as to why your cable bill is ridiculous: sports

 

[DrPizza]

OP, if it makes you feel better, I completely agree. I cut the cord with cable. I realized that frittering away my weekends, glued to the television, was a waste of time (and money) I realized that spending extra money for clothing, just because it has a particular team logo on it, doesn't really make me more cool. For a few months, I missed being able to see the games on television. I've grown out of it. $200/month = $2400 per year. That's an extra week spent on vacation.

 

[drez]

An Antenna and a Netflix subscription is way better value then any cable package. Most Cable networks are clones of each other anyway. If there is a show I really want to watch, I just buy it from Amazon. I watched the current season of walking dead and it cost me what amounts to $2 a month. The best part? I OWN it for that price and can re-watch it whenever I want.

Sports is the ONLY reason to hold onto cable, otherwise your throwing money away.

 

[drez]

Just use the HDhomeRun and Windows Media Center (it's free with the OS). If you have a Linux box I'd go the HDHomeRun/MythTV/XBMC route, but most are familliar with Windows. WMC works like a charm.

 

[Ichinisan]

Just use the HDhomeRun and Windows Media Center (it's free with the OS). If you have a Linux box I'd go the HDHomeRun/MythTV/XBMC route, but most are familliar with Windows. WMC works like a charm.

WMC isn't included with Windows 8.

If you buy the standard edition of Windows 8 and purchase the WMC add-on, it also upgrades you to Professional (so you pay too much if you buy Pro and then buy the WMC upgrade).

However, Microsoft has ended development of WMC. 🙁

 

[drez]

WMC isn't included with Windows 8.

If you buy the standard edition of Windows 8 and purchase the WMC add-on, it also upgrades you to Professional (so you pay too much if you buy Pro and then buy the WMC upgrade).

However, Microsoft has ended development of WMC. 🙁

Haven't move to 8. Thanks for the heads up. Looks like I'm building a Linux/MythTV/XBMC box next year.

 

[NutBucket]

However, Microsoft has ended development of WMC. 🙁

This isn't surprising at all. MC7 has been great. I guess I'll cross that bridge when the time comes.

 

[darkswordsman17]

businesses making money?

oh man how dare they! how dare they force me to pay for something!

oh wait ... they don't.

The problem is, if one of these businesses wants to charge 2-3 times what they had been or pull any other shenanigans (supposedly they were trying to force bundles of other channels at much higher prices on DISH), my only option to do anything about it is to basically entirely give up service, which means multiple other businesses will be hurt. I can't just go, no leave FOX off and just not charge me for their bullshit.

Essentially there's no way I can put pressure on FOX to stop being shitheads since giving up FOX means having to give up all the others, plus the intermediary.

If you think that gets the message across properly I don't know what to tell you. All it will end up doing is hurting DISH who will then feel they need to cave to shit like this in the future in order to keep their customers, meanwhile FOX and the effective media oligopoly they're a part of will be able to keep asking for more and more money (which is why we've seen a lot of this the past few years).

Not that the intermediaries are really any better (see what the telecoms did to Netflix).

Me and you are going to open up a bottle of scotch and talk more about this one day, but not right now! Your choices are your business. If you think economists, marketing, businesses, policy makers and the like, do not influence purchasing decisions of the masses, then obviously your naive to think people started smoking for medicinal purposes in the 1930's and High fructose corn syrup is digested the same way as pure cane sugar. Welcome to the real world sir, I hope you find yourself in it one day.

I just want to know where the money is going and why people are obviously still paying so much! That's it! It's not going to fiber optic lines that have been laying dormant for 20 years, or for acting scholarships, or for TV shows on-demand (Without subscriptions).

What are we valuing here when people are willing to pay so much for so little? When people vote for tax cuts (yet do not know where the money is actually going or how it is used in the first place) then pay for 120-200 dollars for cable TV!

Your ramblings about cane sugar vs HFCS just highlight that you're every bit as out of touch as anyone you're chastising and you need to take your own advice and join the real world.

shows cost a shitload of money to make and distribute and then you got shareholders on top who want a return on investment.

But really, the answer as to why your cable bill is ridiculous: sports

And yet they still have had no problem making money on shows for decades upon decades now. Sick of content companies pulling this "woe is me, it costs us money" while they continually make more money than ever. It's so transparently bullshit. Maybe if they spent less money buying off politicians they could line their pockets with more money (while they use the little guys they continuously screw over to act like things are so goddamn bad).

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...acks-off-google-investigation-pushed-by-mpaa/

The real answer on why cable/internet/etc bills are ridiculous: mixing telecomms and television service providers with modern media companies. Both have been trying to screw their customers every which way they can for decades now. Considering both groups are effectively operating oligopolies now, we're double fucked. And the government agencies tasked with oversight are so rife with conflicts of interest and political bullshit that nothing is being done while those companies pay other politicians to rewrite the laws and use their government powers to waste taxpayer money to enforce what those companies want even when it's blatantly averse to the interest of the people (that they're supposed to be actually representing).

 

[CPA]

I swear, these TV networks, franchises, and the like, must think we are all nothing but a pile of meat with eyes. I use to be in favor of free enterprise and the invisible hand of market forces, but in this case, PLEASE PASS THE NET neutrality BILL! These guys are bastards and deserve it and I do not have confidence in the American people to rise up as one and sley them ! The average American does not have a MBA, shit, the average American does not even know what an MBA stands for!!! Why do you think rules and regulations are in place? So that the MBA's who run these companies do not rip the average American a new butt hole!

I still believe in free enterprise and the invisible hand of market forces, but I want an A LA CARTE BILL passed! Let me decide if I want to pay for that NBA players salary.