Is the "problem" that 90% of what you watch comes from the majors a
problem caused by you or them?
A reasonable question.
I would say them, only because they have the ability to decide which
channels to buy up. They cannot force the others to sell, and they
may find that there is less synergy with some. For example, Disney
did not want to get in the bidding war for the Weather Channel. There
are several possible reasons for this:
1. Little opportunity to repurpose Disney content for the Weather Channel.
2. The audience is "Event Driven." That is, there is a large audience
during major weather events, but a much smaller audience when
conditions are normal.
3. They would prefer for viewers to turn to ABC affiliates during
weather events.
For the most part, the congloms have purchased cable networks that
target demographic groups, not vertical special interests. This
allows them to repackage off-network content to appeal to those
demographic groups. They tend to shy away from very narrow special
interest content, as little of what they now produce could be run on
these special interest channels.
At any rate, the question one should ask is why the government allows
this level of consolidation. Not just allows, but the politicians
crafted legislation that made it possible for the congloms to use the
popularity of their broadcast content as a major negotiating tool to
take over most of the content delivered by the multi-channel systems.
Regards
Craig
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.
