[opendtv] Re: Comcast-owned NBC blocks Sling TV commercials - Business Insider
- From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2015 10:01:46 -0400
On Oct 12, 2015, at 7:44 PM, Manfredi, Albert E
<albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Okay, but in truth, this is NBC (Comcast, presumably, which owns NBC) not
wanting to air commercials for Sling TV. No problem. Comcast, has a right to
not run commercials for anything they perceive as competition.
I think it's a bit short sighted, but agree that they have the right to refuse
to run the Sling ads.
As a matter of fact, Craig, how many commercials for FOTA DTV did you ever
see running on your MVPD? I see a ton of MVPD ads on FOTA TV, but I'll bet
you never see ads for FOTA TV on your cable channels. True? But none of this
qualifies as supply side collusion, so I don't see this as a problem.
I guess it depends on what you consider to be an ad for FOTA TV. True, I have
never seen stations run ads suggesting you dump cable and go back to an
antenna, except in a few retrans blackout battles.
But I have seen ads for broadcast programs on cable networks, not unlike the
ads the broadcasters run on radio. And I am seeing some extensive cross
promotion between the affiliated sports networks and their broadcast networks;
ABC brands their football coverage as ESPN on ABC, and both networks cross
promote the games each airs. The same is now happening with NBC and the NBC
Sports Network.
You do not expect to see ads for Giant Food when you're shopping inside a
Safeway store. This is not anti-competitive behavior. If someone else runs
ads for the competition, good for them.
Not a very good analogy, but your point is taken. The fact that the other
stations are running the ads is still interesting. If you subscribe to Sling,
the only way to get the broadcast networks, at least for now, is with an
antenna. So the other stations may not see this as a threat, although they lose
the subscriber fee revenue if someone drops the full MVPD bundle and goes with
Sling.
Except when they pull that NBC O&O in a retrans battle.
Sorry, but the only reason "retrans consent battles" even work is that the
MVPDs have an essential monopoly in a given location (i.e. their business
model assumes households only subscribe to one). So I have little sympathy
for retrans consent whining, when the root problem is deliberately
overlooked. And anyway, the main TV nets aren't on Sling TV, so this
shouldn't be an issue.
That's crap. Every time a cable system drops a broadcast station there is an
immediate surge in homes switching from cable to a DBS service. The reason
retrans battle work is that people are paying for the station that has been
blacked out and they lose access to something they want to watch. The MVPD is
ALWAYS THE "bad guy." But the MVPD does not care, because they can then blame
the next price increase on the content owners.
NBC cannot offer a package like Sling.
But even if NBC itself can't make something like Sling TV, the supposed
actual "bad actor" here is Comcast, right? It is that Comcast sees Sling TV
as competition. Are you telling me that Comcast can't compete against Sling
TV? Nonsense, of course they can. And other MVPDs have already started down
this path.
It may be more than a nit point. Yes It would be Comcast that would need to
create the Virtual MVPD service. To do so they would need cooperation from the
other content owners, who may see no reason to cooperate. The reason Comcast
bought NBC was to gain leverage in carriage negotiation with the other content
owners. To offer a service like Sling they would need to set up nationwide
licensing deals with the other content owners. I'm not sure the other content
owners would cooperate.
Regards
Craig
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