Obviously the cable companies currently have a monopoly in most areas and will need some oversight.
But it seems equally obvious to me there is also oligopoly control of TV content on cable, OTA, and satellite by 5 companies that control virtually ALL channels on those media.
Both need watching and probable government intervention one of these days. - Tom John Willkie wrote:
How about we end the "content oligopoly" nonsense? Anybody can create content and anybody can distribute content. You are complaining about the cost of content that you don't buy, and which you can 'buy' for the cost of watching an over the air TV show. Speaking of ACTUAL MONOPOLIES, your friends in the cable business, it appears, will lose their contractually-enforced monopoly on serving many apartment dwellers in an FCC meeting tomorrow. If the cable monopolies don't do something to get rid of him, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin will continue his campaign to strip cable of their protective cloaks. See, you complain about the "cost" of free media, but you never address the monopolies that you actually pay money to, like your cable company. Cable doesn't compete with broadcast; and cable attempts to keep out all new entrants in their markets. That mostly worked, until the new entrants turned out to be bigger than the cable companies. If only the fools had bought into the CableCard thing, they probably wouldn't have an FCC Chairman intent on stripping them down. John Willkie -----Mensaje original----- De: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] En nombre de Craig Birkmaier Enviado el: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 2:24 AM Para: OpenDTV Mail List Asunto: [opendtv] News: NBC chief says Apple 'destroyed' music pricingPerhaps this is why U.S. Consumers are paying through the nose for their content fixes. IMHO Apple is charging at least double what the content they are selling via the iTunes store is worth. Yet the content moguls - like NBC Universal - want us to pay significantly more, and have more control over the way we view their content.Greed is killing the content oligopoly...now if we could only accelerate the process a bit!Regards Craig http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/29/nbc_chief_says_apple_destroyed _music_pricing.html NBC chief says Apple 'destroyed' music pricing By Katie Marsal Published: 05:00 PM ESTNBC Universal chief executive Jeff Zucker on Sunday urged colleagues to take a stand against Apple's iTunes, charging that the digital download service was undermining the ability of traditional media companies to set profitable rates for their content online."We know that Apple has destroyed the music business -- in terms of pricing -- and if we don't take control, they'll do the same thing on the video side," Zucker said at a breakfast hosted by Syracuse's Newhouse School of Communications.His comments Sunday were the most aggressive yet since NBC informed Apple last month that it had decided not to renew its contract to sell digital downloads of television shows on iTunes after this year.NBC originally claimed to be seeking more control over the pricing of songs and videos that it was selling on iTunes, in addition to better piracy controls and more flexibility to bundle video content in an effort to increase revenues.For its part in the bitter feud, Apple responded by saying NBC was asking for a twofold increase in the wholesale price of its TV show content, which would have resulted in the retail price to iTunes customers increasing to $4.99 per episode from $1.99.Answering questions at the breakfast Sunday, Zucker offered substantially more color on the iTunes matter, explaining that it was "a relatively easy decision" for NBC to walk away from the Apple download service because it had only earned about $15 million from the service last year in spite of accounting for about 40 per cent of the videos sold on the store.He said NBC routinely propositioned Apple to breach its standard pricing model and experiment with higher pricing for one hit show such as "Heroes" by raising the price from the iTunes standard $1.99 to $2.99 on a trial basis."We wanted to take one show, it didn't matter which one it was, and experiment and sell it for $2.99," he said. "We made that offer for months and they said no."The NBC chief also revealed that in addition to more pricing flexibility, his firm was also seeking a cut of Apple hardware sales -- such as the iPod and iPhone -- which were capable of viewing content downloaded from the iTunes Store."Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content and made a lot of money," he said. "They did not want to share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust pricing."Zucker's comments also arrive just as NBC and NewsCorp. are launching their joint online video venture, Hulu.com, which aims to compete with iTunes by offering streaming TV and other commercial video content to viewers under an ad-supported model.He said that 50 million streams of TV shows accessed on NBC.com during the month of October are proof that there is a demand for traditional TV series on the web."It's extraordinary," he said. "It's like a small cable channel in our universe that is becoming very successful." ----------------------------------------------------------------------You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings atFreeLists.org- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.----------------------------------------------------------------------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.
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