[opendtv] Re: Broadcasters, Cable Spar over Retrans

From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2011 19:02:34 -0500
Craig Birkmaier wrote:

>> Sorry, Craig, but that's very unfair and anti-capitalistic. As long as
>> MVPD subscribers holler the minute a network channel is taken away,
>> the networks have every right to demand to be compensated. If demand
>> is high, the price goes up. This is very basic to capitalism. The
>> price of a product or service is not strictly tied to cost of
>> production.
>
> There is nothing unfair about it. Broadcasters have had a free ride in
> the spectrum for six decades or more. It is ludicrous that they should
> now receive a second revenue stream,

Ignoring your rhetorical "free ride" flourish, this is capitalism. For exactly 
the same product or service, airlines charge more for certain hours of the day 
or days of the week, movie theaters charge more for evening shows than 
matinees, and so forth. If MVPDs charge, and consumers pay, for the benefit of 
getting that same FOTA content over the MVPD net, the content owner is 
perfectly within his rights to get a piece of the action. But this doesn't mean 
the MVPDs are powerless to control prices, either, as we already discussed. 
MVPDs go to a la carte, and shut off channels individual subscribers don't 
want. There's no law to prevent this, that I'm aware of.

> There IS no mechanism available to the cable company to turn
> individual channels on or off (conditional access) in the analog
> tier.

Aawww. Cable is moving away from analog anyway, and oh by the way, broadcasters 
were forced to. So you won't get a lot of sympathy here. The cable companies 
have had at least as long as the OTA broadcasters to switch over, they can do 
it on their own schedule, among other benefits, to provide this improved 
channel selectivity feature. If they haven't done it by now, it is only because 
they benefitted not to. Sounds like a perfect formula for letting the 
marketplace do its own thing. NO NEED to force anyone to do anything. But at 
the same time, don't grab away the peoples' options, such as OTA spectrum, just 
to help prop up the greediest of the greediest.

> And while we're at it, we should place a value on the spectrum they
> are using so that the American people could get a grasp on just how
> large the government subsidy IS for broadcasters. Something like
> follows:

Sorry, but you are arguing like those who call "tax cuts" a "government 
expenditure." The radio and TV spectrum belongs to us, and at least some of us 
are not happy with having politicians putting it in the hands of the greediest 
company out there. And there's also the physics of this, which is that lower 
UHF spectrum IS NOT going to give you any bang for the buck, for two-way 
cellular wireless. This is just an excuse to demolish FOTA TV, championed by 
those who stand to gain, and the politicians who are either in their pockets, 
or just plain clueless and passive.

By the way, the WSJ article doesn't really describe anything new. Verizon, at 
the least, has been offering FiOS only for telephone and broadband for a good 
long time. Maybe from the very beginning. Anyway, this is what I've been 
calling the cable companies "reinventing themselves." Failing a net neutrality 
mandate, they can even go a long way to recreating their walled garden, 
behaving like Internet ISPs with "enhanced capabilities."

Bert

 
 
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[opendtv] Re: Broadcasters, Cable Spar over Retrans

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