[opendtv] Re: Diller's Aereo Survives First Battle, Threatening
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2012 16:02:48 -0500
Craig Birkmaier wrote:
> Given the reality that those 4-5 program choices now deliver less than
> 40% of the TV audience during Prime Time (far less during other day
> parts), one may rightfully question why broadcasters should be entitled
> to multiple revenue streams for a product that is offered to everyone
> in the free and clear.
I'm not so sure about your logic.
1. All of the OTHER junk available over MVPDs gets a lot less than 40 percent
of the audience, and yet the owners of that content do get dual revenue streams.
2. It's not broadcasters you're really talking about, it's the congloms. The
broadcasters are merely middlemen in this case, and even if they disappeared,
the congloms would be demanding ads plus subscription kickback, as all other
MVPD content owners do, no? In fact, the congloms may even prefer that FOTA
disappeared altogether, at this point, given that their customers are so easily
suckered into MVPDs. (Although, as that other article showed, the younger crowd
is not quite as easily suckered.)
3. You can get drinking water for free at any number of drinking fountains
throughout a city, office buildings, or parks. And yet you still pay for water
when you buy bottled water in stores. MVPDs are like that bottled water. You
pay for the convenience, and everyone up that value chain wants their piece of
that. How do you think the water utility would react, if some shyster went to
public fountains around the city to fill up water bottles, and then sold them
with no compensation to the utility?
> It looks like the courts may finally be ready to challenge the collusion
> between the politicians and the broadcasters, which has created powerful
> oligopolies that thwart the ability to create real markets for TV
> content.
That's just silly, Craig. That's been your mantra, but it's not the dynamic
here at all.
The courts are weighing in on whether this undermines the MVPD business model
in a way that should be prevented. It has nothing to do with challenging a
supposed politician-broadcaster collusion, nor does it have anything at all to
do with oligopolies. On the contrary, the fact that politicians get access to
the airwaves is what will keep the FOTA spectrum cheap for broadcasters. I
don't see ANYWHERE that any branch of government considers this direct access
to the citizens to be unnecessary or undesirable.
Bert
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