[opendtv] Re: FW: Intel Will Lead Us to à la Carte Pay TV

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2013 08:58:26 -0500

At 5:38 PM -0500 2/25/13, Cliff Benham wrote:


Ratings and profits.

The programmers, distributors and the equipment makers are no longer operating
as separate entities. "They" are connected in a very 'gray' way that makes watching programs available through their 'channels' boost their ratings and their profits 
which benefits all of them.
They want you to watch ONLY what they provide because that boosts their profits.
They have similar goals even though they may be in direct competition for your eyeballs, and they definitely don't want to make offshore programs like those you mentioned above available through their 'channels' since they can't get any benefit from carrying them, and they lose the benefits of profiting from the programs they pay for and carry if you watch 
programs originating elsewhere.
They want complete control of what is available for you to watch and they definitely don't want you to know about other program sources like those you have found by [in their view] 
sneaking around on the internet.

Cliff
Thanks for this analysis and acknowledgement that the media congloms and MVPDs are indeed working together to protect their lucrative oligopoly. I also agree that to some extent, the traditional CE vendors are in bed with the duo-oligopoly,although I think most of their problem is the result of not understanding what happened to them. Remember when Sony was "the gold standard" and the source of many innovations in the CE space?
Perhaps not, as it has been several decade since Sony has had a blockbuster CE product, with the exception of the Play station. And now the Play Station franchise is dying, thanks to the shift to the mobile devices and casual (read affordable) gaming.
And one more thing. Bert likes to talk about the opportunity for the congloms to go global via the Internet. For some reason he seems to think that ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC .com are available everywhere the Internet goes. He should have been paying attention to Tom's comments: 


Yeah, trying to map US-centric views, attitudes, and purported truths onto
what's really happening on the world scale in OpenDTV won't make many
friends overseas.  Most all of the stakeholders and members of upper level
management in the evil corporate entities so rabidly discussed on this list
have passports and are not stupid.
The U.S. congloms have been global for decades. The international markets are protected with respect to release dates for both movies and TV shows. The congloms are not going to let the rest of the world "catch up" with what they are showing in the U.S., because they will be making a tidy profit from broadcasters outside of the U.S. as they release this content into syndication.
One more thing to add to Cliff's comments. Many of the shows on the networks today are little more than promotional vehicles for conglom content. This is particularly true of the network "Breakfast TV" shows and the late night talkers like Leno and Letterman. It's all about getting you to tune into their programs. You can add to this the heavy load of network promos throughout the broadcast schedule and the money they spend on radio advertising.
It's called spreading the wealth around - as long as you are not straying outside their "garden." 

Regards
Craig






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