On Sep 25, 2015, at 8:52 PM, Manfredi, Albert E <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Correct - they only need to focus on how lucrative it has been and continues to
Finally. So once again, to the conglom, how "lucrative" retrans consent might
be to local broadcasters is a big who cares. The congloms want their pound of
flesh, they don't need to worry about how lucrative the deal might be for
someone else.
Thanks to these “retrans” fees, you pay eight dollars a month for ESPN
whether you watch sports or not. It’s not the cable operators who are denying
consumers the à la carte option many would prefer. It’s the big five
television companies who refuse to parcel out their offerings—(1) ABC/Disney,
which owns ESPN, A&E, and Lifetime; (2) NBC Universal, which owns USA, Bravo,
and the Weather Channel; (3) Fox, which owns Fox Sports, F/X, and National
Geographic; (4) Viacom, which owns Comedy Central, BET, and MTV; and (5) CBS,
which owns Showtime, the Movie Channel, and the CW. For these companies, the
indirect charges they receive for their content have become the pot of gold
at the end of the advertising rainbow.
What the local station gets selling ads could flow direct to the conglom, if
the congloms provided their streams direct to the MVPDs. The more middlemen
there are, Craig, the less the congloms are likely to get, and/or the more
subscribers are likely to pay. You can't escape that. If a middleman makes
tons of money in the deal, but provides no added value, that means that
either the subscriber is paying more (money the MVPD in turns pays for
retrans consent), or it means that the middleman is keeping more of those
retrans consent dollars to themselves, rather than handing them over to the
conglom.
Again, finally. And I explained many times how the congloms would support the
FOTA service. Which presumably the congloms want to do, in good part because
MVPD subscriptions are falling steadily.
One reason you've repeated forever is that retrans consent is very lucrative
for local broadcasters. We're talking congloms here. Why should they care?
Another reason you give is that the local broadcaster airs political debates
and ads. Well, the national ones are transmitted by the conglom, Craig. Local
poltical ads or debates can be handled separately, as they already are. On
local cable networks (I gave the example of News Channel 8 in this market),
and on subchannels of local OTA stations.
Even local broadcast stations remain highly profitable despite the declining
audiences for their core news product, thanks in part to a surge of political
spending following the Citizens United decision in 2010.
Someone who isn't going to pay for broadband these days is likely not going
to pay for MVPD service either. He's going to use FOTA TV. And those who have
access to DSL may only be paying in the $30/mo range, which they can also use
for TV streams.
CBS and the rest are available FOTI too, Craig. You don't need CBS All
Access, unless you want the library content. Someone who uses FOTA TV can
readily switch to FOTI already, except for live streams. And since the
congloms are well aware of this growing online audience, they can in
principle replace the FOTA service with FOTI, including making live streams
available. It's only their decision to make. (I acknowledge that more
infrastructure is needed, compared with OTA service, with consequences for
reliability of service.)
As to broadband households, current numbers are hard to come by. If, at the
beginning of 2014, it was 87%, it's very likely that now the number is over
90%. This projection claims 92.5%:
http://www.statista.com/statistics/183614/us-households-with-broadband-internet-access-since-2009/
In any event, you don't need 25 Mb/s, or whatever the FCC decides to define
as broadband, to watch TV. It all depends on the CDNs and what they decide to
accommodate.