[opendtv] Re: News: Northwest Station Pulls Signal In Retransmission Battle
- From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2007 12:19:22 -0500
Craig Birkmaier wrote:
>> I don't think so. Broadcasters and the umbillical distribution
>> media behave like any business partners would. For example,
>> like well-known, famous authors and their publishers. The
>> publisher has a lot of leverage until the author becomes
>> famous, then the author has all the leverage. There's nothing
>> the FCC should do to change these business basics.
>
> This is rubbish Bert. There is no analogy here. Books are not
> advertiser supported. You pay for the content directly.
Craig, you insist on making this distinction where there is no
difference. It doesn't matter how the author gets paid, whether by ads
or directly by a reader. The effect is identical. If the content is
considered good stuff, the content creator makes the rules. If the
content is still new and untested, the distribution provider has the
leverage. For high value content from the major broadcasters, THEY get
the leverage. The cable companies do not.
If Tom Clancy were to write for an ad-supported magazine, you can be
darned sure he would make the rules about where his text appears in the
mag, and what kind of ads, if any, are allowed to encroach on his space.
Or he would take his stuff somewhere else.
>> We have been over this. I don't know the details of how
>> much ad revenue goes directly to the content
>> creators/broadcasters in Euro TV systems, vs. ad revenue
>> to the distribution medium and from there to the content
>> creators, but that's where the differences lie.
>
> More rubbish.
> Freeview is a pure distribution play, although the main
> owners are also in the content creation business. The
> networks that are NOT affiliated with the companies that
> own and operate Freeview pay a substantial fee to have
> their content delivered. In addition to this they pay
> for the content that they distribute via Freeview (they
> either make the content or buy it). To pay for all of
> this they run ads - hopefully the ad revenues exceed the
> costs of distribution and content.
You can be frustrating. You have to repeat exactly what I wrote, and
then pretend to disagree with what I had said. The bottom line is, in
the Freeview example, the distribution system does not get the ad
revenue, but the broadcasters do. THEREFORE the broadcasters pay money
to the distribution system. Same happens with Rai Way, the company that
creates the OTA infrastructure in Italy. It is paid by the broadcasters.
Over here, affiliates get some of the ad revenues, and operate as
independent companies some of the time. Especially so with digital
stations and their multicasts. So OBVIOUSLY they aren't paid entirely by
the content creators. Ditto with cable systems, which get revenues from
subscription fees as well as ads.
So there is your answer. Please stop asking the same question over and
over.
> The real reason that neither cable nor DBS want ala carte
> is that it would plunge a stake, right into the heart of
> the highly profitable tiering vampire. IF consumers could
> choose and pay only for the channels they watch, two
> things would happen.
>
> 1. Subscriber fee revenues would plunge for everyone.
The opposite is true. The cost of running these labor-intensive cable
networks does not go down if people pay less every month. So
*obviously*, the subscription fees would have to go up.
> 2. MANY networks would drop their subscriber fees altogether
> to encourage people to keep them in their channel lineups.
Translated, the unpopular channels would go out of business very
quickly. In the past, you always championed the cause of the starving
artist unknown producers, so I'm not sure how this position of yours
squares with that conflicting interest.
Bert
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