[opendtv] Re: U.S. NEEDS A CLEAR PICTURE OF WIRELESS
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2010 08:32:36 -0500
At 5:35 PM -0500 1/7/10, John Shutt wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Craig Birkmaier" <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
The average U.S. household now pays around $300 per year in content
subscriber fees and these fees are increasing significantly as we
have seen recently. The current retrans deals are going to add at
least a buck a month to every extend basic cable and DBS subscriber.
Not relevant to the FOTA situation.
Sure it is. Subscriber fees will help keep the FOTA model alive a bit
longer. There is no viable business model delivering FOTA to less
than 10% of U.S. homes.
Without the BBC "seed," there would be no Freeview. Wikipedia says
this about the origins of Freeview:
"Freeview officially launched on 30 October 2002 at 5 am when the
BBC and Crown Castle (now Arqiva) officially took over the digital
terrestrial television (DTT) licences to broadcast on the three
multiplexes from the defunct ITV Digital (originally called
ONdigital)."
There is also a "free" version of BskyB available in GB called
Freesat. Again, without the BBC's seed money, it wouldn't exist
either.
I'm not certain that your claim can be substantiated. Yes the BBC was
part of the group that took over. One could properly claim that this
was one of the best investment the BBC ever made. Now that the
platform is completely viable, the BBC is doing nothing more than the
rest of the partners, paying their share of the cost to operate
Freeview. Remember, that thanks to the license fee, the BBC became
the 800 pound gorilla in U.K. TV Land. Thanks to Freeview there is
now plenty of competition.
The very fact that U.S. broadcasters are now collecting subscriber
fees, when the OTA service is free, says a great deal about their
clout with the U.S. politicians. This was only possible because of
the 1992 cable re-regulation act and similar provisions for the DBS
companies.
No, it says more about the convenience of having a single method of
tuning all your entertainment content that minimizes the "granny
confusion" factor. As we have all agreed, broadcast still has among
the highest desired content. (For now.)
Sorry John, but broadcasters have fully embraced cable carriage for
decades - it helped them reach more homes, especially in fringe
coverage areas.
There is a widespread belief in the broadcast industry that cable
could not exist without the content from the major networks. This may
have been true in the '80s, but has not been true for the past two
decades. There is a reason that >60% of the total audience IS NOT
watching the content offered by broadcasters during prime time.
The only time people get upset about losing a broadcast network is
when a MAJOR event is about to take place, which is the main reason
the broadcasters schedule contract negotiations when major events
aree on the horizon. It is MUCH tougher for a local station to
negotiate because they do not have much content that viewers would
get upset about if it went away.
In our household we watch almost no broadcast TV other than sports,
and most of the sports we watch has now moved to ESPN and regional
sports networks.
Remember, each station has a choice of declaring either Must Carry
or Retrans Consent. If the Cable Ops don't think it is worth it to
pay the fees to a specific broadcaster, they won't. At that point,
the broadcaster either withholds it's signal, or it declares Must
Carry and gets back on the lineup.
Broadcasters with affiliations to a major network generally can
greenmail their way to subscriber fees. Independents typically must
elect must carry.
Regards
Craig
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