[opendtv] Re: something
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2008 10:26:42 -0500
At 10:56 AM -0800 11/26/08, John Willkie wrote:
People have no preference for one (or more) local television stations as a
source of news? It seems to me that you go to rhetorical extremes to make
obvious points, badly.
"Content is king."
Yes content is king.
As for local TV news, clearly there are viewer preferences for one
station or another. The same could be said for cities that had more
than one newspaper in the last century. But the economics made it
difficult, if not impossible for multiple newspapers to survive in
most cities; and now the existence of even one newspaper in a city is
starting to look doubtful.
As long as TV stations can make more money producing newscasts than
it costs, it is likely that they will continue to offer local news.
And if the new FCC demands that stations "bulk up" in terms of
localism , it is likely that they might continue to offer news as a
"loss leader."
But this cannot be sustained if other revenue sources disappear -
like their network affiliation. Look at what has happened to the
valuation of KRON - they cannot sell it at any price today.
So add it up. If there are increased demands for localism, ratings
continue to decline, and local ad dollars continue to dry up you have
the perfect storm...
bye, bye, OTA TV, except of course for public TV funded and run by
the government...
And then there is the dilemma the NAB faces, now that Fox has been
outbid for the BCS championship series by ESPN. Friday they asked
Congress to intervene, using some lame argument about many of the
universities that are involved receive government funding.
Guess they forget that the athletic departments in these Universitis
are "corporations" that are highly profitable, and kick money back to
the educational side of the University. Thanks to escalating TV
rights, each school in a BCS bowl game hauls in about $9 million.
http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/70352
And finally, a school can hit the jackpot for itself and its
conference by playing in a BCS bowl game, where the payouts are
exponentially higher. The BCS bowls pay its participants a set
amount, usually in the $17 million range. About half of this money
goes to the BCS game participant, while the other half is shared with
the other schools in its conference.
If the NAB had any leadership, they would be calling for a REAL
college football play-off system, which would render the bowls and
the BCS irrelevant. I doubt that this would hurt ESPN, no matter how
the contract is written, since they have guaranteed subscriber fee
revenue.
They would have more sympathy from Congress if everyone got to bid on
a whole new "franchise" that would capture more eyeballs than the
Superbowl or the NCAA Basketball Championships. ABC could just take
the lead knowing they will still have the ESPN subscriber fee revenue
to make Disney's bottom line look good.
Regards
Craig
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.
Other related posts:
