Media Companies Are Ready to Sell. Does Anyone Want to Buy?

[fybush]

He di
If every streamer charged $7.99 a month (a low price these days), subscribing to eight of them is $63.92 a month---$767.04 a year.

Or---y'know---roughly your cable bill without extra-cost tiers and packages.

I don't know what your cable bill looks like, but before I heaved Spectrum to the curb last month, I was paying closer to $100 a month for a reasonable but not extravagant cable package. Their "broadcast TV fee" alone - which you can't out of - was $23 and headed up past $27 in the new year.

cable's not a thing where you have multiple other choices in your town offering you different content.


---Nathan Obral, January 6, 2024

(we'll check back to see how well this ages)

Says who?

One of the reasons I was finally able to ditch Spectrum once a different fiber provider arrived is that the linear TV package that they provide could finally be easily duplicated. For now I'm using YouTube TV for $75 a month, but if it gets more expensive or I don't like its channel choices, I could switch to Fubo or DirecTv streaming or Sling in a matter of minutes.

We're getting to the point where most city and suburban areas have multiple fiber Internet providers overbuilding the incumbents, so cable is only a monopoly now if you define it as "RF delivered over coax" - a technology that will be obsolete in the next few years anyway.

 

[vchimpanzee]

Chimp, the writer's strike lasted FIVE MONTHS. Scripted stuff still hasn't returned. What the hell did you record and how many terabytes is your DVR?

I spend too much time on the computer.

And it doesn't matter what's new or scripted. There were game shows, movies, plenty of other content. Like streaming or foreign shows.

Most of it is movies I think I saw but didn't want to get rid of ... just in case.

Edit: I didn't quote this part but yes, it is about cost. I wouldn't be paying per show watched, so the fewer shows I watch per month the more I pay per show.

 

[michael hagerty]

I don't know what your cable bill looks like, but before I heaved Spectrum to the curb last month, I was paying closer to $100 a month for a reasonable but not extravagant cable package. Their "broadcast TV fee" alone - which you can't out of - was $23 and headed up past $27 in the new year.

I'll be honest---I don't know how mine breaks out---cable (I think we have one tier added---no packages or anything), internet and fees. All told I think it's $130, and I was ballparking $60-ish for the cable part. I should probably look that up.

Says who?

One of the reasons I was finally able to ditch Spectrum once a different fiber provider arrived is that the linear TV package that they provide could finally be easily duplicated.

Okay, that's fair, Scott, but the essential point is that most of those cable/fiber providers offer pretty much the same thing, right?

michael hagerty said:
cable's not a thing where you have multiple other choices in your town offering you different content.

It's not a case where you have to subscribe to one to see CBS shows, another to see NBC shows, another to see CNN, and so on. That's what the current streaming model is.

You used the phrase "heaved Spectrum to the curb", which I think is how most people would feel about their cable companies if they were given the chance.

Cancellations of streaming services (churn) is very rarely about dissatisfaction, but about personal finances and the fact that there is no one-stop solution with all the shows you want.

 

[michael hagerty]

The Amazon Reacher is based on the book series, not designed around a Tom Cruise character.

Same thing with the Amazon Jack Ryan series---much more faithful to the books.

 

[Mikey Radio]

"there are eight majors in the USA—-Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Max, Apple, Peacock and Paramount+. They are not in competition with 102 smaller (in many cases microscopic) players.

This year, Hulu gets folded into Disney+, so there will be seven. Apple made a lot of noise about being a major, but never really executed. They’ll survive as a boutique streamer, but it’s not a major and not likely to be, so that’s six.

Four of the six (Amazon, Netflix, Disney/Hulu and Max) are profitable. The odds are heavily against Peacock and Paramount+ being profitable as stand-alones.

If it sounds familiar, it’s because it’s page 42 and them’s the facts, despite (from various posters) ignorance, antipathy toward big corporations, pre-pandemic articles and wild-ass guesses, all of which require me to repeat the facts as they exist today lest someone read that stuff unchallenged and mistakenly think it’s relevant.

I want to use the search function here at RD to go back and see how many times you've written nearly this same exact post, multiple times over. Maybe you should just save this as a Word file or some such, so you can just cut/paste it back into discussions here as needed...Less painful than constantly banging your head against the same brick wall over and over, sometimes for the benefit of the same people who aren't getting it.

 

[michael hagerty]

I want to use the search function here at RD to go back and see how many times you've written nearly this same exact post, multiple times over. Maybe you should just save this as a Word file or some such, so you can just cut/paste it back into discussions here as needed...Less painful than constantly banging your head against the same brick wall over and over, sometimes for the benefit of the same people who aren't getting it.

Well, occasionally, I will use the quote function and pull back in what I've already written.

And there are people who come into a discussion who aren't going to read 42 pages worth of what already's been said, and I get that.

I had someone once ask me why I make it such a point to make sure inaccuracies are challenged. Besides 43 years in journalism, my answer was that there are always new people looking for information about broadcasting coming to this board. And if I don't challenge the stuff that is simply wrong, someone's likely to believe that crap.

You'll notice (I hope) there's not much opinion or advocacy in what I write (allegations by some to the contrary). I come with facts.
I look stuff up. It's what I do. If I get something wrong, I say so and furnish the correct information.

There are people on this board (hell, all over the internet) who allow their wishes, emotions and biases to convince them that things are true that aren't.

The Russians have an old saying: "And if your aunt had balls, she'd be your uncle."

 

[exdjted]

Good Lord!

(sorry, @Kelly A ---it was an involuntary outburst)

You have to understand that the wife has learned to tune me out over the years. She can zone out while we're ordering dinner if I take too long deciding on which sides to order! 🤪

 

[michael hagerty]

You have to understand that the wife has learned to tune me out over the years. She can zone out while we're ordering dinner if I take too long deciding on which sides to order! 🤪

It was spending two nights watching “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nuggets” that got me.

 

[Kelly A]

It was spending two nights watching “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nuggets” that got me.

"But I don't want to be a pie....I don't like gravy"
Original Chicken Run.

 

[Kelly A]

Chimp, the writer's strike lasted FIVE MONTHS. Scripted stuff still hasn't returned. What the hell did you record and how many terabytes is your DVR?

(Also, this means that cost---your original post---has nothing to do with it)

Hours of Murder She Wrote and Matlock.

 

[michael hagerty]

Hours of Murder She Wrote and Matlock.

Think we’re that lucky?

 

[Kelly A]

Think we’re that lucky?

Okay some Mayberry RFD and Perry Mason thrown in.

 

[PTBoardOp93]

I don't know what your cable bill looks like, but before I heaved Spectrum to the curb last month, I was paying closer to $100 a month for a reasonable but not extravagant cable package. Their "broadcast TV fee" alone - which you can't out of - was $23 and headed up past $27 in the new year.

Wow, sounds like a bargain. My current Spectrum bill has $96 for TV, plus the $23 broadcast fee, less a $4.00 rebate for having the cable/internet bundle.

 

[Mark Roberts]

I don't know what your cable bill looks like, but before I heaved Spectrum to the curb last month, I was paying closer to $100 a month for a reasonable but not extravagant cable package. Their "broadcast TV fee" alone - which you can't out of - was $23 and headed up past $27 in the new year.

I just got out an Oakland Comcast bill from mid-year last year. Here's the cable TV portion; these are monthly charges. It reads like the Monty Python "Fees" sketch:

$71 for "digital starter" tier
$18.50 for extra "digital preferred" tier
$10 for HD technology fee
$10 for DVR rental
$9 for the box and remote
$22.50 for the "broadcast TV" fee
$17.25 for the "regional sports" fee
$10.86 for various bureaucratic charges
$13.66 for actual taxes

That's almost $183 a month.

I enthusiastically kicked Comcast to the curb when I moved to Denver. Sure, within the last couple of years, I could have gotten fiber from AT&T in Oakland and used over-the-air TV. I plead inertia.

When I called to cancel just before the move, they tried to get me to sign up with them in Denver. I applied my best corporate-speak: "I've decided to go in another direction". "Who are you going with in Denver?," the CSR responded. I said, "You don't really need to know that in order to cancel this service".

Top priority in this household was internet access. For that we have fiber from the local telco. $70 a month with no extra charges; 1 GB up and down. Extremely stable; haven't had an outage since we got it. Better than what I was getting with Comcast in Oakland for $92 a month and monthly mid-day configuration changes that would wipe out my DHCP configuration along with its inept customer service from some offshore script factory or another. Also: no more MAC address authentication games. PPPoE all the way.

I'm still trying to make sense of the streaming, etc. landscape. It's confusing and seems like more work than I really want to go through. I don't want to think much about my TV. We've got over-the-air TV, though two of the local network affiliates (KMGH and KUSA) stupidly stayed on VHF so I had to do some finagling with amplified antennas to get that to work, and we don't have DVR capability, which we would really like to have. But we have local news and Colbert, which is the bulk of our viewing. I'm leaning toward something like a YouTube TV and then maybe adding a streaming service or two and even then we'd still come out ahead by at least $100 a month.

Cable companies had the field to themselves for too long. Any competent student of economics can tell you what that leads to.

We're getting to the point where most city and suburban areas have multiple fiber Internet providers overbuilding the incumbents, so cable is only a monopoly now if you define it as "RF delivered over coax" - a technology that will be obsolete in the next few years anyway.

They're promising further improvements (particularly better upload/download symmetry) via DOCSIS 4.0 with minimal improvements to cable plant required but, if cable companies don't price it competitively, their longstanding issues with reliable annual price increases combined with unreliable customer service will swamp any commercial benefit from technological improvements.

 

[vchimpanzee]

Hours of Murder She Wrote and Matlock.

I've probably seen every "Matlock" but there may be some episodes I didn't. I just won't be taking chances with every episode because I won't remember it. But no, that's not one.

"Murder She Wrote", I wish.

"DC's Legends of Tomorrow" (waiting for the old ones to be available as I didn't realize I would like it the first few seasons), "All American" (same but lost episodes due to some glitch), "World's Funniest Animals" (can't stand the commentary but there might be a few good videos), "Celebrity Wheel", "The Chase", and a bunch of "Jeopardy" episodes I think I saw. And movies.

And there's a smaller DVR which is also full, so I keep deleting episodes I think I saw. "Just for Laughs" is like "Candid Camera" but like silent movies.

 

[michael hagerty]

I just got out an Oakland Comcast bill from mid-year last year. Here's the cable TV portion; these are monthly charges. It reads like the Monty Python "Fees" sketch:

$71 for "digital starter" tier
$18.50 for extra "digital preferred" tier
$10 for HD technology fee
$10 for DVR rental
$9 for the box and remote
$22.50 for the "broadcast TV" fee
$17.25 for the "regional sports" fee
$10.86 for various bureaucratic charges
$13.66 for actual taxes

That's almost $183 a month.

I've zoned our Comcast password (not gonna change it because my wife's the one who needs it), so I can't get a bill breakdown, but looking at my bank statement, my monthly bill is $144.79 for both cable and internet, with all taxes and fees.

I'm still trying to make sense of the streaming, etc. landscape. It's confusing and seems like more work than I really want to go through. I don't want to think much about my TV. We've got over-the-air TV, though two of the local network affiliates (KMGH and KUSA) stupidly stayed on VHF so I had to do some finagling with amplified antennas to get that to work, and we don't have DVR capability, which we would really like to have. But we have local news and Colbert, which is the bulk of our viewing. I'm leaning toward something like a YouTube TV and then maybe adding a streaming service or two and even then we'd still come out ahead by at least $100 a month.

Our linear viewing is similar but different---"60 Minutes", Rachel Maddow, Colbert, Seth Meyers, SNL (all of it DVRd and played back except Rachel, which we'll usually watch live (the DVR is set to grab it just in case).

We started streaming about eight years ago with Netflix and Amazon Prime, which, at the time, was two-thirds of the streaming universe. There is so much in both of those that it's probably a solid place to start (especially if you already have Prime and just haven't been using the streaming).

Right now, I've also got Max (John Oliver, "Julia" season 2, and the new season of "True Detective" drops in a week) and Apple (bundled with storage and Apple Music, it's cheaper to keep it rather than unbundling).

 

[kfbkfb]

Working backwards...

Any research about how much content (audio only [radio/streaming/physical media] & audio+video [TV/streaming/physical media]) a (working) person can "consume" in 24 hours?

One recent example - I just finished watching all 200+ 1 hour episodes (4/weekday) of Stargate SG-1 (recorded w/VHS), speeding through the ads, it still took ~3 hours/weeknight to watch the 4 episodes, I watched any movies I wanted to see on weekends, there wasn't much time to watch other TV shows/movies on weekdays (I listened to the radio in my car when going to/from work).


Kirk Bayne

 

[michael hagerty]

Working backwards...

Any research about how much content (audio only [radio/streaming/physical media] & audio+video [TV/streaming/physical media]) a (working) person can "consume" in 24 hours?

One recent example - I just finished watching all 200+ 1 hour episodes (4/weekday) of Stargate SG-1 (recorded w/VHS), speeding through the ads, it still took ~3 hours/weeknight to watch the 4 episodes, I watched any movies I wanted to see on weekends, there wasn't much time to watch other TV shows/movies on weekdays (I listened to the radio in my car when going to/from work).


Kirk Bayne

Dude.

Go outside.

Read a book.

Knock over a liquor store.

Something.

 

[kfbkfb]

Blame Comet TV - they do these blocks of the same TV show.

Still - as with radio competing for part of a smaller and smaller pie - there's some limit to how much content a person can "consume".


Kirk Bayne

 

[CTListener]

I'm still waiting to watch Nashville's Big Bash from New Year's Eve. It's sitting there in my YouTube TV library but I haven't found a five-hour window for it yet. Same happens to me even with shorter programs. They seem like they'd be worth saving before they air, but afterward I'm already watching new programming.