DISH: WE WILL DROP AMC, IFC & WE AT MIDNIGHT SATURDAY

[BMR]

OK, so I'm obviously looking at this from a good few thousand miles away, but IMHO what you need is a version of freesat over there.

In the UK you can buy a free to air satellite reciever and dish (total of less than 200 dollars equiv) and after that one off payment you can watch the over the air channels free forever. It's broadly the same channels you would get through a regular aerial, but for people who are out of range of the terrestrial network Freesat is a godsend.

It strikes me something like that would be custom made for the USA with it's large area and relatively low population density and many people out of range of the over the air signal.

I guess the big question would be, how much would it cost and would the networks (and their affiliates) invest in it?

 

[PTBoardOp94]

Cable prices will still keep rising regardless of programming carriage fees. The cable companies want you to believe that prices are rising because of increased carriage costs, but don't forget, they are a business too and want to increase their profit on top of any increased programming fees. Give me 1 example of where a cable company "held the line" by dropping a network and then decreased their prices or even held them steady. It just doesn't happen. This is all a game, and the customers are always the ones that lose.

I don't disagree with you in a practical sense because I don't forsee any of the cable giants pulling away from one of the content giants.

But as a thought experiment: Let's say that Time Warner Cable dropped all of Disney's channels and dropped the retail price of their service by $5 per month, and further that customers appreciated this and started switching to TWC. The other cable giants might notice and follow suit. And everyone is better off, except Disney.

 

[KeithE4]

But as a thought experiment: Let's say that Time Warner Cable dropped all of Disney's channels and dropped the retail price of their service by $5 per month, and further that customers appreciated this and started switching to TWC. The other cable giants might notice and follow suit. And everyone is better off, except Disney.

Two of those Disney-owned channels are ESPN & ESPN2. In the largest markets, the local ABC O&O would also be gone. TWC would lose more customers than they'd gain by dropping the rates. The only companies that would be better off are DirecTV and Dish.

Every cable & satellite company would have to tell Disney to go **** themselves at exactly the same time for this to be effective. This would result in The Mother Of All Lawsuits for collusion.

 

[DJKraze]

But wait a minute, I know this is an unrelated/separate issue, but doesn't the UK have a TV license fee? So, it's free to air TV, after equipment, but the yearly gov't license fee still will apply.


Also AT&T settled at the last minute, only Dish dropped the networks.

Personally, I never watched WE, and AMC was on occasion (lately they seemed to "ramp it up" a bit showing better stuff than they have in a while), and as far as IFC goes, it used to be pretty good, but not so much lately. They no longer show any Anime and the comedy is sub-par and tries to hard to be as edgy as what they used to do in the past.

 

[Joe_Capitano]

But wait a minute, I know this is an unrelated/separate issue, but doesn't the UK have a TV license fee?

From TV Licensing's website: "It costs £145.50 (US$227.80 as of this posting) for a colour and £49.00 (US$76.70) for a black and white TV Licence. In some cases, you may be entitled to a reduced fee TV Licence."

These are annual rates. Effectively, it equates to about (or just over) what one pays for "lifeline cable" in the USA.

 

[BMR]

I probably shouldn't have shoved my 2p worth in on this thread.

I wasn't looking to raise the TV licence issue, purely saying that a Freesat type solution would be custom made for the many Americans who don't get good (or any) OTA reception but don't want to subscribe to a pay platform- and currently have no choice, other than no TV at all!

Even so, it was an off topic point and I shouldn't have raised it.

 

[FreddyE1977]

I don't know why anyone would bother being a Dish subscriber. If you're going to go satellite get Directv. Dish is constantly in the middle of these programming disputes, and they don't carry half of the RSNs.

I have had DirecTV for some time. I am generally satisfied, but the too have their share of these disputes.
I missed the better part of a hockey season on Versus for example. Just part of the business.

 

[radiojomo]

I have had DirecTV for some time. I am generally satisfied, but the too have their share of these disputes.

What bothers me about these carriage agreements is that networks encourage their viewers to drop the service provider if they cannot get the channel. In fact, if you go to the Facebook wall of Dish right now, hundreds of people talk about how they're going to switch service if they cannot reach an agreement with AMC.
But at the end of the day, these carriage wars eventually affect all services at some point and switching TV services becomes somewhat of a hassle.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

Two of those Disney-owned channels are ESPN & ESPN2. In the largest markets, the local ABC O&O would also be gone. TWC would lose more customers than they'd gain by dropping the rates. The only companies that would be better off are DirecTV and Dish.

I think there's a market for a cable company that provides a middle ground between "lifeline basic" ($20 a month) and "expanded basic" ($75 a month).

To produce such a package, some channels have to lose. And because of conglomerates bundling their channels, whole groups of channels would end up losing. Whether that's Disney or Discovery or A&E or NBCU or some combination doesn't make much difference.

 

[Darth_vader]

"I don't know why anyone would bother being a pay-satellite user. If you're going to go to satellite, get a free-to-air box."

Fixed.

"In the UK you can buy a free to air satellite reciever and dish (total of less than 200 dollars equiv) and after that one off payment you can watch the over the air channels free forever. It's broadly the same channels you would get through a regular aerial, but for people who are out of range of the terrestrial network Freesat is a godsend."

Yeah, we have at least a couple hundred free to air satellite services over here (counting feeds.) Lots of foreign and ethnic programming as well, so it's sort of like what shortwave was until about 20 years ago. Some of the terrestrial channels are rebroadcast FA over satellite, but not many.* So we also, in effect, kinda' have a Freesat-like affair here (I can attest to it personally), using practically the same technology even, but not to the extent that you guys have in your part of the world.

A lot of cable systems here do tend to leave at least the local channels, public/community access and government programming (even C-SPAN) channels available in the clear (unscrambled), for anybody who wants them and has a compatible (ATSC/QAM) receiver.** The cable company where I live (¢om¢a$t Vancouver) does that²; they do in Portland as well³.

[size=8pt]___________________________________________
* http://lyngsat.com/freetv/United-States.html , http://lyngsat.com/freeradio/United-States.html
** http://silicondust.com/support/channels/ ; enter a Z.I.P. or postal code in the text field
² http://silicondust.com/hdhomerun/lineup_web/US:98660#lineup_8330278
³ http://silicondust.com/hdhomerun/lineup_web/US:97210#lineup_8340122

 

[wrsg915fm]

West Virginia Media Holdings allegedly refused to extend the current contract, resulting in a message from DISH replacing three of WVMH's offerings (CBS, ABC and FOX). We're left with WTOV from Steubenville, Ohio (which offers exceptional news and cleans WVMH's clock at every turn, even though it's an NBC affiliate), and nothing from PBS, due to the recent storm, resulting in a statewide loss of signal. DISH is using that situation to portray the chairman of WVMH as greedy and not caring about his viewers.

 

[KTN Corp]

But wait a minute, I know this is an unrelated/separate issue, but doesn't the UK have a TV license fee?

From TV Licensing's website: "It costs £145.50 (US$227.80 as of this posting) for a colour and £49.00 (US$76.70) for a black and white TV Licence. In some cases, you may be entitled to a reduced fee TV Licence."

These are annual rates. Effectively, it equates to about (or just over) what one pays for "lifeline cable" in the USA.

That's only just to have a TV (presumably connected to OTA). Cable service is a separate bill by a separate provider.

 

[pab]

But wait a minute, I know this is an unrelated/separate issue, but doesn't the UK have a TV license fee?

From TV Licensing's website: "It costs £145.50 (US$227.80 as of this posting) for a colour and £49.00 (US$76.70) for a black and white TV Licence. In some cases, you may be entitled to a reduced fee TV Licence."

These are annual rates. Effectively, it equates to about (or just over) what one pays for "lifeline cable" in the USA.

That's only just to have a TV (presumably connected to OTA). Cable service is a separate bill by a separate provider.

That's correct, but once you pay your licence fee (honestly, even if you don't but it's hell to pay if they catch you) you can easily receive "Freeview" which is a unscrambled digital broadcast providing all of the BBC Channels (BBC 1-4, the children's channels, BBC News 24), all of the ITV channels, multiple offerings from Channel 4 and Five, a variety of what we would consider "basic cable" channels here in the States (including ESPN!)

Here's a channel lineup for those curious: http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/freeviewchannels.html

How do these channels survive without extortive carriage fees like we have in the States? The BBC channels are funded by the licence fee and the others sell commercials. What a novel concept, huh?

As mentioned above, the licence fee is currently (in US dollars as of this morning) $227.05 for the year. That's $19.00 a month, cheaper than most "lifeline" cable services here in the States and considerably cheaper than a package containing 60 "basic cable" channels. UK Freeview has more channels than my local monopoly (Comcast) offers for $60.00 a month.

So don't use the licence fee to knock British TV. I don't think it would work here (in fact I know it wouldn't because of the way the FCC carved up frequencies and an American aversion to taxes) but it works very well there. And it shows that television networks can make a fortune without resorting to extorting money from carriers.