95.5 PLJ in New York was Hot A/C at the end, not rock. They were originally rock many decades ago.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
Media Companies Are Ready to Sell. Does Anyone Want to Buy?
- Thread starter davideduardo
- Start date
- Status
companies like Optimum in Northern NJ have a monopoly. My parents live 45 minutes outside New York City and they can only get one cable company, Optimum. In the 80s they tried to use an antenna for OTA signals they only got ABC 7 because they live in the mountains of New Jersey. Yet they still get NYC stations like locals with some Hudson Valley stations. If they got rid of cable TV for just internet and added YouTube TV they would have to pay $100 more per month to Optimum than they do with the TV, Cable, and Internet. Optimum is all that they can get. Fios doesn't go into their area nor does T-mobile. Heck, they didn't get Verizon cell service in that area until maybe 15 years ago because they have a water tower behind their house.
Alternatives to Optimum
Tired of your Optimum TV and internet service? Find and compare alternative providers to Optimum TV and Internet services.
www.cabletv.com
It’s “shakeout” time as losses of Netflix rivals top $5 billion
Disney, Warner, Comcast, and Paramount are contemplating cuts, possible mergers.
arstechnica.com
..."complete and utter panic" in the industry.
Selling the ABC TV OTA network is mentioned, nobody interested in buying, what's left to do - cut prime time to 2 hours to save money (then maybe to 1 hour + edited/censored cable/streaming TV show rerun for the 2nd hour)?
Kirk Bayne
It's wrong for Bezos to profit from having the smarts and persistence to make an online bookstore into one of the world's biggest companies. But it is OK for baseball player to sign a $600 million contract.
^^^It’s “shakeout” time as losses of Netflix rivals top $5 billion
Disney, Warner, Comcast, and Paramount are contemplating cuts, possible mergers.
..."complete and utter panic" in the industry.
Selling the ABC TV OTA network is mentioned, nobody interested in buying, what's left to do - cut prime time to 2 hours to save money (then maybe to 1 hour + edited/censored cable/streaming TV show rerun for the 2nd hour)?
Kirk Bayne
It's the streaming that's causing the massive losses. Or rather, the loss-leader pricing of streaming in an attempt to attain immediate scale as everyone not named Netflix, Amazon or Hulu jumped in the pool at the same time.
Getting full control of Hulu is how Disney becomes profitable.
Warner Bros. Discovery is profitable because of cost-cutting.
Apple can afford to run Apple TV+ as a boutique streamer.
Amazon Prime is a shopping service with a streamer wrapped inside it. They're fine.
That leaves Paramount+ and Peacock as the losers. As the article says, mergers and spinoffs would be one way to handle it, but the added debt doesn't look good on anybody's balance sheet.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Barring a merger, Paramount+ and Peacock are best off shutting down their own services and becoming a tier on Amazon Prime---or just licensing their stuff in packages to the highest bidders among the survivors.
After a few weeks of FireTV, the only thing I miss are the local channels just because of the local NFL games. I don't want the whole NFL package. I thought I could just download the local channel apps, and that would solve the problem, but no. All you get on the local channel apps are local news and weather. No regular programming. Lots of archived news video. The Firestick knows where I am because of my ISP. So it tells me what is blacked out in my area.
You say switching to OTA is easy, but I assume that requires an antenna and switching the TV input from the Fire to OTA. Or is there a way to do that within Fire that I haven't found?
Have you subscribed to YouTubeTV? Different than just YouTube. If so, it also has your local channels just like cable in the lineup.
I've used the browser on my RV's 'smart TV' to find local channels or their associated network programming when we're out camping but have Internet access. It's a pain initially, but search for your local NBC station, save it to your favorites, and then do the same for ABC, CBS, Fox, etc. Most major market stations are streaming live.
I have an outdoor TV antenna on the house aimed North toward Washington, D.C. and Baltimore then split to all the TV's in the house. All I need to do is change the source/input on my TV remote from (in my case) HDMI-1/Firestick to TV mode. The internal TV tuner receives all the local channels, along with most of the Baltimore stations. Once you have it connected to an antenna, you just need to go into the TV menu and have the TV scan for available channels. Currently, I get 73 local channels which include main and diginets. My wife complains about having to change the input/source each time she wants to watch a local channel, but it's not that difficult.
I don't want to get into any subscription plans at this time.
So that's not with a Firestick?
Streaming of video isn't profitable for so many large media companies, like Disney, Warner Bros., Comcast, Paramount? Even when (in some cases) they have increased their numbers of subscriptions and even raised some prices? And they're still facing "billions in losses" from their digital platforms?
Who'da thunk?
Obviously, consumers only have so much money to pay out, and they're being selective. And as some in the Hollywood movie industry have said (Matt Damon in particular, in an interview I saw on YT), streaming has cut revenues that they used to get from physical sales, that would act as a sort of revenue 'cushion' when box office proceeds weren't exactly massive.
The main problem seems to be that there is massive, and nearly unlimited competition for the same couple of device screens, even more than there was during the age of Cable, where each home had one cable service or satellite service with 250 channels, but one fairly large fee to cover them. Today it's all scattershot, and it seems Netflix must be doing something right, but there's always a winner in the internet commerce game, the aforementioned Amazon being one of them.
Such is the nature of the internet media age.
Who'da thunk?
Obviously, consumers only have so much money to pay out, and they're being selective. And as some in the Hollywood movie industry have said (Matt Damon in particular, in an interview I saw on YT), streaming has cut revenues that they used to get from physical sales, that would act as a sort of revenue 'cushion' when box office proceeds weren't exactly massive.
The main problem seems to be that there is massive, and nearly unlimited competition for the same couple of device screens, even more than there was during the age of Cable, where each home had one cable service or satellite service with 250 channels, but one fairly large fee to cover them. Today it's all scattershot, and it seems Netflix must be doing something right, but there's always a winner in the internet commerce game, the aforementioned Amazon being one of them.
Such is the nature of the internet media age.
Global giants gear up to build streaming model 2.0
For some, such as Disney, 2023 has proved a harsh reality check. For others, most notably Netflix, it has proved a return to form at the top of the market
I haven't read about any creative plans to minimize churn - once my Hulu $0.99/mo runs out in 11 months, I plan to just subscribe for a month or 2 and binge watch some programs.
Kirk Bayne
Doesn't include local channels, but you might want to try downloading the Freevee app to your firestick. Just like the name says; it's free. There are some national and diginets there. You can just press the little TV set icon on your remote to see the channel lineup and schedule.
Correct. The two 50" Insignia TV's in my RV, one in the bedroom and one in the living area, have a baked-in browser that one can search, or download apps. Most of the newer Samsung TV's have something similar.
Yes I have it. Nothing I saw for me.
Time to put up an antenna. PM me if you'd like some suggestions.
Starz is a strange one. At any time of the year, I can get it for like $3 a month or so...even without ads. Sundance Now is the same way.
They are not major streamers. Starz is owned by Lionsgate Pictures that basically branched into streaming from cable on a limited scale.
Sundance is an imprint of AMC. They're not even in the same conversation as Netflix, Hulu, Disney and Warner, or for that matter even Paramount or Peacock.
I wonder how they make money. Sundance sometimes offers me free months in an email, and even then I do not get ads. Starz is always running a massive sale.
Well, for starters, they didn't (I can't believe I'm saying this again) bury themselves in debt trying to attain Netflix or Hulu-like scale.
Sundance has a mixture of content from small filmmakers, AMC's own library and, it appears some off-network shows. None of that costs a lot, and they don't have a lot of it. Even if it loses a little money, it's probably fine within the context of AMC's overall balance sheet.
Similarly, Starz has a limited library, much of it original content made to a budget, stuff from the Lionsgate film library and, again some off-network stuff (Laramie? Wagon Train? The Rifleman?). And, like Sundance, if it loses some money, it's probably a wash once it's part of the overall Lionsgate budget.
You DO understand that not every streamer has the same business model, the same costs or the same level of indebtedness, right?
You are right that they probably do not spend as much, and that probably justifies it. Did not know The Rifleman was on Starz!!
One of the major FAST networks has an entire channel devoted to The Rifleman, I'm pretty sure. Either that or a channel that seems to be running a Rifleman marathon every time I scroll down the schedule. Either Pluto, Xumo or Tubi, not in a position to check that right now.
- Status