71–80 of 125 posts
“Consumers are being trained there are places they can go to avoid ads.” With that kind of rhetoric no wonder they're still in denial.
Even beyond airtime, the stupid ads and logos blotting out the screen during a show is becoming inexcusable. Sometimes those things can take up a third of the screen!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same thing with Charter for me. They constantly try to sell me a $7/month addon that will give access to over-the-air channels through cable. I got that with a >$10 HD antenna, so I'm not sure what the value would be. (and I've barely used that...)
I've been trying to (unsuccessfully) research why OTA broadcasts of channels exist in the first place. Why do/would these networks provide their service for free? I thought transmissions were to be encrypted. Am I missing something?
With cable and satellite they often put their own commercials on top of the channel's so public broadcasting channels make less money that way.
Aside from ads, freedom of choice with respect to just what you watch seem to be the other key motivator. With the capability of streaming and on-demand services, why would any consumer put up with having to choose any channel with a fixed programming schedule? I almost certainly don't want to watch what you're trying to sell. No other industry seems to operate in this manner. When it comes to books, games, music, et…
2 points. I won't speak for myself, but from what I've gathered from friends: 1. A lot of people seem to like video ads. Movie ads specially tell you 'whats hot', and general ads put you 'in the loop' so to speak. I've tried to install ABV for a couple of people who won't let me because they actually like ads (as in youtube, not the shiny bright popups). This may be true for more people than HN crowd would assume. 2.…
But the high quality content (when there is any) on cable ends up on extra channels that require you to pay more. IMHO TV was better OTA than on cable. You had a small number of local channels and they had to compete for eyeballs. Content was much better. Cable provides a way to shovel in every little crappy thing to satisfy everyone with something, and yet they still split out the best for extra money. Discovery channel split, even Disney split - which is why ratings dropped for Phinias and Ferb. Great show, but not enough pull for people to pay extra to get it, but they cancelled instead of moving it back.
"Hour long" American TV shows are some of the shortest in the world, and are filled with redundancy as viewers "forget" where they are in the show after a stack of ads every 6-8 minutes. This degrades the quality of the programming to the point it is not worth watching.
PBS programs are 50+ minutes long, and BBC are 58-59 minutes long. The local PBS station has been showing short ads in the last 10 minute segment of the hour. That's acceptable and much better than interrupting the programming.
In the future Broadcasters will not need transmitters, and Cable TV won't exist. All programming will be delivered over the Internet. Instead of tuning to channel 10 on your TV, your TV connects to the channel 10 website and you can choose what you want to watch. If you pay extra, you can see shows without ads.
So, you can view Time Warner's move to cut ads in prime time as simply a way of raising prices by reducing supply (inventory).
As for cable companies shoving TV packages down customers throats, well that's easy to explain. The bargaining power a cable company has with media companies is directly proportional to how many TV subscribers they have. So every Internet-only customer a cable company has marginally raises the per-customer cost of TV.
This is also why Comcast wanted to merge with Time Warner. It's simply about reducing TV costs.
This business model really has to die.
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2014/09/05/t...
A question for those who have done more thinking on this than I have: I see cable TV going the way of the dedicated phone line - a bundled benefit you get for a very small fee on top of the primary benefit, which will be the internet connection. The overall cost of a subscription will remain roughly the same, but the cost will be allocated to the internet connection: much like mobile carriers are now basically free v…
I see cable TV going the way of the dedicated phone line - a bundled benefit you get for a very small fee on top of the primary benefit In my region, it's already cheaper to get a package with cable TV than just internet. I have friends that don't even take the cable set of of the shipping box. I assume Comcast's per subscriber cost to cable channels is lower than the ads revenue from artificially inflating subscribe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also find it astounding that people pay $50-60/month for a cable service that is 30% adverts. At that ratio, the cable service should be paying them.
I think one issue is that buying a bundle of Cable/Internet only costs a little bit more than buying Internet alone. All these Cable/Internet providers have a vested interest in getting people to watch Cable, so they overcharge substantially for just buying [rather slow] Internet alone.
A question for those who have done more thinking on this than I have: I see cable TV going the way of the dedicated phone line - a bundled benefit you get for a very small fee on top of the primary benefit, which will be the internet connection. The overall cost of a subscription will remain roughly the same, but the cost will be allocated to the internet connection: much like mobile carriers are now basically free v…
I see cable TV going the way of the dedicated phone line - a bundled benefit you get for a very small fee on top of the primary benefit In my region, it's already cheaper to get a package with cable TV than just internet. I have friends that don't even take the cable set of of the shipping box. I assume Comcast's per subscriber cost to cable channels is lower than the ads revenue from artificially inflating subscribe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't forget that, as a non-sports-watcher, you get to pay a fee to subsidize all the sports channels you don't watch. It's not even the cost of the channels, per se... you get the extra "regional sports surcharge" on top of that.
At least Verizon FIOS in the Boston area lets you opt-out of all sports channels so you are not charged this fee.
All of these companies use sports as a major buying motivator, like in the UK Sky basically went mad on buying every sport they could. I would assume the extra subscription alone doesn't cover the high licensing prices they pay, so they spread out the cost to all the other consumers too but just charge a bit extra to the sports fans.