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Fox may go off regular cable
Ethan Smith
Origin name: Beart4toArlington, VARegistered User regular
Origin name: Beart4toArlington, VARegistered User regular
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/12/18/arts/entertainment-us-fox-timewarnercable.html
The title was a slight extreme, I'll admit. What seems to be happening is that Fox is making this negotiation process very public in an attempt to get better prices on it's channels (double-to-quadruple the usual amount for Time Warner). Fox is now playing ads on it's channels about how Time Warner is threatening to get rid of Fox, asking us to call a number to tell Time Warner to accept Fox's demands. While I'm not really on either side of this (I mean idealistically I'd be cool, happy almost, with Fox losing that because honestly I don't care for the shows they air), that they went public and started doing this whole thing over them wanting a pretty huge raise is slightly ridiculous.
Thoughts?
NEW YORK (Reuters) - News Corp warned that testy carriage negotiations with Time Warner Cable Inc could leave viewers unable to see programing from its Fox broadcast network, including it blockbuster hit "American Idol" and NFL football.
Negotiations between the two sides have been primarily held up by a disagreement over the value of Fox's free-to-air broadcast network. Fox is asking Time Warner Cable for around $1 a subscriber in payment for the retransmission rights to carry its network, according to a person familiar with the talks.
Time Warner Cable executives have balked at paying that much and have claimed that negotiations with broadcast companies like Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc and Local TV which carry local affiliate stations are in the 25 cents to 50 cents a subscriber range.
CBS Corp CEO Les Moonves, who has been a very vocal supporter of getting pay-TV providers to pay cash for the right to carry his broadcast network, has publicly said he expects his company to be paid around 50 cents a subscriber.
Fox said it has for the past nine months attempted to "negotiate in good faith" with Time Warner Cable, the No. 2 U.S. cable operator, which serves some 14 million customers, and said those talks are ongoing.
But there is a "very likely possibility that Time Warner Cable may choose to no longer carry Fox Broadcasting, Fox Cable and Fox regional sports programing," Fox said.
The negotiations do not include Fox's news channels or National Geographic channel in which it has a 50 percent stake.
Executives at Time Warner Cable will be hoping to reach an agreement ahead of January 12, when the new season of hugely popular "American Idol" returns to air.
Time Warner Cable confirmed that the talks are ongoing but said Fox's current demands "are unreasonable and excessive, especially in this economic climate."
"We hope Fox won't punish our customers by taking their programing away while we try to reach an agreement," said spokeswoman Maureen Huff.
Time Warner Cable is also in carriage negotiations with The Weather Channel and Scripps Networks Interactive Inc, which owns stations like the Food Network and HGTV.
Fox said it has launched a marketing campaign to notify Time Warner Cable's customers of the possibility they may lose access to some of their favorite entertainment and sports shows.
It follows a similar PR and marketing campaign launched by Time Warner Cable last month, asking its subscribers to register their displeasure with programmers' demands for higher fees, which it claimed leads to rising subscriptions for customers. In its campaign, it claimed some programmers are asking for as much as a 300-percent increases.
Heated disputes over transmission rights sometimes boil over, to the detriment of viewers.
Last year Time Warner Cable had a similar dispute with Viacom, owner of networks MTV and Nickelodeon, which went right down to the wire on December 31 before both sides came to an agreement.
But in 2000 a similar dispute between Walt Disney Co and Time Warner left millions temporarily unable to see Disney's ABC-TV programs on Time Warner Cable systems. Customers saw only a blue screen and a banner headline proclaiming "Disney has taken ABC away from you."
Time Warner Cable was spun off from its parent Time Warner Inc in March this year.
(Reporting by Franklin Paul and Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Phil Berlowitz)
The title was a slight extreme, I'll admit. What seems to be happening is that Fox is making this negotiation process very public in an attempt to get better prices on it's channels (double-to-quadruple the usual amount for Time Warner). Fox is now playing ads on it's channels about how Time Warner is threatening to get rid of Fox, asking us to call a number to tell Time Warner to accept Fox's demands. While I'm not really on either side of this (I mean idealistically I'd be cool, happy almost, with Fox losing that because honestly I don't care for the shows they air), that they went public and started doing this whole thing over them wanting a pretty huge raise is slightly ridiculous.
Thoughts?
Ethan Smith on
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Fox is not going anywhere.
Indeed, it's just a very public game of chicken.
As noted, any useful shows are already on hulu.
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It appears they think they're in a firm enough position to shake down cable providers, and I'm not too surprised since both Fox and the cable providers know that pulling NFL football and shows with as rabid of followings as AI would piss off a lot of consumers and cause the cable company a shit ton of headaches. They're never going to get more than double the going rate though, I suspect their only trying to inflate the buying price a little over average when it's all said and done.
edit: The current business model went away forever, that is.
Cables goes everywhere. Digital TV is iffy. It's nowhere near as consistent as ye olde TV.
While I personally like the "pick only what you want" model, a big counter argument is that it would kill small channels. You know, the ones that no one watches anyway.
Also, it would require cable to be delivered all digitally and the cable companies are going to be slow to move towards that. That being said the company I work for is testing moving most of their analog channels to digital right now in a very small market.
That's why this is little more than shakedown operation. While I'm not a fan of Time Warner, they are pretty much in the right here. Unfortunately, they're caught behind the must-carry rule from the FCC. All cable companies required to carry local broadcast channels without interruption. That's why the FCC laid the smack down on Time Warner in 2000 when they stopped carrying ABC. The must-carry rule is actually the very first cable regulation ever adopted by the FCC.
As such, I find it unlikely that Fox is truly negotiating in good faith, especially given Newscorp and Rupert Murdoch. But, no, because of the above rule, Fox isn't going anywhere. If anything, the FCC is going to step in and basically tell them what they're going to do, which will like cause Murdoch to throw a tantrum no matter what the deal is because he's not getting exactly what he wants.
Depends on if your local stations are still broadcasting analog. Reception was a bit poor before because they couldn't run the digital signal at full power - they had to wait until the analog was turned off to crank it all the way up.
There should not be any local stations broadcasting on analog, and shouldn't have been since June.
Also, re: must carry rule
This doesn't apply to the current situation but I recall a local network (ABC, I think?) affiliate was in a dispute with the company I work for. Our company told them to buzz off and just started broadcasting a different affiliate.
This is capitalism baby! If you want to exist, put on something that people are interested in! We have youtube and other internet forums for creativity, which will subsequently be signed to major channels if popular enough.
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Yeah, but if you have LOS to your stations' digital transmitters, you can easily get better quality than over cable, because generally it gets recompressed for cable.
Where I'm at (west Puget Sound) I have great LOS to every major network, and can get them all clear as day with a $9 antenna. I got roughly the same in Montana.
Same here, except for House (comes a week later online).
Still, I got an antenna so if I really want to watch it live I can. Fuck 'em.
Doh.
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It's a negotiation tactic that makes no sense. If Fox pulls its programming, cable networks will lose subscribers, but Fox loses revenue. It would be hard for Fox to demand to be treated like a subscription only channel like Showtime or HBO. If they do, less eyeballs reach their content, which is a net plus in my opinion.
Assuming they don't alter the signal, aside from unavoidable technicalities, like transcoding or a few seconds of delay.
Cable companies are evil bloodsuckers, but wrong is still wrong.
I'll pay TWC an extra dollar a month for them specifically not to run Fox News and American Idol on their cable network.
We live in the day of age where we can watch whatever we want, whenever we want. If they don't like it, fuck em.
What America needs to do is update the infrastructure past the 1980's and install fiber wiring. I don't want to hear that bullshit 'Oh boo hoo the people who live out in BFE wont be able to get fiber wiring!', sounds like it's their problem to me.
Quick, everyone act surprised!
In related news, apparently Cablevision will no longer carry channels on the Scripps Network, including the Food Network. No soup for you!
EDIT: Crap! Beat'd!
However, at this time we cannot discuss the terms of the agreement.