Time Warner Cable Takes Firm Stance on Carriage Deals [Telecom]

Time Warner Cable Takes Firm Stance on Carriage Deals

| Time Warner Cable Takes Firm Stance on Carriage Deals | By Anthony Crupi, Media Week, Nov 30, 2009 | | With a handful of carriage deals set to expire at the end | of the year, Time Warner Cable has launched a preemptive | strike against programmers who may be looking to jack up | their affiliate fees. | | The cable operator on Wednesday unveiled | RollOverOrGetTough.com, a site that will allow | subscribers to weigh in on increasing programming costs. | On the home page, users are prompted to click on one of | two icons: a "rewind" button that indicates Time Warner | should "roll over" on network demand, or a "fast-forward" | button that allows customers to add their two cents to | the debate.

formatting link
The last time I wrote about this subject, Univision had announced plans to demand $1.00/subscriber/month.

-----

Re: Cable Firms Raise Set-Top Box Rates

formatting link
Now they're talking about $3.00/sub/month?

Get tough.

Neal McLain

Reply to
Neal McLain
Loading thread data ...

If nothing else, the time is overdue for subscribers being able to select only those channels they wish to subscribe to.

Reply to
Sam Spade

================ That's called "a-la-carte". We've discussed it several times before here on T-D.

As a former cable TV engineer (Warner, Comcast, TCI), I've tried to explain the cable TV industry's position. My long-winded explanation, addressing specific points raised by T-D readers, is at:

formatting link
A more succinct (and more recent) explanation is at:
formatting link
For reasons I've tried to make clear in these explanations, I don't believe a-la-carte pricing would result in lower retail prices. But in light of the enormous increases in the wholesale cost of programming during the past few years, I'm starting to wonder if some sort of a-la-carte tiering might be economically feasible.

Some of the biggest wholesale increases have resulted from the broadcasters' demands for retransmission consent fees. I'd love to see how broadcasters would react to a-la-carte retail pricing. It would be fascinating to find out how many subscribers would actually pay $1.00/month for Univision. Or $3.00/month for CBS.

Now that Comcast owns NBC (or will, if the government doesn't block it), one can hope that Comcast will try to rein in the retransmission fees imposed by its O&O NBC and Telemundo stations. But if so, they aren't talking about it. I haven't seen anything about it in the trade press.

On last night's "Newshour with Jim Lehrer," the words "retransmission consent" were mentioned once by a guest, but he offered no explanation of its significance.

Neal McLain

Reply to
Neal McLain

Why would they do that? The higher the consent fees, the more money all the other cable systems will have to pay Comcast.

R's, John

Reply to
John Levine

As I said, "one can hope..." But maybe that's too much to hope.

It's just possible that some other MSO (e.g. Time Warner) might try to buy another broadcast network (e.g. CBS) one of these days. If Brian Roberts is thinking ahead (which he surely must be), he doesn't want to screw Time Warner.

You may recall that several years ago, before Ted Turner sold Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner, Turner tried to buy CBS. A notable cartoon at the time showed Ted in his yacht "Courageous" sailing up the Hudson toward Black Rock, apparently ready to take it by force if he couldn't buy it.

Neal McLain

Reply to
nmclain

Further reasons why Comcast may be motivated to rein in the retransmission fees:

- As the largest cable company in the country, Comcast dominates the industry. But it also supports the industry by taking a leading role in negotiations with broadcasters, government agencies, and other organizations. It has enough problems dealing with all of these outside parties without alienating the rest of the cable industry.

- For years, the cable industry (including Comcast) has been blaming rising cable rates on programmers and broadcasters. Certain members of Congress (notably Senator Markey of Massachusetts) have noted that some cable TV companies (including Comcast) also own non-broadcast programming. The question arises: "why are you complaining about rates if you own the programming." Comcast has enough problems with Congress without giving Senator Markey even more ammunition.

- Comcast itself will have to pay retransmission consent fees to NBCU. Under the terms of its deal with GE, Comcast will own 51% and GE will own 49%. But Comcast and NBCU are still separate legal entities.

Neal McLain

Reply to
Neal McLain

.....

--------- In the good old daze of "One Bell System - It Works", the local operating companies used to justify their need for higher rates because... they had to pay more for the physical instruments.

That is, Western Electric, a division of AT&T, was charging the local RBOC, another division of AT&T, more...

Same for lots of other industries. For example, the NY Times, which owned lots of the forests and pulp mills in Canada, claimed that newsprint prices were increasing...

Reply to
danny burstein

Next Verizon or att is going to try and buy ComCast.

Reply to
Steven

Or here in RI, where National Grid provides not only the electricity but the natural gas service. And most of our electricity comes from plants fired by none other than natural gas.

And natural gas rates are actually falling. Yet our electricity rates are going UP. This time it's the distribution charges increasing by double-digit percentages.

The question I have to ask, what did they do with all the money they collected prior to this increase?

Reply to
T

As a former Bell employee, I have to disagree with that. Many Bell employees thought WE prices were about normal or high. So when we acquired two independent company offices with Stromberg-Carlson XY switches and a few years later need an addition, they assumed Sromger's prices would be in about the same range and wrote estimates on the basis of XY additions. When they got quotations from Stromberg, they found the Stromberg prices were so much higher that they could scrap the old office and replace in its entirety with a WE step-by-step offices, including the cost of new buildings in both places, for less cost than Stromberg-Carlson would charge just for the additional XY equipment. Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

Reply to
Wesrock

That is the same reason GTE chose to add SXS i an office that they got from Calif. Water & Telephone. We removed the XY switch and moved it to another office and later replaced both offices with EAX type switches. By then Stromberg was owned by General Dynamics and they were pretty much out of that type of business.

Reply to
Steven

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.