Let the games begin! Eventually, everything is supposed to move to the internet. Cable is circling the drain and with it lefty news media.
The Sarah Palin Channel is the only thing worth watching since Murdoch has driven Fox News into a leftist direction. Frankly, Almighty God’s Holy Bible, Free Republic and Sarah Palin’s Channel pretty much sum up what’s good and redeeming. Otherwise, the media is the enemy and the FCC ought to be abolished along with other commie agents of the central government.
And you know what—the cable providers could not care less. They are almost all turning into the broadband providers and operating more like the old telephone companies.
If they lost every cable subscriber it would not really break their hearts. The margin on broadband is, after depreciation of the plant, almost 100%. They need to maintain staff to operate it, but there are no license fees to providers.
Back in the day, CNN and other channels would be free to the cable provider, and they would bundle them up and stick them on the system. After 5-10-15-20 years, those fees started kicking in, and the rates started skyrocketing.
Fast forward to today, and some cable providers are dropping entire company’s worth of channels. I know the system my sister operates just dumped all of their viacom channels. Viacom wanted to much money. So, the cable provider just said, “Screw.”
What a lot of folks do not realize is that the companies like Turner will give you a decent rate if, and only if, you carry their entire suite: CNN, TNT, TBS, etc. And channel placement and bundling counts too.
The future is the Netflix/On Demand model. Entire seasons will either be launched at once, or you will be able to watch your show when it premiers—or all during the next week.
People WILL pay for something like HBO on their PCs. People WILL watch news over the internet. In a very short time the cable networks will go away.
And with it, the billing hassles the cable companies have, their support staffs, their marketing staffs, and half of the stupid local programming fees and staffs.
Trust me...the cable companies cannot wait to get out of the bundling and network TV business.
Call Netflix, or HBO, or Turner...don’t call Comcast. They are just the pipeline.
Cable co’s have starting coordinating with some of the ‘networks’. In order to get Internet/website feeds of the network shows, one first has to sign in through their cable account.
ABC, ESPN, and FoxSports require that. It can be a conglomerated mess trying to log into some of the programs.
“Cable is circling the drain...”
Well, not completely. You’ll still need cable to access the internet.