Posted on 10/31/2016 8:53:26 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Pivot just couldn’t pivot fast enough.
The small cable channel shuts down on Monday, ending its short life with the film “Good Night, and Good Luck,” the 2005 movie about Edward R. Murrow produced by Pivot owner Participant Media.
The movie’s title is an appropriate farewell for Pivot, and perhaps also serves as a message for the cable industry in general — as more networks face an uncertain future in the wake of so-called “skinny bundles” (cable packages with fewer channels) and the growth of cord-cutting. […]
The company is believed to have invested around $200 million into the enterprise, starting in 2012, and at the end had a staff of around 80 running the network. Participant reportedly spent about $100 million to acquire Documentary Channel and Halogen TV, in order to build enough distribution in time for its launch on Aug. 1, 2013, in 40 million homes. …
(Excerpt) Read more at indiewire.com ...
Agreed.
Logo’s a gay channel right? I guess they might have a built in audience.
Yes, Logo is “LGBT-themed”. This evening, of course, they were playing the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
I saw it at a midnight show years after it came out.
It was shown every weekend at midnight and the regulars were a bunch of freaks who had rituals they did during the show.
I should have known better as the girl i was seeing was a loon. Her idea to go. Told me it was “great”
Vice is another one of those channels that I have no use for.
And I think I'm going to drift a bit from the topic.
CBS is presently selling their channel and their library of shows for a certain amount per month. Smart choice, just think they've chosen the wrong vehicle. Amazon has already shown itself competent enough to handle add on subscriptions for content for Amazon Prime customers; the smart choice would have been choosing a low price and teaming up with Amazon - they do all the heavy lifting - they do the billing and the distribution, all CBS has to do is make sure that Amazon actually puts the money in their bank account.
Hulu was a brilliant idea, but for some ghastly and unknown reason, they didn't take the sensible ‘one commercial per break’ that was targeted at the viewer (teaming up with Google or Bing or Yahoo to make sure it matches interests), it instead did this bizarre bid for viewers deal which often made it so that you'd get the same commercial two or three times during a break.
There is an audience for social change propaganda - they could turn the channel into a subscription model (with loads of memes for people to post on social media if they were members) where they could survive quite well. The biggest problem with liberal dogma is that, well, almost no one can stand to watch the crap. But they'll throw money so they can have their WWF sticker on the car (or whatever.)
Had this channel done such a sensible thing, and made it so that people could pay monthly for the appearance of social change and be a warrior ‘for the people’, they would have thrived.
Instead they went with a deal where they were getting a quarter per subscriber who actually watched one 15 minute block per month and lost their bet. Instead of having an hour of Bernie rambling in front of the camera, they went with ‘innovative programming about real change’ - spending tens of millions on poorly produced programming that no liberal could even bother to stomach.
If they had teamed up with Amazon and offered the channel for $4 a month (where they'd get $2.70), they could have really ramped up their propaganda.
And honestly, this is where CBS has gone wrong (and the members of Hulu...) They went and wasted tens if not hundreds of millions creating that which was already there. Billing, delivery, verification - why bother with any of that if there's a third party who can actually handle all that detail and you just sit back and collect money?
Many channels (including ESPN and others) are facing a rather bleak future. The cable companies are facing increased costs (and much diminished available bandwidth as consumers demand more and more internet speed), and local cities are piling on the taxes on providers, both for the multi-year contract franchise fees and the consumer taxes. Satellite can satisfy the channel demand, but can't take up the speed slack, whereas cable internet is getting squeezed more and more.
Cable (and satellite) companies are going to be demanding near zero franchise fees to transmit content, or they'll only carry channels where local cable companies can actually successfully sell advertising. The age of cable companies carrying content for content sake is swiftly going away. Time for the players to come up with a brand new game plan... or do as this did, and go dark with a whimper.
So the lesbian eco Nazi channel couldn’t make it, what a shame. I hope some progressive a-hole lost a bundle.
Vice should be next although I do like the show “Abandoned” the rest is poo.
I remember hearing endless commercials for it on radio in the late ‘70s, just looked, IMDB says it came out in 1975, don’t remember it back then. [Come on, brain!]
I didn’t see until the 80s. Like I said, it was shown every weekend at midnight an the same cult followers would show up EVERY week!
Weirdos.
I suspect we are not the Vice target audience but it seems to have about 20 hours of programming that it stretches over the week.
How can I miss something I never knew existed? Oh well, Pivot is gone. I’d love to start a Family friendly conservative themed network (with an updated Leave It To Beaver, without Mrs. Cleaver cleaning the house in pearls and maybe a few shows in Drama (a show like Walton’s Mountain) and variety shows.
You made a ton of great points!!
Yep, it was at the same theater in Toledo for ages, I lived up there 76-80. Only saw it once, though. That was enough... ;)
The Walton’s were put on the air as a goof by a leftist.
It backfired. It became their most popular show. It beat out the leftist, anti-white male Archie Bunker, even, which was not put out on the air as a goof.
Archie Bunker was not even original. He was copied from a BBC stereotype character named Alf Garnett, from their show called “Till Death Do Us Part”.
(Lots of mainstream-media sitcoms during that period were taken from BBC shows, including “Three’s Company” from “Man About The House”, “Sanford & Son” from “Steptoe & Son”, etc.)
"Farscape" is what I watched, along with maybe a grand total of two documentaries.
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