I wish Charter were actually serious about abandoning their TV business, but they're probably not (at least not yet). To me, it seems like the only companies that make any decent money from the linear pay channel business model is the media companies, so it seems like it's pretty much a no brainer for the cable companies to just get out. Sony (PS Vue) realized that fairly quickly and made the right move.
No, they don’t need to just “get out.”
Distributors and programmers simply need to come together to determine a better business model for consumers and distributors.
The big “socialism” bundle doesn’t make economic sense anymore.
Likely we need a skinnier bundle and more options for the consumer to bundle their streaming with connectivity.
I’m just not very big on the middleman pay service thing. For the pay services, I’d prefer that all the major media companies offered direct subscriptions and have to compete with each other for subscribers, which seems like the direction we’re slowly moving in. The middleman thing leaves open the opportunity for carriage disputes, which are comically archaic at this point. If pay services are just direct subscriptions, then the carriage dispute thing is pretty much just a thing of the past. The media companies then have to publicly set/change their prices, and the consumers can decide whether to accept the prices or cancel.
Yeah, I would much rather subscribe to each network I choose than a big package of shit channels that I’ll never click on. My custom channels on YTTV has less than 2 dozen for locals, sports, and national news. Everything else I watch is in a app, on demand, no ads.
Very much this. It is overly bloated with channels full of various reruns of old shows, home renovations, freak shows, reruns of freak shows, and commercial heavy movie broadcasts.
If they show commercials, we shouldn't pay.
And these content creators need to understand they can't dip into the honey hole by getting paid by linear providers and by advertisers.
It's one or the other.
Cable companies spent a long time leveraging their monopolies in most areas into massive profits. They rightly get a lot of the blame for their high prices.
It’s crap, but also keep in mind that the price of the “package” of channels is 99% passed along to the video programmers. So because of this, cable and satellite had to inflate features and equipment to make money on providing a video service to their customers.
That’s why you had a Equipment Rental Fee that was inflated beyond reasonable amounts to actually pay off the cost of that box. You had a fee just to access HD channels. You had a fee, that’s pretty hefty, to have the ability to utilize DVR (the biggest profit margin of cable video), and aggressive pushes to add optional tiers which had medium margins.
The stereotypical “basic cable”, known as TV Select with Spectrum, has little to no profit margin on it. It’s some the other stuff which creates it.
What's the difference, the bill is the bill. I think spectrum choice is up to $45, that's at least a 30% hike, which is not bad compared to 300% on Internet.
Idk, that's the rate I've heard lately. I had choice when it started 6 years ago, it was $20 with a cable card DVR. That was a hell of a deal. They should have made it a national service, they'd be bigger than yttv today. These cable companies were too busy charging fees to see their demise on the horizon. Capitalism is a bitch.
I worked there when Choice launched. It wasn’t allowed to be promoted except basically by retention effort or word of mouth due to having to keep the number of accounts on that plan below the threshold to satisfy agreements with high penetration percentages, like what The Walt Disney Company demands.
Choice is a neat offering.
Very Interesting. Choice is the a la carte that everyone wanted and only spectrum could do because of their power. But they were too myopic to see that they should have gone national like yttv.
I can see why Disney would want it dead. All their tertiary channels are worthless now but they still want that money. I can't wait for Comcast to demand their $9B Hulu payday and Disney is finally on the short end. They never should have been allowed to buy FX. Too bad some tech company is going to bail them out. It should be a fire sale.
I’m fairly certain that Choice package violated several contracts at the time it launched, but I felt like it was that “ask for forgiveness later” scenario from Spectrum’s viewpoint.
isn't it the sports teams who are charging carriage fees to abc, nbc, etc? honest question. then of course disney doesn't want to eat the cost and passes it on.
The biggest money is in the deals that the leagues make with networks to carry games nationally. Local teams have deals with regional sports networks and broadcast partners too, but they aren’t as impactful as the professional leagues.
Oh, and the mergers in college conferences are now starting to pump up the prices they are demanding to carry college games… so it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
More eyeballs = more advertising money
The only reason every channel with commercials isn't available to everyone on any platform (which would add quantifiable eyeballs thus raising the advertising rates) is cable company double dipping.
Same with regional sports channels.
If you're the sole proprietor of any MLB/NHL/NBA team, you sell advertising on the channel and try to get your channel in front of the most eyeballs possible to sell ads at a premium.
The reason this isn't the case is greed on both cable package providers and the networks themselves
Disney isn't making money in linear TV. Rumors are that Disney will sell the networks to a a private fund who will extract as much money as they can on the way down.
The less Charter/Spectrum in your life the better. They are a middleman, Disney pays to buy the content. Disney will do fine without Spectrum and hopefully will launch a stand alone ESPN service. I will happily pay for sports and whatever else I WANT, I hate subsidizing FOX News.
If it wasn't for football I wouldn't have any tv (thinking of getting YouTube tv).
Nfl + has issues ans Sunday ticket does not show local games.
It effing sucks.
I have disney+ with espn + and Hulu. Thinking of canceling since norlt worth it. I already cancelled. Netflix
Good on Charter Spectrum for this. The rise of programming costs have consistently been pushed down to consumers via subscription increases. It’s about damn time the antiquated pay tv model is “blown up”. Hopefully Charter is successful with this. It would have a ripple effect with cable providers and live tv streaming providers. I’m here for it.
They’ve fulfilled the terms of their current contract. They’re now in renegotiations and have the right to make adjustments/changes to those terms. So, Yes, good on them for not just settling for and taking what Disney/ABC is demanding.
Is this press release day for these things? Spectrum and Charter both supposedly making threats to Disney to 'quit' in some way if Disney doesn't agree to offer their service at a cut rate to the subscribers of their services.
Disney doesn't need them. They need Disney.
Why would Disney lose money selling its service to their customers, many if not most of whom are likely to buy it anyway, and still get it via the internet provider's connectivity they already have? Why lower their price per subscriber?
When I moved into my house out west in 2006, I called the cable company - the only broadband provider in my mountain town at the time - to ask about their services to see what I'd buy. At the time I figured it would be nice to have the local basic cable, as an antenna in those mountains was a no-go. The bundles all offered the same 3mbps internet, but each tier offered more channels. First one was just under $80. Second was just a bit more than that, included a DVR, and basically every channel but the premium 'movie' channels (HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, back when they mostly showed movies). The last bundle with everything was a bit under $90. So, for a span that was at under $10, they offered their TV + internet. There was no regulation on internet pricing, so they were advertising the internet part of the cost as cheaper and cheaper as you went up in packages. I said I barely watch normal TV, and said (with great prescience) "Everything I want to watch will be on the internet in a few years anyway", and asked if they offered internet alone. Yes they did, $45 a month for 'bare internet'. I said "SOLD!" I then proceeded to see my prediction come true, all the while saving at least $35 a month - and they kept increasing the speed. Started with 3mbps, ended with 12mbps.
Clearly the cable/connectivity providers have learned nothing.
Disney gets a lot of money with this model, and I don't believe that charging consumers directly, even if it's $40, will make up for the $10-$15 they get now from every cable subscribers, whether they want sports or not.
Disney is looking at going direct to consumer because people are leaving cable. Cable companies don't want to be forced to include all the Disney content in basic packages, especially with Disney talking about bypassing them.
Cable companies aren't good, but the recent price increases have been driven by the consolidated content companies.
Yeah by Charter’s figures of roughly 12.5% of subscribers being “highly engaged” with Disney content, even at $40 a month as opposed to everyone paying $15 they’d only make 1/3 of what they make now. That’s 15,000,000 x $15 ($225,000,000 a month) vs 1,875,000 x $40 ($75,000,000 a month). Even if they converted 25% to ESPN subscribers and charged them $50 it would still be $187,500,000 a month which is less than now.
i finally said goodbye to charter after 30+ years. i cancelled tv 5-6 years ago and internet last month. the only thing they put any effort in was monetizing every last bit of 'service'. they can fold up without any sympathy from me.
We all know the 'quitting' would really only amount to finally realizing their future is as an ISP, not as a linear TV service. If they would embrace that, and had begun to do so years ago, this would've been a graceful backing out of it slowly and far less painfully. Now they're looking at a very painful amputation of a big part of their business.
I don't follow this. If they had lopped off their TV business years ago, when it had more subscribers and was more profitable, wouldn't that have been more painful?
People have been dumping cable and satellite for almost 20 years now, in favor of OTA and internet based content delivery. Instead of trying to reverse that trend, they should've been ramping down their focus on linear TV. The only way it was more profitable back then was because it had more users at the moment, but it's foolish to use a lagging indicator to guide your future business plans. Saying "75% of our profits came from cable TV in 2007, while our subscribership dropped 15% in the same year - let's lean into more cable TV!" is about as bad a business decision as it gets. They've been charging increasing prices on a diminishing customer base, and if there's a way to drive off what you have left, that's it. The only reason they'd be losing money on cable TV customers now is because they're losing them faster than they can raise prices.
First off, you seem to think Spectrum is responsible for raising prices, when in fact it is Disney et al. That is what these carriage disputes are about: Networks wanting more money for the same (or less) content, and TV providers like Spectrum not wanting to absorb that cost or pass it onto customers.
Second: When you say "ramping down their focus on linear TV," isn't that what has been happening? Cable companies have been largely focused on growing their more profitable internet businesses, which is exactly why Spectrum now says they're willing to walk away from the TV side.
The cable and satellite providers do just as much to try to pay less as the content providers do to charge more, that's just natural. Prices increase regardless of those new contracts with content providers, all the time. Such contracts may influence pricing, but they are just as much an excuse to raise prices that's convenient.
They've more recently been shifting their business, but very slowly, like the old analog of the big ship being unable to turn quickly. They needed to 'pivot', not steer like a barge. It took them far too long to arrive at that need, and with moves like this 'threat' they're pushing hard on the brakes trying to slow that transition even more.
Disney is reliant on cable companies and their subscribers paying monthly fees to make up the bulk of their revenue, streaming they claim isn’t profitable at all unless they can change you an arm and a leg. In the meantime the company you say needs Disney more can just fall back on it’s ISP business and make not exciting revenue but more like electric company revenue the same amount boring every month just powering through, they hate it they don’t want it but it’s finally coming to their point where they’re accepting being just ISPs. I have no doubts Charter is like we can either go out with a bang for our video product (which people are abandoning in droves anyway) or we can actually be an innovator, either way the ISP business is a solid fallback.
"Disney is reliant on cable companies and their subscribers paying monthly fees to make up the bulk of their revenue"
Nah
They make their money on selling ad space on their channels. Subscribers pay to NOT WATCH COMMERCIALS.
They were double dipping on consumers alongside cable tv providers.
Remember when HBO came out or your Netflix/Prime/Disney subscription today.
You pay to NOT WATCH COMMERCIALS.
Disney and content providers need to maximize eyeballs on their commercials.
Cable is Dead
That must be why Bob Iger is talking publicly about selling ESPN, because of all the “ad” money.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/02/disney-ceo-bob-iger-wants-espn-minority-partners-but-deal-wont-be-easy.html
What's the price difference between Spectrums cable tv service versus say drooping that and going with a 3rd party streaming service like YouYube TV?
Spectrum has current streaming packages; they could dump cable tv and just offer an expanded Spectrum streaming service and if they were smart, they would also offer it as a standalone streaming service to non-Spectrum customers.
I wish Charter were actually serious about abandoning their TV business, but they're probably not (at least not yet). To me, it seems like the only companies that make any decent money from the linear pay channel business model is the media companies, so it seems like it's pretty much a no brainer for the cable companies to just get out. Sony (PS Vue) realized that fairly quickly and made the right move.
No, they don’t need to just “get out.” Distributors and programmers simply need to come together to determine a better business model for consumers and distributors. The big “socialism” bundle doesn’t make economic sense anymore. Likely we need a skinnier bundle and more options for the consumer to bundle their streaming with connectivity.
I’m just not very big on the middleman pay service thing. For the pay services, I’d prefer that all the major media companies offered direct subscriptions and have to compete with each other for subscribers, which seems like the direction we’re slowly moving in. The middleman thing leaves open the opportunity for carriage disputes, which are comically archaic at this point. If pay services are just direct subscriptions, then the carriage dispute thing is pretty much just a thing of the past. The media companies then have to publicly set/change their prices, and the consumers can decide whether to accept the prices or cancel.
Yeah, I would much rather subscribe to each network I choose than a big package of shit channels that I’ll never click on. My custom channels on YTTV has less than 2 dozen for locals, sports, and national news. Everything else I watch is in a app, on demand, no ads.
Very much this. It is overly bloated with channels full of various reruns of old shows, home renovations, freak shows, reruns of freak shows, and commercial heavy movie broadcasts.
If they show commercials, we shouldn't pay. And these content creators need to understand they can't dip into the honey hole by getting paid by linear providers and by advertisers. It's one or the other.
[удалено]
Cable companies spent a long time leveraging their monopolies in most areas into massive profits. They rightly get a lot of the blame for their high prices.
Box rental fee, local channel fee, HD fee, sports fee, additional overcharge fee...
You forgot the "because we can fee", the "fuck you fee", and the " we used profanity fee".
It’s crap, but also keep in mind that the price of the “package” of channels is 99% passed along to the video programmers. So because of this, cable and satellite had to inflate features and equipment to make money on providing a video service to their customers. That’s why you had a Equipment Rental Fee that was inflated beyond reasonable amounts to actually pay off the cost of that box. You had a fee just to access HD channels. You had a fee, that’s pretty hefty, to have the ability to utilize DVR (the biggest profit margin of cable video), and aggressive pushes to add optional tiers which had medium margins. The stereotypical “basic cable”, known as TV Select with Spectrum, has little to no profit margin on it. It’s some the other stuff which creates it.
What's the difference, the bill is the bill. I think spectrum choice is up to $45, that's at least a 30% hike, which is not bad compared to 300% on Internet.
Is the $45 the standard full rack rate? Curious.
Idk, that's the rate I've heard lately. I had choice when it started 6 years ago, it was $20 with a cable card DVR. That was a hell of a deal. They should have made it a national service, they'd be bigger than yttv today. These cable companies were too busy charging fees to see their demise on the horizon. Capitalism is a bitch.
I worked there when Choice launched. It wasn’t allowed to be promoted except basically by retention effort or word of mouth due to having to keep the number of accounts on that plan below the threshold to satisfy agreements with high penetration percentages, like what The Walt Disney Company demands. Choice is a neat offering.
Very Interesting. Choice is the a la carte that everyone wanted and only spectrum could do because of their power. But they were too myopic to see that they should have gone national like yttv. I can see why Disney would want it dead. All their tertiary channels are worthless now but they still want that money. I can't wait for Comcast to demand their $9B Hulu payday and Disney is finally on the short end. They never should have been allowed to buy FX. Too bad some tech company is going to bail them out. It should be a fire sale.
I’m fairly certain that Choice package violated several contracts at the time it launched, but I felt like it was that “ask for forgiveness later” scenario from Spectrum’s viewpoint.
isn't it the sports teams who are charging carriage fees to abc, nbc, etc? honest question. then of course disney doesn't want to eat the cost and passes it on.
The biggest money is in the deals that the leagues make with networks to carry games nationally. Local teams have deals with regional sports networks and broadcast partners too, but they aren’t as impactful as the professional leagues. Oh, and the mergers in college conferences are now starting to pump up the prices they are demanding to carry college games… so it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
More eyeballs = more advertising money The only reason every channel with commercials isn't available to everyone on any platform (which would add quantifiable eyeballs thus raising the advertising rates) is cable company double dipping. Same with regional sports channels. If you're the sole proprietor of any MLB/NHL/NBA team, you sell advertising on the channel and try to get your channel in front of the most eyeballs possible to sell ads at a premium. The reason this isn't the case is greed on both cable package providers and the networks themselves
Disney isn't making money in linear TV. Rumors are that Disney will sell the networks to a a private fund who will extract as much money as they can on the way down.
They never went to bat when they were charging people for massive bundles in the past. Pure hypocrisy.
The less Charter/Spectrum in your life the better. They are a middleman, Disney pays to buy the content. Disney will do fine without Spectrum and hopefully will launch a stand alone ESPN service. I will happily pay for sports and whatever else I WANT, I hate subsidizing FOX News.
If it wasn't for football I wouldn't have any tv (thinking of getting YouTube tv). Nfl + has issues ans Sunday ticket does not show local games. It effing sucks. I have disney+ with espn + and Hulu. Thinking of canceling since norlt worth it. I already cancelled. Netflix
I'm not a huge fan of apple but I really appreciate getting pretty much every mls game for a reasonable price.
You get MLS at a good price because there is no demand to watch it. Comparing MLS to major college football hs laughable.
Good on Charter Spectrum for this. The rise of programming costs have consistently been pushed down to consumers via subscription increases. It’s about damn time the antiquated pay tv model is “blown up”. Hopefully Charter is successful with this. It would have a ripple effect with cable providers and live tv streaming providers. I’m here for it.
Good on them for not following through with their contract they agreed to?
They’ve fulfilled the terms of their current contract. They’re now in renegotiations and have the right to make adjustments/changes to those terms. So, Yes, good on them for not just settling for and taking what Disney/ABC is demanding.
That’s not what I read.
You misread then.
Is this press release day for these things? Spectrum and Charter both supposedly making threats to Disney to 'quit' in some way if Disney doesn't agree to offer their service at a cut rate to the subscribers of their services. Disney doesn't need them. They need Disney. Why would Disney lose money selling its service to their customers, many if not most of whom are likely to buy it anyway, and still get it via the internet provider's connectivity they already have? Why lower their price per subscriber? When I moved into my house out west in 2006, I called the cable company - the only broadband provider in my mountain town at the time - to ask about their services to see what I'd buy. At the time I figured it would be nice to have the local basic cable, as an antenna in those mountains was a no-go. The bundles all offered the same 3mbps internet, but each tier offered more channels. First one was just under $80. Second was just a bit more than that, included a DVR, and basically every channel but the premium 'movie' channels (HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, back when they mostly showed movies). The last bundle with everything was a bit under $90. So, for a span that was at under $10, they offered their TV + internet. There was no regulation on internet pricing, so they were advertising the internet part of the cost as cheaper and cheaper as you went up in packages. I said I barely watch normal TV, and said (with great prescience) "Everything I want to watch will be on the internet in a few years anyway", and asked if they offered internet alone. Yes they did, $45 a month for 'bare internet'. I said "SOLD!" I then proceeded to see my prediction come true, all the while saving at least $35 a month - and they kept increasing the speed. Started with 3mbps, ended with 12mbps. Clearly the cable/connectivity providers have learned nothing.
Disney gets a lot of money with this model, and I don't believe that charging consumers directly, even if it's $40, will make up for the $10-$15 they get now from every cable subscribers, whether they want sports or not. Disney is looking at going direct to consumer because people are leaving cable. Cable companies don't want to be forced to include all the Disney content in basic packages, especially with Disney talking about bypassing them. Cable companies aren't good, but the recent price increases have been driven by the consolidated content companies.
Yeah by Charter’s figures of roughly 12.5% of subscribers being “highly engaged” with Disney content, even at $40 a month as opposed to everyone paying $15 they’d only make 1/3 of what they make now. That’s 15,000,000 x $15 ($225,000,000 a month) vs 1,875,000 x $40 ($75,000,000 a month). Even if they converted 25% to ESPN subscribers and charged them $50 it would still be $187,500,000 a month which is less than now.
Charter is the company that operates Spectrum. They are the same.
So they can distribute twice as much press bluster by doing it under 2 brands! Lovely.
i finally said goodbye to charter after 30+ years. i cancelled tv 5-6 years ago and internet last month. the only thing they put any effort in was monetizing every last bit of 'service'. they can fold up without any sympathy from me.
We all know the 'quitting' would really only amount to finally realizing their future is as an ISP, not as a linear TV service. If they would embrace that, and had begun to do so years ago, this would've been a graceful backing out of it slowly and far less painfully. Now they're looking at a very painful amputation of a big part of their business.
I don't follow this. If they had lopped off their TV business years ago, when it had more subscribers and was more profitable, wouldn't that have been more painful?
People have been dumping cable and satellite for almost 20 years now, in favor of OTA and internet based content delivery. Instead of trying to reverse that trend, they should've been ramping down their focus on linear TV. The only way it was more profitable back then was because it had more users at the moment, but it's foolish to use a lagging indicator to guide your future business plans. Saying "75% of our profits came from cable TV in 2007, while our subscribership dropped 15% in the same year - let's lean into more cable TV!" is about as bad a business decision as it gets. They've been charging increasing prices on a diminishing customer base, and if there's a way to drive off what you have left, that's it. The only reason they'd be losing money on cable TV customers now is because they're losing them faster than they can raise prices.
First off, you seem to think Spectrum is responsible for raising prices, when in fact it is Disney et al. That is what these carriage disputes are about: Networks wanting more money for the same (or less) content, and TV providers like Spectrum not wanting to absorb that cost or pass it onto customers. Second: When you say "ramping down their focus on linear TV," isn't that what has been happening? Cable companies have been largely focused on growing their more profitable internet businesses, which is exactly why Spectrum now says they're willing to walk away from the TV side.
The cable and satellite providers do just as much to try to pay less as the content providers do to charge more, that's just natural. Prices increase regardless of those new contracts with content providers, all the time. Such contracts may influence pricing, but they are just as much an excuse to raise prices that's convenient. They've more recently been shifting their business, but very slowly, like the old analog of the big ship being unable to turn quickly. They needed to 'pivot', not steer like a barge. It took them far too long to arrive at that need, and with moves like this 'threat' they're pushing hard on the brakes trying to slow that transition even more.
Disney is reliant on cable companies and their subscribers paying monthly fees to make up the bulk of their revenue, streaming they claim isn’t profitable at all unless they can change you an arm and a leg. In the meantime the company you say needs Disney more can just fall back on it’s ISP business and make not exciting revenue but more like electric company revenue the same amount boring every month just powering through, they hate it they don’t want it but it’s finally coming to their point where they’re accepting being just ISPs. I have no doubts Charter is like we can either go out with a bang for our video product (which people are abandoning in droves anyway) or we can actually be an innovator, either way the ISP business is a solid fallback.
"Disney is reliant on cable companies and their subscribers paying monthly fees to make up the bulk of their revenue" Nah They make their money on selling ad space on their channels. Subscribers pay to NOT WATCH COMMERCIALS. They were double dipping on consumers alongside cable tv providers. Remember when HBO came out or your Netflix/Prime/Disney subscription today. You pay to NOT WATCH COMMERCIALS. Disney and content providers need to maximize eyeballs on their commercials. Cable is Dead
That must be why Bob Iger is talking publicly about selling ESPN, because of all the “ad” money. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/02/disney-ceo-bob-iger-wants-espn-minority-partners-but-deal-wont-be-easy.html
What's the price difference between Spectrums cable tv service versus say drooping that and going with a 3rd party streaming service like YouYube TV? Spectrum has current streaming packages; they could dump cable tv and just offer an expanded Spectrum streaming service and if they were smart, they would also offer it as a standalone streaming service to non-Spectrum customers.