The NEW NORMAL
7/16/12
Blogged some time agao about when the Television stations were reaarranged and people had to get the Black box to have a television; mentioned the fact that that was a part of process of beginning to send different information to different people; so nobody would have the same information:
Winston-Salem Journal Julyy 16, 2012 one of the front page stories="CHANNELS blackouts"the NEW NORMAL; did not read the story; do know the headlines are a preparation for things to come=to guranteee what they think is them controlling you.
Channel blackouts 'the new normal'
By: | From staff and wire reports
Published: July 16, 2012
Published: July 16, 2012
»
Channel blackouts such as the one that resulted from the current spats between WXII-Channel 12's parent company and Time Warner Cable and the one between Viacom and DirecTV have become more common over the past three years. Consumers can thank the changing dynamics of the entertainment industry.
Media companies such as Viacom and Disney have become steadily more profitable since the gloom of the recession lifted in early 2010. But the cable and satellite providers that pay to carry their channels have seen profitability virtually stagnate as they fight one another for subscribers.
The squeeze has prompted such distributors as Time Warner Cable, Dish and DirecTV to revolt against higher programming costs. Consumers are left in the crossfire.
WXII, the local NBC affiliate, has been blacked out since Tuesday, after contract negotiations broke down between Time Warner Cable and Hearst Television, the company that owns WXII.
Time Warner has instead been airing programming from WBRE, an NBC affiliate from Wilkes-Barre, Pa. WXII can still be seen over the air with an antenna and on other video providers such as DirecTV, AT&T U-verse and Dish Network.
DirecTV subscribers have not been able to view Viacom channels such as Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon and VH1 since Tuesday, when the two companies failed to reach a contract agreement over content fees.
In both cases, it's not clear how long the blackouts will last.
"I think this is the new normal," says Barton Crockett, an analyst with Lazard Capital. "It's getting to be a little bit more of a battle between life and death for these guys."
The rising number of disputes is largely the result of the stagnant market for pay television. Simply put, there are not many new households being formed in the sluggish economy, and those who want to pay for TV already do. Some 101 million American households subscribe to cable or satellite service. That's about 87 percent of homes, a proportion that has remained unchanged since 2009, according to Leichtman Research Group, which studies media and entertainment.
TV distributors pay media companies a few cents per channel per subscriber each month. In turn, they try to sell packages of channels for more. As costs for those channels rise, so do monthly service bills, but not always by enough to offset the increasing fees cable and satellite providers are paying to media companies.
That has prompted cable and satellite service providers to fight back against cost increases, even when it means blacking out channels until they can eke out a better deal. Satellite TV companies such as Dish and DirecTV are in an even tighter squeeze than cable companies because they cannot make up for higher costs by providing Internet or phone service.
Major cable and satellite TV distributors Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, Dish, Cablevision and Charter have increased profitability over the past few years, but that's tapered off, according to an Associated Press review of FactSet data.
Back in December 2009, they kept 15 cents of profit after subtracting operating expenses from every dollar of services they sold. That grew to 19 cents last September. But since then, cable and satellite companies have not found a way to wring more profitability from their business.
Meanwhile, prominent media companies that produce and bankroll the shows — Disney, Time Warner, News Corp., Viacom, Discovery, CBS and AMC — have kept expanding their profit share. They grew operating profits from 16 cents to 19 cents per dollar over the same period. That kept climbing to 20 cents per dollar by March.
Media companies have posted gains in part by extracting higher fees from distributors in bare-knuckle contract negotiations.
In the first 6 1/2 months of this year, 22 fee disputes involving the price of broadcast TV signals have caused channel blackouts, according to the American TV Alliance. That's up from 15 blackouts in all of 2011. There were just four in 2010.
Dish Network Corp. dropped AMC Networks Inc. channels on July 1, two weeks ahead of Sunday's premiere of the final season of "Breaking Bad." DirecTV dropped more than a dozen Viacom Inc. channels last week. Time Warner Cable Inc. gave up on a Fox Sports channel covering the San Diego Padres in April and last week it let 15 Hearst television stations, including WXII, go dark, complaining of a three-fold fee hike demand.
Hank Price, president and general manager of WXII, said in a news release that "Time Warner's characterization of the percentage increase in carriage fees we are seeking is inaccurate. We have sought a reasonable increase consistent with the increased costs we have to pay for our highly valued programming and the carriage fees now paid to us by Time Warner's competitors."
Amid the war of words, one thing is clear: The price of TV is going up.
People already have been paying more and more. In April and May, 1,369 Americans who were surveyed by the Leichtman Research Group reported that their monthly TV bill rose an average of 7 percent from a year ago, to $78.63.
What's different for distributors lately is that they also have to pay for broadcast TV station signals, which they used to get for free in exchange for carrying upstart new channels.
In recent years, broadcasters such as CBS have demanded cash from TV distributors for broadcast signals, even though consumers who go through the trouble of setting up an antenna could get them over the air at no charge.
Such "retransmission fees" are expected to double industrywide from $1.8 billion this year to $3.6 billion in 2017, according to research firm SNL Kagan.
Media companies such as Viacom and Disney have become steadily more profitable since the gloom of the recession lifted in early 2010. But the cable and satellite providers that pay to carry their channels have seen profitability virtually stagnate as they fight one another for subscribers.
The squeeze has prompted such distributors as Time Warner Cable, Dish and DirecTV to revolt against higher programming costs. Consumers are left in the crossfire.
WXII, the local NBC affiliate, has been blacked out since Tuesday, after contract negotiations broke down between Time Warner Cable and Hearst Television, the company that owns WXII.
Time Warner has instead been airing programming from WBRE, an NBC affiliate from Wilkes-Barre, Pa. WXII can still be seen over the air with an antenna and on other video providers such as DirecTV, AT&T U-verse and Dish Network.
DirecTV subscribers have not been able to view Viacom channels such as Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon and VH1 since Tuesday, when the two companies failed to reach a contract agreement over content fees.
In both cases, it's not clear how long the blackouts will last.
"I think this is the new normal," says Barton Crockett, an analyst with Lazard Capital. "It's getting to be a little bit more of a battle between life and death for these guys."
The rising number of disputes is largely the result of the stagnant market for pay television. Simply put, there are not many new households being formed in the sluggish economy, and those who want to pay for TV already do. Some 101 million American households subscribe to cable or satellite service. That's about 87 percent of homes, a proportion that has remained unchanged since 2009, according to Leichtman Research Group, which studies media and entertainment.
TV distributors pay media companies a few cents per channel per subscriber each month. In turn, they try to sell packages of channels for more. As costs for those channels rise, so do monthly service bills, but not always by enough to offset the increasing fees cable and satellite providers are paying to media companies.
That has prompted cable and satellite service providers to fight back against cost increases, even when it means blacking out channels until they can eke out a better deal. Satellite TV companies such as Dish and DirecTV are in an even tighter squeeze than cable companies because they cannot make up for higher costs by providing Internet or phone service.
Major cable and satellite TV distributors Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, Dish, Cablevision and Charter have increased profitability over the past few years, but that's tapered off, according to an Associated Press review of FactSet data.
Back in December 2009, they kept 15 cents of profit after subtracting operating expenses from every dollar of services they sold. That grew to 19 cents last September. But since then, cable and satellite companies have not found a way to wring more profitability from their business.
Meanwhile, prominent media companies that produce and bankroll the shows — Disney, Time Warner, News Corp., Viacom, Discovery, CBS and AMC — have kept expanding their profit share. They grew operating profits from 16 cents to 19 cents per dollar over the same period. That kept climbing to 20 cents per dollar by March.
Media companies have posted gains in part by extracting higher fees from distributors in bare-knuckle contract negotiations.
In the first 6 1/2 months of this year, 22 fee disputes involving the price of broadcast TV signals have caused channel blackouts, according to the American TV Alliance. That's up from 15 blackouts in all of 2011. There were just four in 2010.
Dish Network Corp. dropped AMC Networks Inc. channels on July 1, two weeks ahead of Sunday's premiere of the final season of "Breaking Bad." DirecTV dropped more than a dozen Viacom Inc. channels last week. Time Warner Cable Inc. gave up on a Fox Sports channel covering the San Diego Padres in April and last week it let 15 Hearst television stations, including WXII, go dark, complaining of a three-fold fee hike demand.
Hank Price, president and general manager of WXII, said in a news release that "Time Warner's characterization of the percentage increase in carriage fees we are seeking is inaccurate. We have sought a reasonable increase consistent with the increased costs we have to pay for our highly valued programming and the carriage fees now paid to us by Time Warner's competitors."
Amid the war of words, one thing is clear: The price of TV is going up.
People already have been paying more and more. In April and May, 1,369 Americans who were surveyed by the Leichtman Research Group reported that their monthly TV bill rose an average of 7 percent from a year ago, to $78.63.
What's different for distributors lately is that they also have to pay for broadcast TV station signals, which they used to get for free in exchange for carrying upstart new channels.
In recent years, broadcasters such as CBS have demanded cash from TV distributors for broadcast signals, even though consumers who go through the trouble of setting up an antenna could get them over the air at no charge.
Such "retransmission fees" are expected to double industrywide from $1.8 billion this year to $3.6 billion in 2017, according to research firm SNL Kagan.
****************************************
headlines story is a joke; just sending them back in a circle.
Socialpeacest
posted by peaceblog at
5:59 PM
