This is the script for my national radio report yesterday on the state
of the TV/cable/streaming industry, related to a new case where a
judge has (for now) blocked an attempt at a multi-company sports
streaming package that some observers feel triggers antitrust
concerns. As always there may be some very minor wording variations
between this script and how I presented it live on air.
- - -
So this case is a great example of how the entire TV broadcasting,
cable TV, and video streaming world has turned into such an awful mess
for consumers. It seems like every day the "new tech" that was
supposed to set us free from expensive cable TV packages is more and
more emulating some of the worst aspects of cable TV.
In the early days of cable TV and even in places where cable hadn't
rolled out yet and there were over the air premium movie services that
operated usually part time on UHF channels, one of the biggest draws
was commercial free, ad free programming. But as cable came to
dominate, subscribers found themselves forced to accept expensive
programming packages that often included a multitude of channels they
didn't want.
Some people didn't really want sports, some people didn't want all the
channels full of commercials, you know the drill. Then came the move
to satellite based services especially for people who still didn't
have cable -- and that still includes many areas today, especially
rural areas.
And then of course came Internet streaming and various devices to view
those streams. But very quickly it became clear that subscribing to
multiple separate streaming services with different types of
programming could be confusing and expensive, so we saw the rise of
bundling services like Sling and Hulu, and of course YouTube TV. And
there would be various collections of channels on these.
Now what's happened in the last couple of years is that prices for
individual streaming services have often gone through the roof because
the firms just weren't making the kind of money (if any, in terms of
profits) that they had hoped for. Then many started putting ads back
in, the very thing that drove people away from commercial TV and then
cable in the first place. So now if you want a streaming channel
without commercials you can end up paying through the nose.
And those prices keep going up. And the prices for even the versions
of these services with ads are rising rapidly as well. And what about
bundlers like YouTube TV? It keeps getting increasingly expensive too,
and monthly costs are becoming very similar to the much hated cable TV
packages, including being full of channels that any given individual
might have no interest in watching but still has to pay for.
And now we're seeing a push for separate companies to create bundles
of programming between themselves, at what most people would call
quite high price points, again, looking more and more like traditional
cable TV packages and prices.
So legislators and courts are starting to get involved, because these
kinds of cross-company packages can begin to invoke antitrust
questions.
So ironically we seem to be ending up close to where we started with
large media firms attempting to bundle programming (often in the
process dropping content that they used to offer) in ways where most
people are going to end up being flooded with ads during programs and
movies again, and the monthly costs will keep going through the roof.
And so long as these firms can convince consumers to pay these high
fees, we can bet they're going to keep doing it and pretty soon the
prices that seem so high now are going to look downright economical
compared to the kinds of prices they're going to try get us to pay
down the line.
Frankly, after all this time and effort and technology, to be back in
this kind of situation again, seems mostly like a testament to
corporate greed more than anything else.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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