5 ms·

This is an important point that everyone really misses. Cable companies make (50M subscribers * $100 /month * 12 mo/yr)=60B dollars per year. TV advertising is

by cmsmith 13y ago

This is an important point that everyone really misses. Cable companies make (50M subscribers * $100 /month * 12 mo/yr)=60B dollars per year. TV advertising is another $80B /year. Overhead and profit might eat up 20-50% of that, but we're still left with a bill, to create the TV we want to watch, of a few hundred dollars per US man, woman, and child. Why would people imagine that we can replace that market with a hundred million $8/month netflix subscriptions and not see a decline in the availability of quality programming?

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destroyAllCable 13y ago
Here in NYC with TWC, I threw cable in the garbage when my subscription for TV and internet (ONLY, no VOIP service) exceeded $150 a month. I didn't even have premium service. This was in 2010, I think. One month I saw the bill and I wanted to punch a hole in the wall. They run a wire to my house, so that the TV reception is better than an aerial antenna. That's what cable is. That's what cable does. The internet service was rock solid, but when they bombard me with a constant deluge of ads offering introductory service at $99 dollars a month (for TV, VOIP and internet), every ten minutes, no matter what channel I'm watching, basically, I expect my bill to be $66 dollars for TV and internet only, AT ALL TIMES. This is the same psychological process where we rationalize to ourselves that $99 is cognitively less than $100, so it must be a reasonable truth that I'm paying a better price than $100, if I'm only paying $99. If they know who I am, because they know whether to enable my cable signal, based on whether I've paid my bill, and they show ME advertisements on MY TV, stating that I can get 3 things for a price divisible by three ($99), when we both know I'm only buying 2 things from them, then cognitively, we both know I should be paying 2/3 of what their hellish TV jingle blasts into my ears every 10 minutes. I'm sitting at work, humming their damned jingle to myself, as I suffer through my 9 to 5 drudgery. Then I come home check the mail box. There are two bills. Cable and Gas/Electric. The cable is more. It's $150 dollars. I'm subscribed to two thirds of their products, and I'm humming their incessant jingle to myself about how all three of their products should cost two thirds of what I'm actually paying for the stinking two thirds of what they offer. The jingle is thus: EYE! OH! DIGITAL CABLE! WATCH A LOTTA CHANNELS! WHENEVER YOU'RE ABLE! THE PRICE IS NICE! LET ME PUT IT ON THE TABLE! ONLY NINETY NINE DOLLARS WHEN YOU SIGN THE LABEL!!! There are trains underground, and I can enter and exit their tunnels twice a day, every day for a month, on trips as long as I can tolerate, and I'll pay less for that than cable. Trains underground cost less than cable. Smart phones might be a secret government program engineered to earn the complicity of the citizenry, in volunteering to carry tracking devices on our person 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So what?! It's still cheaper than cable! Cable doesn't keep me warm in the winter. They don't do anything essential to my survival. They don't deliver perishable food to my door. Cable TV can burn.
- dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  I feel like you might be insane ... Is this correct?
  - destroyAllCable 13y ago
    If I am, it's because of the secret signals cable TV has been broadcasting directly into my brain.
njharman 13y ago
There will always be enough entertainment to meet the demand of viewers. What we have now is a deluge of crap to meet the demands of advertisers wanting to sell eyeballs.
- chc 13y ago
  > There will always be enough entertainment to meet the demand of viewers. This seems likely, but the idea that it will be cheaper than cable is pretty specious. The reason you can get TV programming so cheap for just the cost of a Roku and Netflix is because hidden in that content is the millions of dollars that already came from traditional TV.
anoncow 13y ago
If the eyeballs move to netflix, the billions in ad revenue will move too.
- coldpie 13y ago
  If they bring ads to Netflix, I'm out.
  - deaconblues 13y ago
    It'll likely manifest as blatant and ridiculous product placement in the original programming, won't it?
    - coldpie 13y ago
      Somehow I don't have a problem with that. What annoys me about ads is how they have nothing to do with what I want to be watching, and try to get in your head. Sing-song commercials and commercials for baby diapers make my blood boil, and that's not what I want when I'm trying to relax.
      - deaconblues 13y ago
        Fair enough. I'd much rather have 3-4 breaks in an episode to surf around online/make popcorn/whatever instead of stuff like this in every show I watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQYwFND7rHE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQYwFND7rHE
        albeec13 13y ago
        That's gotta be the most egregious product placement I've ever seen.
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podperson 13y ago
OK so let's assume we need to pay $200 per person and a typical household is a family of 4. Currently the difference between a broadband internet connection and a typical monthly cable TV with internet bundle is in the $50/month range. This means that the current typical household is paying $600 per year to get content in a ridiculously stupid way, versus the estimate of $800 per family of four just buying their content direct from the producers. This doesn't seem like an unbridgeable gap to me. And in fact it's in the process of being bridged slowly -- the problem is that existing contractual relationships and infrastructure won't just reform themselves overnight.

by cmsmith 13y ago

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destroyAllCable 13y ago

Here in NYC with TWC, I threw cable in the garbage when my subscription for TV and internet (ONLY, no VOIP service) exceeded $150 a month. I didn't even have premium service. This was in 2010, I think. One month I saw the bill and I wanted to punch a hole in the wall. They run a wire to my house, so that the TV reception is better than an aerial antenna. That's what cable is. That's what cable does. The internet service was rock solid, but when they bombard me with a constant deluge of ads offering introductory service at $99 dollars a month (for TV, VOIP and internet), every ten minutes, no matter what channel I'm watching, basically, I expect my bill to be $66 dollars for TV and internet only, AT ALL TIMES. This is the same psychological process where we rationalize to ourselves that $99 is cognitively less than $100, so it must be a reasonable truth that I'm paying a better price than $100, if I'm only paying $99. If they know who I am, because they know whether to enable my cable signal, based on whether I've paid my bill, and they show ME advertisements on MY TV, stating that I can get 3 things for a price divisible by three ($99), when we both know I'm only buying 2 things from them, then cognitively, we both know I should be paying 2/3 of what their hellish TV jingle blasts into my ears every 10 minutes. I'm sitting at work, humming their damned jingle to myself, as I suffer through my 9 to 5 drudgery. Then I come home check the mail box. There are two bills. Cable and Gas/Electric. The cable is more. It's $150 dollars. I'm subscribed to two thirds of their products, and I'm humming their incessant jingle to myself about how all three of their products should cost two thirds of what I'm actually paying for the stinking two thirds of what they offer. The jingle is thus: EYE! OH! DIGITAL CABLE! WATCH A LOTTA CHANNELS! WHENEVER YOU'RE ABLE! THE PRICE IS NICE! LET ME PUT IT ON THE TABLE! ONLY NINETY NINE DOLLARS WHEN YOU SIGN THE LABEL!!! There are trains underground, and I can enter and exit their tunnels twice a day, every day for a month, on trips as long as I can tolerate, and I'll pay less for that than cable. Trains underground cost less than cable. Smart phones might be a secret government program engineered to earn the complicity of the citizenry, in volunteering to carry tracking devices on our person 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So what?! It's still cheaper than cable! Cable doesn't keep me warm in the winter. They don't do anything essential to my survival. They don't deliver perishable food to my door. Cable TV can burn.

dinkumthinkum 13y ago
I feel like you might be insane ... Is this correct?
- destroyAllCable 13y ago
  If I am, it's because of the secret signals cable TV has been broadcasting directly into my brain.

njharman 13y ago

There will always be enough entertainment to meet the demand of viewers. What we have now is a deluge of crap to meet the demands of advertisers wanting to sell eyeballs.

chc 13y ago
> There will always be enough entertainment to meet the demand of viewers. This seems likely, but the idea that it will be cheaper than cable is pretty specious. The reason you can get TV programming so cheap for just the cost of a Roku and Netflix is because hidden in that content is the millions of dollars that already came from traditional TV.

anoncow 13y ago

If the eyeballs move to netflix, the billions in ad revenue will move too.

coldpie 13y ago
If they bring ads to Netflix, I'm out.
- deaconblues 13y ago
  It'll likely manifest as blatant and ridiculous product placement in the original programming, won't it?
  - coldpie 13y ago
    Somehow I don't have a problem with that. What annoys me about ads is how they have nothing to do with what I want to be watching, and try to get in your head. Sing-song commercials and commercials for baby diapers make my blood boil, and that's not what I want when I'm trying to relax.
    - deaconblues 13y ago
      Fair enough. I'd much rather have 3-4 breaks in an episode to surf around online/make popcorn/whatever instead of stuff like this in every show I watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQYwFND7rHE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQYwFND7rHE
      - albeec13 13y ago
        That's gotta be the most egregious product placement I've ever seen.

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podperson 13y ago

OK so let's assume we need to pay $200 per person and a typical household is a family of 4. Currently the difference between a broadband internet connection and a typical monthly cable TV with internet bundle is in the $50/month range. This means that the current typical household is paying $600 per year to get content in a ridiculously stupid way, versus the estimate of $800 per family of four just buying their content direct from the producers. This doesn't seem like an unbridgeable gap to me. And in fact it's in the process of being bridged slowly -- the problem is that existing contractual relationships and infrastructure won't just reform themselves overnight.