cptmilesPremium
join:2004-04-22
Swayzee, IN | Who is the Real Culprit? I am not a fan of big service providers as a whole, but they are just one of the players. The real culprit is the programmers like Viacom, MTV, and especially Disney/ESPN. The programmers are doing everything in their power to keep a la carte out of the market and doing it quite effectively. If a carrier even hints they are going to try a la carte ESPN threatens to pull all their programming. As a cable company you become pretty unattractive without ESPN...so we keep playing the game. I agree that we need regulation, but maybe the regulation needs to be on the programmers.
Everyone is worried that Comcast makes money. Hey, they are in the business to make money. Think of them just like a BP or Marathon (major oil company). They have their internally controlled margins and when their cost of goods sold go up their prices go up. In Comcast's case they are even worse off. They have to deal with 30 or more product (content) providers.
Every time ESPN decides they need another crappy channel on the basic tier or they will pull their contract, somebody has to pay and it's not going to be Comcast.
I disagree with the idea that Comcast is in cahoots with Verizon or any other carrier. If the margins were so wonderful there would be 10 video carriers in every major market. |
