sbrook Mod join:2001-12-14 Ottawa |
sbrook
Mod
2014-Aug-5 12:42 pm
And we wonder why our cable and internet rates are going up ....» www.cbc.ca/news/arts/jim ··· .2727640One Million per episode ... that's typically 13 episodes per season ... 2 per year ... total 26 MILLION dollars. That's less than the average person earns in a 40 year career! And that gets reflected in programming costs that the studios charge the stations that charge the cable / satellite /telco tv cos who charge us. And they'll try to get it from every source they can ... TV, Internet, phone. I N S A N E! |
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Gone Premium Member join:2011-01-24 Fort Erie, ON |
Gone
Premium Member
2014-Aug-5 12:53 pm
You do know that they were paying Jerry Seinfeld $1M per episode and were going to give him $5M per if he stayed on past 1998, right? This isn't exactly anything new new. |
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GuspazGuspaz MVM join:2001-11-05 Montreal, QC |
to sbrook
So? The actors on Friends were paid $1.26m, adjusted for inflation, and Big Bang Theory's ratings have grown to the point where they're roughly on par with where Friends was. |
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sbrook Mod join:2001-12-14 Ottawa |
I know it's nothing "new" ... look at what we're paying pro-athletes. It's just another example of the absurdity of what we are willing to pay for. Not that I don't enjoy BBT!
That said, we can't complain about our rates going up if we're facilitating studios paying more and more and more for just entertainment. |
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booj join:2011-02-07 Richmond, ON |
booj
Member
2014-Aug-5 1:30 pm
Who still pays for tv? Rather quaint. |
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vincom join:2009-03-06 Bolton, ON |
to sbrook
thats not the reason for rates going up lol, as posted previously actors of previous shows were getting paid even more, blame the carriers for uping rates, shows make most of their money on commercials and reruns |
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sbrook Mod join:2001-12-14 Ottawa |
vincom ... and who pays in the end? |
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CFoo join:2008-03-19 Nepean, ON |
to sbrook
"estimated $1 billion in profits for Warner Bros.over the next three years"
Wow, no wonder they wanted a raise. |
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Exidor Premium Member join:2001-05-04 |
to sbrook
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elwoodbluesElwood Blues Premium Member join:2006-08-30 Somewhere in |
to CFoo
CBS made a mistake in renewing the show for 3yrs BEFORE negotiating with the actors.
At that point the sky is the limit. |
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Gone Premium Member join:2011-01-24 Fort Erie, ON |
Gone
Premium Member
2014-Aug-5 3:51 pm
Regardless of what the actors wanted they're still making a killing on that show, otherwise they wouldn't have renewed it for three years. |
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GuspazGuspaz MVM join:2001-11-05 Montreal, QC |
to sbrook
Friends was costing $7 million per episode by the end (largely due to cast salaries). They didn't make enough to cover those costs from advertising, but they were getting $4 million per episode in syndication licensing fees alone (including for older episodes which had much lower production costs), and the show improved the ratings of other shows the same night. |
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Gone Premium Member join:2011-01-24 Fort Erie, ON |
Gone
Premium Member
2014-Aug-5 5:25 pm
I imagine that Big Bang Theory is making similar money in syndication now, too. |
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to sbrook
said by sbrook:And that gets reflected in programming costs that the studios charge the stations that charge the cable / satellite /telco tv cos who charge us Not yet in Canada. It may come to that later though. |
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GuspazGuspaz MVM join:2001-11-05 Montreal, QC |
to sbrook
Which won't impact me, who switched to OTA Not that there are many English-language OTA stations in Montreal, but I get CTV/CBC/Global/City, which isn't have bad for "free". I could also get three PBS stations from Burlington with a better antenna. I still think that OTA is a colossal waste of spectrum that could be used enormously more efficiently by licensing it for mobile use with a provision that the resulting LTE networks must carry multicast h.265 streams of the stations that the network replaces with free access to the TV streams, mind you. But as long as we're wasting the spectrum on the TV stations, I'm gonna take advantage of it. |
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sbrook Mod join:2001-12-14 Ottawa |
Not a lot wrong with the use of spectrum after going to digital ... but that said, they need to cram the signals on nearby channels more effectively. |
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GuspazGuspaz MVM join:2001-11-05 Montreal, QC |
to sbrook
Well, here's the current allocation for FM and TV broadcasting (AM omitted because, come on, it's like 1MHz for the whole AM band):
TV ch. 2-4: 54MHz - 72MHz (18MHz total) FM Radio: 76MHz - 108MHz (32MHz total) TV ch. 7-13: 174MHz - 216MHz (42MHz total) TV ch. 14-36: 470MHz - 608MHz (138MHz) TV ch. 38-51: 614MHz - 698MHz (84MHz)
This ignores the stuff in the 700MHz band that is about to be discontinued. For example, CityTV is currently broadcasting on channel 62, which was auctioned off to the cellular companies recently.
Total allocation for FM/TV: 314MHz
Now, there seem to be about ~10-11 digital channels in Montreal, and let's realize that even with a fully populated FM band of 100 radio stations, you could fit that digitally into less than 1MHz of spectrum with modern audio compression at better-than-FM quality...
How much bandwidth would you need to broadcast those TV stations using more efficient transmissions? Well, they're all MPEG-2, so super wasteful, so for the equivalent perceptual quality, about 6 Mbps per HD channel... Meaning we need (let's say) 70 Mbps to handle all of Montreal's OTA needs for TV. For LTE, you could fit that, and the entire maximally consumed AM/FM radio stations, in under 10MHz.
As a result, we get:
Required spectrum over LTE to replace OTA TV/Radio broadcasts: 10MHz Actual spectrum allocated to OTA TV/Radio broadcasts: 314MHz
So... why not free up 300MHz for mobile broadband use? That represents more than four gigabits per second of LTE! |
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Gone Premium Member join:2011-01-24 Fort Erie, ON |
Gone
Premium Member
2014-Aug-5 9:52 pm
No television station in Canada broadcasts on any channel above 51. You're confusing the PSIP virtual channel with the actual channel that City Montreal broadcasts on, which is 49.
Beyond that, I take it you've never heard of white spaces. |
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GuspazGuspaz MVM join:2001-11-05 Montreal, QC |
Guspaz
MVM
2014-Aug-5 10:33 pm
Whitespace data use does not exist in Canada, as Industry Canada hasn't done anything about it since they held some consultations three years ago. In the US, the spectrum will be unlicensed, but subject to restrictions that prevent it from being used for wifi. This means that it won't be useful for delivering broadband or mobile services, and it won't be usable for home use without special whitespace-specific hardware (or some new wireless standard that gets integrated into wireless routers).
In other words, whitespace won't get us anything any time soon. It also does nothing to address the extreme wastefulness of the spectrum that *is* being actively used for TV transmissions. |
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Gone Premium Member join:2011-01-24 Fort Erie, ON 2 edits |
Gone
Premium Member
2014-Aug-5 10:41 pm
Irrelevant. The only thing preventing whitespace from being used in the way you described is regulation, not technology. Just like how the 600MHz band is used for television now, but will be auctioned off in the not too distant future. It's all about the regulations and how they are put to use.
And seriously, are you going to tell us that whitespaces won't get us "anything any time soon" when you are proposing that we throw away our entire standards-based broadcast television system and replace it with something using LTE that no television anywhere in the world has integrated as part of its basic electronics? You think something as radical as this can happen even sooner?
Furthermore, if you want to do something completely different from the ground up like you're proposing now, why would you base it all off LTE when you can design a custom protocol optimized strictly for television usage that can be even more bandwidth efficient than even LTE?
Hell, why not *start* with what we already have now? ATSC already supports H.264 with the option to add additional protocols like H.265 later. There's nothing preventing more than one broadcast station from being placed into a single VHF or UHF television channel. The Americans are already starting to do this. It is only the Canadians that are not because... you guessed it! Regulation!
Really dude, you need to think this through. |
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to Guspaz
said by Guspaz:In other words, whitespace won't get us anything any time soon. It also does nothing to address the extreme wastefulness of the spectrum that *is* being actively used for TV transmissions. Maybe it's a bit of a waste in Montreal which does not have so many OTA stations but in other areas such as Toronto, the current channel 7 to 51 band is actually very crowded and essentially fully used for high power broadcasting, same with the FM band. Even with 314MHz of spectrum, there's still some interference issues in the GTA such as CHOQ and CFLZ interfering with each other on 105.1FM and CHCH on channel 15 interfering with WUTV on channel 14 in the Hamilton area. As noted above, not every single RF channel should be used in any location in order to avoid co-channel or adjacent channel interference issues. |
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DrSat |
to Gone
said by Gone:Hell, why not *start* with what we already have now? ATSC already supports H.264 with the option to add additional protocols like H.265 later. Only issue with this is that almost none of the current TV's or ATSC set top boxes support H.265 so they would all have to be replaced. It was hard enough getting people to upgrade from analog to digital tuners so I don't think we will see a push to H.265 anytime soon, at least not until 4K broadcasting becomes more mainstream. My guess is that H.265 will be used to support the additional bandwidth required for 4K so we won't necessarily get additional channel capacity. |
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GuspazGuspaz MVM join:2001-11-05 Montreal, QC |
to sbrook
ATSC isn't nearly as efficient in terms of bits-per-hertz as LTE. LTE has the advantage of, if used for television broadcasts, using the existing physical infrastructure for mobile coverage. Don't you think that, if Rogers or Bell was given access to prime spectrum in the sub-100MHz, 100-200MHz, and 400-600MHz bands, that they'd be willing to set aside the infrastructure to dedicate 10MHz of LTE for broadcast use? It'd be a relatively small cost to modify existing infrastructure for that, and in exchange they get this super awesome (in terms of penetration) very-low frequency spectrum?
Yes, televisions don't natively support it... but then, they don't support h.265 either, and many don't support h.264 for ATSC (I don't know of any ATSC broadcasts that actually use h.264). So if you're going to need new hardware for ATSC upgrades anyhow, you might as well take advantage of the physical infrastructure of the cell networks.
Also, think about how much better coverage LTE gives you in urban areas when compared to ATSC. I can randomly pick up Canal Savoir if I hold my antenna at just the right angle, and stand in just the right place in my living room... But I can get a 3G or 4G signal anywhere in my apartment, at any angle, because it's a distributed network versus the "single big antenna" approach. |
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sbrook Mod join:2001-12-14 Ottawa |
sbrook
Mod
2014-Aug-6 12:18 pm
Very low frequency spectrum???? that's below 50 kHz more or less!
The VHF frequencies sub 200 MHz would be filled SO quickly with so little. This is why it's used for point to point and broadcast services. You've got Emergency services and Aircraft services too. |
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GuspazGuspaz MVM join:2001-11-05 Montreal, QC |
to sbrook
There are 76MHz worth of spectrum below 200MHz that are currently allocated for FM radio and television. That's a little over a gigabit worth of LTE, I believe.
In my fantasy land, the cell networks as well as the spectrum is managed by Industry Canada, and providers would buy non-exclusive wholesale data capacity on it. But that's a fantasy that would never work (even if the government tried to do it, it'd fail). But imagine if it DID work :P |
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sbrook Mod join:2001-12-14 Ottawa |
sbrook
Mod
2014-Aug-6 12:30 pm
Canada's broadcasters have been very reluctant to adopt digital TV and radio ... And the CRTC have been reluctant to force them because of the threats to centralize all programming if stations are forced to digital. I can't remember when the latest "enforced change date" was ... but it seems to keep getting pushed back. And then the CRTC doesn't seem to have the guts to do channel allocation changes again because the broadcasters say things like "we'll need to increase power" or "we won't get the coverage area on other channels" etc.
The broadcasters don't want to spend the $ to go digital and the CRTC hasn't the will to test their resolve for fear that if they push, they'll fulfil the next promise of shutting coverage in selected geographies. |
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elwoodbluesElwood Blues Premium Member join:2006-08-30 Somewhere in |
to Guspaz
You pick up Burlington VT from downtown Mtl? That's pretty damn good. |
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GuspazGuspaz MVM join:2001-11-05 Montreal, QC |
to sbrook
I bought a cheap little $10 flat antenna. When I held it up around 6-6.5 feet off the ground in the right spot in the middle of my living room and had the ATSC tuner do a scan, I was able to pick up three Burlington, VT stations (with strong enough signals to be good quality). All three were PBS. If memory serves, two were HD, one was SD, and all three were showing different content.
I suspect that if I replaced the cheap little antenna with something like a CableCutter, I could probably get the PBS stations without special placement. I'm not sure I'll bother though, because I get good signals on Montreal's four English-language stations with the cheap little antenna. I get a 100% signal on three of the stations, and CityMontreal gets 70s-80s, which is good enough that there is only the occasional bit of error glitching (not often enough to be annoying). |
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Teddy Boomk kudos Received Premium Member join:2007-01-29 Toronto, ON |
to Guspaz
said by Guspaz:Don't you think that, if Rogers or Bell was given access to prime spectrum in the sub-100MHz, 100-200MHz, and 400-600MHz bands, that they'd be willing to set aside the infrastructure to dedicate 10MHz of LTE for broadcast use? Ya... No! Just think TPIA service levels ÷ 1,000. OTA broadcast is literally eating Rogers lunch, they are guaranteed to sabotage it if you give them the chance. Of course I don't disagree in principal, but you'd really need a public utility model to make this at all feasible. Of course data services should be a public utility! If a political party wanted to run on the platform of expropriating the wireless networks, for the creation of some kind of PPP--public utility, with private consumer facing services--I'd vote for them. Kind of fantasy land though.. |
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capitalismm to sbrook
Anon
2014-Aug-6 3:30 pm
to sbrook
said by sbrook:»www.cbc.ca/news/arts/jim ··· .2727640
One Million per episode ... that's typically 13 episodes per season ... 2 per year ... total 26 MILLION dollars. That's less than the average person earns in a 40 year career! And that gets reflected in programming costs that the studios charge the stations that charge the cable / satellite /telco tv cos who charge us. And they'll try to get it from every source they can ... TV, Internet, phone.
I N S A N E! C A P I T A L I S M the show is hilarious and they deserve every cent. comparing what they do to the average citizizen is ridiculous. with that same logic an IT person should receive the same compensation as janitor because if a janitor can support a family with his income then others should. complain when they start receiving government assistance. |
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