totamak
And they call me nuts?
join:2000-10-24
Los Angeles, CA
 ·DSL EXTREME
| reply to mags2
Re: No Free Lunch
With cable TV, you're paying for the 'transport' of said channels. Also the cable (and DSS) pay a nominal fee for each network carried (not all ask for the fee, some are more than willing to go on for free).
The premiums are subscriber paid, note that HBO doesn't have commercials and therefore must generate revenue by subscriptions through the cable/DSS provider.
As for online, most content online isn't worth a dime, I don't bother with streaming video from most sites I visit even when I have the bandwidth (at work I have access to DUAL T-1's!).
The real killer is the price of bandwidth itself, until it gets down to reasonable, I don't see any content oriented business able to sustain itself through subscriptions (even if advert padded) unless it's extremely desirable and almost impossible to get elsewhere. |
