Time Warner Cable Pretends They Care About Soaring TV Prices Continues to Play Poor Victim in Retrans TV Cash Grab Even the cable industry's biggest supporters on Wall Street concede that endless cable TV rate hikes simply aren't sustainable. We've noted repeatedly that while the folks at cable companies like to talk a lot about trying to lower the cost of TV services to protect their lower-income subscriber base, their actions usually indicate the exact opposite. While cable operators like to place all the blame on broadcasters, the reality is that both sides of the ecosystem just love themselves some bi-annual rate hikes, whether it's for sports programming, DVR rental -- or to give your money to a live human being. Time Warner Cable is usually the worst offender when it comes to talking out of both sides of their mouths when it comes to pricing, repeatedly insisting they really care about pricing issues, then phoning in efforts to really compete on value or price. This week Time Warner Cable was back at it again, warning programmers about demanding exorbitant new price hikes for retransmission fees: Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC) issued a stern warning to television programmers, arguing against "huge price increases," as a handful of new disputes over programming costs have forced new rounds of blackouts for many channels on Time Warner Cable and others. "Consumers are tired of these disputes and so are we--television networks can't continue to demand huge price increases and expect us to silently pass those cost increases on to our customers," the cable-TV provider said. As a consumer you are, of course, supposed to ignore that Time Warner Cable will happily raise your bill -- whether programming costs increase or not. As a consumer, you get to enjoy rate hikes driven by programming one month, followed by a rate hike just for the hell of it (new fees, DVR rental cost increases, new fees to pay your bill in person) the next. The pretense that any of the companies in this food chain care about lower consumer costs is an idea Time Warner Cable keeps pushing, but it never gets any more believable.
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  LinklistPremium
join:2002-03-03
Longport, NJ
kudos:5
1 edit |  And when were programming costs NOT going up?
whether programming costs increase or not.
It is a strawman argument that cable companies raised prices when programming costs haven't gone up. Programming costs have been going up since 1996 when the FCC forced must carry or negotiate on price contract rules(aka re-transmission agreements).
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»www.mittromney.com/s/repeal-and-···bamacare
»www.mittromney.com/issues/health-care | |
|  |  odogCable Centric Vendor BiasedPremium,VIP
join:2001-08-05
Atlanta, GA
kudos:9 | Re: And when were programming costs NOT going up? Well Aereo might shake this up a bit. I think at some point the whole retrans/must carry rules will have to be overhauled. | |
| | | | | | Re: And when were programming costs NOT going up? It is a strawman argument that cable companies raised prices when programming costs haven't gone up.
In this case, it is true that cable operators have raised rates for every and all service, whether tied to programming costs or not. When a DVR rental fee jumps six bucks months after a rate hike tied to programming costs for example. Or say when a cable company charges you six bucks just to pay your bill over the phone with a live human, eight months after they already socked you with a hike that was actually tied to programming.
Do you come here just to play the corporatist contrarian? | |
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| | I don't care! All I care about is getting my upstream channel bonding! Dag nabbit! Where is it? | |
|  pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD |  Shrug...
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| |  banditws6Shrinking Time and DistancePremium
join:2001-08-18
Frisco, TX | Re: Shrug... And done! Don't miss it either. | |
| | | | You can't cancel it if you never ordered it to begin with 
/M | |
| | | | | Re: Shrug... I stopped playing that game 2 years ago. | |
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Rekrul
join:2007-04-21
Milford, CT | ... Get rid of the exclusive franchise laws, allowing real competition and watch prices nose-dive. | |
| | pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD | Re: ... said by Rekrul:Get rid of the exclusive franchise laws, allowing real competition and watch prices nose-dive. Doubtful. We've seen more competition in video services with the emergence of TV services provided by Verizon and AT&T, as well as the emergence of satellite-provided TV (Dish and DirecTV).
The problem is that each content company has an effective "monopoly" over its own content. Even if you had 100 cable TV companies, they would still have to pay the price dictated by the content provider.
Only consumers' putting their feet down and starving the beast will have any impact.
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Romney 2012 - Put an adult in charge. | |
| | | | | Re: ... Unfortunately I'm in a spot where there is only one TV provider (excluding sat services), Time Warner, but, in my same city, south of me, there are three different providers, and Time Warner services are significantly cheaper, about half for TV services, and about 20 to 30% cheaper for faster internet, this is all literally a few blocks from me, with the exact same packages, channel listings, it is the same Time Warner. The two competitors also seem to have better channel selection for what otherwise appears to be competing levels of service.
Competition DOES work.
I've seriously considered moving just because of this, but there's always hope that at least one of these two companies will eventually build out to me.
When the 2nd cable company came along, TW immediately sent a letter to only people in the competitive area announcing cheaper rates. I got a copy of the letter and called them, they wouldn't even talk to me because I wasn't in a competitive area. | |
| | | | pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD | Re: ... said by ShowMeISP:Competition DOES work.
...
When the 2nd cable company came along, TW immediately sent a letter to only people in the competitive area announcing cheaper rates. I got a copy of the letter and called them, they wouldn't even talk to me because I wasn't in a competitive area. I'm certainly not suggesting that competition in general doesn't work. However, ponder this, even with multiple TV providers, how do your rates compare with what they were 10 years ago, adjusting for inflation?
IMO, Cable TV rates are simply becoming more reflective of what it really is, a luxury product.
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Romney 2012 - Put an adult in charge. | |
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| | Cut the cord people The only way these guys are going to listen is if people start cutting the cord en masse. That and the ridiculously low caps need to be done away with on wired lines so that competing services have a chance to grow. | |
| |  Rojo_P
join:2001-10-03
Lancaster, OH
 ·Earthlink Cable ..
·RoadRunner Cable
| Both sides of the mouth Rekrul makes a good point, but who is going to get rid of franchise laws when local governments are generally getting a percentage of cable tv income, so these franchise laws and also higher cable fees mean more money for them.
pnh102 makes a good point, but in the present economic climate consumers are spending their entertainment dollars for a cheaper "in home" solution, and are reluctant to cut back on entertainment any further (each party recognizes the fact and wants to take advantage).
More to Karl's point about Time Warner, why is it when things get ugly and independent arbitration is suggested, history has shown that the bottleneck has been that TW doesn't want any arbitrator to have access to records of their contract negotiations.
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There's nothing big I want to prove,
No mountains that I need to move,
Or even claim what's right or true for you.
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|  IowaCowboyWant to go back to IowaPremium
join:2010-10-16
Springfield, MA
·Comcast
 ·Verizon Broadban..
| Some of Grandma's channels are blacked out TWC in Maine is currently in a carriage dispute with Hearst TV, which owns a handful of stations in the Northeast. I was troubleshooting one of Grandma's TVs and I noticed a few stations that were blacked out.
On the other hand, Comcast seems to just give into price hikes as we never have blackouts in Western Mass. No wonder my cable bill is rising like hot air. I do try to keep the cost down by having my own TiVo boxes and my own modem. I have had the TiVo boxes since 2010 and they've nearly paid for themselves as I have lifetime subs on them. | |
| | Reviews:
·Time Warner Cable
| Re: Some of Grandma's channels are blacked out said by IowaCowboy:TWC in Maine is currently in a carriage dispute with Hearst TV, which owns a handful of stations in the Northeast. I was troubleshooting one of Grandma's TVs and I noticed a few stations that were blacked out.
On the other hand, Comcast seems to just give into price hikes as we never have blackouts in Western Mass. No wonder my cable bill is rising like hot air. I do try to keep the cost down by having my own TiVo boxes and my own modem. I have had the TiVo boxes since 2010 and they've nearly paid for themselves as I have lifetime subs on them.
this dispute was resolved thursday night. The channels are back. | |
|
 voipguy
join:2006-05-31
Forest Hills, NY | Out of Market Signals I read that TWC actually imported some out-of-market network affiliates to areas that were blacked out. (I would send a link, but the story moved behind a pay-wall)
That, to me, indicates that they are willing to play "hardball" more than we have seen in the past. I also read that they just settled with Hearst TV. | |
| Reviews:
·Time Warner Cable
 ·Verizon FiOS
 ·voip.ms
| The problem All TV providers have a problem because TV is an "anchor" product in which they make the least margin. HSI is like hitting gold, maybe $4/month. VOIP is next, I read it costs them about $8 inc taxes. OK there is $12 in cost. The rest is opex which includes PPE, maint, and cost to broadcasters -- the biggest nut.
So phone and HSI costs go down, TV costs go up 2% and they jack your rate 4-7% (hey times are tough). Record profits, record revenue. They are suffering dearly 
People say enough is enough, and they cut phone (remember juicy margins). So now their bottom line suffers, and they have to implement caps to make up for the margin cost lost to the person pinching pennies. And they don't want to lose their anchor product, because now revenue will go down (but profits up). It's a tricky balancing act.
Now that the juicy suburbs are pretty much covered, the only way to keep growing bigger is to find new revenue sources. And since TV hasn't changed in 40 years, that means simply raising your rates--a la Bell. | |
| Reviews:
·MetConnect
| There's always the buddy system split that bill in half or more! Most people never need the whole pipe to themselves for HSI. Whether in an apartment or house, ethernet can go 330ft on a single run, that's over a football feild! Run one to each of your neigbor and buddy up! If you need to go furthur you can use a vdsl to Ethernet converter, sometimes called a long haul modem. You won't be at full 100mbps speed but you can go 5k ft! On just one pair. Now I know the TOS doesn't allow for this so you can't make a public biz out of it but between family/friends/neigbors I see little trouble.
Ethernet is fun and easy to work with. If you need to go over 330ft just add a inexpensive 5 port switch inline, you can now go another 330ft! Remeber 330ft is spec, you can push your luck and go furthur on one run too. Routers that support dd-wrt firmware can do some amazing things, one is creating a separate IP address pool for one port, this is called a VLAN. Example, your network is on ports 1and2, neigbor A is on VLAN1 on port 3 and the other neighbor is on vlan2 on port4. You get 192.168.0.1-192.168.0.254 Neighbor 2 gets his own pool 192.168.1.1-192.168.1.254 Neigbor2 gets 192.168.2.1-192.168.2.254 you all get the protection of the firewall in the router, but your each isolated from each others printer and file sharing. Now if you don't want that isolation then simply don't use vlans.
So the next question can neighbor 1 and 2 each use their own router at the end of their Ethernet? Yes they can! Actually your providing the dhcp so all they really need is a switch so they can plug in as many devices as they like. 5,8,16 ports switches are very cheap now days. Any house run out of ports? Easy, add a switch! They work like power strips. Everyone can have their own wirless routers too if they wish.
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