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2017 Arrives With a Flood Of Carriage Feuds, TV Blackouts

Last year consumers made it clear that the endless bickering between cable providers and broadcasters was driving many of them to cut the cord. The feuds over programming contracts, which have risen to an all time high, usually involve both sides engaging in ugly public feuds, blacked out content, and annoying commercial and on-screen ticker attempts to get consumers annoyed at the other side.

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But the end result is always the same for consumers: after blackouts (with no refunds) and months of annoyances, the two sides strike confidential deals, and consumers then wind up paying an arm and a leg in higher cable rates. Rinse, wash, repeat.

So far, 2017 isn't going much better than 2016 did. At the moment:

• NBC is threatening to pull its content offline if it can't strike a new deal with Charter Spectrum.

• KXLY Channel 4 ABC affiliate Morgan Murphy Media this week blacked out its station from Suddenlink customers in Idaho, after demanding a 75% rate hike.

• Bonneville International has blacked out Dish customer access to a local NBC affiliate in large parts of Idaho.

• Cable ONE customers have lost access to Northwest Broadcasting channels across a huge swath of its terrories after disputes.

• Frontier customers are losing access to Sinclair Broadcast Stations, which is rumored to be looking for a 200% rate increase.

• DirecTV users temporarily lost access to 33 Hearst Stations during yet another feud.

The American Television Alliance, a coalition of mostly cable providers, says 2017 is already setting records for these kinds of blackouts, placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of greedy broadcasters.

"Broadcasters ambushed innocent consumers on New Year’s Day with a tidal wave of television blackouts," said the group. "Broadcast tycoons have brazenly and deliberately hijacked pay TV viewers once again, holding college football bowl games, the last weekend of the NFL’s regular season and network premiers for ransom in a naked ploy to extract more money from consumers."

Except cable providers aren't faultless. They too seek to raise rates wherever and whenever possible, from the fees charged to rent cable hardware, to repair, installation, and even costs affixed to paying your bill. They're also relentlessly pursuing cable broadband rate hikes, usage caps and overage fees to ensure their margins remain fat overall as television revenues tighten.

All told it's part of an immense cross-industry tone deafness when it comes to the interests of their own customers, who have made it repeatedly clear (through record 2016 cord cutting) they're looking for lower prices and more flexible programming options. As cord cutting continues to accelerate, nobody in this industry should bee foolish enough to wonder why.

Most recommended from 44 comments



telcodad
MVM
join:2011-09-16
Lincroft, NJ

29 recommendations

telcodad

MVM

Bring back "must carry" for OTA stations

For OTA broadcast TV stations, go back to only having the "must carry" rule.

Those stations gain by having many more viewers (and more eyes on their commercials) that way.

And no more of this "Broadcast TV" fee crap!

Economist
The economy, stupid
Premium Member
join:2015-07-10
united state

14 recommendations

Economist

Premium Member

Should be no retrans fee for OTA

So long as the feed is not molested.

karlmarx
join:2006-09-18
Moscow, ID

10 recommendations

karlmarx

Member

The correct solution is to let the channels drop

Broadcast stations make their money from advertising. Period. The fact that they GET the spectrum to broadcast as part of a monopoly deal means they are the only station that can 'broacast' on that channel.
Cable companies, satellite companies, fiber companies, basically all of them should completely refuse to carry those channels for ANY fee. Period. The long term winners are going to be the customers.
Remember, the rates the TV channel can charge is 100% related to the number of 'eyeballs' that watch. If a TV station in NYC gets 2 million 'eyeballs', they price their advertising appropriately. However, if the TV station in Boise, ID only gets 20,000 'eyeballs' from broadcast, but 200K eyeballs from cable. it's in the best interest of the Boise, ID station to have their channel on cable.
The problem is, Boise, ID wants to have their cake (eyeballs), and eat it too (broadcast fee). Let them be dropped from cable. Their lifespan with 20,000 eyeballs it not going to generate them enough revenue to continue. Cable companies should REFUSE to 'pay' to carry a company that makes it's money from the number of people it serves. Who cares, let the satellite company carry the NYC broadcast station for FREE, and let the Boise, ID station die from lack of funding.
American does not run on 'dunkins', it runs on greed. The only way to defeat 'greed' is to cut off their funding.

maartena
Elmo
Premium Member
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA

10 recommendations

maartena

Premium Member

And at the end of the day.....

.... the customer is the one who will have to pay for all of this. The 2017 price increases have been set in stone by most providers and announced in late last year or coming soon.... The article above features the first list of reasons why in late 2017 they will announce the next price increase for 2018. But don't worry, there will be many more programming contracts negotiated silently, and probably still quite a few public feuds about them as well in the coming 12 months.

But when it comes time to figure out the money, the "trickle down" economy doesn't mean that wealth flows from the top to the middle class..... no, it means that payments will "trickle up" from the customers who will need to bend over once more, to the cable providers, and eventually to the channel owners and then the programming owners who are investing it all nicely into a brand new yacht.

Cable TV customers are getting screwed many times over. And most people are too addicted to their sports and other channels to even notice or care..... because as soon as the dust has settled, their favorite channels are no longer dark, they happily fork over the next 5% increase on the bill, as long as they can keep watching.

Darknessfall
Premium Member
join:2012-08-17
Motorola MG8725
Asus RT-N66

4 recommendations

Darknessfall

Premium Member

Increases of More Than 200%

I thought it was kind of neat how Frontier actually told us how much the increases they were being asked for were, with their recent negotiations.

With the Sinclair negotiations, Frontier last said that they've asked for a "rate increase of more than 200%", which I feel is kind of crazy. I wonder why these companies ask for so much.

I am curious how much that 200% increase would actually be, in terms of actual cost. Anyone have any idea of the estimated $ value per subscriber?

Anon358af
@2601:8b.x

3 recommendations

Anon358af

Anon

Sinclair and Hearst are the OTA equivalent of Disney

Sinclair and Hearst are the OTA equivalent of Disney. These 2 companies create 90% of these carriage disputes with cable and satellite providers. Both companies use their OTA monopolies to demand the ridiculous carriage prices.
JChris
join:2015-11-19
Raleigh, NC

3 recommendations

JChris

Member

Exactly who is threatening Charter?

The most obvious thing to say about this is that NBC is owned by Comcast. So really, it's Comcast that is threatening to pull its channels off Charter unless they cough up more money.