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Steep cable price hikes could soon make cord-cutting a reality

if by bloat you mean people who don't watch sports are annoyed that they have to pay for sports, then sure. but people, surprisingly, do watch all those bullshit channels
 
That "bloat" is because of consumer demand, actually. I mentioned this earlier: The diffusion of media in the information age. It has happened in literally every aspect of media: news, books, music, TV, film, etc. People want variety. They want more channels. They might not want every channel, but they want channels to be more particularly suited to their wants and needs. But the 7% of the channels they do want don't get produced without the money spent from the bundle on 100% of the channels. It's very, very basic business that you can't meme away with Death Star pics.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
A huge chunk of that content has no market demand, it only exists in the vacuum of cable television where there is no competition. Why do you believe that technical innovation will allow that bloat to remain in existence? Your entire point in all this is grounded in the lack of competition, but you're only supporting evidence as to why that lack of competition will continue is government lobbyists.
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This makes no sense. Now I do think channels could be consolidated and we don't need multiple channels that primarily show reruns and old movies, but there is definitely a market for them.
 
I find there aren't enough channels that show reruns and old movies for free.
 
bigdoublezero said:
That "bloat" is because of consumer demand, actually. I mentioned this earlier: The diffusion of media in the information age. It has happened in literally every aspect of media: news, books, music, TV, film, etc. People want variety. They want more channels. They might not want every channel, but they want channels to be more particularly suited to their wants and needs. But the 7% of the channels they do want don't get produced without the money spent from the bundle on 100% of the channels. It's very, very basic business that you can't meme away with Death Star pics.
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what people will watch and what people are willing to pay for are two separate things. Those niche, "bloat" channels could not sustain themselves in an ala carte model.
 
One man's bloat is another man's SEC Network.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
you talk about bundling so fondly that i'd almost believe your were a cable executive or something. The whole movement to cut the cord is in recognition that the cost of cable has become unruly due to that bloat of unwanted programming and channels. People increasingly don't want all of that content, and your belief that they're stuck with it in perpetuity is foolish IMO.
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I don't have any attachment to the cable industry. In fact in recent years, I've cut back on my cable service to a basic package (only because it's cheaper to have that and Internet via Comcast than purely just internet). I also stream all sorts of crap illegally and just bought a Chromecast.

That said, I'm also not a fucking idiot and understand how the world works.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
what people will watch and what people are willing to pay for are two separate things. Those niche, "bloat" channels could not sustain themselves in an ala carte model.
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but the point is without those channels and additional revenue streams to subsidize them, your premium channels (at least premium to you) will cost much more.
 
i dislike reality tv because it's lacking in reality.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
what people will watch and what people are willing to pay for are two separate things. Those niche, "bloat" channels could not sustain themselves in an ala carte model.
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Neither could 99.9999999% of the products on Amazon.com, but bundle them together and you have the most efficient product delivery business in history. Neither is 99.999999% of the news content online. But bundle them together and you get major news outlets.

I'm not just making this shit up. This is real-life stuff.
 
bigdoublezero said:
I don't have any attachment to the cable industry. In fact in recent years, I've cut back on my cable service to a basic package (only because it's cheaper to have that and Internet via Comcast than purely just internet). I also stream all sorts of crap illegally and just bought a Chromecast.

That said, I'm also not a fucking idiot and understand how the world works.
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well understand that cable tv subscriptions #s have been trending downwards for 15 years, and are currently lower than they've been in 20 years. Don't know how much simpler that concept could be.
 
That's one small data point in this discussion, and I've already discussed how it's largely irrelevant.


Attendance at professional sports games is down = THE BUSINESS OF SPORTS IS DYING

no.
 
bigdoublezero said:
Neither could 99.9999999% of the products on Amazon.com, but bundle them together and you have the most efficient product delivery business in history. Neither is 99.999999% of the news content online. But bundle them together and you get major news outlets.

I'm not just making this shit up. This is real-life stuff.
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great example, Amazon is about as great an example of ala carte programming as you could have found. You know how it's a store, where you only have to buy what you want, instead of paying one flat fee for everything in the store? Real life stuff.
 
bigdoublezero said:
That's one small data point in this discussion, and I've already discussed how it's largely irrelevant.


Attendance at professional sports games is down = THE BUSINESS OF SPORTS IS DYING

no.
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Yeah, that's definitely an apples to apples comparison: As baseball attendance goes, so does home entertainment technology.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
great example, Amazon is about as great an example of ala carte programming as you could have found. You know how it's a store, where you only have to buy what you want, instead of paying one flat fee for everything in the store? Real life stuff.
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Also that neon orange codpiece you just bought on Amazon couldn't be available a la carte. It's only viable online on Amazon, bundled with millions of other products. That's the analogy. The bloat of the neon codpiece is unsustainable on its own. You'd have to go down to the sex shop by the truckstop to buy it like you used to.

Anyhow, if you can't understand how media, telecoms, and the Internet work by now, you're probably incapable of understanding it. So enjoy the streaming for cheap on your phone, but I'd budget for more money toward video content, if that matters to you, in the future, because things that don't suck will always cost money.
 
bigdoublezero said:
Also that neon orange codpiece you just bought on Amazon couldn't be available a la carte. It's only viable online on Amazon, bundled with millions of other products. That's the analogy. The bloat of the neon codpiece is unsustainable on its own. You'd have to go down to the sex shop by the truckstop to buy it like you used to.

Anyhow, if you can't understand how media, telecoms, and the Internet work by now, you're probably incapable of understanding it. So enjoy the streaming for cheap on your phone, but I'd budget for more money toward video content, if that matters to you, in the future, because things that don't suck will always cost money.
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Yeah, i'm definitely paying money for that everytime I visit amazon. Oh wait, no i'm not, because Amazon doesn't pay it's private sellers. Your genius comparison would only make sense if Amazon was subsidizing some poor schlub to make those unwanted cod pieces through ad revenue, despite him not selling nearly enough cod pieces to keep his fledgling cod piece business afloat. Good thing you understand how the real world works, cause you sure as fuck don't know how Amazon works.
 
You realize that analogies are comparisons between two things that are not exactly the same right?

Like "Muggsy Bogues : Manute Bol :: Meerkat : Giraffe" is looking at the height of beings. It's not calling Muggsy Bogues a meerkat.
 
bigdoublezero said:
You realize that analogies are comparisons between two things that are not exactly the same right?

Like "Muggsy Bogues : Manute Bol :: Meerkat : Giraffe" is looking at the height of beings. It's not calling Muggsy Bogues a meerkat.
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You're just comparing a store that only charges you for what you want to buy, to a vast service that charges you a flat fee for access, thereby making you pay for everything it provides whether you want them all or not.
 
his comparison was about economies of scale affecting the cost of goods/services, not the revenue model.
 
No, I'm comparing how two industries package lots of things that everyone necessarily might not want individually to bring down costs overall. Muggsy Bogues is not a meerkat, I'm sorry.
 
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