Comments on: Retransmission Consent as Awards Show

By: Jeremiah Tittle

Jeremiah Tittle — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:02:26 +0000

You tell it like it is, John.

Particularly of note to sports programming is Sports Fans Coalition’s filing before the FCC yesterday seeking the FCC to rule that programming may not be withheld in these very public retrans consent negotiations.

Here’s the link:

http://www.sportsfanscoalition.org/2010/06/media-advisory-sports-fans-coalition-files-petition-at-fcc/

Keep up the great work!

By: John McMurria

John McMurria — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:33:45 +0000

Sheila, you’re right that there has been much debate in recent years about a la carte. Despite the highly bipartisan climate in Washington these days, support for a la carte has come from Democrats and Republicans in recent congressional hearings. However organizations representing what has been called the rainbow coalition are against a la carte. They fear that networks that target underrepresented groups would be hurt by a la carte pricing and benefit the networks that get larger ratings. We might also be concerned about losing a space where diverse voices can speak to broader audiences. This is typically the purview of a vibrant public broadcaster, but since we don’t have that, we might be reluctant to support further balkinization in viewing. I elaborated a bit more on this in an issue of flow: http://flowtv.org/?p=219. Perhaps there are other ways in new media environments to facilitate more cross cultural encounters.

By: Christine Becker

Christine Becker — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:41:16 +0000

All Things Digital has a great list of cable channel carriage prices: http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100308/hate-paying-for-cable-heres-the-reason-why/

By: Sheila Seles

Sheila Seles — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 17:10:40 +0000

John, I really enjoyed this post. The battle over retrans has been heating up in the past year or so and it looks like it will remain contentious. I think this has a lot to do with anxiety in the television industry over changing business models–the networks are trying to find money anywhere they can get it. You also make a great point that the consolidation of media ownership has allowed broadcasters to leverage their various holdings to get higher carriage fees from MVPDs.

There’s some buzz about allowing cable subscribers to assemble their channel lineup a la carte. It’s only a matter of time until the distribution technologies can handle that kind of customization, but consumers may face higher cable fees if they don’t benefit from bundling deals negotiated by MVPDS. This fall, Apple seemed to be putting together a plan where users would be able to subscribe to individual programs or a “best of TV” package for $30/month. Would individualized channel lineups be a good way to make sure consumers got access to the programming they demanded? Could broadcasting still serve the public good if we were to adopt individualized cable subs?

To Jon’s question–I haven’t found any places where those kinds of negotiations are available. I’ve only found them leaked out piecemeal in the press. There is a new SNL Kagan report out about the biggest overlaps in cable and broadcast ownership by MSO. It basically predicts where the next retrans battles will play out: http://www.snl.com/InteractiveX/article.aspx?CDID=A-10776008-12593

By: Jonathan Gray

Jonathan Gray — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:48:53 +0000

Excellent post, John. As you note, the position of the audience/consumer/citizen in all this should be key, even though at present we’re reduced to simply waiting to see what happens and to choose whether to watch what they give us or not.

I love your idea of an awards show, albeit it tongue-in-cheek, since ideally it would serve an informational purpose. Just as most of the country hadn’t heard of The Hurt Locker till it got all the Oscar buzz, most of us have no sense of how our cable dollars are being parsed out. Indeed, do you know of a site or organization that tracks exactly how much each channel is charging, what’s must-carry, etc.? Seeing such a list would seem to be Step One in determining what battles could be fought.