(08-06-2015 11:58 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(08-06-2015 05:55 PM)krup Wrote:  The bottom dropped out of the revenue side of the recorded music business (just like it will for cable), but there is still one place in the music business where a lot of money can be made. Popular artists make huge amounts of money from concert tours, because the experience of being at a live concert cannot be replicated by technology.

Going to a concert is a social experience. I'll give you that it can be a great one at a small venue that seats < 500 people, in the same ways a stand up show at a good small comedy club like the Improv or Ice House is way better than stand up at a theater used for Broadway kind of performances. It's about the intimacy of the experience. But for the concerts that REALLY make money where they are playing football stadiums ... that's a crappy experience IMHO.

I agree with you on the appeal of small venues (as someone who saw bands like U2 and REM in small clubs in NYC in the early 80's), but the point is, if an artist has a following, they can still make money holding live shows even though technology has driven most of the money from other parts of their industry.

Creators of popular sports content will have the same power in a world where technology will destroy some of the ways the middlemen (cable, sat) are getting rich.

I put up an antenna because I got sick of rain fade when I wanted to see the local weather. NOAA radio is great, so is the new emergency alert system available on some smart phones that is geo-sensitive (I got an alert in south Arkansas while I was driving in an impacted county), but when it is tornado time, I want to look at the freaking radar on TV and have the dudes draw the boxes and arrows so I can figure out whether to hunker down or not worry about it.

(08-06-2015 05:42 PM)stever20 Wrote:  

(08-06-2015 04:08 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(08-06-2015 03:11 PM)stever20 Wrote:  It's interesting. Folks want to always talk about ESPN and everything...

Fox fell 7% yesterday and is down another 6.7% today. Gone from 34.34 per share on Tuesday down to 29.87 today. That's a big loss- down by 13% last 2 days....

Disney fell 9% yesterday, but only 1.8% today. 122.10 down to 108.55 in the last 2 days. down by 11%

So Fox has lost more here than Disney.

I think the biggest misnomer by folks that like Fox- and Big East fans(and a lot of Big Ten fans)- is that ESPN is going to collapse but Fox won't get hurt at all. That's just not the case at all.

But that's the entire, overall business. Sports is safe.

There will always be a place for someone to make some amount of profit by providing a quality telecast of a popular sporting event.

Then if that's the case, ESPN is safe. People want to act like ESPN will collapse, but FS1 will be fine. That's just absolute bunk.

So long as they continue to pay the big bucks to the leagues for the right to telecast their competitions, ESPN is safe.

If they start trying to cheap out on that, using poor excuses ... then all bets are off.

(08-06-2015 05:55 PM)krup Wrote:  I think there will still be a lot of money to be made in the viewership of sports, but it will be made by the people who create the content (conferences and schools) not the middleman provider.

The example I would use is the music business. Record companies used to pay the artists a lot of money in return for the rights to what they created for a certain number of years or albums. Then, the record companies would be able to produce and sell millions of albums and make a lot of money. However, technology like I-Tunes and services like Pandora/Spotify drove most of the money out of delivering recorded music to consumers.

The bottom dropped out of the revenue side of the recorded music business (just like it will for cable), but there is still one place in the music business where a lot of money can be made. Popular artists make huge amounts of money from concert tours, because the experience of being at a live concert cannot be replicated by technology.

For sports, the one thing that cannot be replicated by technology is watching the sporting event at the time it happens. Unlike other TV content, it cannot be shared later. The people that create popular live sports content will make money on it, regardless of whether it is delivered through bundled cable, internet streaming or something we don't even know of yet.

The current popular thinking among consumers is that they can bypass having to pay middlemen to get at the content they want.

HBO Now being the prime example currently bandied about. "Oh hey, I don't have to pay a cable bill anymore. I can just buy HBO directly and watch it over the internet."


But that just won't end up being the case. The middlemen -- ISP's -- have every right to charge you extra money in order to bring you streaming video data, as opposed to all other types of data.

The two are not the same. Streamimg video data stresses the networks harder.

(08-07-2015 09:13 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(08-06-2015 05:55 PM)krup Wrote:  I think there will still be a lot of money to be made in the viewership of sports, but it will be made by the people who create the content (conferences and schools) not the middleman provider.

The example I would use is the music business. Record companies used to pay the artists a lot of money in return for the rights to what they created for a certain number of years or albums. Then, the record companies would be able to produce and sell millions of albums and make a lot of money. However, technology like I-Tunes and services like Pandora/Spotify drove most of the money out of delivering recorded music to consumers.

The bottom dropped out of the revenue side of the recorded music business (just like it will for cable), but there is still one place in the music business where a lot of money can be made. Popular artists make huge amounts of money from concert tours, because the experience of being at a live concert cannot be replicated by technology.

For sports, the one thing that cannot be replicated by technology is watching the sporting event at the time it happens. Unlike other TV content, it cannot be shared later. The people that create popular live sports content will make money on it, regardless of whether it is delivered through bundled cable, internet streaming or something we don't even know of yet.

The current popular thinking among consumers is that they can bypass having to pay middlemen to get at the content they want.

HBO Now being the prime example currently bandied about. "Oh hey, I don't have to pay a cable bill anymore. I can just buy HBO directly and watch it over the internet."


But that just won't end up being the case. The middlemen -- ISP's -- have every right to charge you extra money in order to bring you streaming video data, as opposed to all other types of data.

The two are not the same. Streamimg video data stresses the networks harder.

I agree that people that want to watch certain products are still going to pay a lot of money for them even if the delivery method changes. Where the current middlemen get killed is that they lose the guaranteed revenue from the people that pay for a product they don't even use.

(08-07-2015 09:34 AM)krup Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 09:13 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(08-06-2015 05:55 PM)krup Wrote:  I think there will still be a lot of money to be made in the viewership of sports, but it will be made by the people who create the content (conferences and schools) not the middleman provider.

The example I would use is the music business. Record companies used to pay the artists a lot of money in return for the rights to what they created for a certain number of years or albums. Then, the record companies would be able to produce and sell millions of albums and make a lot of money. However, technology like I-Tunes and services like Pandora/Spotify drove most of the money out of delivering recorded music to consumers.

The bottom dropped out of the revenue side of the recorded music business (just like it will for cable), but there is still one place in the music business where a lot of money can be made. Popular artists make huge amounts of money from concert tours, because the experience of being at a live concert cannot be replicated by technology.

For sports, the one thing that cannot be replicated by technology is watching the sporting event at the time it happens. Unlike other TV content, it cannot be shared later. The people that create popular live sports content will make money on it, regardless of whether it is delivered through bundled cable, internet streaming or something we don't even know of yet.

The current popular thinking among consumers is that they can bypass having to pay middlemen to get at the content they want.

HBO Now being the prime example currently bandied about. "Oh hey, I don't have to pay a cable bill anymore. I can just buy HBO directly and watch it over the internet."


But that just won't end up being the case. The middlemen -- ISP's -- have every right to charge you extra money in order to bring you streaming video data, as opposed to all other types of data.

The two are not the same. Streamimg video data stresses the networks harder.

I agree that people that want to watch certain products are still going to pay a lot of money for them even if the delivery method changes. Where the current middlemen get killed is that they lose the guaranteed revenue from the people that pay for a product they don't even use.

And that's why conference networks won't be as profitable when the current cable model breaks up. They are taking advantage of a distortion in the market right now. With a head start and good penetration, the Big 10 and SEC will milk that as much as they can, but it won't last indefinitely.

(08-07-2015 09:34 AM)krup Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 09:13 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(08-06-2015 05:55 PM)krup Wrote:  I think there will still be a lot of money to be made in the viewership of sports, but it will be made by the people who create the content (conferences and schools) not the middleman provider.

The example I would use is the music business. Record companies used to pay the artists a lot of money in return for the rights to what they created for a certain number of years or albums. Then, the record companies would be able to produce and sell millions of albums and make a lot of money. However, technology like I-Tunes and services like Pandora/Spotify drove most of the money out of delivering recorded music to consumers.

The bottom dropped out of the revenue side of the recorded music business (just like it will for cable), but there is still one place in the music business where a lot of money can be made. Popular artists make huge amounts of money from concert tours, because the experience of being at a live concert cannot be replicated by technology.

For sports, the one thing that cannot be replicated by technology is watching the sporting event at the time it happens. Unlike other TV content, it cannot be shared later. The people that create popular live sports content will make money on it, regardless of whether it is delivered through bundled cable, internet streaming or something we don't even know of yet.

The current popular thinking among consumers is that they can bypass having to pay middlemen to get at the content they want.

HBO Now being the prime example currently bandied about. "Oh hey, I don't have to pay a cable bill anymore. I can just buy HBO directly and watch it over the internet."


But that just won't end up being the case. The middlemen -- ISP's -- have every right to charge you extra money in order to bring you streaming video data, as opposed to all other types of data.

The two are not the same. Streamimg video data stresses the networks harder.

I agree that people that want to watch certain products are still going to pay a lot of money for them even if the delivery method changes. Where the current middlemen get killed is that they lose the guaranteed revenue from the people that pay for a product they don't even use.

Yes they do. That's what I'm saying.

Everyone may not agree to pay for channels they don't watch, anymore. But everyone wants to stream video of some sort!

(08-07-2015 09:49 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 09:34 AM)krup Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 09:13 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(08-06-2015 05:55 PM)krup Wrote:  I think there will still be a lot of money to be made in the viewership of sports, but it will be made by the people who create the content (conferences and schools) not the middleman provider.

The example I would use is the music business. Record companies used to pay the artists a lot of money in return for the rights to what they created for a certain number of years or albums. Then, the record companies would be able to produce and sell millions of albums and make a lot of money. However, technology like I-Tunes and services like Pandora/Spotify drove most of the money out of delivering recorded music to consumers.

The bottom dropped out of the revenue side of the recorded music business (just like it will for cable), but there is still one place in the music business where a lot of money can be made. Popular artists make huge amounts of money from concert tours, because the experience of being at a live concert cannot be replicated by technology.

For sports, the one thing that cannot be replicated by technology is watching the sporting event at the time it happens. Unlike other TV content, it cannot be shared later. The people that create popular live sports content will make money on it, regardless of whether it is delivered through bundled cable, internet streaming or something we don't even know of yet.

The current popular thinking among consumers is that they can bypass having to pay middlemen to get at the content they want.

HBO Now being the prime example currently bandied about. "Oh hey, I don't have to pay a cable bill anymore. I can just buy HBO directly and watch it over the internet."


But that just won't end up being the case. The middlemen -- ISP's -- have every right to charge you extra money in order to bring you streaming video data, as opposed to all other types of data.

The two are not the same. Streamimg video data stresses the networks harder.

I agree that people that want to watch certain products are still going to pay a lot of money for them even if the delivery method changes. Where the current middlemen get killed is that they lose the guaranteed revenue from the people that pay for a product they don't even use.

And that's why conference networks won't be as profitable when the current cable model breaks up. They are taking advantage of a distortion in the market right now. With a head start and good penetration, the Big 10 and SEC will milk that as much as they can, but it won't last indefinitely.

Unless they can figure out an analog for carriage fees, in the new model of charging for streaming video data. But currently I can't think of one.

(08-07-2015 05:11 AM)PGEMF Wrote:  Yep, local news never goes overboard with wall to wall coverage of weather be it tornadoes or blizzards. These news stations never send

Tell me about it. I am pretty selfish, admittedly, but I get annoyed when they take over the TV to talk about the weather, things that are 100 miles away (but still in the coverage area), while I am trying to watch Jeopardy. Even worse, these channels all have .2 an d.3, and they could easily put a ticker on the bottom and tell people to tune in. It can't be a money thing because they never show commercials during the weather issues. If it is tornados I completely understand. That **** is serious. But when it is just heavy rain, or flash floods, use the other channels. Or put the main network broadcast on those channels, or something.

Yes I know. I am selfish.

Books, Symphony, Light Opera, Opera, Ballet, Entertaining friends, Card Clubs, Parlor Games... There is a hell of a lot of things you can do without having to worry about the idiot box. Honestly, I could care less if access to TV is so fundamentally altered that it causes swathes of people to have greatly reduced or no access. I would rather watch my kids during one of their recitals or playing sports 1000 times out of 1000 chances than to go to any pro or college sporting event or to watch the latest episode of "House" or "Glee". Having written all that, I highly doubt that we see any substantial changes in the content we will consume in the future - just the vehicle and models by which we receive the content. I ask it again, but in the end will anyone really be so fundamentally affected by whether his/her school no longer is in the top cluster of college sports, or if the sports conference that their school is a member of gets a lower deal than the other power conferences? Not hardly. You're ability to get an extra 5% raise or a 20% bonus is not dependent upon whether the Big12 gets a fat new TV contract or not...

LOL at the ridiculous chest thumping over conference memberships, and whether "my conference makes more money than your conference"... Trust me, everyone was much better off when the veneer on college sports still looked like we were watching kids compete for the glory of their school and in the spirit of amateur competition.

(08-07-2015 09:13 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(08-06-2015 05:55 PM)krup Wrote:  I think there will still be a lot of money to be made in the viewership of sports, but it will be made by the people who create the content (conferences and schools) not the middleman provider.

The example I would use is the music business. Record companies used to pay the artists a lot of money in return for the rights to what they created for a certain number of years or albums. Then, the record companies would be able to produce and sell millions of albums and make a lot of money. However, technology like I-Tunes and services like Pandora/Spotify drove most of the money out of delivering recorded music to consumers.

The bottom dropped out of the revenue side of the recorded music business (just like it will for cable), but there is still one place in the music business where a lot of money can be made. Popular artists make huge amounts of money from concert tours, because the experience of being at a live concert cannot be replicated by technology.

For sports, the one thing that cannot be replicated by technology is watching the sporting event at the time it happens. Unlike other TV content, it cannot be shared later. The people that create popular live sports content will make money on it, regardless of whether it is delivered through bundled cable, internet streaming or something we don't even know of yet.

The current popular thinking among consumers is that they can bypass having to pay middlemen to get at the content they want.

HBO Now being the prime example currently bandied about. "Oh hey, I don't have to pay a cable bill anymore. I can just buy HBO directly and watch it over the internet."


But that just won't end up being the case. The middlemen -- ISP's -- have every right to charge you extra money in order to bring you streaming video data, as opposed to all other types of data.

The two are not the same. Streamimg video data stresses the networks harder.

I agree with much of this.

The other thing is that there are still "middlemen" even beyond the ISPs. For instance, Netflix is a middleman - you're paying a flat rate for all-you-can-watch access to shows and movies that you may or may not watch. The price you're paying today incorporates the fees that Netflix is paying (or more accurately, subsidizing) for all of its shows, whether you watch them or not and whether they're in-house productions (i.e. House of Cards, Orange is the New Black) or third party IP. That's effectively the same proposition as basic cable, except that it's in a different format.

People don't truly want PPV - they generally don't want to be paying $5 for one sporting event here and another $5 for a TV show there. They're basically saying that they want the same all-you-can-eat buffet for a single price that they've been getting with basic cable that is (a) on-demand, (b) streaming and © at a lower price.

The content creators also don't necessarily want to cut out the middlemen entirely, particularly when those middlemen are able to attract a large platform of subscribers. In theory, Warner Bros. could cut out the middleman complete and stream, say, reruns of Friends directly on its own website. However, that may not really fully monetize the value of those reruns compared to selling them to a middleman that is collecting subscriber fees that is much larger and consists of a lot of people that have no interest in watching Friends. So, Warner Bros. chose to sell the streaming rights to Friends to Netflix for over $500,000 per episode (meaning for over $100 million for a show that started airing over two decades ago and still in heavy rerun rotation on cable and syndication). I have no idea whether anyone here is streaming Friends episodes on Netflix, but you're paying for them if you're a Netflix subscriber. (Hmmmm... isn't that what people complain about with basic cable? It's just that it's much more transparent how much each channel costs. If/when Netflix raises its subscription prices, will we start scrutinizing how much they're paying for individual shows the same way?)

In the sports realm, leagues will likely still sell heavily to ESPN, except that WatchESPN might become the dominant platform instead of the cable network itself. There's power in being one of the dominant aggregators, which ESPN still will be for at least the next decade with all of the sports rights that it has in place.

As I've said before, this is all "form over substance". A lot of people focus on the "form" (streaming vs. cable), but the substance (paying one price for an all-you-can eat aggregator) is still the same. The history of the Internet has already shown that competition on paper is usually short-lived and we consolidate into a relatively small handful of sites for the bulk of our time. Social networking sites have effectively consolidated into Facebook and Twitter. Sure, you'll get a lot niche upstarts to target specific groups, but no one is even trying to create a big broad-based social networking competitor like many companies were attempting 10 years ago. That broad-based market is accounted for. Broad-based streaming music has consolidated over the past few years into essentially Spotify and Pandora, so it now takes a company with the resources of Apple to even attempt to break into that market. In video, it has basically been Netflix, Amazon, YouTube and Hulu for non-sports entertainment for several years. These are all oligopolies just like the dynamics behind basic cable today... and eventually, they'll start pricing themselves like oligopolies. We're just in that transition period right now where the video streaming oligopolies are still more interested in gaining market share than earning profits, which won't last forever.

FWIW, I love Netflix. I use the service heavily. However, I'm not naive enough to think that they're going to keep their subscription prices at this low level forever. Eventually, prices will rise to cover their costs. They can't do too many Friends-type deals as a public company and not start delivering profits. Netflix had profits of about $70 million in the last quarter, which is still a rounding error compared to the Disney/ESPN cable unit even taking into account basic cable subscriber losses.

(08-07-2015 09:34 AM)krup Wrote:  I agree that people that want to watch certain products are still going to pay a lot of money for them even if the delivery method changes. Where the current middlemen get killed is that they lose the guaranteed revenue from the people that pay for a product they don't even use.

People will still be "paying for a product that they don't even use", because the economics of bundling will still offer a better deal for most programming to the individual customer for what they do want to watch than the economics of pay per view.

Even buying an individual channel is buying a bundle, of shows that you want to watch and shows that you don't, or teams that you want to see play and teams that you don't. People mostly switched from landline cable to satellite to get BTN during the big BTN cable access fights to see their team ... and it was enough in some parts of Big Ten country to get the biggest landline cable carriers to give in.

Its still bundling ... what's up in the air is how fine grained the bundle is.

There is a growing number of people for whom good internet access is necessary and subscription TV is optional. But they are not really the core of subscription TV revenue stream, because the reason they want to move to a finer-grained bundle is so that they can turn different subscription television channels on and off on a seasonal basis ... get a sports bundle for FB season, or for March Madness, get HBO when Game of Thrones is on, get HuluPlus for a while to follow the new season of their favorite season and catch up on others.

The system of offering "service bundles" of internet, basic cable and telephone is designed to both keep all of the revenue in one company, and reduce that kind of churn to just specific extra cost packages. And were it has succeeded, the basic cable channels have been largely sheltered from that churn.

But that churn for ESPN is still on the margin, since their core revenue base are those people who would not even bother with basic cable if the sports programming was not there, which is what assures them their carriage fees, and those are the people who will simply switch to an ESPN subscription and leave it on. Those are the people whose basic cable subscription revenues drives what the cable companies are willing to pay on an all-subscriber basis to have ESPN.

The revenue upside for ESPN is that there is some portion of subscription TV subscribers who get their subscriptions entirely or primarily for the sports, who might be persuaded to pay a premium price for premium services, if ESPN can work out what those services are. And since they can afford high quality, effective marketing work, the odds are that they would be able to search out those revenue opportunities if anyone can.

The changing households hurt the massive bundle. There are a lower percentage of family households. That's when you get someone who wants Lifetime, someone who wants ESPN and someone who wants Disney XD. With single households, people are less willing to pay so much for so little that they use. The value isn't there. They will find alternative methods of entertainment. The cable companies have pushed the prices up to where that is happening more and more. Its one of the problems of oligopolies.

(08-07-2015 11:03 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 09:13 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(08-06-2015 05:55 PM)krup Wrote:  I think there will still be a lot of money to be made in the viewership of sports, but it will be made by the people who create the content (conferences and schools) not the middleman provider.

The example I would use is the music business. Record companies used to pay the artists a lot of money in return for the rights to what they created for a certain number of years or albums. Then, the record companies would be able to produce and sell millions of albums and make a lot of money. However, technology like I-Tunes and services like Pandora/Spotify drove most of the money out of delivering recorded music to consumers.

The bottom dropped out of the revenue side of the recorded music business (just like it will for cable), but there is still one place in the music business where a lot of money can be made. Popular artists make huge amounts of money from concert tours, because the experience of being at a live concert cannot be replicated by technology.

For sports, the one thing that cannot be replicated by technology is watching the sporting event at the time it happens. Unlike other TV content, it cannot be shared later. The people that create popular live sports content will make money on it, regardless of whether it is delivered through bundled cable, internet streaming or something we don't even know of yet.

The current popular thinking among consumers is that they can bypass having to pay middlemen to get at the content they want.

HBO Now being the prime example currently bandied about. "Oh hey, I don't have to pay a cable bill anymore. I can just buy HBO directly and watch it over the internet."


But that just won't end up being the case. The middlemen -- ISP's -- have every right to charge you extra money in order to bring you streaming video data, as opposed to all other types of data.

The two are not the same. Streamimg video data stresses the networks harder.

I agree with much of this.

The other thing is that there are still "middlemen" even beyond the ISPs. For instance, Netflix is a middleman - you're paying a flat rate for all-you-can-watch access to shows and movies that you may or may not watch. The price you're paying today incorporates the fees that Netflix is paying (or more accurately, subsidizing) for all of its shows, whether you watch them or not and whether they're in-house productions (i.e. House of Cards, Orange is the New Black) or third party IP. That's effectively the same proposition as basic cable, except that it's in a different format.

People don't truly want PPV - they generally don't want to be paying $5 for one sporting event here and another $5 for a TV show there. They're basically saying that they want the same all-you-can-eat buffet for a single price that they've been getting with basic cable that is (a) on-demand, (b) streaming and © at a lower price.

and d) without commercials or delays due to commercials

I know this is not important to everybody but it is extremely important to a lot of people like me.

For somebody who has had TIVO for 15 years, my days are gone where I will be sitting at home forced to sit through commercials. And with the cord cut, I will be looking for content and services without ads. thats why I am willing to pay for Netflix or HBO, but won't pay for hulu plus.

(08-07-2015 11:21 AM)goofus Wrote:  and d) without commercials or delays due to commercials

I know this is not important to everybody but it is extremely important to a lot of people like me.

For somebody who has had TIVO for 15 years, my days are gone where I will be sitting at home forced to sit through commercials. And with the cord cut, I will be looking for content and services without ads. thats why I am willing to pay for Netflix or HBO, but won't pay for hulu plus.

Yes, that's true - most of us want to avoid commercials. However, it's always a balance between how much we want to pay (or not pay) for content. The main value proposition of live events (such as sports or the Oscars) is that you can't skip over commercials (and they all have breaks that you can insert commercials, anyway). When I'm watching a baseball game, it doesn't really matter much to me one way or another whether they show commercials between innings. A 3-hour baseball game is always going to be a 3-hour baseball game with or without the commercials. However, there's certainly a large difference between watching an episode of Mad Men live (1 hour) compared to on a DVR or Netflix (around 40 minutes).

(08-07-2015 11:21 AM)goofus Wrote:  and d) without commercials or delays due to commercials

I know this is not important to everybody but it is extremely important to a lot of people like me.

I pointed this out, but it is worth mentioning. If you watched NBA Summer League, you will notice the games were 40 minutes long (4 quarters), had no TV timeouts, and I think only one time out each per team per game, an 8 minute half time, and the games STILL filled the full 2 hour TV window. TV timeouts and such really only add a few minutes to games, which just have lots of starts and stops.

Go to a minor league baseball game, which has no TV timeouts, and the games are within 5-10 minutes of a major league game. Go to a High school football game, ones that use college or NFL offense (i..e not ground and pound teams), and the games are still 2 hours and 45 minutes long. TV doesn't add as much time as you think.

BTW you mentioned how you hate Hulu because it has commercials? Dude HULU adds 5 breaks of 45 seconds per hour to each show. That is an extra 3 minutes per hour. You can't be that hard up for time.

(08-07-2015 11:18 AM)bullet Wrote:  The changing households hurt the massive bundle. There are a lower percentage of family households. That's when you get someone who wants Lifetime, someone who wants ESPN and someone who wants Disney XD. With single households, people are less willing to pay so much for so little that they use. The value isn't there. They will find alternative methods of entertainment. The cable companies have pushed the prices up to where that is happening more and more. Its one of the problems of oligopolies.

Yes, this is true, as well. On the other hand, that may also be a reason why some of the "Millennials aren't watching cable!" articles are somewhat alarmist, similar to the "Millennials aren't getting married!" or "Millennials aren't buying houses!" or "Millennials aren't buying cars!" articles that we see from time to time. Paying $100 per month for cable as a single guy in an apartment is expensive. Paying $100 per month for cable in a household with 4 different people with different interests could be a very good deal compared to a la carte. Millennials are putting off a lot of lifetime actions, such as getting married or buying houses, until their mid-30s, whereas prior generations might have already done that in their 20s. Some of it might be by choice (they want to keep their "freedom" longer) and others might not be by choice (i.e. they simply can't afford a downpayment on a house). I know a lot of Millennials, and as a general rule, I don't think that they really want to rent apartments in urban areas with lots of nightlife for the rest of their lives or never get married - anyone who is betting on businesses that are based on those assumptions ought to short sell them. However, it's definitely true that they're waiting 5 to 10 years later to take those steps compared to prior generations, whether it's by their personal choice or not.

Some content Netflix has they acquire for essentially nothing and pay a set amount per viewing. And odds are you've never watched more than one or two of those movies.

Folks can proclaim the ESPN bubble bust all they want. I fully expect in roughly 10 years when the Power 5 conference rights come up again they go up by much more than the rate of inflation.

Record labels realize there are fewer move the needle stars so they pay those stars megabucks. Movie studios understand there a few move the needle actors and pay them vast sums as well.

The power leagues will draw subscribers, they will keep people happy (relative term) to pay cable, satellite, or internet aggregator a monthly fee that includes carriage fee payments to ESPN etc.

Everyone else will get paid for moving games out of traditional timeslots and traditional time slot games they get paid based on audience delivered. If Arkansas State vs. Appalachian State draws 10% more viewers than Akron vs. Central Michigan, Sun Belt will get a royalty check that is 10% larger and if NIU vs. Toledo draws 15% more viewers the Georgia State vs. Troy MAC will get a royalty check that is 15% larger.

(08-07-2015 11:21 AM)goofus Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 11:03 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(08-07-2015 09:13 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  

(08-06-2015 05:55 PM)krup Wrote:  I think there will still be a lot of money to be made in the viewership of sports, but it will be made by the people who create the content (conferences and schools) not the middleman provider.

The example I would use is the music business. Record companies used to pay the artists a lot of money in return for the rights to what they created for a certain number of years or albums. Then, the record companies would be able to produce and sell millions of albums and make a lot of money. However, technology like I-Tunes and services like Pandora/Spotify drove most of the money out of delivering recorded music to consumers.

The bottom dropped out of the revenue side of the recorded music business (just like it will for cable), but there is still one place in the music business where a lot of money can be made. Popular artists make huge amounts of money from concert tours, because the experience of being at a live concert cannot be replicated by technology.

For sports, the one thing that cannot be replicated by technology is watching the sporting event at the time it happens. Unlike other TV content, it cannot be shared later. The people that create popular live sports content will make money on it, regardless of whether it is delivered through bundled cable, internet streaming or something we don't even know of yet.

The current popular thinking among consumers is that they can bypass having to pay middlemen to get at the content they want.

HBO Now being the prime example currently bandied about. "Oh hey, I don't have to pay a cable bill anymore. I can just buy HBO directly and watch it over the internet."


But that just won't end up being the case. The middlemen -- ISP's -- have every right to charge you extra money in order to bring you streaming video data, as opposed to all other types of data.

The two are not the same. Streamimg video data stresses the networks harder.

I agree with much of this.

The other thing is that there are still "middlemen" even beyond the ISPs. For instance, Netflix is a middleman - you're paying a flat rate for all-you-can-watch access to shows and movies that you may or may not watch. The price you're paying today incorporates the fees that Netflix is paying (or more accurately, subsidizing) for all of its shows, whether you watch them or not and whether they're in-house productions (i.e. House of Cards, Orange is the New Black) or third party IP. That's effectively the same proposition as basic cable, except that it's in a different format.

People don't truly want PPV - they generally don't want to be paying $5 for one sporting event here and another $5 for a TV show there. They're basically saying that they want the same all-you-can-eat buffet for a single price that they've been getting with basic cable that is (a) on-demand, (b) streaming and © at a lower price.

and d) without commercials or delays due to commercials

I know this is not important to everybody but it is extremely important to a lot of people like me.

For somebody who has had TIVO for 15 years, my days are gone where I will be sitting at home forced to sit through commercials. And with the cord cut, I will be looking for content and services without ads. thats why I am willing to pay for Netflix or HBO, but won't pay for hulu plus.

I don't use TIVO and I won't watch USA or TNT programming. They fill up their programs with commercials. There's one network (forget which one) that stretches Friends out to 35 minutes so they can add 5 minutes of commercials. That makes those networks unwatchable for me.

(08-07-2015 11:40 AM)adcorbett Wrote:  BTW you mentioned how you hate Hulu because it has commercials? Dude HULU adds 5 breaks of 45 seconds per hour to each show. That is an extra 3 minutes per hour. You can't be that hard up for time.

It's not the time, its the interruptions. A few years back, I was paying for Netflix, Huluplus and a specialized streaming subscription channel, and also had several free streaming channels, and in the end I got tired of paying a subscription to watch ads. If there was something on Hulu I really wanted to watch, I'd watch it on a laptop, but not having Hulu on my Roku and Nook cut back on my Hulu viewing substantially.