Tired of Blackout Risks

[Dished Off]

What you are asking is near impossible. Almost 98% of contract negotiations are settled and signed deals long before the contracts expire. To announcement several months in advance would do nothing more then scare people when again 98% of the contracts are renewed without issue.

I can also guarantee you that if you cut the cord and move to a streaming service, that the same kind of disputes will also happen there as well.

Its just a game of chess... by both sides. And as you said the FCC and Congress won't do anything about it as its called Free Enterprise, and no company should be forced to do business with a company they dont want to do business with.

Just be happy you still have the choice to switch companies if you so choose to get the programming you want.

According to an article I found in Business Insider, just 6 corperations control 90% of the media in the United States. That is consolidated down from about 50 seperate corperate entiities just a few deckades ago in 1983. So the available free market forces are not strong enough to keep the prices down. Therefore, it needs regulation. This is what keeps wall street in check so that we are not all standing outside in soup lines right now. The bundling requirment of many of these contracts prevents start up broadcasters from being able to get a foothold in the industry. Dish Network has limited space for distribution of channels. If Dish were able to drop many of the useless force bundled channels, we would have a lot more choice and probably better prices. We just lost Al Jazeera English because they were not backed by one of these 6 large corperations, for instance. When Al Jazeera shut down that is exactly what they complained of as the cheif reason why. They could not get distribution. How long will it be until we lose NASA, FSTV, Link TV, and other valuable channels that are not flooded with re-runs from the BIG 4 NETWORKS or back to back runs of Sportscenter in place of actual live sports all day long?

You are correct that Steaming Services face disputes. However, they are more open to people. There is even a helpful website called whats-on-netflix.com that I find particularly useful in giving me ADVANCE notice as to what may soon be removed from the service before it actually gets removed. There is no such place I can turn to for cable/sat. Perhaps this forum could be a place for that. However you are correct in that its impossible to get that info. Its because they MAKE it impossible.

Free Enterprise is good when there is enough compitition to control prices. However this is not the case because so many mergers are being allowed. They are stopping some of them, but not enough of them. So it needs to be customer that drives the market from now on. It will take a lot more influence from a customer to make change than it would a competative corperation. We are not likely to see any changes until enough customers shave like I did or even compleatly cut cord to make a difference.

businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6?IR=T

 

[STDog]

So if I wanted to start my own radio station, I should be allowed to record songs off the radio and play them?

No, but if you just repeated the programming (allowing for compression and similar to fit your transmission method) then yes.

As soon as you change the content (like your own commercials) or skip certain song, change the order, etc., then no.

Contrary to what some believe, local broadcasts are available FREE to most people. You want your local channels on the same box so you don't have to change inputs on the TV or you can record? Pay up.

To some portion of the DMA that the station choises to serve. That portion is smaler now with digital. Yet the DMA didn't change and the syation still has exclusive rights to broadcat certain content in thst area.

Cable retransmited with no special consent for years. Then congress got involved and gave us the current mess. It's nothing more than fleecing the customers that want a single source, or that can't affordably get the OTA signal.

 

[STDog]

I know this thread is in response to an existing local channel dispute, but the problem is much larger than that. Especially when the local channel group in question also owns at least 1 other cable channel (and is part of the contention in the dispute). My post applies to the entire media ownership/delivery landscape.

If not for the retransmission agreements being needed, they would have little leverage. Tribune couldn't leverage locals to get WGNA carried at a higher fee.

No, it wouldn't be a panacea. There would still be problems with tiering and other methods of tying channels together. But those issues have generally been minor.

 

[dare2be]

But those issues have generally been minor.

I disagree. 250+ cable channels, 90% of which owned by 6 corporations. Overall prices up 4 times more than inflation. Local channel retrans is part of the whole.

 

[STDog]

I disagree. 250+ cable channels, 90% of which owned by 6 corporations. Overall prices up 4 times more than inflation. Local channel retrans is part of the whole.

I could be wrong. I just don't recall a whole lot of issues with channels other than locals. There have been a few, but nothing like the fights involving locals.
Would the others be nastier w/o the locals for leverage? I guess it's possible. I would certainly be willing to find out.

Case in point, Tribune would have very little leverage for WGNA w/o tying it to locals. It'd be priced based on the value of the content only, not inflated because of the need for a retran agreement on the locals.

Would I like to see more diversity of ownership? Sure. But forcing it via government power is not the answer.

I'd like to see a free market. Truly free, not the pseudo "free" mess we've had for the last 100 years (less and less free every month as new regulations are enacted). The regulations today are a barrier to entry for new competition. They protect the established/status quo. And the latest turn is to impose regulations on new products over the last 9 yrs but not products that existed prior to then.

I don't mid if company X buys channel Y, whether they own 2 others or 20 others.
What I mind is the regulatory burden that prevents channels D, E, F, and G for ever getting off the ground.

Broadcast stations were a special case due to the use of the public airwave, but even that hasn't kept up with modern technical changes. The rules are based on antiquated technology instead of whats possible today. The rules need to be total rewritten, ignoring what was done how in the past, and instead what makes sense today.

 

[MikeD-C05]

As I learned in college back in the 80s in my macro/micro economics class, the U.S. is not a true free market democracy or a true republic. WE are a mixed society with both socialist and capitalist ways . The younger people have the capitalism and the older people over 65 have the socialist ways: social security and government health care with medicare/medicaid. We will never be a true free market society due to these two competing philosophies that are ingrained in our society for close to a 80 years now. Ignoring out past to use what makes "sense" today isn't ever going to happen.

 

[dare2be]

Would I like to see more diversity of ownership? Sure. But forcing it via government power is not the answer.

I'd like to see a free market. Truly free, not the pseudo "free" mess we've had for the last 100 years (less and less free every month as new regulations are enacted).

Without getting into Pit territory, it was de-regulation in 1996 that created this "free" market for a handful of media giants to buy up all the competition and create the bundled extortion oligopoly we have today. Local channel owners own cable channels, MVPDs own their own channels and hold them hostage over other MVPDs (Comcast Sportsnet).