Kinda unrelated. Cablevision is moving many of their channels to switched Video. Switched Video does not work with cable cards. Cablevision is giving customers a set top box free for a year, hoping that it will take less than a year for cable cards to work with switched video (Tivo has same issue).
This whole thing is fishy. There's so much detail on everything DISH did wrong (and I do believe they did do some things wrong), but then it skates over the whole issue of the programming and blames it on DISH in a way that makes no sense.
OK, here's a theory. The numbers are hypothetical, but the idea could be applied regardless. (And I have studied programming in college, though it was long ago. I still have a texbook that explains this stuff...)
Let's say this "Section 4" says a film can be shown multiple times in a 48 hour period (to allow for weekend marathons, like Monsters often did), but then cannot be repeated again for at least 10 days. Films are licensed for a window of time -let's say 60 days- not for a number of plays.
If they showed 6 movies rotated for a 48 hour period, they would need to have 30 movies available during that 10 day period. That doesn't mean 30 different movies every 10 days. They could run the same 30 movies the following 10 days. But the way it's set up, windows are always opening and closing. So one movie may get retired for a short time, and another one comes back at the same time.
So, say Monsters starts licensing fewer movies. They only have 15 movies available in any 10 day period. They switch to rotating 5 movies over a 48 hour period. On a daily basis, viewers wouldn't notice much of a change. They see 5 different movies each day. True, they come back more often, but there's still variety every day.
At that rate, movies would repeat every 6 days. Dish says "You can't repeat them for 10 days". Voom doesn't have enough movies to do it that way. So they have to cut back on how many movies they show in a 48 hour period.
The other half of it was how they had switched to older movies. So that's another point...or perhaps both are true. DISH forced them to buy more movies to meet the commitment, so they switched to cheaper movies.
But there's no way DISH forced them to buy cheaper/fewer movies. DISH tried to enforce the rules on repeats, and Voom got around it by showing fewer and cheaper films each day.
Scott, just say the code word if this is what you heard in that meeting.
This whole thing is fishy. There's so much detail on everything DISH did wrong (and I do believe they did do some things wrong), but then it skates over the whole issue of the programming and blames it on DISH in a way that makes no sense.
OK, here's a theory. The numbers are hypothetical, but the idea could be applied regardless. (And I have studied programming in college, though it was long ago. I still have a texbook that explains this stuff...)
Let's say this "Section 4" says a film can be shown multiple times in a 48 hour period (to allow for weekend marathons, like Monsters often did), but then cannot be repeated again for at least 10 days. Films are licensed for a window of time -let's say 60 days- not for a number of plays.
If they showed 6 movies rotated for a 48 hour period, they would need to have 30 movies available during that 10 day period. That doesn't mean 30 different movies every 10 days. They could run the same 30 movies the following 10 days. But the way it's set up, windows are always opening and closing. So one movie may get retired for a short time, and another one comes back at the same time.
So, say Monsters starts licensing fewer movies. They only have 15 movies available in any 10 day period. They switch to rotating 5 movies over a 48 hour period. On a daily basis, viewers wouldn't notice much of a change. They see 5 different movies each day. True, they come back more often, but there's still variety every day.
At that rate, movies would repeat every 6 days. Dish says "You can't repeat them for 10 days". Voom doesn't have enough movies to do it that way. So they have to cut back on how many movies they show in a 48 hour period.
The other half of it was how they had switched to older movies. So that's another point...or perhaps both are true. DISH forced them to buy more movies to meet the commitment, so they switched to cheaper movies.
But there's no way DISH forced them to buy cheaper/fewer movies. DISH tried to enforce the rules on repeats, and Voom got around it by showing fewer and cheaper films each day.
Scott, just say the code word if this is what you heard in that meeting.
