Future of Cable TV

Comcast is trying to purchase Time Warner Cable giving them control of 33 million of the 116 million TV households. If Dish TV and Direct TV merge they too will control over 30 million homes.

With cable prices doubling every ten years, and any other option to get internet into your home rapidly vanishing, people are concerned about their expenses.

The future of Cable will depend upon Bundling, cable selection on impulse w/o warning of increased fees, control over the Last Mile.

Quote: Fleastiff

The future of Cable ...

Comcast is getting an average of $161 per household that it serves for cable. In comparison, it's subsidiary NBC is bringing in $5.12 per TV household (mostly from advertising revenue). Only about 1.6% of the operating cash flow of the company comes from NBC broadcast.

Robert Shore, an analyst at Union Gaming Group, said that sports betting accounts for about $72 million in Nevada’s gaming revenue each year — not counting money it generates through increased tourism. But in New Jersey, Shore said, it would likely produce well over $100 million a year.

Cable may have a big share of future sports betting.

Comcast's ownership of NBC has made some people skeptical about the quality of new shows under this management on broadcast TV. CBS has no significant presence in cable besides Showtime (a pay channel), and is forced to rely on their on air broadcasts to make money.

Up until 2006, CBS was Viacom. Then Viacom spun off CBS which is now primarily a broadcast concern.

NBC of course was bough by General Electric in 1986. Then Universal bought them in 2004 and NBC became NBCUniversal. Comcast didn't buy NBCUniversal's assets until January 2011. Therefore, you really can't conclude that Comcast was to blame for NBC's current failures. Its failure to create good sit-coms ended pretty much in 2004 when Frazier and Friends were done, and "must see Thursdays" was gone as people flocked to reality in the form of Survivor, America's got Talent, the Amazing Race, and Idol. NBC didn't have reality shows to compete except perhaps for the Apprentice.

And really, NBC had some pretty good dramas. Law and Order comes to mind right away.

Quote: boymimbo

Up until 2006, CBS was Viacom. Then Viacom spun off CBS which is now primarily a broadcast concern.

NBC of course was bough by General Electric in 1986. Then Universal bought them in 2004 and NBC became NBCUniversal. Comcast didn't buy NBCUniversal's assets until January 2011. Therefore, you really can't conclude that Comcast was to blame for NBC's current failures. Its failure to create good sit-coms ended pretty much in 2004 when Frazier and Friends were done, and "must see Thursdays" was gone as people flocked to reality in the form of Survivor, America's got Talent, the Amazing Race, and Idol. NBC didn't have reality shows to compete except perhaps for the Apprentice.

And really, NBC had some pretty good dramas. Law and Order comes to mind right away.

Actually its failure to create them ended in the late 1990s. The ones you mention were created earlier. NBC nuked itself out of the drama business with the Leno prime-time experiment.

NBC seems very lost. To me the way you build a network is a night at a time. But when you care more about shocking people than entertaining them, when you care more about a PC cast than an entertaining one, well then you can't even build one show much less one night.

Quote: boymimbo

NBC of course was bough by General Electric in 1986. Then Universal bought them in 2004 and NBC became NBCUniversal. Comcast didn't buy NBCUniversal's assets until January 2011. Therefore, you really can't conclude that Comcast was to blame for NBC's current failures.

Its failure to create good sit-coms ended pretty much in 2004 when Frazier and Friends were done, ...

I suppose I shouldn't have said Comcast. It is more rooted in the NBC Universal merger. Cable shows are very profitable for these companies. NBCUniversal reports huge revenue on it's cable networks (USA, SyFy, etc.). Turner Cable (TNT, TBS, CNN) makes more money for Time Warner than HBO.

If you look at the table, you see that NBC only created a single successful sit-com from 1998's Will and Grace and 2004's The Office. This fact was not widely noticed as much because the older shows from the 1990's were still playing.
Now, NBC also failed to create one hit from 2009-present. But the two 2009 sitcoms still on the air "Park's and Recreation" and "Community", are only popular with very narrowly defined groups of people. They are only seen by 4-5 million people per week, and both shows may be cancelled this year, despite leaving the network with no returning sitcoms.

Currently Comcast offers
(1) 25 Mbps for $40/mo for the first 12 months, then goes up to $55 in year two
(2) 25 Mbps for $50/mo for the first 12 months, then goes up to $65 in year two (includes 10 local channels + HBO and HBO|GO)
--- Equipment charges are extra.

I figure if they can make those offers, than if Comcast ends up controlling cable to 30% of TV households, they can just say if you buy internet, then you get their corporate owned television stations for just the cost of the equipment (set top boxes, DVRs, routers, etc).

Potential cord cutters will be tempted to take these stations for just cost of renting a set top box. Ratings for NBC entertainment should zoom.

NBC Owned Television Stations & Affiliate Relations
Syfy
Chiller
Cloo
E!
USA Network
Bravo Media
Oxygen Media
Sprout
Comcast Sports Group
Golf Channel
NBC Sports
Telemundo
mun2
NBC News
CNBC
MSNBC
Esquire Network (Joint Venture)
TVOne (Joint Venture)
The Weather Channel (Joint Venture)

Quote: Pacomartin

Comcast is getting an average of $161 per household that it serves for cable. In comparison, it's subsidiary NBC is bringing in $5.12 per TV household (mostly from advertising revenue). Only about 1.6% of the operating cash flow of the company comes from NBC broadcast.

Robert Shore, an analyst at Union Gaming Group, said that sports betting accounts for about $72 million in Nevada’s gaming revenue each year — not counting money it generates through increased tourism. But in New Jersey, Shore said, it would likely produce well over $100 million a year.

Cable may have a big share of future sports betting.

Very informative, as usual.
I've deleted the image of the cable connector, but that may have been the most important part.

Comments:
Comcast gets money for cable service which consists of various segments such as over the air channels, highly desired channels, specialized channels desired by narrow segments of the population, unheard of channels that virtually no one wants because they carry basically junk programming and make money by occasionally delivering an audience but often make money simply because they are bundled under a policy of "we don't care if you eat that darned piece of parsley or not, we are going to put in on the plate and we are going to charge you for it".

Sports betting revenue in New Jersey is related to population density and disposable income levels.

The problem of traffic congestion on our roads has often been likened to the size of the pipe at the bottom of a great big water tank.
If you tap the tank with a small diameter pipe it will always be full, same with medium or large size pipes. Same with roads, if you build an extra lane or two extra lanes or ten extra lanes of traffic the will always be full because people drive on what is available and build homes if roads are available.

I think Cable TV may be in a similar situation. It will always depend on the BANDWIDTH involved and people will always want MORE.

Consider this Network Neutrality buzzword. At first no one cared, then they were opposed to it, then they were in favor of it because they realized the carriers could charge for it.

Households want various data streams: Email and Pinterest are negligible in band with. What uses up data transmission stuff is graphics such as movies, MRI images, chat where latency is very noticeable, multi player games where latency is noticeable, etc.

Comcast wants to be able to deliver all the demanding data but charge for keeping the important traffic lanes open for high speed traffic, the only way they can charge for high speed traffic is to charge the subscriber monthly fees for ALL traffic from junk emails to major Hollywood block busters.

So its really a question of how to charge different rates for different traffic or charge the same rate for any and all traffic.
And the demand is similar to a demand for hot water.....its generally at peak hours but always has variable demands.

The issue, I think, for net neutrality is less about charging for the high occupancy lanes, but reducing access to Joe Blows website about pickled herring.

I'm not sure how it will all work out in the end, but throttling Peter so Paul can get better access to the roads will 'break' some parts of the internet model. As it currently stands.