SportsCenter in HD

[Gregg Lengling]

SportsCenter in HD - ESPN said SportsCenter will debut in high def Monday, June 7, at 11 p.m. Eastern when its flagship news and information program becomes the first to be televised from the network's new Digital Center in Bristol, Conn. Linda Cohn and Rece Davis will co-host the first HD SportsCenter.

[gparris]

What are the odds of Time Warner Cable adding ESPN-HD now that this HD SportsCenter is being added? :rolleyes:

Heck, even Voom has ESPN-HD!:bang:

Many cable companies with the exception of TWC have ESPN-HD.

Will this make it more appealing for TWC to add this channel, finally?

[Mrtanner]

Originally posted by gparris
What are the odds of Time Warner Cable adding ESPN-HD now that this HD SportsCenter is being added? :rolleyes:

Heck, even Voom has ESPN-HD!:bang:

Many cable companies with the exception of TWC have ESPN-HD.

Will this make it more appealing for TWC to add this channel, finally?

Trust me.  There is no way you want ESPN-HD on TWC more than I do but I am rooting for TWC in this battle with ESPN.  If the precedent is set for charging extra for the same programming in HD, HBO, Showtime, ABC, etc will be sure to follow (starting with ABC) and then our HD bills will skyrocket.

[gparris]

I can't say that I am a "marketing genius", but adding to cable costs is what Time Warner Cable has done for a number of years.
Why should this time be any different?:eek:

Directv has a 4-pack for $10.99 including ESPN-HD.
DishNetwork has a 4-pack for $9.99 including ESPN-HD.
TWC has a 4-pack for $6.95 NOT including ESPN-HD.:confused:

I suggest that TWC offer the following to cover costs:

Keep the current HD 4-pack at $6.95 as is...then

Add another "tier" (TWC is so fond of doing this thing, anyway):
Call it "HDPic 2" like their DigiPic plans are named and charge:
$8.95 for it by adding ESPN-HD and Bravo HD+.This way, you can tell your spouse you got another HD channel besides just ESPN-HD and maybe one they would enjoy, opposite what you would.

I'll bet this marketing concept escapes the big marketing brains at TWC.
TWC is more comfortable to blame the "mouse" for not having ESPN-HD, especially now with HD SportsCenter  starting:guitar:

Just wait until July when Directv comes out with more HD choices and Dish follows right behind, leaving TWC behind in HD service.
Then the only thing TWC can compete with is their HD DVR instead of financing a HD-Tivo,
that is, if they ever get them to the subscribers.

A little off-topic, but as I was paying my bill yesterday, and guess what I heard?
"We're still testing, maybe July" for the HD-DVRs.
Behind the counter, were literally stacks of SD-DVRs, waiting for some subscriber to pick one up. No longer a hot product, I guess.:mad:

[Matt Heebner]

TWC will not win this battle. ESPN-HD is already on all satellite services, and most cable services. I highly doubt that they are going to change for TWC anytime soon.  
Eventually TWC will buckle, and serve up ESPN-HD. But don't worry, they will probably bump subscription costs on to the consumer. You know how TWC "hates" to raise rates....:rolleyes:

Matt

[The Law]

You know how TWC "hates" to raise rates....

As your tag states:  "...easier to beg for forgiveness..."

[borghe]

as far as I understand, your $2 fee increase will not cover ESPN and Bravo-HD...

the thing you guys have to understand under two fold.

First, these channels are expensive to pickup... the only channels TWC is giving you for free are Discovery, which has relatively little new content on over a month, and TNT, which is owned by the same parent corp. You will notice that the HD stations NOT owned by TW and with lots of new content are EXTREMELY slow coming to any operator, including TWC.

Second, in the stations' defense, it is more than likely expensive as hell for them to do this... You complain about ESPN setting a horrible and greedy precident with this, yet fail to mention the undreds of millions of dollars they spent on the digital center at bristol. fail to mention the millions of dollars they spend every month in additional costs of producing HD presentations, etc..

HD programming isn't free to make and in some cases costs a hell of a lot more than SD programming... Why should those stations have subsidize that cost by including those stations in existing tiers for no additional profit at all?

Now, I'm not at all for raising cable (or satellite) prices, but I realize all of this stuff costs money, and as long as it IS costing money, extra money that is, who do you expect to pay for it? The cable provider who is using it to make 10K-15K subs happy (out of undreds of thousands mind you) or the relatively few subscribers interested in it? Now mind you when HD is no longer costing more to do than SD and cable cos are making some money back on HD ad space, they better lower, and yes I said lower, the price... but until then, nothing is free and we are the only part of the chain out there that makes sense to charge for watching this stuff.

[summerfun]

I will grant you that producers of HD programs are now spending more money to produce in HD and for now, they need to continue with the SD content as well.

If they raise the price now for adding HD, will they lower the price when SD goes away? I don't think so. They should, their cost will drop considerably when they no longer need to produce and distribute both.

This conversion is costing everyone. The producers that need new cameras and editing equipment, the local affiliates and distributors that need new distribution equipment, the consumer that needs to buy new HDTV sets. Everyone has to share the burden.

What ESPN HD is doing to TWC is trying to push off their share of the burden onto the consumer. ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, HBO, Showtime and others have NOT pushed that added cost onto the consumer.

I stand behind TWC in their effort to hold down cost as much as possible.

The additional tier that TWC has for $6.95 is for HD only premium commercial free programming. Not the same thing as we are talking about.

[gparris]

Ok, borghe, make it $10.99 for the TWC HD 6-pack :
(just like Directv)

INHD1 and 2,
HDNET and HDNET Movies
ESPN-HD
Bravo HD+

I seriously doubt only TWC Milwaukee would pick it only for those 10K-15K subs you mentioned, rather a larger group in the millions  that the TWC group services in the country.
For example, if Austin, TX has it, Milwaukee eventually gets it,too.
Make that several hundred thousand HD subs out of millions of subs in the whole country.
It will work if TWC wants it to...or is forced to...
costs go up with them all the time.
We'll just see it embedded in our next price increase in 2005, as that it is when they raise rates every year.
Recently the added a few more channels, like they really needed them (and didn't raise any rates....yet).

[borghe]

I posted in (I believe) the programming thread... apparently it has nothing to do necessarily with raising costs or anything but the renegotiation of the existing contracts. Long story short for this thread, I still wouldn't expect to get ESPN-HD on TWC without an extra fee... In ESPN's case the demand is there along with the precident.. I would rate TWC's chance of not passing a charge along to its subs at well under 50%.

As for will the programming charge go down? In a sense, yes... It sounds crazy, but it has happened numerous times before.. To give you the two most recent times, when DirecTV introduced their new packages after they bought out USSB, my bill dropped about $3/month.

Conversely, with tWC my mom's bill dropped permanently by about $2 when she switched to a digital package from her then current analog package (it wasn't a promotion).

Also, my road runner bill dropped $5 month also (without any cable package subsidy).

So yes, the prices drop, but it usually happens after package reorganizations, channel lineup changes, possibly a technology upgrade and a little time to boot.