TWC may cancel CW18 carriage soon

[jjallou]

For those of you who have TWC I'd be curious to know how much your cable bill drops if 18 & 24 are pulled off of their system.

Yea Right - ha, ha.  

[Xizer]

I don't see why it should drop any since they are getting rid of free channels.

[ArgMeMatey]

I don't see why it should drop any since they are getting rid of free channels.

If 18 & 24 were really free, why would there be a dispute?  

[Xizer]

They are free channels, WVTV and WCGV are just greedy trash affiliates trying to double dip from a cable company. TWC is rightly telling them to **** off.

If you are broadcasting for free over the air, thus getting a much larger viewer base and significantly increased ad revenue, you shouldn't be getting extra revenue by charging the cable companies to distribute your signal that you push out for free.

[Jack 1000]

They are free channels, WVTV and WCGV are just greedy trash affiliates trying to double dip from a cable company. TWC is rightly telling them to **** off.

If you are broadcasting for free over the air, thus getting a much larger viewer base and significantly increased ad revenue, you shouldn't be getting extra revenue by charging the cable companies to distribute your signal that you push out for free.

I agree.

Jack

[jjallou]

They are free channels, WVTV and WCGV are just greedy trash affiliates trying to double dip from a cable company. TWC is rightly telling them to **** off.

If you are broadcasting for free over the air, thus getting a much larger viewer base and significantly increased ad revenue, you shouldn't be getting extra revenue by charging the cable companies to distribute your signal that you push out for free.

So if you produced a product that you gave away for free, you wouldn't have a problem if someone took it and sold it as part of a package deal and made a profit with it? Interesting.  When you come up with something let me know so I can sell it.

By the way WISN is in negotiations with DirectTv for a new agreement. Old one is set to expire on Dec 31st as well.  WISC in Madison on U-Verse as well. These trashy affiliates are everywhere.

[ArgMeMatey]

They are free channels, WVTV and WCGV are just greedy trash affiliates trying to double dip from a cable company. TWC is rightly telling them to **** off.

If you are broadcasting for free over the air, thus getting a much larger viewer base and significantly increased ad revenue, you shouldn't be getting extra revenue by charging the cable companies to distribute your signal that you push out for free.

Well, if a jury of the three of us were handed the case, Time Warner would walk away with their wallet intact.

However, we all know the rules the broadcasters bought themselves years ago.  I supposed the rationale was something along the lines that the broadcast product adds value to Time Warner's product, and regardless of where else it may be purchased, the broadcasters are entitled to their cut.  

I haven't spent any time thinking of analogies or researching the economic analysis of the policy, but how many products can you pick up for free and turn around to use in your own product without paying a supplier?  

Like maybe air?  Lucky for us no one owns the air.  

Parks?  Have you heard about entrepreneurs offering fitness classes in public parks, and now some of the "public" want them to pay to use something everyone else gets for free?  

How about media examples?  There's a magazine called The Week.  They reprint articles from other magazines.  Those source magazines are given credit, but you can bet they are getting paid as well.  Same thing for Reader's Digest if they still exist.  

The way it works is, if somebody sees somebody else making serious money, they're going to do what they can to get a piece of the action.  In the case of cable, where barriers to entry are high, and margins are suspected to be great, regulators weren't willing to tell broadcasters they couldn't have any.  

Yes, cable increases 18 & 24's penetration.  That's good for 18 & 24.  But cable is not doing this out of any sense of altruism or public service; they are in it to make money.  

So what's behind your opinion besides "it just isn't right"?

[Xizer]

So if you produced a product that you gave away for free, you wouldn't have a problem if someone took it and sold it as part of a package deal and made a profit with it? Interesting.  When you come up with something let me know so I can sell it.

I would love it if my product was mandated to be sold at all retailers by the government like the FCC mandates cable companies carry the broadcast channels. There was an epic lobbying win when they came up with that rule.

[ArgMeMatey]

I would love it if my product was mandated to be sold at all retailers by the government like the FCC mandates cable companies carry the broadcast channels. There was an epic lobbying win when they came up with that rule.

As I understand it the local stations may choose Must Carry or Retransmission Consent.  

In other words, broadcasters can demand carriage, or they can demand money, but not both.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must-carry

[foxeng]

As I understand it the local stations may choose Must Carry or Retransmission Consent.  

In other words, broadcasters can demand carriage, or they can demand money, but not both.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must-carry

You are correct.

[Xizer]

As I understand it the local stations may choose Must Carry or Retransmission Consent.  

In other words, broadcasters can demand carriage, or they can demand money, but not both.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Must-carry

Yup, and now it looks like Sinclair is going to be losing out on both because of their greed.

What exactly do these two affiliates contribute anyway? They exclusively broadcast CW and MyNetworkTV material. I have never seen any specialized content for the market produced by these networks like the other "local" channels like NBC/CBS/etc. They are basically middlemen between us and the CW national satellite feeds. It's not a situation like Chicago's CW affiliate WGN which produces tons of local programming material customized for the market.

[ArgMeMatey]

Yup, and now it looks like Sinclair is going to be losing out on both because of their greed.

What exactly do these two affiliates contribute anyway?

Well, what Sinclair wants is more money, and their strategy is to make Time Warner look like the bad guy.  Time Warner wants to keep more of their profits, so they point the finger at Sinclair.  Not sure if it's been pointed out in this thread but in economic terms both sides are asking viewers to make a judgment based on incomplete information.  

Neither side wants to reveal exactly what they are offering.  So by and large, viewers will make a judgment based on their pre-existing opinions about Sinclair and Time Warner, because they don't have anything else to go on.  

Sinclair only has to please a handful of advertisers, so when enough of them suspend their payments, Sinclair may have to move toward the middle a bit.  

I don't know who will cave first, but that's why these things go down to the wire.  I would venture a guess that in this situation, where viewers are paying all their money to Time Warner and none to Sinclair, Time Warner is at a disadvantage.  

Regarding local contributions, I don't know how current standards for "acting in the public interest" affect licensure.  Apparently not to any great degree based on the local tripe being served up by other affiliates.

[Xizer]

What I'm saying is I don't think we would be missing a single thing if Time Warner Cable told Sinclair to **** off and just started carrying the national CW and MyNetworkTV feeds.

[gparris]

In some areas of the country, FOX has a new deal with TWC and even if the Sinclair station plays  hard ball, the TWC location has the rights to offer FOX anyway and will do so from what I have read (or understand) at AVS forums.
Why couldn't TWC just by-pass Sinclair altogether and grab these networks and rebroadcast, too?

Does Sinclair really think its advertisers will support a suddenly-greatly-reduced viewer  base with TWC out of the picture for access?:huh?:

[ArgMeMatey]

What I'm saying is I don't think we would be missing a single thing if Time Warner Cable told Sinclair to **** off and just started carrying the national CW and MyNetworkTV feeds.

I can only speculate that Sinclair's contract with CW and MyNetworkTV is geographically exclusive.  

Otherwise if the networks didn't like what the local affiliates were doing, they could just hook up with another local outfit.  They can still do that when contracts come up for renewal, or maybe if the local starts showing neo-nazi recruiting videos instead of infomercials, but they can't do it at the drop of a hat.