Saturday, August 3, 2013

Things I Don't Get: Time Warner Cable vs. CBS

 If you are like me and live in one of the zones where Time Warner Cable and CBS are fueding, you know that your cable television lineup now no longer includes CBS.

Now, my question is, why don't television and cable executives understand that no good can come of their feud?

Anyone who has any interest in following the evolution of entertainment, knows that the ratings system and structure of broadcast television is changing faster than the antiquated system can keep up with.  Viewers now have options to record or stream content at any hour of the day with many of their favorite programs, or sometimes delay gratification for an entire season and the gobble shows in binge-viewing.  So, needless to say, this does affect an already faulty ratings system that depends upon randomized viewers with boxes recording viewership of live programming.

So, with declining viewership to begin with, what good does it do to play chicken over ridiculous profits? Both sides need to get a clue that the only result will be customers driven away to getting most of their programming other ways.  Either people will get fed up enough that they switch to DirectTV or AT&T U-verse and switch off the cable entirely.  Then once they do negotiate, undoubtedly Time Warner Cable will end up offloading the ridiculous amount that CBS offers onto paying customers who will no longer be able to pay and will quit.

In the meantime, we all have to suffer through radio ads where CBS encourages listeners to call up and demand that Time Warner Cable cave and bring back CBS.  Meanwhile, those of us who have heard the other side, know that CBS is demanding a new contract with a 600% fee increase.  No wonder Time Warner Cable refused to pay.

Normally I wouldn't side with big cable, but when CBS also feels too big to fail as the most watched television network, maybe we all need to reconsider when television and cable networks get too greedy for their own good and send a message to both by fleeing in droves.

For a business model that doesn't want to change, they are only enabling consumers to start an even bigger revolution whether they like it or not.

1 comment:

  1. My antenna and I are holed up under a table while the fighting between the corporations continues outside my sand-bagged windows.

    When the smoke clears, I hope to see surviving viewers straggle over to Best Buy and attach antennas to their own sets too. Then we can all watch high definition broadcast tv for exactly zero dollars per month!

    That's what I call, and I quote the Time Warner marquee being shown on channel 2 currently, doing "what it takes to keep down the price of TV." ;)

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