Hey, didn't Tolkien use a single all-seeing eye as a metaphor for evil?
I try to not regurgitate articles on other blogs, but when I read this piece (Time Warner Customers in Danger of Losing Fox Soccer Channel) over on EPL Talk I knew I needed to comment. You see, two years ago I was subjected to the terrible, terrible service that is Time Warner Cable when my city was purchased like a cheap slab of meat in a territory swap with Comcast; the swap ended up upping my bill $30, costing me the NFL Network, and just generally pissing me off (until I switched to the Elysian fields of AT&T U-Verse).
It would appear that Time Warner is up to their old tricks (holding customers at ransom in their pissing matches with networks): if Fox and Time Warner can’t agree on how much Time Warner needs to pay Fox to continue carrying it by the end of the month, than on January 1st you’re going to need to make alternative plans for any show that you watch on any Fox channel. Seriously.
Here’s the long and short of how cable works. The provider, in order to carry a channel, pays a fee to said channel and then gains access to their feed (there’s more to it, but this isn’t a telecommunications blog and this is enough for our purposes). These deals, like every deal, have an expiration date. At the end of that expiration date, the two sides re-enter talks and hammer out what the new price is going to be for the next deal. This includes what “tier” each channel should be on, how much each additional offering costs, etc., etc. Ultimately, this ends up in a small increase ($1 or $2, perhaps) on your bill; the provider also will probably charge more for ads under the new deal, which the end user ultimately pays for, too. So, merry Christmas! You’re boned both ways!
Regardless of that, the cable provider is under no obligation to carry any of the channels on their lineup (except maybe public access, which I don’t know anything about); every single one is under some kind of arrangement. And, guess what? EVERY SINGLE DEAL goes up at the time of renegotiation. That’s how it works.
So right now, Fox’s deal with Time Warner is expiring. And, perhaps predictably, Fox wants more than Time Warner is prepared to pay. In anticipation of this negotiation, Time Warner put out a survey back in September with one question: Should Time Warner give in to price increases from program suppiers? And, hey, guess what? When asked in a completely ridiculous and vague way like that, 95% of the people who responded said “Yes, Time Warner should prevent providers from charging a 300% increase.”
Time Warner is using that number as a mandate to play hardball with Fox. Nevermind that the 400,000 people who responded to the survey represent a small, small portion of the 13,000,000 Time Warner subscribers, or that it’s doubtful those 400,000 people even knew what they were talking about: that’s a MANDATE, dammit!
At issue is this killer rate increase: Fox wants to charge Time Warner $1/month for every subscriber out there (or $13 million a month, $156 million a year); Time Warner wants no price increase whatsoever. And rather than negotiating this figure down, Time Warner’s just going to take their ball and go home, dumping every single Fox channel from every single tier of their lineup.
Now, in a sense, it’s noble for Time Warner to protect their customers…except they aren’t doing that. In fact, Time Warner’s planning to jack up rates on basic cable 9.5%, while the rights to use a DVR are going to cost you 11.1% more in 2010. That’s a grand total of…$4.36 a month. Most of those people would probably want one more Fox channel, eh?
What’s the end game on this? The end game is, if you’re a Time Warner customer, you’re about to get boned. On January 1st, they’ll simply stop broadcasting Fox channels. While you might not miss Sean Hannity, chances are you’ll miss the NFL, MLB, and (particularly for our readers) Fox Soccer, which is pretty much the best way to catch the Champions League there is. And in case you don’t think they will do this, bear in mind: they’ve done exactly this before, with ABC (turning on ABC or any other Disney owned network – ESPN included – resulted in a blue screen with a note from Time Warner that “Disney Took Your Shows Away” until the contract was sorted out.
Now, if this was another industry, you’d simply switch. But cable TV is essentially a monopoly; it’s not like you can switch to Comcast or Adelphia and just avoid them. If they’re your cable provider, you have these options:
- Switch to AT&T U-Verse (if it’s available, it’s fantastic. Seriously.)
- Switch to DirecTV/DishTV (provided you can; many apartments and condos don’t like the dish, and not every area can get good reception)
- Spend the time you would’ve spent watching Champions League matches writing nasty letters and waiting on hold to yell at Time Warner representatives (I spent a lot of time doing exactly this after the switchover).
Merry Christmas, huh?
Time Warner cable may drop Fox, along with programs like ‘American Idol,’ the NFL; no contract yet [New York Daily News]
Time Warner Cable mailing out 2010 rate increases [Foxcitiestv.com]
Time Warner Cable Customers May Ring in the New Year without Fox TV Programs [Beforeitsnews.com]
Time Warner Customers In Danger Of Losing Fox Soccer Channel [EPLTalk]
i read the same thing on epltalk too and happily voted in the little push poll since i’m a very satisfied directv customer!!
i was blown away to discover the cozy little monopolies the comms companies enjoy in the “Land of the Free” (TM) when i moved over here.
i’m not certain, but i imagine it’s been the same for at&t, i’m definitely aware of verizon literally fighting township by township for the right to bring their fios tv into a market currently exclusively occupied by the likes of comcast or time warner. it just boggles the mind. how can that be in consumer interests? why hasn’t anyone done anything about it? oh wait, can you say lobbyists??
my feeling is that while soccer fans in america are obviously pretty smart, worldly-wise folk, the rest of americaland are too dumb and ignorant to realise this isn’t good for them. if this is how it is here and this is the best country in the world, then it surely follows that this is as good as it gets, right? hurr durr!!
that said, the people who “think” like that will surely have an issue with hannity and beck being taken from them!! it’s an obama marxist conspiracy to silence the truth tellers!! hurr durr!!
wouldn’t it be ironic if the tea-baggers actually protested this to a solution?? lol
sorry for the rant. short-version – i agree with you. also, comcast purchasing controlling interest in NBC can’t be a good thing either, can it??
Didn’t know that about Comcast, but no, it can’t. The problem is that, while most Americans don’t LIKE their cable arrangement, there usually isn’t a substantial difference between providers; prices, packages, and the like are typically only different by one or two channels. There also, until recently, haven’t been any other options, particularly if you’re renting an apartment or are in a metropolitan area that can’t find the satellite (like, say, pretty much everyone in New York City).
Ironically, the folks who get their FoxNews taken away will probably pretty much immediately go liberal and ask for government intervention in the matter.
It’s called “collusion.”
Everyone- including the government- knows about it, but the cable companies are deft enough about the way they go about it that nobody wants to spend the time and money to stop it.
Except for when Time Warner does something stupid like try to eliminate one of the four networks from their line-up. That’s the kind of thing that should get you thrown out of the collusion party.
I wonder how Time Warner will reconcile that rate increase with that price lock guarantee they’ve been peddling in the Dallas area.
Oh and Uverse OWNS! Everywhere that service goes, TW and Comcast bleed subscribers by the boatload.
Word. U-Verse is the best cable ever; in soccer terms, I have FSC, FSEE, Gol, and COULD get Setanta if I were interested. I also get to deal with insanely friendly customer support people. It’s a win all around.
[...] I am about to get screwed. Big time. EPL Talk and Avoiding the Drop have summarized and analyzed the situation brilliantly, so I won’t wax poetic for five [...]