Comcast Agrees to Buy Time Warner Cable

BrutulTM_sl said:

The entire purpose of everything is to raise profits. What bundling does is allow less profitable shows/channels to exist. Some of them you don't like, some of them you probably do. If we paid a la carte they would be making less shows and catering to the least common denominator. If you like shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men then you are probably a beneficiary of the bundling system. If you like neutered network dramas like NCIS/CSI et al or the Real Housewives of whatever then you probably don't need it.

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By that logic, indie music shouldn't exist. Nor should any other niche market entertainment. But they do. Indeed, those markets are growing and becoming more diverse precisely because consumers have the ability to access only the things they want, when they want them.

BrutulTM_sl said:

Indie music doesn't cost millions per episode to produce. If you are willing to watch shows like "The Guild" instead of Game of Thrones then this will work out well for you.

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Industry average is 1.5 million per episode, so minor exaggeration there. Also GoT is an interesting example (as are other HBO shows). Funny thing, when HBO is airing an original show, the number of people subbed to the channel via their service provider spikes! Then it goes back down when the show is off for the season. In the case of HBO peoplealreadyare "buying" the show a la carte. That is great content being produced in an manner identical to the one under discussion and it works. The only thing you lose if you sell TV a la carte are shows that cost more than the interest they produce. I'm not sure how that is a bad thing, as it frees up money for other projects. There isn't any doom and gloom of TV only produced for the lowest common denominator, if it didn't happen in dozens of other entertainment markets, it isn't going to happen with TV.

BrutulTM_sl said:

Good original content is being subsidized by shitty but popular reality shows, the home shopping network, etc. If you stop bundling, there will be more mass appeal stuff and less high quality stuff with a limited appeal. That's all I'm saying.

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That is interesting speculation. Did you miss the part where it is demonstrably false in the case of HBO shows? Or in other entertainment markets? Sure, content creators want to make money. But competing the in mass appeal market means competing with everyone and making, essentially, the same things. Niche markets exist because content creators want to do the work THEY want to do and because people are willing to pay for it. This is just like MMOs. Everyone wanted to be the next WoW, but realistically 20-60k subs was enough to keep a game going at a profitable rate. You don't need a million people. Industry average per episode for a show is 1.5 million. If you had 250k people (which is a number so low that a show that had that number in today's market would be instantly cancelled), that is 6 bucks each per episode. That is before you factor in advertising, merchandising, etc. Or that singer who signed with a big label... and sold exactly the same number of records! Because her fans who liked her niche music bought them and no one else did. She makes a living off of it, not a multi-million dollar living, but a living.

BrutulTM_sl said:

"Demonstrably false" LOL.

It's a totally different world when people are paying a set rate for all the channels and ratings determine advertising rates. When every single show has to get people to buy it on it's own merits, the risk of making any TV show goes through the roof. The result of that is a lot less content being made and what is made is shit that they know is going to sell (mass appeal stuff).

Stop with the music comparisons. Indie music can be made by one person in their garage. TV is a totally different world.

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Modern video editing programs allow a similar thing for TV. Hell, look at movies (which for big ones cost even more than shows) that are made on budgets of like 60k. People sub to HBO for the quality content. There will be no decline in quality content. The only difference is people will only pay for the stuff they actually want to watch. Meaning, yeah, if people want to pay for crap, there will be crap. But to think TV will somehow magically perform differently then other markets and there'll be zero niche markets develop is just absurd.

EDIT: Go back to like '93. People said the same thing about the music industry, it was "too expensive" for anyone to make it if they weren't backed by a label. Look at the music scene today. Tons of people make it on their own. It has happened to music, games, movies, and it is, right now, happening to TV with Hulu+ shows, Netflix shows, Youtube shows, etc. In the next few years you'll see sites selling original shows a la carte. It'll start out having nothing to do with the big networks, but they'll eventually have to follow suit to stay competitive. Just like the music industry gave into stuff like iTunes.

Blaire Witch 20-25k. Grossed over 245M.

Pi was about 60K

Brothers McMullen 28K

Slacker 23K

Paranormal Activity 15K

El Mariachi 7K fuckin Rodriguez should be Rodriguezberg.

Primer 7K

All these movies are well regarded in their own rights, with some blowing away million dollar movies in sales.

BrutulTM_sl said:

So we can have movies with 2 locations that are a video store and a convenience store and we won't pay the actors at all. I like this brave new world of filmmaking!

Also, those movies didn't get into theaters with those budgets. They got picked up by studios and promoted. If they hadn't they would have shown in 2 theaters in LA for 3 nights each and went into the trash.

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Edited my post. Plenty of examples.

Primer had way more than two locations, bro.

The Master_sl said:

That is interesting speculation. Did you miss the part where it is demonstrably false in the case of HBO shows? Or in other entertainment markets? Sure, content creators want to make money. But competing the in mass appeal market means competing with everyone and making, essentially, the same things. Niche markets exist because content creators want to do the work THEY want to do and because people are willing to pay for it. This is just like MMOs. Everyone wanted to be the next WoW, but realistically 20-60k subs was enough to keep a game going at a profitable rate. You don't need a million people. Industry average per episode for a show is 1.5 million. If you had 250k people (which is a number so low that a show that had that number in today's market would be instantly cancelled), that is 6 bucks each per episode. That is before you factor in advertising, merchandising, etc. Or that singer who signed with a big label... and sold exactly the same number of records! Because her fans who liked her niche music bought them and no one else did. She makes a living off of it, not a multi-million dollar living, but a living.

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Niche markets exist, sure. But they also tend to adapt towards whatever is popular, at least in the instances we are talking about. Take the Food Network. Remember when that was about cooking? Now it is Real Housewives with a thin veneer of food added on top. Now the niche is the Cooking Channel. Which, if we were going a la carte, I can't imagine would survive. Those are probably super low budget shows, so I don't think it is the production that is really the holdup. More like convincing a provider to eat up bandwidth with these niche channels when there is no packaged incentive to offer them. I don't know how the industry works in that regard, I always just assumed that whatever arm of Disney deals with their tv shit negotiated with these providers to push certain networks and tv shows, so like if they want Food Network at X price then they have to take Cooking Channel and ABC Family or whatever as well, and group them together in the lineup (like shelf placement in the grocery store).

chaos_sl said:

Primer had way more than two locations, bro.



Niche markets exist, sure. But they also tend to adapt towards whatever is popular, at least in the instances we are talking about. Take the Food Network. Remember when that was about cooking? Now it is Real Housewives with a thin veneer of food added on top. Now the niche is the Cooking Channel. Which, if we were going a la carte, I can't imagine would survive. Those are probably super low budget shows, so I don't think it is the production that is really the holdup. More like convincing a provider to eat up bandwidth with these niche channels when there is no packaged incentive to offer them. I don't know how the industry works in that regard, I always just assumed that whatever arm of Disney deals with their tv shit negotiated with these providers to push certain networks and tv shows, so like if they want Food Network at X price then they have to take Cooking Channel and ABC Family or whatever as well, and group them together in the lineup (like shelf placement in the grocery store).

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You're talking about a network whose most popular show of all time, Good Eats, barely got green lighted. Networks don't really have any incentive to care if something is popular or not, precisely because of bundling. So long as each show, individually, is making enough via advertising to justify its time slot. Which is why you'll see this slow death of shows sometimes, where it is borderline making it, so they move it to a less popular time slot and see if it has enough fans to make it work in a less popular time slot. Usually the show dies. In the case of cooking shows the production value is so low that doesn't take much to break even though. If you're only paying for the shows you want, the time slot nonsense goes away to. Another bonus.

The current industry model just isn't going to keep working as more and more people watch shows online. They'll need to do something else. Networks are already having issues with advertisers. Everyone keeps talking about money, but advertisers have been paying less for commercial space because of DVRs. Money is already becoming an issue. They'll pay more for an in-show ad, but that has the occasional backlash (see Glee at the People's Choice Awards and Digorno). There is a whole new business based around inserting background ads into old shows, every re-aired episode of I think it was CSI now has a Subway in the background somewhere. The money is already shifting around, the current model of making shows will become completely untenable in the next decade because the advertising money won't be there in the quantity it is now. Something is going to change. It is reasonable to think it'll go the same route the music industry did, instead of buying an album (channel) you buy the song (show) you want. People will come up with low cost technology to do all of this more cheaply. Location shooting is one of the primary expenses of shows and you can dispense with that entirely with modern green screen set ups (which, yes, you could set up in a garage). There are answers to the cost hurdles of "indie TV."