Time Warner Cable drops Ovation and Current TV(charlotteobserver.com)
charlotteobserver.com
Time Warner Cable drops Ovation and Current TV
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/01/02/3761236/time-warner-cable-drops-arts-channel.html
16 comments
Time Warner and other cable companies are anticompetitive monopolies that offer poor-quality service at high prices. At one point Comcast had a worse customer service rating than the IRS (hence the new Xfiniti brand). Dropping these channels is pure greed.
Seems like a strange overreaction. I mean, I get Al Jazeera English here in DC. There really isn't anything on it that should be controversial.
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that Current was reportedly tanking, which is why it was on the block in the first place.
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that Current was reportedly tanking, which is why it was on the block in the first place.
The actual headline is "Time Warner Cable drops arts channel" which talks about the Ovation channel being dropped because nobody tunes in, as an aside it also mentions that Current TV was dropped after being acquired by Al Jazeera.
Now I suspect the person who submitted this thought there was some weird conspiracy about Al Jazeera and Time Warner and what not but the reality is that when a channel changes ownership previous contracts get voided, sometimes that gives folks an easy out. In this case it looks like they took that out.
Now I suspect the person who submitted this thought there was some weird conspiracy about Al Jazeera and Time Warner and what not but the reality is that when a channel changes ownership previous contracts get voided, sometimes that gives folks an easy out. In this case it looks like they took that out.
> Seems like a strange overreaction. I mean, I get Al Jazeera English here in DC.
This is an exception. As noted on Wikipedia[0],
> Al Jazeera English is unavailable to cable viewers in the US, with the exception of those in Toledo, Ohio; Burlington, Vermont; Staten Island, Washington State and Washington, D.C. Many analysts consider this to be effectively a "black out".
More information in these[1,2] articles.
Some say it is for political reasons:
> Al Jazeera English launched in the fall of 2006, opening a large bureau on K Street in downtown Washington, but has made little progress in persuading cable companies to offer the channel to its customers.
> The objections from the cable companies have come for both political and commercial reasons, said Burman, the former editor-in-chief of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. "In 2006, pre-Obama, the experience was a challenging one. Essentially this was a period when a lot of negative stereotypes were associated with Al Jazeera. The effort was a difficult one," he said, citing the Bush administration's public hostility to the network.
> "There was reluctance from these companies to embark in a direction that would perhaps be opposed by the Bush administration. I think that's changed. I think if anything the Obama administration has indicated to Al Jazeera that it sees us as part of the solution, not part of the problem," Burman said.
> Cable companies are also worried, said Burman, that they will lose more subscribers than they will gain by granting access to Al Jazeera.
Others say it is because the American public does not like unsanitized reporting:
> So why has Al Jazeera English found it so difficult to gain a foothold in the United States? One reason is a perceived lack of audience; the network is not typical American television fare, and cable operators doubt many Americans would embrace the change. During the two years I worked at Al Jazeera English, I was continually amazed by the channel's inversion of conventional U.S. news values--in particular, its willingness to convey suffering in the developing world, like that of the Samouni family, in graphic detail. Far from conspiracy or manipulation, as critics charge, this use of evocative imagery is the natural result of a dynamic process meant to translate news into what Bruce Shapiro, director of the Dart Center on Journalism and Trauma, calls "the visual language of a particular culture."
> "It's not about a rigid corporate agenda or a rigid imperialist agenda imposed from above," Shapiro explains in an interview with the author. "It's about a much more complex dynamic between sources, journalists, managers, and image-makers." Unpacking that dynamic is essential to understanding the biases of American news, as well as the difficulties channels like Al Jazeera English have attracting an audience in the United States. Understanding this also gives reason to hope that given a broader range of media options, the media preferences of Americans--and popular sympathies--might change as well.
0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera#Availability
1: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/30/al-jazeera-english-...
2: http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Absence-of-Al-Jazeera-...
This is an exception. As noted on Wikipedia[0],
> Al Jazeera English is unavailable to cable viewers in the US, with the exception of those in Toledo, Ohio; Burlington, Vermont; Staten Island, Washington State and Washington, D.C. Many analysts consider this to be effectively a "black out".
More information in these[1,2] articles.
Some say it is for political reasons:
> Al Jazeera English launched in the fall of 2006, opening a large bureau on K Street in downtown Washington, but has made little progress in persuading cable companies to offer the channel to its customers.
> The objections from the cable companies have come for both political and commercial reasons, said Burman, the former editor-in-chief of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. "In 2006, pre-Obama, the experience was a challenging one. Essentially this was a period when a lot of negative stereotypes were associated with Al Jazeera. The effort was a difficult one," he said, citing the Bush administration's public hostility to the network.
> "There was reluctance from these companies to embark in a direction that would perhaps be opposed by the Bush administration. I think that's changed. I think if anything the Obama administration has indicated to Al Jazeera that it sees us as part of the solution, not part of the problem," Burman said.
> Cable companies are also worried, said Burman, that they will lose more subscribers than they will gain by granting access to Al Jazeera.
Others say it is because the American public does not like unsanitized reporting:
> So why has Al Jazeera English found it so difficult to gain a foothold in the United States? One reason is a perceived lack of audience; the network is not typical American television fare, and cable operators doubt many Americans would embrace the change. During the two years I worked at Al Jazeera English, I was continually amazed by the channel's inversion of conventional U.S. news values--in particular, its willingness to convey suffering in the developing world, like that of the Samouni family, in graphic detail. Far from conspiracy or manipulation, as critics charge, this use of evocative imagery is the natural result of a dynamic process meant to translate news into what Bruce Shapiro, director of the Dart Center on Journalism and Trauma, calls "the visual language of a particular culture."
> "It's not about a rigid corporate agenda or a rigid imperialist agenda imposed from above," Shapiro explains in an interview with the author. "It's about a much more complex dynamic between sources, journalists, managers, and image-makers." Unpacking that dynamic is essential to understanding the biases of American news, as well as the difficulties channels like Al Jazeera English have attracting an audience in the United States. Understanding this also gives reason to hope that given a broader range of media options, the media preferences of Americans--and popular sympathies--might change as well.
0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera#Availability
1: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/30/al-jazeera-english-...
2: http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Absence-of-Al-Jazeera-...
How does carrying a TV channel cost Time Warner real money? I guess they pay the channels for the rights to broadcast, but how much was really costing them? A few hundred thousand a year? What if Ovation was free?
As for the politics of carrying an Al Jazeera owned channel in the U.S., it's a sad day for free speech.
As for the politics of carrying an Al Jazeera owned channel in the U.S., it's a sad day for free speech.
So at least in the past when I worked for TechTV new networks paid for carriage, and eventually got paid by the cable operator once they earned their stripes (usually 3 to 5 years)
I doubt this cost is really the relevant one though. More importantly its the opportunity cost. Cable operators are limited in bandwidth and the number of channels they can carry at any given time. Getting rid of Ovation free's up that network bandwidth for another, more profitable network (or more HD channels etc...)
Ovation and Current both were at a disadvantage as independent networks. Larger network groups like NBCU, Scripps (food network) Viacom (Comedy Central & MTV) have a better chance getting a smaller network off the ground because of their increased leverage.
Hopefully at some point the cable operators will move to a Switched Digital Video[1] system which would free up bandwidth and allow for these smaller networks to get traction a bit easier, but its not going to happen soon and (hopefully) streamed internet networks will really start to flourish. Maybe the Ovations and Currents of the world will move this way sooner now.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched_video
I doubt this cost is really the relevant one though. More importantly its the opportunity cost. Cable operators are limited in bandwidth and the number of channels they can carry at any given time. Getting rid of Ovation free's up that network bandwidth for another, more profitable network (or more HD channels etc...)
Ovation and Current both were at a disadvantage as independent networks. Larger network groups like NBCU, Scripps (food network) Viacom (Comedy Central & MTV) have a better chance getting a smaller network off the ground because of their increased leverage.
Hopefully at some point the cable operators will move to a Switched Digital Video[1] system which would free up bandwidth and allow for these smaller networks to get traction a bit easier, but its not going to happen soon and (hopefully) streamed internet networks will really start to flourish. Maybe the Ovations and Currents of the world will move this way sooner now.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched_video
Actually, TWC does use SDV in most of their markets.
> How does carrying a TV channel cost Time Warner real money?
They're afraid of negative reactions from viewers:
> Cable companies are also worried, said Burman, that they will lose more subscribers than they will gain by granting access to Al Jazeera.
Just having that "Al" in the name makes it sound like a terrorist network to a large fraction of Americans.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/30/al-jazeera-english-...
They're afraid of negative reactions from viewers:
> Cable companies are also worried, said Burman, that they will lose more subscribers than they will gain by granting access to Al Jazeera.
Just having that "Al" in the name makes it sound like a terrorist network to a large fraction of Americans.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/30/al-jazeera-english-...
That's fine. I dropped Time Warner and Comcast years ago. Oddly enough, between Youtube, podcasts, Netflix, iTunes, and bittorrent I have no need to have "channels" any more.
If there's a movie or tv show I want to see, Netflix -> iTunes -> bittorrent.
I've actually been finding I watch Youtube more than anything else. I have a particular set of interests and have found a particular set of regular independent producers on Youtube and subscribe to them.
I literally have no need for cable tv and haven't for years. All of the interesting stuff is online.
What I'd really love to see is a popular tv show with a loyal fan base but marginal viewers on cable to just switch over 100% to Youtube. Put the episodes in full HD and run regular Youtube ads. Maybe do some in-show advertisement, product placement, that kind of thing.
Recently, Dirty Jobs was cancelled after 8 years by Discovery. That was a really cool show with a loyal fan base. Its numbers got too low for Discovery so they canned it. It'd be the perfect example to try switching to a pure online model.
If there's a movie or tv show I want to see, Netflix -> iTunes -> bittorrent.
I've actually been finding I watch Youtube more than anything else. I have a particular set of interests and have found a particular set of regular independent producers on Youtube and subscribe to them.
Minecraft: Etho's Lab
Starcraft: HDStarcraft and Husky
Bread baking: multiple
Telescope mirror making: multiple
Photography: multiple
I literally have no need for cable tv and haven't for years. All of the interesting stuff is online.
What I'd really love to see is a popular tv show with a loyal fan base but marginal viewers on cable to just switch over 100% to Youtube. Put the episodes in full HD and run regular Youtube ads. Maybe do some in-show advertisement, product placement, that kind of thing.
Recently, Dirty Jobs was cancelled after 8 years by Discovery. That was a really cool show with a loyal fan base. Its numbers got too low for Discovery so they canned it. It'd be the perfect example to try switching to a pure online model.
> What I'd really love to see is a popular tv show with a loyal fan base but marginal viewers on cable to just switch over 100% to Youtube. Put the episodes in full HD and run regular Youtube ads. Maybe do some in-show advertisement, product placement, that kind of thing.
The budget for one Top Gear episode (for example) is greater then what PSY made from his youtube video with a Billion views.
On top of that, even the smaller networks enjoy a built in audience of hundreds of thousands (if not several million) viewers for each new show they put out there. If you start a show from obscurity it has a much steeper hill to climb.
If you take an already existing show, like you say, it will lose most of its audience because people will think "whatever happened to" and promptly forget about it. That's how good stuff like Firefly gets killed, you move the schedule around a bit and ratings tank because people don't keep up with that.
The budget for one Top Gear episode (for example) is greater then what PSY made from his youtube video with a Billion views.
On top of that, even the smaller networks enjoy a built in audience of hundreds of thousands (if not several million) viewers for each new show they put out there. If you start a show from obscurity it has a much steeper hill to climb.
If you take an already existing show, like you say, it will lose most of its audience because people will think "whatever happened to" and promptly forget about it. That's how good stuff like Firefly gets killed, you move the schedule around a bit and ratings tank because people don't keep up with that.
I know the current monetization for videos is low. That's not for lack of audience, its because advertisers have not really switched over a lot of their ad spend to online video.
Look at this video from HuskyStarcraft. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfBKFLrUQU4. That's his episode celebrating his 700,000th subscriber. 700,000 people subscribe to his channel. He posts several videos a day, usually about 20-30 minutes in length. Each video gets hundreds of thousands of views in a day, and even more over time. There are entire cable networks that don't have that kind of viewership, and this is just a highly-caffeinated guy broadcasting high-level StarCraft 2 games. There are thousands of Youtubers just like him.
There's a huge audience worldwide on Youtube. It and sites like it are already the future of broadcast, and the traditional networks are way, way behind. They're going to be less and less relevant as time goes on.
If you take an existing show that, as I already said would likely be cancelled, and move it to Youtube there could be an amazing response.
Look at this video from HuskyStarcraft. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfBKFLrUQU4. That's his episode celebrating his 700,000th subscriber. 700,000 people subscribe to his channel. He posts several videos a day, usually about 20-30 minutes in length. Each video gets hundreds of thousands of views in a day, and even more over time. There are entire cable networks that don't have that kind of viewership, and this is just a highly-caffeinated guy broadcasting high-level StarCraft 2 games. There are thousands of Youtubers just like him.
There's a huge audience worldwide on Youtube. It and sites like it are already the future of broadcast, and the traditional networks are way, way behind. They're going to be less and less relevant as time goes on.
If you take an existing show that, as I already said would likely be cancelled, and move it to Youtube there could be an amazing response.
That is rather what I am talking about. He posted 18 videos this week (I'm not counting the two from the last 24 hours) with an avg. of ~55,000 views.
There's a lot of noise and people have short attention spans, he also posts stuff willy nilly. So only some small fraction of his 700,000 subscribes see any one video, for the rest it disappears into their feeds.
His 360 Million views is still quite a lot, by definition there can only be so many accounts with such a high view count. And yet that translates to a check of only around a quarter million dollars.
This is great for a highly caffeinated individual sitting in underwear and recording his screen - it simply doesn't cover a cast and crew even if you improve the CPM by a factor of x10.
The truth is that TV advertising is very overpriced and just like newspapers trade physical print dollars for digital pennies the same thing applies here.
There's a lot of noise and people have short attention spans, he also posts stuff willy nilly. So only some small fraction of his 700,000 subscribes see any one video, for the rest it disappears into their feeds.
His 360 Million views is still quite a lot, by definition there can only be so many accounts with such a high view count. And yet that translates to a check of only around a quarter million dollars.
This is great for a highly caffeinated individual sitting in underwear and recording his screen - it simply doesn't cover a cast and crew even if you improve the CPM by a factor of x10.
The truth is that TV advertising is very overpriced and just like newspapers trade physical print dollars for digital pennies the same thing applies here.
Perhaps less popular in this audience, but it hard to find many live streaming sports (legally) without a cable subscription. The Rose Bowl, for example, was on ESPN yesterday and they did not offer a live stream, afaik.
It's getting increasingly common to be able to buy streaming packages if you're outside the normal TV area, since that allows the streaming offerings to be decided independent of TV contracts. For example, anyone outside the U.S. or Canada can get all NFL games streamed on the internet for $280/season. Americans and Canadians aren't allowed to subscribe to that package, due to exclusive licensing deals with TV stations.
I'm not sure that will change anytime soon. NBC pays the NFL $950 million/year for the exclusive license. They would need a lot of streaming subscribers to move the needle relative to that kind of money.
I'm not sure that will change anytime soon. NBC pays the NFL $950 million/year for the exclusive license. They would need a lot of streaming subscribers to move the needle relative to that kind of money.
> Carl Meredith is one local viewer upset about Ovation’s removal from his Time Warner lineup. Meredith and his wife, who live near Clayton, are big fans of Ovation’s reruns of the original British version of “Antiques Roadshow.” Meredith said he had his DVR set to record the episodes during the day, and the couple would watch them together at night. Now, he gets a blue screen telling him Time Warner Cable no longer carries Ovation.
That's a rather left-field choice of show to enjoy, and in most of these discussions reruns (especially esoteric ones) don't get a lot of focus. Pundits tend to focus on the newest episode of, say, Homeland as the item worth buying. The Merediths show us that there is more to that puzzle.
The à la carte selection of and payment for individual shows, as opposed to individual channels, may have some merit after all; if you read between the lines, they don't want Ovation. They want reruns of British Antiques Roadshow, and Ovation just happened to have them. This couple is already down the road toward a different model, too, since they utilize their DVR to time-shift the episodes anyway.
The downside to shifting to paying for shows is (the often useful) local network affiliates, live sports programming, real-time news, and so forth, which are problems yet to be solved. Basically, anything live. I think the generation that's in their 20s and 30s now, though, is more palatable to this kind of model, and we're very likely on the way.
----
Other point I'd like to make here is that British Antiques Roadshow is produced by the BBC, who haven't quite figured out the United States yet. Different legal systems force them to make real bummers, like rescoring Top Gear since they have a very liberal licence to use popular music in the UK and America is a very different picture. In many Top Gear films, the music is half of the equation[1] and its replacement with stock light rock jams is a real shame. Heard some of that in the Best of Top Gear edits that BBC America just aired. That's also probably why they have to be really aggressive on YouTube, and a lot of the unofficial clips of Top Gear on YouTube have been disappearing, replaced by official edits following the same rules.
A lot of Americans, myself included, are chomping at the bit for Top Gear but the BBC finds itself having to edit it to remove British-specific jokes (which I disagree with) or rescoring as mentioned above (which is just unfortunate). They're pretty lax on QI on YouTube, though, which is just great; I've seen all of QI XL Series J so far, not far behind Britain.
[1]: Example from last series, brilliantly written, shot, edited, and scored: http://vimeo.com/40226173
That's a rather left-field choice of show to enjoy, and in most of these discussions reruns (especially esoteric ones) don't get a lot of focus. Pundits tend to focus on the newest episode of, say, Homeland as the item worth buying. The Merediths show us that there is more to that puzzle.
The à la carte selection of and payment for individual shows, as opposed to individual channels, may have some merit after all; if you read between the lines, they don't want Ovation. They want reruns of British Antiques Roadshow, and Ovation just happened to have them. This couple is already down the road toward a different model, too, since they utilize their DVR to time-shift the episodes anyway.
The downside to shifting to paying for shows is (the often useful) local network affiliates, live sports programming, real-time news, and so forth, which are problems yet to be solved. Basically, anything live. I think the generation that's in their 20s and 30s now, though, is more palatable to this kind of model, and we're very likely on the way.
----
Other point I'd like to make here is that British Antiques Roadshow is produced by the BBC, who haven't quite figured out the United States yet. Different legal systems force them to make real bummers, like rescoring Top Gear since they have a very liberal licence to use popular music in the UK and America is a very different picture. In many Top Gear films, the music is half of the equation[1] and its replacement with stock light rock jams is a real shame. Heard some of that in the Best of Top Gear edits that BBC America just aired. That's also probably why they have to be really aggressive on YouTube, and a lot of the unofficial clips of Top Gear on YouTube have been disappearing, replaced by official edits following the same rules.
A lot of Americans, myself included, are chomping at the bit for Top Gear but the BBC finds itself having to edit it to remove British-specific jokes (which I disagree with) or rescoring as mentioned above (which is just unfortunate). They're pretty lax on QI on YouTube, though, which is just great; I've seen all of QI XL Series J so far, not far behind Britain.
[1]: Example from last series, brilliantly written, shot, edited, and scored: http://vimeo.com/40226173
Since Time Warner Cable would not consent to the sale “Current will no longer be carried on TWC. This is unfortunate, but I am confident that Al Jazeera America will earn significant additional carriage in the months and years ahead.” Time Warner Cable says that it is “removing the service as quickly as possible.” The loss of the No. 2 cable operator will hurt: Time Warner Cable has 12.2M video subscribers and Current reaches about 59M homes. Others also could follow Time Warner Cable’s lead as they look to prune their often bloated channel lineups.