Still Complaining About ESPN...

[alfablue]

Re: Still Complaining About ESPN...

You need to switch over to CBS Morning News. I made the switch back when they did to a more serious morning news program.

CBS does not have a morning news around here. They barely have a channel.

I'm gone before GMA comes on.

None the less, thanks, but I'm happy with what I watch in the morning.

 

[SonofSouthie]

Re: Still Complaining About ESPN...

You know why FSL failed? Because it tried to replicate ESPN. I watched it for a month or so but ended up deciding there was better things to do than Sports Argle Bargle.

If they went back to the old ESPN format, I would have been hooked. Just sports. Just highlights. No "personalities" beyond the two guys at the desk. I don't want or need Donovan McNabb breaking **** down. I just want the scores and the highlights.

Just sports. Just highlights. No "personalities" beyond the two guys at the desk. I don't want or need Donovan McNabb breaking **** down. I just want the scores and the highlights.

+ 1 Gazillion.

 

[Slap Shot]

Re: Still Complaining About ESPN...

Weird thing is almost never watched ESPN because I rarely found a reason outside of tWorld Cup coverage or during my FF peak years so I can't even identify with the vitriol toward them, which is not the same as saying I disagree with it.

 

[RaceBoarder]

Re: Still Complaining About ESPN...

Weird thing is almost never watched ESPN because I rarely found a reason outside of tWorld Cup coverage or during my FF peak years so I can't even identify with the vitriol toward them, which is not the same as saying I disagree with it.

Honestly it's more of a nostalgia thing than anything else with most guys... They want SC and ESPN the way it was in 1997, but don't want to acknowledge that everyone also wants games/highlights available instantly on their IPhones...

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Still Complaining About ESPN...

Weird thing is almost never watched ESPN because I rarely found a reason outside of tWorld Cup coverage or during my FF peak years so I can't even identify with the vitriol toward them, which is not the same as saying I disagree with it.

Part of my "vitriol" toward the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network is because they are included in the base cable package and just ESPN alone costs upward of $6 per month IIRC toward the basic package bill. I rarely watch it outside of specialty sports events, and if they weren't given such a ginormous cash flow from basic cable they wouldn't be able to engage in so many bidding wars to televise events that then make it more expensive for everyone whether ESPN wins or not.

This will soon turn into another useless rant against Comcast and so I'll stop now.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Still Complaining About ESPN...

Comcast is actually your friend in this limited instance. They're the collective bargainer on your behalf trying to keep subscription fees low. If fees go up, their subscriber base goes down.

Dish and DirecTV have been leaders on this as well. They nearly killed The Weather Channel because they simply dropped it rather than let a crap channel push more garbage on their customers. The customers had been saying for a while they don't care about TWC so when they tried to increase costs, the dish networks dropped them.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Still Complaining About ESPN...

Additionally, people think their cable bills are going to go down if we move to a la carte. They won't. Maybe for some people who never watch sports, but individual channels will go up. There isn't the collective bargaining to be had anymore. You either buy it at that price or you don't. The cable companies will no longer care about keeping subscription costs low.

 

[Jimjamesak]

Additionally, people think their cable bills are going to go down if we move to a la carte. They won't. Maybe for some people who never watch sports, but individual channels will go up. There isn't the collective bargaining to be had anymore. You either buy it at that price or you don't. The cable companies will no longer care about keeping subscription costs low.

GCI did that here with AMC. AMC tried to jack up the rates so GCI dropped them and told people to go stream the Walking Dead.

 

[joecct]

Comcast is actually your friend in this limited instance. They're the collective bargainer on your behalf trying to keep subscription fees low. If fees go up, their subscriber base goes down.

Dish and DirecTV have been leaders on this as well. They nearly killed The Weather Channel because they simply dropped it rather than let a crap channel push more garbage on their customers. The customers had been saying for a while they don't care about TWC so when they tried to increase costs, the dish networks dropped them.

FIOS dropped them too. I only miss TWC when there is a weather disaster and THUNDERSNOW!

 

[bigblue_dl]

Re: Still Complaining About ESPN...

Additionally, people think their cable bills are going to go down if we move to a la carte. They won't. Maybe for some people who never watch sports, but individual channels will go up. There isn't the collective bargaining to be had anymore. You either buy it at that price or you don't. The cable companies will no longer care about keeping subscription costs low.

Regardless, more people will just go the Netflix/Hulu route

 

[The Rube]

Re: Still Complaining About ESPN...

Regardless, more people will just go the Netflix/Hulu route

<<-----------pick me pick me!

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Still Complaining About ESPN...

Additionally, people think their cable bills are going to go down if we move to a la carte. They won't. Maybe for some people who never watch sports, but individual channels will go up. There isn't the collective bargaining to be had anymore. You either buy it at that price or you don't. The cable companies will no longer care about keeping subscription costs low.

The situation with Comcast is more complicated. I would love to buy straight internet service from a company focused solely on doing that one job really well. I would love to subscribe to a cable service that only passed through content provided by others. But Comcast overprices internet only service to force you into also buying cable, and they double-dip on the cable side because they also own the NBC stable of networks. How hard do you think Comcast Cable negotiates with all the NBC channels to keep those prices down?

Here is an area where I'd like to see the anti-trust laws invoked more fairly. ATT U-verse was a really strong competitor to Comcast, but ATT was forced to divest U-verse in a different anti-trust action, and Frontier is nowhere near as competitive as U-verse used to be. If Comcast did not also own all the NBC networks....

The problem with the model that would have people pick and choose is the way the pricing is set up. Charge a flat fee of $xx per month merely to maintain the lines and maybe to provide only the broadcast channels. Then maybe add tiers from there, but that isn't available here.

and the a la carte option as you describe it, market forces would still apply. if anything, a la carte pricing on cable would also spread to hulu et al: pay $xx per month and you can get us either on cable or streaming or both all at one price. It would mean whether you got the channel through cable or through streaming you'd pay the same, and the larger prospective subscriber base under that pricing model would actually drive prices down, since the cost to produce the content would be fixed so the marginal profit you'd gain from adding each one new subscriber would be much higher if your a la carte price was spread across both cable and streaming.

 

[SonofSouthie]

Re: Still Complaining About ESPN...

Honestly it's more of a nostalgia thing than anything else with most guys... They want SC and ESPN the way it was in 1997, but don't want to acknowledge that everyone also wants games/highlights available instantly on their IPhones...

Honestly it's more of a nostalgia thing than anything else with most guys...

Yeah, the good old days of yesteryear when you were getting scores and highlights without 10 lbs of bullsh*t added. Not sure where you were going with the Iphone thing though.

 

[St. Clown]

Re: Still Complaining About ESPN...

Yeah, the good old days of yesteryear when you were getting scores and highlights without 10 lbs of bullsh*t added. Not sure where you were going with the Iphone thing though.

ESPN says that YouTube changed how it delivers Sports Center. The younger generations stopped tuning in because they could get any highlight they wanted whenever they wanted it on YouTube.

 

[SonofSouthie]

Re: Still Complaining About ESPN...

ESPN says that YouTube changed how it delivers Sports Center. The younger generations stopped tuning in because they could get any highlight they wanted whenever they wanted it on YouTube.

I tried a couple of different things on the Tube didn't get much. Typed in Bos/Port highlights and got a couple of minutes from Wed nights game. Typed in Bruins/Hawks game from last night and got nothing.

I'll continue to get scores and written recaps on "The World Wide Leader In Sports" website.

 

[St. Clown]

Re: Still Complaining About ESPN...

I tried a couple of different things on the Tube didn't get much. Typed in Bos/Port highlights and got a couple of minutes from Wed nights game. Typed in Bruins/Hawks game from last night and got nothing.

I'll continue to get scores and written recaps on "The World Wide Leader In Sports" website.

Did you try the team's site? The world has changed. (Ooh, ah!)

The teams, leagues and various news services have started moving that content to their own sites, driving more traffic and ad revenue to themselves rather than Google. ESPN made the YouTube comment long before high quality video streaming was common to all the different parts of the web.

 

[SonofSouthie]

Re: Still Complaining About ESPN...

Did you try the team's site? The world has changed. (Ooh, ah!)

The teams, leagues and various news services have started moving that content to their own sites, driving more traffic and ad revenue to themselves rather than Google. ESPN made the YouTube comment long before high quality video streaming was common to all the different parts of the web.

The world has changed. (Ooh, ah!)

It's passing me by. The network admin in work only allows a few minutes a day to access certain websites. Might as try well get it all at once.

A guy in work gave me sage advice once, "don't worry about things you can't control."

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Still Complaining About ESPN...

The teams, leagues and various news services have started moving that content to their own sites, driving more traffic and ad revenue to themselves rather than Google. ESPN made the YouTube comment long before high quality video streaming was common to all the different parts of the web.

Exactly!

I want reliable internet service from an internet-only company. Can't get that here, Comcast has a monopoly on the cable lines, and the FCC knee-capped DSL. DSL has the capacity to deliver order of magnitude better internet than available in US (e.g., South Korea). Perhaps not quite the thread to rant about how big government and big business are supporting each other at our expense?

 

[unofan]

Exactly!

I want reliable internet service from an internet-only company. Can't get that here, Comcast has a monopoly on the cable lines, and the FCC knee-capped DSL. DSL has the capacity to deliver order of magnitude better internet than available in US (e.g., South Korea). Perhaps not quite the thread to rant about how big government and big business are supporting each other at our expense?

The FCC did nothing of the sort.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Still Complaining About ESPN...

The FCC did nothing of the sort.

which agency was it then? One of them did. The alphabet soup we have to sort through today is absurd.


EDIT: this article says that it indeed was the FCC, because the FCC regulates DSL under regulations that apply to telephone companies, while cable companies are regulated in a different category, and so there indeed are significantly different regulatory regimens for DSL internet compared to cable internet in the US. It is a long and complex article and I haven't the inclination to wade through it all now and parse it precisely. However,

Because DSL services are offered over telephone lines, telephone companies providing high-speed internet access were at this time subject to mandatory common-carrier regulation, including the requirement that they share the "last mile" connection with unaffiliated ISPs. It has not been so clear, though, how cable modem services should be categorized. If cable modem service providers were deemed to be offering telecommunications services, they would necessarily be subject to Title II requirements for common carriers, including the requirement to carry competitor's signals.

In contrast, if they were deemed to be offering information services without a telecommunications services component they would not be subject to such requirements.

the FCC's position that the nature of cable modem services should be interpreted from the consumer's point of view, summarizing the FCC's conclusion that "cable modem service is not a telecommunications offering ....

The Brand X ruling, in upholding the FCC's classification of cable modem services as an "information service," thus upheld the exemption of cable modem service providers from regulation as a common carrier under Title II.

That says quite clearly that DSL is regulated under one set of rules while cable is regulated under a different set of rules. So it looks like my original statement, that the FCC treats DSL differently than cable, is indeed correct. I assume you merely reacted negatively to the verb I used as more pejorative than descriptive, while if I had used a different verb to describe the same action...

The effect of this differential regulatory regime creates a "free rider" problem for DSL that does not impede cable, and so investment in DSL lags in the US compared to other countries that do not burden DSL with the free rider problem that inhibits its development in the US.

anyway, DSL iin the US is slower than DSL in other countries that do not impose the same constraints, especially countries that developed their technological infrastructure much later, where they are not burdened by out-of-date historical anomalies.



PS How can they possibly say that "cable modem service is not a telecommunications offering"? that is nonsensical, isn't email transmitted over cable modem service? aren't telephone signals (like vonage) transmitted over cable modem service? how about Skype?