Did I say all cable companies were acting together? For the record, Adelphia does not exist anymore, and their subscribers got it the worst, because they had the NFLN, and lost it when Adelphia was bought by TWC.
How is it colluwion? Because Time Warner Cable, CableVision and Charter Communications are acting in concert against against another entity to gain a desired outcome that is beneficial to them, and potentially detrimental to the other entity. That's collusion, no matter how you slice it. There are other, smaller, entities involved as well, but their the big dogs in the fight. Now, legally proving collusion is almost impossible. But, here in the court of public opinion, it's pretty obvious that you have three megacorporations asking for the same deal, from the same company at the same time. Either one heck of a coincidence, or collusion. At least in my study of business, I've never seen such a coincidence.
To show the fallacy of the claims by the cable companies about the NFL's costs. DishNetwork offers the NFLNetwork in their base package at $29.99 a month.
http://www.dishnetwork.com, as does directv. As I said in an earlier post; It's not about the $.70. That's a clever marketing gimmick that they came up with to get people to rail against the NFL. Buy it if you want, but the reality is that there are two other outlets, and other cable vendors for that matter, carrying the NFL Network on theri basic tier, betraying this claim. But, that's why there's a line of work in marketing that pays well. Spend enough money and you can create your own reality that people will believe, because they don't care to research the realities of the claim s.
this ploy by the cable companies is about one thing. They want to boost subscribers, and hence revenues and profits, in their more profitable 'premium sports package', and they saw the perfect opportunity to do so when the most popular sport in America had the fastest growing network on Cable Television, and put games on it. Lump this monster in there, and subscribers would soar, and charting it out their likely theorized they could make a killing. The NFL chose not to play along. I'd even take it a step futher and theorize that they offered the NFL more than the $.70 per subscriber to be in the premium package, but the NFL said no. Somebody earlier analogized this to boxing and pay per view. This is a great analogy. Go where you have fewer eyes, and people tend to forget you're there. Yes, you get more revenue in the short run, but you lose popularity in the long run, and long term potential revenue declines. More sets, more eyes, lese $ per set.
Cable companies don't care about competition. They are protected in many municipalities from competition. The FCC ruled in the last week or two to prohibit local municipalities from making laws stopping competition in the twisted pair arena (phone lines) delivering TV programming, but in the cable TV arena, the rules are already there, and they have no competition. Satellite is a viable competition in some ways, but in all but major cities, your local networks are not carried on the satellite. Many people prefer their netwrok channels to be local, and that is why they stick with cable. Even for those who didn't care, and were gettting what were called 'distant network' feeds, this ruling came down about a month ago, and this is no longer allowed. They lost their network programming all together. Syracuse is my local market, and they're not on satellites, either Dish or DirecTV. Nor a major city, but pretty large. People around here dumped their dishes like hot cakes about a month ago. They gave up the NFL Network, but got the network games.
Again, I think the best way for consumers to approach it is not take this issue alone, but the issue of subscriber TV as a whole, and push for a la carte programming. This is but a sub-issue of a storm that has been brewing for years. Push your local and state reps for this. Debating amongst ourselves on who is right on this issue is a no win, because we, the consumers, are losing in the end. WE are all, no matter what media we receive our programming through, paying for channels we don't want. Beyiond PBS and the major Networks, I think it should be a la carte. you choose what you want, and pay for what you want. If you don't like the price, or the value, you don't buy it. Market economics. Break down this barrier first. Hopefully soon, they'll be delivering video across twisted pair, and we'll have true competition, but that technology is at least 4-5 years away, ir not 10. It's just a horrible media to carry the bandwidth needed for multichannel applications.
They could cut a useless channel or raise prices 70 cents but have decided to screw customers instead.Never for a second do i regret switching to satellite.
You do understand that alot of cable companies do carry the NFLN, right? In fact, I think I read somewhere that more than half of the cable subscribers in the US can get it. It's only 2 or 3 cable companies that don't supply it: Time Warner, Cablevision, and I think some Adelphia systems. Can you please explain how that is collusion?
You do understand that alot of cable companies do carry the NFLN, right? In fact, I think I read somewhere that more than half of the cable subscribers in the US can get it. It's only 2 or 3 cable companies that don't supply it: Time Warner, Cablevision, and I think some Adelphia systems. Can you please explain how that is collusion?
This is a good point, and people are letting the cable companies off too easily. They say it would be too expensive, but many providers already offer it in their basic packages 
