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Home Front: Culture Wars
Bundled Cable Deathwatch: Ratings Plunge, Darwin Looms
2014-11-09


If you're wondering how in the world CNN and MSNBC can have almost no viewers but continue to survive, these fees are why (these fees also explain why your cable bill is so expensive). Currently, if you want Fox News but are forced into a package with CNN in order to get Fox News, CNN's parent company, Turner Broadcasting, earns a piece of your cable bill whether you watch CNN or not.

What absolutely terrifies the likes of CNN and MSNBC is that there is no other format where these obscene carriage fees can be duplicated. Only cable and satellite are NETWORK driven. Every emerging technology, such as streaming, is CONTENT driven. People aren't paying for networks, they are paying for individual shows and movies.
Posted by:badanov

#5  I would love to have access to Velocity Channel, but I'm not going to sign up for a cable/dish package to get it. Haven't had one for ten years, and that was only for five years or so until Comcast aggravated me sufficiently. I don't watch sports, so there's basically nothing on TV (or Apple TV, or Hulu Plus) that I would want to watch. That includes Fox News, not to say the rest of the MSM. Netflix is pretty good, and Amazon Plus is occasionally useful.
Posted by: KBK   2014-11-09 11:38  

#4  I haven't had cable in ten years, and since cable companies insist on "bundling" I prolly won't for the rest of what's left of my life. My TV habits are to watch college football and college basketball until the Final Four, and then off goes the TV until the Hall of Fame game. If I could buy cable for the months of August through April, I would, but for "bundling"
Posted by: badanov   2014-11-09 09:29  

#3  Cut the cord ten years ago and haven't looked back. Noticed this morning though (I'm on firewatch duty at work today) that all the CNN channels are gone.

The beginning of the end? Maybe - but at this point, not even a la carte would bring us back. The only things I missed was History Channel, TLC, A&E, and Discovery - and since they're nothing but reality programming now, there's nothing on them I want to watch that I can't find on Hulu or Netflix for a total of $22/month for 100% of what I want to watch...as opposed to my old cable bill of $60/month for not even 1% of the programming.

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski   2014-11-09 09:21  

#2  It's negotiations time.
Posted by: Pappy   2014-11-09 09:02  

#1  I noticed last night when I expanded my select listing on Dish to all channels that CNN had disappeared with a notice "Withdrawn by Turner". Guess they're not getting their cut of the action now.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2014-11-09 08:45  

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