CHICAS PRODUCTIONS: cable providers

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Showing posts with label cable providers. Show all posts

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Comcast to Enable Movie Purchasing in Early EST Window...

Comcast is expanding from renting to selling movies from major studios by the end of the year, sources confirmed.

The nation's largest cable operator will join digital streaming platforms such as Apple's iTunes and Vudu in allowing users to purchase films in an evolving new window leading into the traditional home-video window, known as "early EST" or as studios recently agreed to call high-definition copies, "Digital HD."

Comcast declined to comment, as did reps from several studios. News was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and Reuters.

Early EST is not to be confused with the controversial premium VOD, which involves movies bowing in tandem with or shortly after the beginning of the theatrical window. Early EST comes after hotels and airlines get films, or several weeks before the traditional three-month separation between theatrical debut and home video.

More and more big movies have launched in that window including "The Heat," "Iron Man 3," "The Great Gatsby" and "Star Trek Into Darkness." Titles are available for approximately $15.

With the major studios recently agreeing to adopt the Digital HD brand for all HD movies available in the early EST window, the addition of a broadly available distributor like Comcast provides yet another shot in the arm for driving the value of ownership to U.S. consumers. While rental transactions outnumber movie purchases, the latter category is of huge importance to the studios because they have a much higher profit margin than the former.

Comcast intends to make movie ownership available through its Xfinity TV platform, which allows access to a huge trove of rental titles regardless of whether they are being accessed on TV, mobile or PC to authenticated subscribers. A cloud-based locker would be built into the Xfinity platform where the content could be accessed.

Comcast has more than 20 million cable subscribers in the U.S. The MSO reported a loss of 129,000 subs in the third quarter.

Currently, Comcast offers its subscribers 36,000 titles through its set-top VOD service and 270,000 videos online. About 70% of digital video subscribers use VOD monthly.

Comcast is currently in talks with Netflix to add the streaming video service to its cable boxes and new X1 product. X1 is a cloud-based service, introduced last year, that Comcast hopes will attract new customers with its user-friendly interface, better search functionality and enhanced DVR.

Overall, Comcast's third-quarter net profit slipped 18% to $1.73 billion, while revenue declined 2.4% to $16.15 billion.

Thank you Variety

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Cable prices not out of whack, a la carte won't work, analyst says...

If you want to save money, you might be better off getting rid of your dog before you cancel your pay-TV service, a prominent media analyst says.

In a report issued Friday, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Todd Juenger takes a contrarian approach to all the talk about skyrocketing cable bills and the calls to let consumers pick the channels they want instead of having to pay for dozens they never look at.

With regard to cost, Juenger notes that while pay-TV prices are rising faster than inflation, the growth is slower than a lot of other products and services including pet food, public transportation, gas and even coffee.

Currently, the typical cable bill is $72 a month, compared to $55 in 2005. This is just for video services, not broadband or phone or other offerings from pay-TV distributors. That is a compound annual growth rate of about 4.7%. Juenger checked with the American Pet Product Manufacturing Assn., which said in 2005 the average cost of caring for a dog was $131 a month and has grown by 4.8% on a compound annual basis since then.

Juenger isn't really suggesting people should stark kicking their dogs to the curb to save a few bucks. After all, who will we pet while watching "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo"?

But he does note that even that 4.7% compound annual growth rate for pay TV can be challenged. TV viewership, Juenger said, has risen over the past five years, as have the number of channels and (arguably) quality of programming. "The real unit price of pay-TV has been growing even slower than 4.7%," Juenger said.

Despite that, there are still many who want to be able to choose their own channels in the hopes that this would keep prices low. It's a nice idea, but, as Juenger points out, one that wouldn't work. That's because the dozen channels one subscriber might want would not be the same that his neighbor would want. ESPN charges about $5 per-subscriber, per-month to be in every home. If ESPN were suddenly in one-third of those homes, that price would triple in order for ESPN to pay for all the sports it carries.

The same is true for entertainment channels. Nickelodeon goes for 55 cents per subscriber, but if it were suddenly in far fewer homes, the channel would have to raise its prices or say goodbye to "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "Dora the Explorer."

"The fact that the current bundled model is filled with cross-subsidies works both ways for every household," Juenger said. "On one hand they are forced to pay for channels they don't want. On the other hand, other people are helping subsidize channels they do want."

Juenger said he is not unsympathetic to those concerned about the rising cost of pay-TV but does feel that the industry has become an easy target for academics and consumer advocates.

"The proportionality has been overblown, at least to those of us who make a living studying the economics of the industry, because the focus of the discussion has been centered on the rising cost of sports rights and affiliate fees, as opposed to the rising price to consumers of pay TV," he concluded.

Thank you Los Angeles Times

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FCC lets program access rules expire...

The Federal Communications Commission has decided not to extend its regulations requiring cable operators that own programming to make that content available to rival pay-TV distributors such as satellite broadcasters.

Known as the program access rules, the regulations were a key part of the 1992 Cable Act and credited with driving the growth of the satellite broadcasting industry. At that time, there was far more vertical integration between cable operators and programmers. Lawmakers were worried that cable operators that owned programming would refuse to sell that content to competitors.

However, now that DirecTV and Dish are viable competitors to cable, and phone companies such as Verizon and AT&T are also going head-to-head against cable providers, the commission decided to let the rules expire.

Also, fewer cable operators own content. Comcast, the nation's largest cable operator does own a lot of cable channels including USA Network and CNBC but it will continue to abide by the program access rules for the next several years as part of the government's approval of its merger with NBCUniversal.

If a non-cable pay-TV distributor believes it is being treated unfairly in trying to buy programming from a cable operator, it can file a complaint with the FCC, which will review it and decide whether any action needs to be taken.

The FCC's decision was not a surprise. The rules were initially meant to last only 10 years but were extended twice. In 2007, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit indicated that the rules had outlived their usefulness.
"We anticipate that cable's dominance in the MVPD [multichannel video program distributor] market will have diminished still more by the time the Commission next reviews the prohibition, and expect that at that time the Commission will weigh heavily Congress's intention that the exclusive contract prohibition will eventually sunset," the court said.

Still, DirecTV, Verizon and smaller cable operators fought to keep the rules intact. Google, which is launching its own programming service in the Midwest, also tried to make the case to the FCC that the rules were still important.

"While we prefer the proven, well-established rule to a case-by-case approach and merger conditions, we are hopeful the FCC is correct in concluding that its new regime will provide adequate safeguards," a DirecTV spokesman said. "If this approach is to be effective, the FCC must be vigilant in its oversight and be ready to act immediately should the cable industry re-engage in anti-competitive conduct."

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said the agency's decision will allow it to "continue preventing anti-competitive video distribution arrangements through a legally sustainable, expeditious, case-by-case review."

"The exclusivity ban served its purpose, but now the facts justifying its existence have changed in favor of consumers," FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell added. "Accordingly, this creaky relic must be shown the door."

Thank you Los Angeles Times

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Comcast to Enable Movie Purchasing in Early EST Window...

Friday, October 12, 2012

Cable prices not out of whack, a la carte won't work, analyst says...

FCC lets program access rules expire...