Cable.. a luxury?

Everyday day we hear that the economy is recuperating, slowly but is getting better. Still for some people money is tight and so they try to find solutions to save some money. Some choose to eat more at home, but for some others the solution is: no cable. According to an article in the New York Times’ Media Decoder, cable subscriptions have gone down tremendosly in the past months. Little by little consumers have canceled their cable and satellite subscriptions.

“Cable distributors like Comcast have been hardest hit by the loss of subscribers. Some people who had cable have switched to satellite or to new telecommunications services like Verizon FiOS. Others, according to Comcast, are reverting to over-the-air television signals.”

This situation has affected the television industry because most of the money they collect comes from cable distributors like Comcast and DISHNetwork. However, some TV companies are trying to come up with new strategies to help solve the problem. Time Warner Cable, for example, is trying to retain consumers by introducing cheaper packages of TV programming. Right now they hope that subscriptions will increase during the third quarter of the year, since during this season they expect that more people will want to watch special programming.

This issue relates to the News Corp and Cablevision dilemma. The prices of subscriptions are directly affected by increments in programming fees, and in such a hard economy customers are not able to pay much for TV.

The problem is that when companies like News Corp make cable companies pay huge amounts of money for their programming, it is causing that TV viewers take drastically actions, like canceling their cable subscriptions. The question now is, if we can watch TV for free (over the airwaves or online), why do we have to pay ridiculously amounts of money for a subscription? I agree that if you want more, well, you pay more, but I don’t agree that a regular consumer be forced to unsubscribe from this service because companies just want to take too much advantage of their products.

Panther Report Ep. 5

And here is our Halloween edition of the Panther Report!! Make sure you watch the entire episode! It has 2 parts.We are looking so much better... and we are learning so much out of this experience, you can actually see our progress!

Also, in this episode we have an interview with The Economist's Economics editor, Zanny Minton Beddoes. Check it out!

Panther Report Ep. 4

It's been long time since my last post... it's always hard to take time off!! But here is an update... watch the 4th episode of the Panther Report. It's divided in 3 parts, so just click on it to watch the rest!

Cablevision vs. News Corp continues (Part 2)

A couple of days ago Cablevision (the cable company that serves the New York metropolitan area) and News Corporation (owner of Fox) were having some difficulties reaching an end to the negotiation terms for the cable company to carry Fox.

Cablevision’ subscribers were unable to watch Fox since October 16, and their main concern was that Fox was going to broadcast the World Series. While the dispute was taking place, subscribers were unable to watch these series, and some others were forced to switch to other cable companies. Other methods used for subscribers were to watch shows online and some others went back to the use of an antenna.

The dispute finally came to an end last Saturday (October 30), just in time for cablevision subscribers to watch the third game of the World Series. According to an article in the New York Times, the two companies came to an agreement, in which Cablevision accepted to pay a huge amount of money to News Corp. Cablevision stated that it was ridiculous they had to pay so much money to carry these channels when people can get them for free over the airwaves.

Even though the two companies reached a deal, it seems they still involve in a big dispute. Cablevision stated that the retransmission consent system is badly managed and they ask the government to take a more active action in the issue. Since they, and some other cable companies, believe that the government doesn’t care much about these issues.

However, News Corporation stated that Cablevision has always been complaining about the prices. They also alleged that the only reason why Cablevision wants to get the government involved is because they want a change in the regulations to benefit their company.

Everyday we see disputes like this, in which businesses try to take the most advantage out of their services. It’s ridiculous that the broadcast company want to charge so much when subscribers can get these same channels for free with an antenna. And what is unfair is that subscribers are the ones who will have to pay the price, because it’s for sure that the cable company will raise their prices. In situations like this, I think that government (precisely the FCC) should take action, because at the end consumers are the most affected.