Paging Chicos for comment

[MU Fan in Connecticut]

Who would that be?

Frank Batten was one of the two founders, the other is John Coleman.  Batten is a UVA and Harvard guy.  Coleman is a University of Illinois guy and not a fan of Al Gore.

It was in the Marquette Alumni magazine articles like 6 years ago.

[Bocephys]

It was in the Marquette Alumni magazine articles like 6 years ago.

Bill Diederich, and he just worked for a company that created it.  http://www.marquette.edu/magazine/winter06/diederich.shtml

Diederich served in several leadership positions at what became Landmark Communications Inc. before retiring in 1990. Although a diversified company, its claim to fame is cable television operations and creation of the Weather Channel, just one of dozens of ideas that Diederich investigated as part of a committee that met to try to identify the next “big thing” that would change the way people get information.

[ChicosBailBonds]

Bill Diederich, and he just worked for a company that created it.  http://www.marquette.edu/magazine/winter06/diederich.shtml

Yeah, Landmark Communications is where Batten worked, but you are right that Diederich was not a founder of Weather Channel...that goes to Batten and Coleman.

[ChicosBailBonds]

chicos, while you're here... any thoughts on this?

http://bgr.com/2014/01/14/net-neutrality-court-ruling/

Still getting my head around it.  Lawyers are summarizing what it all means for us.

[keefe]

while you're at it Chicos, wtf is it with the ratings directv uses in the guide description for movies? I get the 5 star rating system, easy to follow that, but then why not be consistent and NOT use spilled popcorn 28% or Flixter tomato splatters for others? Try explaining those ratings to 85 YO parents

Chico

You guys should adopt the Penthouse Boner Rating System. Simple, direct, and easy to understand. Bob Guccione was brilliant in many ways. Damn that Al Gore. Damn that man for inventing the internet!

[DegenerateDish]

I see also where DirecTv is no fan of the new WWE Network

I'm fascinated to see how/where WWE Network goes/succeeds. This is taking NetFlix and Hulu to a much higher, much more game changing level. Their business plan appears to be quite solid, undervalued to begin with, tons and tons of content available, and hugely discounted PPV rights (which is where DirecTv is really pissed).

Interesting that WWE teamed up with MLB TV to develop.

[Spotcheck Billy]

chicos, while you're here... any thoughts on this?

http://bgr.com/2014/01/14/net-neutrality-court-ruling/

it means that your ISP can now control your internet content / shape it / do as they please
for example.. ban/throttle torrent traffic. favor bandwidth for Netflix over Hulu. etc etc

hell, they might even slow down your posts / post count !!

[jesmu84]

it means that your ISP can now control your internet content / shape it / do as they please
for example.. ban/throttle torrent traffic. favor bandwidth for Netflix over Hulu. etc etc

hell, they might even slow down your posts / post count !!

Maybe they won't, but I could definitely see Comcast slowing down/preventing use of any streaming/on-demand service outside of their own. Dangerous precedent

[MU Fan in Connecticut]

Bill Diederich, and he just worked for a company that created it.  http://www.marquette.edu/magazine/winter06/diederich.shtml

How dare I be mislead by an alumni magazine!

[ChicosBailBonds]

while you're at it Chicos, wtf is it with the ratings directv uses in the guide description for movies? I get the 5 star rating system, easy to follow that, but then why not be consistent and NOT use spilled popcorn 28% or Flixter tomato splatters for others? Try explaining those ratings to 85 YO parents

It's part of Rotten Tomatoes rating system for movies, tv shows, etc

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/

[ChicosBailBonds]

I see also where DirecTv is no fan of the new WWE Network

I'm fascinated to see how/where WWE Network goes/succeeds. This is taking NetFlix and Hulu to a much higher, much more game changing level. Their business plan appears to be quite solid, undervalued to begin with, tons and tons of content available, and hugely discounted PPV rights (which is where DirecTv is really pissed).

Interesting that WWE teamed up with MLB TV to develop.

Simply put, WWE tried to pitch this channel to every distributor out there.  Everyone said no....EVERYONE.  This has been going on for the last year +.   Teaming up with BAM (MLB) is a no brainer, they are the best in terms of this technology.  As I've said here countless times, technology isn't really the issue on delivery (though it is on receipt at the customer's home), its mostly the dollars. 

Right now WWE gets a split of all PPV buys (there are plenty of articles out there guessing at what that split is, but I'd say most reporters did their homework well).  Now they want to go OTT at the same time while ALSO keeping those splits.  So, in essence they want DISH, TWC, Charter, et al to still do the work of order processing, customer service, tying up satellite bandwidth that could be used in other revenue generating ways, etc, etc all while they will sell it direct at a lower price.  The irony is that they set the PPV television price, not the distributor.  

Well, yes, this could get very interesting as you can see from our latest comments  http://www.fiercecable.com/story/directv-fires-warning-shot-over-wwe-network/2014-01-10

This is one of the major reasons why HBO and others have not gone down this path because the distributors do all the heavy lifting for them (marketing, sales, customer service, support, etc).  What happens to the guy that used to buy PPV and is a wrestling fan but has no broadband or terrible broadband?  Or he wants to watch it on his large tv screen like he always did with 5 buddies over, but now has to watch it on his computer screen because he can't port it over, etc, etc.  

If a bunch of distributors say BYE BYE, it will be interesting indeed.  Just my two cents.  They believe they have all these fans out there ready to stream it, ready to deal with WWE's customer service (non existent), any outages that might happen, buffering, the inability to watch it on their big screen, etc, etc....have fun Vince.

Interesting indeed.  

[jesmu84]

http://www.barstoolsports.com/m/philly/super-page/net-neutrality-died-today-heres-what-that-means/

This is a big deal. The net is no longer neutral. I’m watching the Nightly News and they’ve got my boy Brian Williams talking about Chris Christie commercials and crapty water in West Virginia, but it doesn’t look like they’re gonna cover the Net Neutrality decision at all. Here’s basically what it means:
Internet service providers like Kabletown Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, Google, etc now have a lot more power over controlling the speed, pricing, and content of their internet. If Comcast or Time Warner wants to charge more for high-data usage with Netflix, YouTube, or Netflix it’s now legal.  If they want to charge people double for an internet “fast lane” and leave everybody else with dial-up speeds it’s now legal. If they want to censor sites or make sites from a specific company or competitor slow for no reason it’s now legal. If Verizon wants to slow down Barstool Sports because they don’t like us it’s now legal.  ”Oh you want to visit porn sites? Those are censored unless you pay $15 extra.” Basically what I’m saying in the near future everything will be crapty.
Sucks to be Netflix. And, you know, all of us.
This can’t be what Al Gore envisioned.

[keefe]

It's part of Rotten Tomatoes rating system for movies, tv shows, etc

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/

And that is somehow better than the Penthouse Boner System for rating movies??

[ChicosBailBonds]

And that is somehow better than the Penthouse Boner System for rating movies??

What can I say, we have to serve a lot of folks who may not be UP for that kind of rating system at this juncture in time.

[ChicosBailBonds]

http://www.barstoolsports.com/m/philly/super-page/net-neutrality-died-today-heres-what-that-means/

This is a big deal. The net is no longer neutral. I’m watching the Nightly News and they’ve got my boy Brian Williams talking about Chris Christie commercials and crapty water in West Virginia, but it doesn’t look like they’re gonna cover the Net Neutrality decision at all. Here’s basically what it means:
Internet service providers like Kabletown Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, Google, etc now have a lot more power over controlling the speed, pricing, and content of their internet. If Comcast or Time Warner wants to charge more for high-data usage with Netflix, YouTube, or Netflix it’s now legal.  If they want to charge people double for an internet “fast lane” and leave everybody else with dial-up speeds it’s now legal. If they want to censor sites or make sites from a specific company or competitor slow for no reason it’s now legal. If Verizon wants to slow down Barstool Sports because they don’t like us it’s now legal.  ”Oh you want to visit porn sites? Those are censored unless you pay $15 extra.” Basically what I’m saying in the near future everything will be crapty.
Sucks to be Netflix. And, you know, all of us.
This can’t be what Al Gore envisioned.

That's our initial reading and something I've spoken about here and elsewhere for quite some time.  While people love to say Netflix is only $8 a month, you just wait until the other costs go up.  Not just with Netflix, but those that operate the pipes who start to charge those services which will be passed on to the customer. 

I still need more information on this, but it has long been our feeling with data caps, etc, that this is where things are going.  This is also one of the reasons why when people predict TV is going to end next year (the prediction made not always in jest year after year) a lot of folks don't have a very good grasp of the playing field or how it all works.

Too many illogical comparisons to other industries that don't compare at all.   Interesting times ahead, and many more curveballs still to come.  True wireless video is going to be very interesting.

[jesmu84]

The cable/telecom lobbies are alive and well in Washington

[keefe]

those that operate the pipes who start to charge those services which will be passed on to the customer. 

Therein lies the rub. From my work in Corporate Strategy at TMO I can tell you that the pipes are very expensive and the double edged sword is data consumption.

[ChicosBailBonds]

The cable/telecom lobbies are alive and well in Washington

Mostly Telecom in this case.  Comcast actually supported the FCC in this, while Verizon brought suit against the FCC.

There is a practical reason for the court's decision as well.  I know many folks don't like to focus on that and prefer to predict gloom and doom.  Many pundits think this is good news for consumers ultimately.  Don't forget when the FCC rules were formed, people complained from the left and the right of the political spectrum.  The way I understand the ruling, the FCC's power wasn't taken away on this, but they get a second bite at the apple to rewrite the rules again under a different framework. 

This has a long way to go IMO.

[jesmu84]

Mostly Telecom in this case.  Comcast actually supported the FCC in this, while Verizon brought suit against the FCC.

There is a practical reason for the court's decision as well.  I know many folks don't like to focus on that and prefer to predict gloom and doom.  Many pundits think this is good news for consumers ultimately.  Don't forget when the FCC rules were formed, people complained from the left and the right of the political spectrum.  The way I understand the ruling, the FCC's power wasn't taken away on this, but they get a second bite at the apple to rewrite the rules again under a different framework. 

This has a long way to go IMO.

The problem I see in practice, is that the courts are saying: well, if you don't like the restrictions put in place by your current company/service, you can just change. But for most locations, including big cities, that's just not reality as you probably only have, at most, 3 options, with many locales only having 1-2.

[Spotcheck Billy]

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-net-neutrality-20140114,0,522106.story#axzz2qQ6MMMPu

Net neutrality is dead. Bow to Comcast and Verizon, your overlords
Advocates of a free and open Internet could see this coming, but today's ruling from a Washington appeals court striking down the FCC's rules protecting the open net was worse than the most dire forecasts. It was "even more emphatic and disastrous than anyone expected," in the words of one veteran advocate for network neutrality.

The Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit thoroughly eviscerated the Federal Communications Commission's latest lame attempt to prevent Internet service providers from playing favorites among websites--awarding faster speeds to sites that pay a special fee, for example, or slowing or blocking sites and services that compete with favored affiliates.

Big cable operators like Comcast and telecommunications firms like Verizon, which brought the lawsuit on which the court ruled, will be free to pick winners and losers among websites and services. Their judgment will most likely be based on cold hard cash--Netflix wants to keep your Internet provider from slowing its data so its films look like hash? It will have to pay your provider the big bucks. But the governing factor need not be money. (Comcast remains committed to adhere to the net neutrality rules overturned today until January 2018, a condition placed on its 2011 merger with NBC Universal; after that, all bets are off.)

"AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast will be able to deliver some sites and services more quickly and reliably than others for any reason," telecommunications lawyer Marvin Ammori (he's the man quoted above) observed even before the ruling came down. "Whim. Envy. Ignorance. Competition. Vengeance. Whatever. Or, no reason at all."

The telecom companies claim their chief interest is in providing better service to all customers, but that's unadulterated flimflam. We know this because regulators already have had to make superhuman efforts to keep the big ISPs from degrading certain services for their own benefit--Comcast, for example, was caught in 2007 throttling traffic from BitTorrent, a video service that competed with its own on-demand video.

Amazingly, even after Comcast was found guilty of violating this basic standard of Internet transmission, the FCC greenlighted its acquisition of NBC, which could only give the firm greater incentive to discriminate among the content being pipelined to its customers.

ISPs like Comcast are only doing what comes naturally in an unregulated environment, the way a dog naturally scratches at fleas. "Cable and telephone companies are simply not competing for the right to provide unfettered, un-monetized internet access," wrote Susan Crawford, an expert on net neutrality, around the time of the Comcast case.

This wouldn't be as much of a threat to the open Internet if there were genuine competition among providers, so you could take your business elsewhere if your ISP was turning the public Web into its own private garden. In the U.S., there's no practical competition. The vast majority of households essentially have a single broadband option, their local cable provider. Verizon and AT&T provide Internet service, too, but for most customers they're slower than the cable service. Some neighborhoods get telephone fiber services, but Verizon and AT&T have ceased the rollout of their FiOs and U-verse services--if you don't have it now, you're not getting it.

Who deserves the blame for this wretched combination of monopolization and profiteering by ever-larger cable and phone companies? The FCC, that's who. The agency's dereliction dates back to 2002, when under Chairman Michael Powell it reclassified cable modem services as "information services" rather than "telecommunications services," eliminating its own authority to regulate them broadly. Powell, by the way, is now the chief lobbyist in Washington for the cable TV industry, so the payoff wasn't long in coming.

President Obama's FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, moved to shore up the agency's regulatory defense of net neutrality in 2010. But faced with the implacable opposition of the cable and telecommunications industry, he stopped short of reclassifying cable modems as telecommunications services. The result was the tatterdemalion policy that the court killed today. It was so ineptly crafted that almost no one in the telecom bar seemed to think it would survive; the only question was how dead would it be? The answer, spelled out in the ruling, is: totally.

The court did leave it up to the FCC or Congress to refashion a net neutrality regime. The new FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, has made noises favoring net neutrality, but he also sounds like someone who's not so committed to the principle.

In an important speech in December and a long essay released at the same time, he's seemed to play on both sides. But that won't work. The only way to defend net neutrality, which prioritizes the interests of the customer and user over the provider, is to do so uncompromisingly. Net neutrality can't be made subject to the "marketplace," as Wheeler suggests, because the cable and telephone firms control that marketplace and their interests will prevail. Congress? Don't make me laugh--it's owned by the industry even more than the FCC.

The only course is for public pressure to overcome industry pressure. That's a tough road, but there's no alternative. Do you want your Internet to look like your cable TV service, where you have no control over what comes into your house or what you pay for it? Then stay silent. If not, start writing letters and emails to your elected representatives and the FCC now. It's the only hope to save the free, open Internet.

[brandx]

Still getting my head around it.  Lawyers are summarizing what it all means for us.

Just another victory for the "haves". No different than any other situation.

We try to make it about laws, but the power/money win these cases all the time.

Kinda like the criminality of cocaine vs. crack. We don't wanna be puttin' rich people in jail now, do we?

[DegenerateDish]

That was good analysis of DirecTv/WWE Network Chicos (working off my phone so couldn't copy/quote). I "think" the revenue split from PPV's between WWE & Providers is 50%, no? Or roughly that.

I think you're right on too in regards to watching PPV. If WWE, UFC, or any sport wanted to go this route with their PPV's, I for one would much rather watch it in 1080 on my 65'' screen as a direct feed, rather than linking it via PS3 or my computer. Do you think they'll offer a concession and lower the costs of PPV's to providers? I guess what I'm asking is if the payoff off WWE lowering PPV prices, while conceding revenue for those PPV's to their networks, is it still something for DirecTv to pursue a deal on?

I've heard/read WWE needs a million subscribers to break even. I think they will blow away that number early on. What will be most interesting is the retention percentage after 6 months.

[Canned Goods n Ammo]

The problem I see in practice, is that the courts are saying: well, if you don't like the restrictions put in place by your current company/service, you can just change. But for most locations, including big cities, that's just not reality as you probably only have, at most, 3 options, with many locales only having 1-2.

Due to the current infrastructure, you are correct.

However, if those existing providers start jacking around with pricing, it will open up the marketplace for other options.

A lot of alternate cell phone carriers are popping up right now. They are usually leasing the infrastructure of another provider... but there isn't really anything stopping Virgin Mobile from developing their own towers, their own 10G LTE network*, and provide home internet service as well as mobile. 

*(I don't think 10G LTE is a real thing (yet), but you get my point).

Wired connections and infrastructure are REALLY expensive, but, think how far wireless has become in the past 10 years. In theory, there could be a lot more options for home internet in 5-10 years.

[jesmu84]

Due to the current infrastructure, you are correct.

The current infrastructure should be vastly different. But corporations keep screwing over consumers and taxpayers alike. The "haves" win again!

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131012/02124724852/decades-failed-promises-verizon-it-promises-fiber-to-get-tax-breaks-then-never-delivers.shtml

[Canned Goods n Ammo]

The current infrastructure should be vastly different. But corporations keep screwing over consumers and taxpayers alike. The "haves" win again!

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131012/02124724852/decades-failed-promises-verizon-it-promises-fiber-to-get-tax-breaks-then-never-delivers.shtml

I know the consumer is getting screwed (relatively), but I guess my point is, inefficient companies, that profit by "screwing" with consumers usually leave a gaping hole in the marketplace for the competition.

It might not be today, it might not be tomorrow. But, it'll happen.

Google, or amazon, or virgin, or (insert company), will see an opening and run them out of business.