Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday May 02 2017, @02:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the cheaper-circuses dept.

ESPN, which laid off 100 people this week, has a multitude of problems, but the basic one is this: It pays too much for content and costs too much for consumers.

That didn't used to matter because, thanks to the way the cable industry "bundled" channels, cable customers were forced to pay for it even if they never watched it. Now, however, as the cable bundle slowly disintegrates, it matters a lot.

[...] But it's a pipe dream to think that ESPN will ever make the kind of profits ($6.4 billion in 2014) that it once did, for two reasons. First, as is the case with so many other industries, the internet has both shined a light on the flaws of the cable model and exploited them. What was the main flaw of the cable model? It was that consumers had to pay for channels they never watched.

And now they don't.

It turns out that there were lots of people, including sports fans, who resented having to pay for the most expensive channel in the bundle. The popularity of streaming led to "cord cutting," but it also caused cable companies to begin offering less expensive "skinny bundles," some of which don't include ESPN.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @04:03PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @04:03PM (#502915)

    Some people seek out actual news. Nobody wants to provide it,

    You've got it backwards. EVERYONE would love to provide it, but nobody wants to pay for it. The news rooms would give their right arm to be able to go back in time because they all yearn to be Woodward or Bernstein. But the public doesn't want news, they WANT Kardashian stories, AND they want it free. Look at all the pissing and moaning we get here when something is behind a paywall. OMG! Those EVIL bastards wanting to charge me money. Then the same people go an bitch about how bad news coverage is. Just where do they think the people who cover news comes from, just free from the Internet? News reporting costs money, and it turns out that most of the connoisseurs of fine news and reporting actually find fine news and reporting to be boring, so they go to where the Kardashian stories are.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +5  
       Insightful=4, Interesting=1, Total=5
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @04:38PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @04:38PM (#502940)

    I like the BBC model where the public funds news reporting directly and is independent of the government. Unbiased reporting is too important to leave to commercial interests or billionaire endowments. Those guys should go and buy a celebrity event or a basketball team and fill up the middle and back pages. The front pages need to be THE news.

    • (Score: 2) by n1 on Tuesday May 02 2017, @06:33PM (1 child)

      by n1 (993) on Tuesday May 02 2017, @06:33PM (#503020) Journal

      The BBC is mostly independent of government.

      Their unbiased reporting is not always ideal either, since they wont actually do much in the way of investigating themselves. The way I explain it usually goes like this: "The government insists it's not raining. The opposition says it is raining. The BBC reporter declined to look out of the window for fear of showing bias." ... They show both sides of the story, usually weighted more toward the government position as even though they are technically independent, they are still under pressure and threat from government to reign them in, constantly. They repeat government press releases as they are expected to, but they almost never look into the details of the proposals themselves, just report the spin, they have to wait for some other third party to provide that balance, usually after the fact in a 'what we know now' kind of a way.

      In 1980 the BBC’s documentary series Panorama began developing an episode on British intelligence. This was the first of its kind, at least by such a prominent and respected series, but both the central government and the intelligence agencies were not happy. Over a period of several months they put pressure on the BBC, trying to stop the programme from being broadcast. When this failed they considered using the government veto to prevent it from airing, and ultimately ended up heavily censoring the documentary via a secret preview screening with MI5.

      [...] the government can veto any BBC programme. Armstrong does describe this as the ‘nuclear option’ for both the government and the BBC, i.e. something neither side really wants.

      http://www.spyculture.com/clandestime-103-mi5-censorship-panorama/ [spyculture.com]

      A clip from "Yes, Minister" which pains me greatly as it's as valid as ever https://vimeo.com/155307641 [vimeo.com]

      More recently:

      The culture secretary has been accused of attempting to “bend the BBC to his political will” after it emerged he plans to have the government directly appoint most members of a new body to run the corporation.

      https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/13/government-choose-bbc-board-john-whittingdale [theguardian.com]

      Don't get me wrong, I think the BBC does provide a valuable service and are often the best of a bad bunch of media corporations, but they are not truly independent from government and they are not unbiased. Their bias just changes depending on the political agenda of the day.

      • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday May 02 2017, @07:15PM

        by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday May 02 2017, @07:15PM (#503059) Journal

        Kind of like the CBC: sort-of-independent: they get funding from the government, but there are a lot of Canadians who put pressure on the Government of the day to keep funding it.

        But independent and unbiased? Better than CNN, but there is quite a bit of bias (liberal) still.

        --
        --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday May 02 2017, @08:07PM

      by jdavidb (5690) on Tuesday May 02 2017, @08:07PM (#503106) Homepage Journal

      I like the BBC model where the public funds news reporting directly and is independent of the government

      But the reporting is funded by the government, so it is not independent of the government. And in fact there are people who believe the BBC is biased in favor of the government:

      --
      ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @05:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @05:01PM (#502950)

    Vapid news programs on TV drove me away from TV news. Tabloid quality reporting is what finally convinced me to install an ad blocker.

  • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday May 02 2017, @07:23PM (2 children)

    by Aiwendil (531) on Tuesday May 02 2017, @07:23PM (#503066) Journal

    Look at all the pissing and moaning we get here when something is behind a paywall. OMG! Those EVIL bastards wanting to charge me money

    Well, that is also because we are being asked to pay for it sight unseen. If it is at least at the level of Forbes, Technology Review or Smithsonian one would consiser paying for it if they had a sensible (no subscription, no javascript, no third-party crap needing to be installed, semi-anonymous payment) payment model.

    However since most articles online are crap one would be hardpressed to even consider paying for the unknown.

    • (Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Tuesday May 02 2017, @07:52PM (1 child)

      by AndyTheAbsurd (3958) on Tuesday May 02 2017, @07:52PM (#503096) Journal

      Sadly, the currently-in-place payment systems make it impossible to turn a profit by charging ten or twenty-five cents for access to a single article. If the credit card networks would further lower their fees - or if a proper micropayments service that allowed websites not be net-negaive when charging those kinds of prices would gain traction - we might be able to pay for our online article access per article rather than having to subscribe or buy far more articles than we need.

      --
      Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
      • (Score: 2) by cafebabe on Wednesday May 03 2017, @04:22PM

        by cafebabe (894) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @04:22PM (#503734) Journal

        RFC2616, Section 10.4.3 reserves HTTP response code 402 for micropayment. All that is required is a web server and web browser which implements a common micropayment system plus users who are willing to go web browsing with their digital wallet open. Given the idiocy of one dollar apps, there must be a one billion dollar market by now.

        --
        1702845791×2
  • (Score: 3, Flamebait) by jmorris on Tuesday May 02 2017, @11:38PM (1 child)

    by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday May 02 2017, @11:38PM (#503298)

    The news rooms would give their right arm to be able to go back in time because they all yearn to be Woodward or Bernstein.

    You are half right. You are wrong that they want to be journalists, hold the powerful to account, etc. We just had eight years of an utterly corrupt and lawless administration that created an opportunity for a Pulitzer Prize pretty much on a monthly basis. Nobody even really tried to claim one. None. To the current people with the monopoly on the microphones, journalism isn't a profession it is a tactic. 90+% are on Team Blue and simply want to win at all cost and the few on Team Red (FNC, Breitbart, Drudge) are essentially the same way. And the few indy journalists who try to actually report get zero airplay for their reporting.

    You are right that they all want to be "Woodward or Bernstein" in the sense of getting the scalp of an "Enemy of the Party" so expect many such attempts now... but they are so incompetent now and have squandered so much public trust they probably can't pull it off. Trump was right when he said he could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and his voters wouldn't care, we wouldn't care because we wouldn't trust the media reporting it.

    This is not a good situation, btw, And no I don't have a solution.

    • (Score: 2) by cafebabe on Saturday May 06 2017, @11:19PM

      by cafebabe (894) on Saturday May 06 2017, @11:19PM (#505601) Journal

      journalism isn't a profession it is a tactic.

      The last journalist I (knowingly) met certainly had an agenda. Specifically, he wrote articles which were favorable to pro-immigration demonstrators and only varied his output to increase virtuousness. If pro-immigration demonstrators killed someone he'd probably ignore it or spin it favorably.

      Oh, and there was the guy in a makerspace who was covertly recording on his Android phone and then mis-quoted people anyhow. Oh yeah, and then there was the little guy in the wheelchair who similarly mis-quoted people. That was a blatent case of affirmitive action. If you're going to mis-quote people then make sure that grammar and slang are credible. Overall, I presume that it is easier aggregate, plagurize and fabricate rather than obtain the truth.

      --
      1702845791×2