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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.


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  • (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.

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  • (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 ---