AT&T blacks out HBO, Cinemax for Dish, Sling TV users over carriage dispute
telecompaper.com
telecompaper.com
After the merger, AT&T removed HBO from its lower-priced wireless plan, raised wireless prices, raised DirecTV NOW prices, and now this. Frankly, I would have expected a year or two of AT&T saying, "see, nothing bad happened! If anything, we're giving consumers more!" Then a couple years later, "because of inflation, costs, whatever, we're raising prices...it wasn't because of the merger at all!"
It just seems like AT&T decided to forego plausible deniability. And the merger is being appealed to the DC Circuit court. Literally the DoJ argued that AT&T would have, "both the incentive and the ability to raise its rivals' costs and stifle growth of innovative, next-generation entrants that offer attractive alternatives to AT&T/DirecTV's legacy pay-TV model—all to the detriment of American consumers," and that AT&T would have more power in negotiations with competitors. Now they're proving that.
I'm just surprised that AT&T couldn't wait 18 months. 18 months later, the merger wouldn't be on people's minds as much and they could argue that the market had shifted (production costs, more competition from YouTube, whatever). Doing these things so soon makes a really clear cause and effect. Waiting gives you deniability.
Nothing. Nobody is going to do a thing about it.
Nobody wins when any of these three can be owned by the same interest.
And the government was forced to make their case in court, but the government lost and ATT won. The government is now appealing.
How would you design an alternate system? Government gets to decide with no recourse for the company to make their case?
I don't know what the 'right' system is, but the current one allows for situations like the one in the article to be perfectly OK and, IMHO, is broken.
Judges are accountable. You just have to impeach them.
Except when they don't, like in the case of the 'muslim ban' and the specific case here with the creation of a new monopoly.
The massive consolidation in soo many US industries I think has done a large disservice to the country and long term prospects for the economy by massively reduced competition
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...
Sure. More regulation. Just what we need. Well known to solve every problem known to man.
You're engaging in a slippery slope argument, and I hope no one buys in to your point of view.
How do you get them to cooperate though? What's to stop AT&T from playing them against each other and just saying the first one to accept their terms gets a sweetheart deal, and everyone else is going to have to pay even more?
Turn on your cable or satellite TV and scroll through the channels. Notice everything that is on. Should you do it every day for a month you would realize that it is the same recycled content that is being re-pushed. That's because for all big talk there's just not enough broadcast quality content that is being produced to fill the available slots. Production of the content is not just expensive, it is time consuming.
2018, Univision: https://www.multichannel.com/news/ergen-univision-blackout-i...
2017, CBS: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dish-network-drops-cb...
2016, Viacom: https://deadline.com/2016/04/viacom-dish-network-resolve-car...
2012, AMC: https://www.npr.org/2012/09/13/161019358/wheres-my-amc-dish-...
2010, Weather Channel: https://www.reuters.com/article/industry-us-dish-weatherchan...
2010, Disney: https://technology.ihs.com/402822/disney-dish-spat-the-battl...
Full list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Dish_Network#Prog...
Granted, the landscape has changed and it's a lot easier to change streaming providers than the old days when you had to physically switch out your satellite system for DirecTV or go back to CATV/Cable.
The problem is that this weapon does not work against AT&T which owns DirectTV -- Dish would need to drop all AT&T controlled content a the worst possible time for AT&T - such as right before the elections ( CNN would take a major hit ) as well as channels such as TBS/TNT/etc, which may not be possible due to other contracts while betting that AT&T's campaign to switch Dish users to DirectTV won't be successful ( it will - there's really no difference between the two providers it is just a question of AT&T having the installation operation ready )
Dish is a dinosaur of the carriers - it has too many channels and no content to put on it. Its only long term play is heavy investment in creating its own programming. Even Netflix and Amazon realized it.
They are definitely playing long game if they’re willing to lose 2.5 million Dish subscribers. HBO makes about $8 per sub from cable companies, so $20m per month. They are probably trying to push it up to their OTT price ($15).
People can still subscribe to HBO Now. Mildly annoying to get it from a separate interface or you have bad internet, but at least there are options.
If you don't watch live shows anyway, it's (IME) better than HBO-on-Cable, even accompanied by the HBO Go app (which is far more terrible than HBO Now ever was.)
This isn't an issue for me because I have DirecTV, etc., but if it were I would simply sign up for HBO Now, pay full price, but never use it and download from bittorrent in leech mode[1].
I will happily defend that behavior to a jury of my peers.
[1] Or whatever your client calls the mode where you don't seed the torrent.
Supply-side economics.
Pertaining to this instance, that would include taking on and honoring the contracts and commitments already made by your acquisition.
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Here's an idea: Regulation that says the moment they do such, they have to discount all impacted customers' billing by the amount represented by these services.
And, up the food chain, the other parties lose their corresponding revenue. No grace period, no exceptions. Every hour of blackout costs them, for what they are not providing on the packages they've sold customers.
I'd also argue for an additional penalty assessment for lack of notice to customers of service change.
When it starts costing them all money, negotiations may go a bit more smoothly and willingly -- and planfully.
"But, contracts!"
Commercial contracts face all sorts of legal limitations. This proposal seems a pretty simple and purposeful limitation, that is overdue.
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P.S. Once it's coded into their systems, it can be generalized. Failed Internet connectivity? Discount! Missed service call? Discount!
In other words, stop them from externalizing the costs of poor support. (Which they can do all the more readily in the absence of effective competition, a known issue here in the U.S.)
P.P.S. You can also see the pressure/incentive this situation provides, for customers to move to online streaming over a neutral carrier (if they can get it), for such programming -- including access at time of release as opposed to through an archive.
Customers make commitments, both contractual and personal in terms of time and effort and availability, to media distribution purchases. I think they have a right to receive the product they paid for. If that product fails or changes substantially, they have a right to recompense -- to a corresponding adjustment, at least.
They get jerked around by the big media companies: Programming and distribution.
Make those companies absorb the costs of their own machinations and failures, instead of passing them on -- financially and otherwise -- to relatively captive customers.
Let's say I'm a lumber supplier and happen to be the only supplier in the world capable of manufacturing AwesomeWood. I want to raise my prices, but some contractor/land owner decides they won't pay. But they really like AwesomeWood. Does the manufacturer now owe the contractor/land owner compensation? Seems silly.
Again, speaking generally, if cable company had to, hour one, cut customer's bill by the portion that X represents. If, in other cases where provider/distributor of X is still getting paid essentially out of customer's pocket for X, that too has to stop.
Maybe these sudden blackouts would go away.
In this case, as I understand it, ATT bought HBO. ? -- I can't even keep up with all the mergers, anymore; that kind of rings a bell.
Suddenly, a couple of months later, pricing/contract dispute makes HBO go away for these customers. They should get a discount on their packages, and I'd love to see ATT eat it for not honoring the relationship HBO had with these downstream providers and providing some continuity.
At least in this case, if they have decent high speed internet (Sling at least implies this, for part of them), they can get HBO through another avenue. Does HBO stream directly, now? I know you can subscribe to their... "channel"?, addon?, through Amazon Prime video and presumably (without requiring eating the $120/year cost for Prime) through Amazon video.
In other cases, customers may not have such a ready, easy option for alternative access. No high speed internet (Dish customers, maybe). Or content that doesn't stream (some sports). And this lack of options all the more so, in past but still recent and relevant years.
In many cases, due to lack of options, or to one-time cost and time barriers (getting another physical distribution channel set up, if one's even available), customer subscription choices are significantly "sticky".
Every time these big media companies "fight it out", with blackouts and such, they are imposing costs on those customers. Costs they can externalize, because customers are "stuck" with them in a marketplace that is severely lacking in effective competition.
Finally, that lack may be lessening -- IF those customers have access to adequate, affordable, and neutral data delivery. Something that remains untrue or under threat, for many customers.
Anyway, I hope I made some sense, here.
As for me, I spent 16 years with only one high-speed Internet option, because the one competitor in this area chose not to repair or replace the ancient and degraded copper line along my back lot line. And that was after they received approximately 750 million in tax breaks and other... "gifts", I have to call them, from the state, in return for a commitment to deploy "universal" high speed Internet access to the entire state (with a little wiggle room for hard to reach areas) -- years prior. A commitment they promply reneged on and spent money lobbying to get out of.
That was what is now called ATT, by the way.
So here, I see another instance of their shafting customers, because they can.
Make them pay. Nothing else works -- well, there's been no effective political will to throw their executives in prison, yet. (Were there, I'm not entirely dubious that criminal activity could be found in some of their behavior.)
/s
Now facebook, that is pure luxury that we can all do without. And don't get me started on air travel. Get out and walk. Take a train.
Facebook is trying to be a content platform for everything. If it had it's way, it would be YouTube++. To be locked out of YouTube these days would be pretty bad if you wanted to be a vlogger. And Air Travel is pretty critical for remote towns in America. Train isn't really competitive for cross america travel in terms of time even if we have to put up with all the security theater.
For the Sheldon out there: When you see someone equate two wildly different things, such as FLYING and WALKING, that is code for not literal and you should examine the wording in context. There is probably another meaning, one often opposite to that literally described by the text. And if you don't understand what I mean by "Sheldons" then I give up.
Wow, that was too much typing. It is almost like metaphor allow us to express complex ideas with far fewer words than literal description of the facts. I wonder if anyone else has discovered this trick?
You mention walking vs flying as an appeal to extremes, but you dropped in trains right after. That takes away from your point at the critical moment. And your Facebook as a luxury comparison just doesn't really get your point across. It's not like you told me to sell my children to fix my financial troubles.
Do you want piracy? This is how you get piracy.
And drives them right into the arms of the HBO Now $15/month plan. Oh, yeah, cord-cutters have 'em so torn up at HBO, they're crying rivers of gold bars over there.
Holy crap, I didn't know this. That seems like absolute peanuts.
Edit: As pointed out, the article dropped a factor of 1000. Mildly infuriating, to the say the least. I guess they pointed it out at the end of the article, shame on me then.
Yep, just looked it up to verify, I thought it was fishy as hell. Shame on the original article, that's such a silly misprint.
Comcast - Disney - AT&T - Nextstar - Sinclair, etc... It's an everlasting dance that's been doing on for decades.
The only reason this is interesting to the HN community is because it's happening to Sling. But if Sling wants to play on the level of Scripps, Gannet, etc... it has to play by those rules, and expect these sorts of things to happen.
I'm not saying AT&T is right here. But I witnessed at least a dozen of these temporary content blackouts in my previous life in broadcasting. Just because your TV company doesn't have towers doesn't mean you get a free pass.
And also no, Sling being included is not the only reason this is interesting. It’s interesting because it’s a major telco using their newly acquired content as an anticompetitive bludgeon, in direct violation of their quite recent promises to the contrary.
Yes, it does. You are correct that this is the first dispute between HBO and Sling. But as I stated, this type of dispute between content creators and content distributors happens all the time.
Welcome to professional broadcasting. So much for the SV "disruption" strategy.
There is no free pass expected. This is a simple result of ATT flexing its muscles after consolidation. I don't think you can genuinely say this is business as usual if it is the first time in HBO's history it has happened.
As for it happening to Sling/Dish, yes, absolutely I think ATT picked a fight with them first due to it being their main competition with DirecTV.
No worries. Eventually, the online streaming services will become so fragmented it'll be just like cable tv all over again.
I don't think I've ever been to this site in my life, but they claim I've used up my free articles. Clearing cookies solves this.
*posting from a place where there's no cell signal and the only internet access available is satellite (the POTS is too noisy for modem connection)
it just so happens that it’s real easy with content!