Remember when I was furious because Cablevision and ABC had a falling out and we wound up going to a hotel so we could watch the Oscars?
Well, the latest round is Fox pulling its line-up of programming because Cablevision didn’t want to increase their payout to Fox from $70 million to $150 million.
This time, though, I couldn’t care less.
The programs I actually watch on Fox are easily available through the Internet. It’s one less show (“Glee”) to be pitted against “Tower Prep” in this media market. Being a Mets fan, I absolutely don’t give a crap about the baseball post season, and if I’m inclined to watch football for some unknown reason, there’s plenty of other avenues for it. And best of all, it makes it less convenient for the conservatives to watch their beloved Fox News.
So I really don’t give a dámņ how long this particular outage continues.
PAD
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Dish is also threatening to pull Fox as well.
I am very glad to have DirecTV now.
I’ve not read anything that says Dish is threatening to pull Fox channels, but both sides certainly have the propaganda machine going full force.
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That said, some Fox-owned channels, such as FX, were pulled from Dish Network on Oct 1, as the contract for those channels expired. Negotiations have stalled over Fox’s requested rate increase for those channels.
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According to Dish, Fox is also threatening to pull local affiliates from Dish Network as well; I’m guessing there’s another contract there that is soon to expire.
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As for being glad for DirecTV, don’t worry, your turn is coming sooner or later. The last thing I’d tell anybody to do is switch because of this kind of dispute. That will simply lock you into a new contract with another provider when these kinds of disputes are only going to become more common moving forward.
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The one I keep warning people to really watch out for is what happens once Comcast is given the thumbs up to buy NBC Universal.
“but both sides certainly have the propaganda machine going full force.”
Working for Canada’s equivalent of the FCC, I can tell you that both broadcasters and networks’ pronouncements should be taken with a hill of salt. I’ve lost track of how many times either cable companies or networks have blatantly lied to the public in an effort to swing opinion their way. The most memorable was when one of our biggest cable company sent out notices that we were going to ban them from including American stations on their grid if they didn’t go along with a proposed new regulation. Pure hooey manure, of course, but I’m betting a lot of people believed it.
Wow. $70 to $150 million is quite a large increase.
However, while I don’t currently have Fox 5 I do still have Fox News. So it’s a lose-lose situation.
On the bad side, there are Cablevision subscribers in the Philadelphia area who are missing out on seeing their Phillies in their (joy!) third straight League Championship Series (not to mention their Eagles pulling a surprising upset of the Atlanta Falcons, with the hapless Kevin Kolb actually acting like a real quarterback).
On the good side, the outage means that those Phils fans don’t have to suffer through the horrid, horrible, horrendous playcalling by Joe Buck (who has forgotten the face of his father–or at least his voice) and Tim McCarver (who has forgotten … everything else, really).
If I still owned a car, I could time my oil changes by Cablevision’s disputes with the networks.
just recently got set up with Verizon Fiberoptic, so no real impact here. And even if, only thing Fox holds for me is the sunday animation block, and all that ends up on dvd eventually.
It’s just sad that Fox is so rampantly greedy. and they have an ad campain trying to imply to consumers that it’s cablevision who are making them “lose their shows”.
Just sad.
Unfortunately, Fox News is not part of the dispute. I did like the line from the live 30 Rock show this week: “Welcome back to Fox News. I’m blonde.”
Except Fox started blocking Cablevision’s Internet customers from accessing Fox programming on sites such as Hulu (they restored it a few hours later, but left open the possibility of reinstating the block):
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9IT4SE80.htm
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20101016/news-corp-shuts-off-hulu-access-to-cablevision-subs/
That’s crazy. Cablevision doesn’t pay up on the television end so they block internet users. Net neutrality, anyone?
Sadly, Fox News has “must carry” status as a “news” channel.
That Fox started blocking Cablevision users on Hulu, on the other hand, is a VERY bad precedent. Because if Fox is going to start screwing around with net neutrality, there’s nothing stopping Cablevision from blocking Internet access to all of Newscorp’s web sites– including, say, Myspace and IGN.
Likewise, there’s nothing to stop Myspace from blocking Cablevision.
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Not that it’d be a huge loss.
Dammit. Fox News: Like a turd that just won’t flush.
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PAD
I’d urge anyone troubled by Fox’s actions with Hulu to contact their Congressperson. Congress is very interested in Net neutrality issues at the moment (it’s been speculated that this being pointed out to them was what caused Fox to back off on the block… for now).
Not sure I understand this–why wouldn’t or even shouldn’t the creators of a show have control over whether or not it is seen on the Internet? How is this different from Marvel not wanting people downloading comics?
Because this is a case of only blocking it to certain internet users…
They put their shows on the internet for people to watch. Not they are blocking only certain ISPs from connecting?
On the other hand, anyone else remember when cable TV first rolled up and their big selling pitch was “You’re paying for TV, so no censorship and no commeercials!”
“why wouldn’t or even shouldn’t the creators of a show have control over whether or not it is seen on the Internet?”
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Well, I assume you mean the owners, not creators. The issue is the precedent it sets; the nature of the Internet is that traffic is supposed to flow freely across a shared network. To block one segment of that network from access (particularly as a tactic to gain leverage in a business dispute) creates the threat of Balkanization; suppose Cablevision decided to retaliate by blocking all traffic from News Corporation employees. If those kinds of behaviors became accepted, it would eventually lead to the functionality of the Internet breaking down. Whether you could view a webpage or receive an email would depend on the vagaries of the disputes between whichever organizations the data happened to travel across (and who many have nothing to do with the content of the data at all).
This is why we need “a la carte” options from cable and sat companies. Just let us choose which channels we want and pay only for those.
PAD, does this include FX? If so, there are quite a few shows I would miss being able to see, if I was in your position.
No, FX is unaffected. I didn’t realize that Fox News was still there, though; I could have sworn that was one of the impacted channels. Dammit.
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PAD
Whatever happened to free speech? To be happy that conservatives can’t watch FOX News (which, yes, isn’t affected) is a bit hypocritical, no?
Sorry Alan, TV and radio aren’t free speech, why do you think it’s so heavily censored, especially by the right-wing bible-thumpers?
A few weeks ago I did the math and realized last season I followed 21 shows. Some were british (I dont know if it was aired in the US but you have to watch Luther) but most were american. And I watched all of them without relying on spaniard networks (that, anyway, bought less than a third of the shows I follow), all thanks to internet. No hulu too, because hulu blocks IPs from many countries, like mine.
So:
1- It is quite easy to keep up to date with your favorite shows without depending on warring companies.
2- It means a bit of work but that turns it into a more selective process, encouraging you to drop shows that are not worth it and improving the overall quality of what you watch.
On a side note… Murdoch also maneuvered to heighten the value of his newsfeeds on Google News last year. I didnt follow that closely but hearing this new dispute, seems to me the man is trying to improve his revenue by sheer çøjøņëš and might even be able to pull it off.
Upfront, I work for ABC/Disney, so I know a little about why this is happening. As PAD mentioned, ABC/Disney has had it’s own problems with cable, specifically Time-Warner Cable and Cablevision.
For the over-the-air programming, cable companies used to pay ZERO dollars. They only paid companies for the cable-only programming. Local stations decided they wanted a piece of the pie. After all, all the cable companies were doing is to put up their own antennas and then selling a product that people could get for free. So, now there is a contract between the broadcast channels and the cable companies on how much cable has to pay the stations. This contract between Cablevision and FOX has expired and it’s time to renegotiate. If they can’t come to an agreement, then the stations have the right to not allow cable to retransmit the signal. It’s really that simple. Is Murdock asking for too much of an increase? I don’t know. Obviously he doesn’t think so and Cablevision does. Thus the talks going back and forth. Please, don’t think that it’s only the EVIL TV stations that cause the interruptions. Back in the last ABC/Disney negotiations, it was Time-Warner and Cablevision that stopped sending the signals, not the stations that told them to stop.
As for the FOX News problem many people seem to have, just change the channel. Wow, isn’t that easy!?
With Fox News, as with many editorial networks and radio stations (thats not news, no matter how often they repeat it) is that you can turn them off but their crap follows you around. Whenever I hear multiple people repeating the same lie (as in things I know are untrue for a fact), using the same language figures, maybe even the same words, I just have to listen to certain radio or Tv shows to see where they got it.
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Wishing some kinds of noise would go away is not an attack on freedom of speech, is just self defence.
To be fair, there’s also repeated lies coming from CNN, Msnbc, and even comedy central. Granted, it’s easier when it’s the lies you like.
Oh, there is a lot of lies in the news, that for sure. There is smearing and misinformation. But for the most part it takes the either an anarchic form or the form of an oversimplistic crusade. Liberals hate to come off as meanspirited loudmouths so even their misinformation cater to the gentler aspects of our personalities. Liberal misinformation might lead you to buy something you dont need to save something that doesnt need to be saved. And thats bad.
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But Fox News (and the ilk) framing of most issues cater to our most reptilian insticts. They want us to think in a “Us vs Them” way 24/7 and serve a culprit for every problem in the world, real or imaginary. And I am not saying thats because its conservative propaganda (some of the media outlets you mentioned are actually pretty conservative from where I stand) but because its Fox News and thats what they do. I dont like misinformation when it makes people write angry letters or vote against the values they really hold. But I like it even less when it might leads to people hoarding bullets.
im with you PAD. With this current go-round, i could care less. Not a big sports fan, and i could give 2 figs about Glee.
I have to say tho, that while im no fan of cablevision, it DOES seem that Fox is being the unreasonable one this go-round.
I am strictly a wait-for-the-DVD kind of guy when it comes to TV shows. I don’t even have cable. In any case, I’m not American, so I can’t support the ratings that would keep interesting shows from cancellation.
I’m with you, Peter. Even though I still get the Fox broadcast network from Cablevision on our local Connecticut channels (we’re in both markets), they could drop the dámņ thing entirely and I wouldn’t care less. I watch the Simpsons and Adriane watches Glee; we have the Internet so what Fox gives away for free to people with antennas they can give away for free to me, too.
Same thing is true for FX, but I enjoy a lot more on that channel. Sons of Anarchy, Louie, Justified. I notice they’re all online as well.
I’d say “Screw Murdoch” but, well, I’d say “Screw Murdoch” anyway.
For what it’s worth, my family gave up our dish in February. We’ve been watching all of our television through the network’s websites and Netflix’s instant streaming service, with almost no trouble at all. The only hiccup was the new season of Doctor Who. I bought two episodes (one from iTunes, one from Amazon) and watched the rest at a friend’s house.
For the most part it’s been a big success. There’s generally less commercials, and I even get to see end credits again! (Although this year, the CW is putting enough commercials in their streaming of Smallville that it nearly takes the full hour. I’m rediscovering the joys of being able to get up and go get a snack during the commercials, with the modern perk of being able to pause it or rewind it if I take too long!)
Peter, I wish you wouldn’t compare Fox News to a turd. It’s really unfair to the other turds.
“Liberals hate to come off as meanspirited loudmouths”
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Really? Please YouTube Keith Olbermann’s Scott Brown rant for exhibit A on how he has taken “meanspirited loudmouth” to new heights. even Jon Stewart said it was probably the nastiest description of someone he’s ever heard.
See also: Michael Moore and Janeane Garafolo. Or Cynthia Tucker hoping Clarence Thomas’s “white wife would feed him plenty of butter so he dies of heart disease like many black men do”. Or the poster here who is not even worth naming who, while trying to be fair, called me a “piece of scum” because, I don’t know, he never specified.
So, you know, please.
Well, there are many exceptions, but usually Liberals want to be liked by everybody. You don’t need to see that as praise, if you don’t want to. Some consider it spinelessness or naivete.
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I wish most Liberals had more of the killer instinct that allows many Conservatives to think like “I don’t give a dámņ if people don’t like what I say, those are my values and if you don’t like them, f*** you.”
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There is something to admire in that sort of attitude, and it’s more common in Conservatives, for some reason.
I agree. Individuals aside, the liberal side of the argument has become all too often tame and too thin blooded. They still cling to the notion of winning people by exposing their point of view in a detailed way, wich is fine when talking to individuals but not to groups. Conservatives learned long ago that most people vote what they feel is right, not what they think it is. Most people share the same values to a degree. Many self labeled conservatives Ive met would vote liberal if someone talked straight to the liberal leaning notions they actually believe in.
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(in case someone has noticed the similarities, most of this theories I borrow from Lakoff books)
Admiting I have a bias, I also see my statement would benefit from some narrowing down.
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Liberals can be as mean spirited, loud and obnoxious as conservatives. Tho I usually enjoy Olbermann’s “worst person” pieces, Ive also objected to some thick brush definitions I’ve watched him make. Most heated arguments I remember having had to do with people ideologically akin to me retorting to poisoned paths when making a political point that I would otherwise agree with.
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What I should have said then, would be that even when promoted via disinformation through media, liberal causes rarely promote negative generalizations like xenophobia. The worst examples of liberal thinking usually have to do with trying too hard to help someone, falling into paternalism and infatilization of whole segments of the population, if not the whole. You can see A liberal beign mean to a person, you wont see campaigns based on promoting straight forward hate for whole groups of people. Most conservatives wont do that either.
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Fox News does that. Fox News and some other outlets of its kind presents its audience a narrow, distorted aspect of reality as if it is the whole. And it usually does it in a structured, planned way, with cunningly crafted catchphrases instead of slogans. I can think of a lot, mostly in my country’s versions of FN, but I remember one Fox used not long ago. During the whole Health Care reform craze, nearly every Fox News clip I watched about it included the expression “Shoving down my/your/our throat”. Not one, not two but nearly everyone would use that expression. In some clips, if there were 4 people on the screen the four of them would use it. That’s called negative framing, thats when you can stop talking about bias or right leaning and start talking about strategy and outright Propaganda. Thats when you lose the right to say you are a News channel or even an editorial one and become a pamphlet.
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Doing it to promote a political issue is bad enough, but Fox also does it to promote racial and national stereotypes. They dont report on how angry people are but actually feed them the right kind of stuff to make them angry, furious even. If youd ont think thats bad, just read anything you find about the role of Shock-jock radio in Rwanda genocide, please. The differences with FN are of cuantity, not quality.
I think you are still painting with far too broad a brush. One of the dangers liberals face, to a far greater degree than conservatives, is the blessed conviction that they are good and their opponents are evil, motivated by evil, seduced by evil, or just too stupid to see how evil they are. There are plenty of conservatives who do it as well and it is a foolish trap to fall into, one quite liable to result in…well, evil. I think liberals are more likely to fall into the trap if only because so much of the popular media culture reinforces that impression. You don’t often see the liberal revealed as the bad guy on Law & Order and even when a conservative is presented in a semi-positive light we are usually left with no doubt as to what the “correct” path should be (Boston Legal gets kudos for Denny Crane–a conservative with a degenerative brain disease who is certifiably crazy. At least the creator’s bias was in the open.)
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“Liberal causes rarely promote negative generalizations like xenophobia”? Well, almost all of the hardcore anti-semitsm I’ve seen openly displayed has been from the left, blaming Israel for virtually every problem in foreign policy–and not just in the usual way one may disagree with a country, but by using the most appalling and time tested blood libels. It is certainly possible to be anti-Israel and not be anti-Semetic but if you are marching next to a guy who has a poster of a hook nosed Jew drinking the blood of slaughtered Palestinian children, well, your sheet is showing.
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In this election season we have seen candidates on the left side of the aisle engage in religious attacks, racial attacks, and rather xenophobic attitudes in the name of protecting American jobs. Of course, if one believes that one is Good fighting Evil it is so much easier to not see those negative traits even when they are coming from one’s own lips.
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But you know, all this will bog down in the whole semantics of left and right, conservative and liberal. When people on one’s own side behave badly the standard rely is “Well, they aren’t TRUE ********s anyway.”
Bill, there are good reasons why pop culture reinforces this impression. Conservatism and Liberalism DO have important differences. Even when they’re twisted into unhealthy shapes, they remain different.
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Liberals usually believe in non-violence, diplomacy and multi-culturalism. It’s hard to come up with “active” villains that expouse such beliefs.
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Liberals have been demonized in pop culture, but in a slightly different way. They’re not the main villain, they’re the weakling worm that makes things easy for the villain and makes the mission of the conservative hero harder.
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In the 24 movie, there was a perfect example: the holier-than-thou, cowardly UN French dude that wants to be “reasonable” with the thugish African dictator, while the “correct” action is to blow the bad guys to kingdom come.
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Thus, the “evil” of Liberalism is more likely to manifest in “treason” and “cowardice.” Even the Left’s condemnation of Israel seems less like xenophobia to me, and more like self-loathing. After all, Jews are symbols of Western, corrupt, decadent, imperialistic white culture, correct? While Palestinians are non-white, pure, Eastern, etc.
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It’s like… in rejecting Israel, the liberals reject themselves, or what they don’t like about themselves. Conservatives love to mock Liberals as white dudes full of misplaced guilt.
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Now, the “evil” of Conservatism is different, and has to do with ambition, dogmatism, ruthlessness, greed, selfshness, distrust of what is different and unnatural. Those are qualities that make better villains.
Also google “Paul Begala Esquire article” for another unbelievable display of meanspiritedness.
All I know is I sit down to watch the first night of the NBA season — for my favorite team — only to learn that Fox has pulled all of its channels from DISH network, and my team only broadcasts on Fox Sports Net. Shìŧ, this is ridiculous. The home team sold out and moved off the local station to go with Fox, and now Fox is fûçkìņg the home fans. Thanks, Fox. I hope next season the home team switches back to the home channel — that’s where the local games belong anyway. GRUMP!