Cablevision Reports 8,000 Voom Subscribers.

[Bruce]

Back to topic:

8,000 subs was lower than the 10,000 + figure I was told last week. I am dissapointed that my source of information did not match. Now, if you consider this low and you are predicting dooms day for VOOM then you have missed the entire point about VOOM.

(1) VOOM started $0 leasing and advertising after 2/19/04. Oscar's night they started advertising. They also put an ad for the SuperBowl but nothing after that until Oscar's Night on Network channels. So in essence you are looking at 8000 - 1600 = 6400 subs. Now the 1600 subs was up to 12/30/03. I doubt that they added any substantial subs between 12/30/03 and 12/19/04; let's say 500. So 5900 all were added after 2/19/04. This is 69 days which equals 85 subs/dayon average. So in a market where HD is only targeting HDTV owners, this number may not look that bad.

(2) ESPN-HD was not added till recently.

(3) If VOOM fails then everyone who an HDTV has failed. This will give a clear sign to networks and programmers that there is not an HDTV market yet and will slow down HDTV substantially.

You have to look at it from the investor's point of view(not the programing view)with all the money Voom is putting out in getting subs and program cost (and not getting much of a return) Voom is flushing money right down the you know what.

Now I wish it would succeed and light a fire under Dish or themselves offer more programing that I would like to get me to drop Dish(RSN,Sci-Fi,etc) but remember Mr.Dolen said today that there is not a second satellite ordered yet(just one maybe for back-up)and what does that say about the future.

And when people say that D* and E* took a while to ramp up-E* did so without much marketing in its first year, with no major outlets and no awareness to speak of, they still got 100,000 in the first 6 months and 1,000,000 the first year,and D* did quite well in the beginning while charging a lot for there units.

 

[Sean Mota]

You have to look at it from the investor's point of view(not the programing view)with all the money Voom is putting out in getting subs and program cost (and not getting much of a return) Voom is flushing money right down the you know what.

Now I wish it would succeed and light a fire under Dish or themselves offer more programing that I would like to get me to drop Dish(RSN,Sci-Fi,etc) but remember Mr.Dolen said today that there is not a second satellite ordered yet(just one maybe for back-up)and what does that say about the future.

And when people say that D* and E* took a while to ramp up-E* did so without much marketing in its first year, with no major outlets and no awareness to speak of, they still got 100,000 in the first 6 months and 1,000,000 the first year,and D* did quite well in the beginning while charging a lot for there units.

Yet the SD market that both D* and E* got into from the beginning cannot be compared to the HD market that VOOM is trying to get into. Not every household has an HDTV while every household has an SD TV.

The HD market is a market that will not offer profitability immediately. Look at Mark Cuban's HDnet. After he invested money in HDnet, he had to take more money to re-invest on HDnet. Of course, this is a bigger operation than HDnet. HD is expensive and the fact that they decided to enter into the HD business, makes me believe that these people are not going into the market blind-sighted and expected losses in the beginning and not profitability.

Voom is the only who has come out and done the exact thing that HD subs wanted for years. If they do not succeed it will be a victory for the SD crowd and not the HD crowd. Programmers will be very afraid of investing in HD. Whether VOOM fails or succeeds only time will tell. If they fail, we can all return our equipment and nothing was lost as we got the most of what we paid for. As opposed to others, I do not believe they will fold (personal opinion). There's too much at stake and there are too many bright people behind this.

 

[dtsfanohio]

Yet the SD market that both D* and E* got into from the beginning cannot be compared to the HD market that VOOM is trying to get into. Not every household has an HDTV while every household has an SD TV.

The HD market is a market that will not offer profitability immediately. Look at Mark Cuban's HDnet. After he invested money in HDnet, he had to take more money to re-invest on HDnet. Of course, this is a bigger operation than HDnet. HD is expensive and the fact that they decided to enter into the HD business, makes me believe that these people are not going into the market blind-sighted and expected losses in the beginning and not profitability.

Voom is the only who has come out and done the exact thing that HD subs wanted for years. If they do not succeed it will be a victory for the SD crowd and not the HD crowd. Programmers will be very afraid of investing in HD. Whether VOOM fails or succeeds only time will tell. If they fail, we can all return our equipment and nothing was lost as we got the most of what we paid for. As opposed to others, I do not believe they will fold (personal opinion). There's too much at stake and there are too many bright people behind this.

Sean, You took the words right out of my mouth.. To compare E* or D* start-up market to Voom, is like comparing apples to coconuts. Totally different market. VoOm is a creature unto itself!

 

[DarrellP]

Also, the cable companies back when Dish started up were horrible. There was no such thing as a digital picture, it was a purely Analog infrastructure. The cable companies sucked the money out of our pockets for so long without upgrading their equipment that people literally jumped at the chance to go with satellite. The price was right, the PQ was outstanding and the equipment worked. I did my own install back in Feb 97, I was up and running in about 30 minutes and was in TV Heaven.

 

[Bruce]

Sean, You took the words right out of my mouth.. To compare E* or D* start-up market to Voom, is like comparing apples to coconuts. Totally different market. VoOm is a creature unto itself!

Not really,remember E* was not really E* back then(they barely had 40-60 channels)Voom has a lot more to offer(I really wish I could afford both)but no one(but a few) is bitting,say that out of 100 million SD homes(I don't know how many,just guessing) dish captures 1% of the market in 6 months with not much to offer(unlike today,more programing,bad way of viewing them-had to reboot my 811 2nd time this week)out of 12 million HD homes Voom has .0015% of the market.And I wonder of that 8000 is that current subs or how many subs they have had and how many have left?

Reading more about the start-up of Voom on the net I have learned that the FCC was going to pull the license for Rainbow at 61.5 if they did not start using it by the end of last year so maybe they just started too early and were not ready to offer service.

And lastly,it does make me wonder for the future why they do not have another satellite planned,both D* and E* have birds planned for the next few years why not Voom?

 

[rtt2]

I think the real telling thing about the CV results were from the cable division. The HD customers for Cablevision rose 34,000 to a total of 66,000 customers.
IMO I believe this is indicative of the market in general. People are just turning to their local cable provider for HD. They don't seem to be abandoning their current provider and moving to VOOM.
The bad part about this is convincing people to switch to VOOM. For most people changing a utility is inconvenient and avoided. If they already had a service call done to swap out their SD cable-box for an HD box - chances are they will not want to do it all over installing a satellite.
VOOM has to get to people before they switch to HD cable. There is definite growth in the satellite business now as we have seen from the sub increases of D* and E8 this quarter. People will move but the SD content has to be there first.

 

[seandudley]

I think the real telling thing about the CV results were from the cable division. The HD customers for Cablevision rose 34,000 to a total of 66,000 customers.
IMO I believe this is indicative of the market in general. People are just turning to their local cable provider for HD. They don't seem to be abandoning their current provider and moving to VOOM.
The bad part about this is convincing people to switch to VOOM. For most people changing a utility is inconvenient and avoided. If they already had a service call done to swap out their SD cable-box for an HD box - chances are they will not want to do it all over installing a satellite.
VOOM has to get to people before they switch to HD cable. There is definite growth in the satellite business now as we have seen from the sub increases of D* and E8 this quarter. People will move but the SD content has to be there first.

I lucked out on my timing. I was just getting ready to move to a new house I had built right when Voom started offering the free install & lease plan. At the time, I was trying to decide what to do, whether to keep Dish Network, or whether to get Voom at $649.00 up front. I didn't really want to pay all that up-front cost, but then right at the last minute, the no-contact lease & free install made it a no-brainer!

 

[wasch_24]

I lucked out on my timing. I was just getting ready to move to a new house I had built right when Voom started offering the free install & lease plan. At the time, I was trying to decide what to do, whether to keep Dish Network, or whether to get Voom at $649.00 up front. I didn't really want to pay all that up-front cost, but then right at the last minute, the no-contact lease & free install made it a no-brainer!

It was pretty much the same for me. I had just finished my HT with my first HDTV and I was already getting cable from the HOA (E* feed). I started comparing what D* and E* offered as far as HD since that was all I was interested in adding. D* was winning out because of the NFL Sunday Ticket but having to buy the STB was holding me back. Then I finally clicked on a Voom ad on a website and the rest is history. I was Vooming the next week.

 

[Bruce]

Maybe Voom would have been better off as a provider for programing for E*(when Voom started all the HD was at 61.5 for E*) kind of like when USSB was for D* for movie channels and such?