Who's to blame for these increasing tv costs?

Gotta have my slingplayer app. Watching NFL with Slingbox off my Las Vegas TiVo locals in Tulsa today as I didn't like the games Tulsa local affiliates picked.

Yes sir, watching the Patriots from my Ct Slingbox.... :) :)
 
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I do like the new "renewal offer" for current customers, that allows them the same deals as new subs on all top programming packs and of course the Flex pack too. We on this board , including me, have been suggesting for years that DISH should offer the same new customer deals to current subs, to keep them from churning to the competitors for new customer deals. The only thing I would suggest is that DISH also offer discounts on their DVR fees and whole house dvr fees to go with the price freezes on the programming packs too. This would also be a perk to existing subs to stay ,rather than churn. Especially if DISH isn't going to offer any more large monthly discounts to existing subs any longer.
 
This is an entirely different story but the context fits. Back in 1977 you could buy a pound of coffe for $1.25. Just about all of our coffee came from Columbia in those days. The Columbian coffee providers decided that they could make a ton of profit by raising the price. Just about overnight the price of coffee went up to $7 a pound. Restaurants put a surcharge on a cup of coffee overvthe menu price. The people of America boycotted coffee. Nearly everyone stopped drinking it, even with the headaches that came along with that. It took about a month and a half for that boycott to make a dent. Coffee dropped to about $3.50 a pound and most were happy. The price of coffee nearly tripled in the end and I'm sure the industry was tickled. From a personal viewpoint, I held myself to one cup cup a day even though I was drinking about two pots a day in the past. Today I hardly drink coffee at all, just when I have an occasional breakfast out.
Hmm. Coffee is traded on commodities exchanges.
 
Coffee is bad for you. I drink that nice healthy soda stuff instead.......
LOL......I remember when some group, no doubt with some kind of agenda, claimed that coffee causes cancer. News stations took that info and did man on the street interviews in off all places, New York City.
Well, being New Yorkers, the reaction from many of those interviewed was so full of expletives, the news reporters could barely use the tape. In other words, if you tell the typical New Yorker, "coffee is bad for you", you have my sympathies. You could find yourself in an alley two days later with one heck of a headache. LOL.....
Just an amusing anecdote.
 
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You give too much credit to the provider in their placement of channels in packages. Most of that is controlled by the rigorous contract negotiations that occur with channel owners. Most of the time, the channel owner conglomerates have more of the leverage to dictate which packages their channels appear in.
Yep...I learned this in consumer type courses I took as electives in high school. The term is "battle for the choicest shelf space.
 
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Because of all the OTA channels In Tampa if money were to become an issue I would be open to relying more on OTA for TV. That and the Flex Pack could easily be enough.
The Tampa DMA is not good for OTA if one lives more than 40 miles from Downtown.
My parents live in Hernando County. I tried putting up an antenna ( Yagi) to pull in OTA. I got Ch 8 clear. The rest were real sketchy. Most of the Transmitters are 45 miles distant and greater.
 
Would eliminating the whole home DVR fee and receiver fees help? I think so since each year those seem to go up in price and if they would eliminate that then I think a lot more would stay. I think a lot are leaving pay tv since the cost is just too high. All I can do is just keep dropping down to the next channel package and losing channels I do watch .


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The fees D* and E* charge can be controlled. But the providers are not giving those up. The fees are the profit margin.
I have seem some on here post they pay as mush as 40 to $50 per month in fees alone
 
In addition, customers threatening to leave (including those who do) doesn't always have the effect of causing the vendor to panic. Case in point, ATT hasn't ever reduced the cost of their landline service because people jumped to cell phones. In fact, they are eager to shed their landline operations in the years to come. I have a hunch that DISH is betting on Sling TV and their other IP based TV services eclipsing satellite in the years to come. Dishes may not completely disappear for another 20 years, but it's not their only iron in the fire anymore


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Now hear this. IP TV services are a Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong way off from becoming the norm.
A few things must occur.
1. high speed internet must reach far beyond the city limits.
2. ISP's want the ability to charge by data used, rather than the speed of the service.
3. ISP's want a piece of the pie that services such as Netflix, etc charge because the ISPs' view the OTT services as "squatters". In other words, the ISP's that are tied to tv providers, don't want the competition. So they want to grab some of the competitors revenue.
4. ISP's have the technology to expand, but they won't. The federal regs and local agreements mandate the ISP's install their equipment to feed the entire community. Not just the areas where the highest concentration of potential customers are located.
The one thing that pisses me off is that the Euros laugh at us. To them, our internet and cell phone technology is primitive.
 
Now hear this. IP TV services are a Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong way off from becoming the norm.
A few things must occur.
1. high speed internet must reach far beyond the city limits.
2. ISP's want the ability to charge by data used, rather than the speed of the service.
3. ISP's want a piece of the pie that services such as Netflix, etc charge because the ISPs' view the OTT services as "squatters". In other words, the ISP's that are tied to tv providers, don't want the competition. So they want to grab some of the competitors revenue.
4. ISP's have the technology to expand, but they won't. The federal regs and local agreements mandate the ISP's install their equipment to feed the entire community. Not just the areas where the highest concentration of potential customers are located.
The one thing that pisses me off is that the Euros laugh at us. To them, our internet and cell phone technology is primitive.

These things are all true. My point was that complaining to Dish or Direct about price increases and fees won't necessarily make them change anything, because they know that OTT streams are gaining a foothold and will become the norm sometime in the future (except in rural areas where people may need satellite dishes for years to come). Have you seen those Sling TV commercials where Dish is basically cannibalizing their satellite services by calling it "Old TV?" They WANT people to move to Sling and OTT.


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I can't even imagine only being able to watch or record 1 Satellite and/or 1 OTA show at a time. Some nights there are 5 or more shows recording at once while I'm watching 4 screens of MultiView and a Joey or 2 around the house are watching as well.

Life's to short to scrimp on TV :biggrin
If I was single, I could do a 211 by itself.
But I probably wouldn't.
 
It was extremely relevant right here in this thread.
It certainly wasn't false advertising.
More like a mis-print .
A misprint is false advertising. Whether it was intentional or not is beside the point. It was still false, and should have been fact-checked before it was posted. The fact that the start date got corrected proves that it was fact-checked at some point, but Dish still didn't catch (or purposely didn't correct) the incorrect end date of the preview. (This may have been intentional, to avoid getting complaints about the preview being shortened before the preview ended and before the listing for the preview was removed from the web page.)
 
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A misprint is false advertising. Whether it was intentional or not is beside the point. It was still false, and should have been fact-checked before it was posted. The fact that the start date got corrected proves that it was fact-checked at some point, but Dish still didn't catch (or purposely didn't correct) the incorrect end date of the preview. (This may have been intentional, to avoid getting complaints about the preview being shortened before the preview ended and before the listing for the preview was removed from the web page.)
OK let's use your hardass stance. If I were Dish I would no longer offer Freeviews of anything. You want to see it, you pay for it, period! That settles all of your views!!!
 
OK let's use your hardass stance. If I were Dish I would no longer offer Freeviews of anything. You want to see it, you pay for it, period! That settles all of your views!!!
Dish is already doing that on deactivated receivers with white G4 Smart Cards. Deactivated receivers with purple G3 Smart Cards still work to get the free preview channels absolutely free with no subscription required, although only the standard-def feeds.
 
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You give too much credit to the provider in their placement of channels in packages. Most of that is controlled by the rigorous contract negotiations that occur with channel owners. Most of the time, the channel owner conglomerates have more of the leverage to dictate which packages their channels appear in.

Unless you were a Dish dealer, your didn't have access to the dealer channel, and a host of other inside information. Jim DeFranco, Charlie's partner, made a few slips of the tongue to the affect of splitting up certain channels and migrating them to higher price packages. I recorded every Charlie Chat that took place while I was a dealer, so their slips are in that collection of recordings somewhere. On more than one occasion I saw Charlie give Jim the evil eye after saying something Charlie wasn't thrilled about being broadcast.

I started selling Dish when it first hit the market, so I was there from the beginning. I was with them a long time, and they did a lot of stuff dealer's didn't like and really upset a lot of customers.
 
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they did a lot of stuff dealer's didn't like and really upset a lot of customers.

And yet, Dish and Directv, back then collectively known as "Direct broadcast satellite / DBS" (does anybody even use that terminology anymore?) was successful and pretty much turned out the lights on residential C-Band. Just like Sling TV and other OTT formats will eventually do to DBS. And then we can complain about them!



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Unless you were a Dish dealer, your didn't have access to the dealer channel, and a host of other inside information. Jim DeFranco, Charlie's partner, made a few slips of the tongue to the affect of splitting up certain channels and migrating them to higher price packages. I recorded every Charlie Chat that took place while I was a dealer, so their slips are in that collection of recordings somewhere. On more than one occasion I saw Charlie give Jim the evil eye after saying something Charlie wasn't thrilled about being broadcast.

I started selling Dish when it first hit the market, so I was there from the beginning. I was with them a long time, and they did a lot of stuff dealer's didn't like and really upset a lot of customers.
I don't disagree with you there, but the landscape has changed dramatically over the years since the pioneering days of DBS. Many more mergers and acquisitions of content ownership, exclusive broadcast/content deals, etc. has shifted the balance of power and leverage toward the content owners to the point where many channel carriage agreements and placements are extorted by the oligopolic ownership of a handful of popular channels.
 
I don't disagree with you there, but the landscape has changed dramatically over the years since the pioneering days of DBS. Many more mergers and acquisitions of content ownership, exclusive broadcast/content deals, etc. has shifted the balance of power and leverage toward the content owners to the point where many channel carriage agreements and placements are extorted by the oligopolic ownership of a handful of popular channels.

I believe this is why the $20 package price for Sling TV won't last long. TV pricing is just out of control.


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Totally late to this discussion, and in fact I don't know if I posted this here before or not, or if someone else has. But here's the answer: WE (THE SUBSCRIBERS) ARE TO BLAME! Honestly, as long as we continue to pay at each increase, then we allow the demand to continue. If we say "@$#& you! Your product isn't worth it!" Then there is no demand, and we force them to change their buisness model.
 
Totally late to this discussion, and in fact I don't know if I posted this here before or not, or if someone else has. But here's the answer: WE (THE SUBSCRIBERS) ARE TO BLAME! Honestly, as long as we continue to pay at each increase, then we allow the demand to continue. If we say "@$#& you! Your product isn't worth it!" Then there is no demand, and we force them to change their buisness model.
That's because, until recently, there wasn't any real choice. You had a handful of large bundles to choose from no matter which provider you chose, or nothing at all. Now with the advent of OTT and skinnier bundles, more choice will lead to more control by the consumers. I for one am glad I cut my TV bill in half with the Flex Pack and stopped feeding the biggest pigs.
 

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