[NU Sports] TV and sports

[Roy Lamberton]

I think we miss the point about the two cash flow models that the program
suppliers use. 

1. Is the per subscriber model, the way Weather Channel, CNN, and the base ESPN
channels work - they charge so much per subscriber, originally around a nickel
per month a location. 2. Is the pay per view model, as cable got up to 1000
channels, this has started to become more of a cash stream, but not really.

Verizon is betting the farm on the east coast that fiber down the street and
into the house with TV, Phone and Internet is the way to go. My son had it in
Damascus, MD and it was nothing short of spectacular, altho they don't have the
TV worked out everywhere just yet. The argument about phone lines is also
starting to fade out as more and more folks start using cell phones as primary
phones. The biggest obsticle to this is the cable industry's fighting of any
competition by keeping everything locally franchised.  

Comcast is also trying to play in the VOIP, TV and Internet world but they're
still living on coax everywhere. They would prefer to have more tiers of service
and charge $5-15 per month to watch them. They have to deal with the
programmable box on the top of the set, which is a royal pain at times when the
signals get degraded, but by and large, their system does deliver programming,
altho you can make the case that its expensive.

The mobile phone world is really starting to move in on Cable and the other
Phone services by providing WIFI type services at a fairly reasonable price over
your phone. They already have their equipment installed and don't have to add
more fiber or copper down the street. They also don't have to rent space on the
telephone poles to work.

The rest of the wired world is worried that Verizon will pull down all of their
copper when they get the fiber to each house. Its hard cut prices when you have
to run your own copper instead of renting the phone companies.

The issue in all of the internet TV protocols is that the suppliers want to
charge the ISP's a fixed amount for every subscriber on their service,
regardless of which sub uses which service. Its why ESPN 360 does not run on the
major cable companies, even at 5 cents a sub, a million subscribers is just too
much money [in the minds of the cable outfits] to hand over for something that
eats a lot of bandwidth.

Now, once you get outside the towns and cities, the costs of running cables gets
pretty expensive, which is the entre for the satellite services. Their problem
is that their uplink costs are fairly high compared to using Comcast or Fios.

I wish we could buy sports events on the web by the program, but given the fact
that all these individual service providers [like the Big 10 Network] are
projecting giant profits to get funding, the per subscriber model will be the
one used for a while. I know its BTN, Turner and ESPN's model.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Roy S. Lamberton - Senior Associate
Computer Applications & Support Associates
and Publisher of Purple Reign, 
The Scout.com Northwestern University Site
(http://www.purplewildcats.com)
AIM Handle: CoachRoy74
======== Go Cats -  Beat 'em All ===========
"You have a Republic Madam --
     If you can keep it" - Benjamin Franklin
============================================

> -----Original Message-----
> From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On
> Behalf Of Jeff Beamsley
> Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 12:01 PM
> To: nwu-sports at tssi.com
> Subject: RE: [NU Sports] TV and sports
> 
> Mike,
> 
> I agree that the stakes are huge.  That's not what I meant.
> 
> I meant the carping about pricing and how the cable companies go about
> their
> business is really missing the point.
> 
> There is a sea change coming and we have to pay attention to how that rolls
> out to make sure that we don't allow all of the things that we don't like
> in
> the cable/phone space to end up being replicated in the high-speed version
> of
> the Internet that's coming.
> 
> Jeff
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Nolan [mailto:nolan at romaine.tssi.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 11:50 AM
> To: Jeff Beamsley
> Cc: nwu-sports at tssi.com
> Subject: Re: [NU Sports] TV and sports
> 
> > I think that this is much ado about nothing.
> 
> Oh I disagree here, there are BILLIONS of dollars at stake here!
> 
> The current issue is over who gets their pipline into your house.  Many if
> not most people have 3 different wires coming into their house now:
> electricity, phone and cable.
> 
> As I understand it, all three are (or will be) capable of supporting
> gigabit
> over copper.  (Fiber to the house is IMHO not likely to be a major player
> because of the infrastructure costs to string it, and gigabit speeds over
> copper isn't likely to be the high end of that protocol either.  When they
> figure out how to do terabit over copper, who needs fiber?)
> 
> The initial battle will be over who gets control of that pipeline and the
> extent to which it is shared.  (I have both DSL and cable internet, for
> example, because I need higher availability than either the phone company
> or
> the cable company can individually delver.)
> 
> How will this affect sports viewers?  Hard to say, but in the long run I
> doubt we'll see any savings, even with ala carte pricing, because the REAL
> money is in the information content, not in the delivery of it.
> And as ESPN has already demonstrated, they can pretty much ask whatever
> they
> want, there are enough people out there who'll pay it.
> --
> Mike Nolan
> 
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