If The Internet Pursued The Pay TV Model.

[i'vegotwinners]

You Tube, Hoosier.com, Tic Tok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google.com, Yahoo, Pornhub, What'sApp, Amazon, Wikipedia, Reddit, Ebay, etc etc etc.

most are ad supported, some have other revenue models, but most can be accessed for free, you just need to pay for the internet connection..

at one time the same could have been said for all your favorite cable channels.

then the cable channels DISCOVERED the "dual revenue stream" model, where you pay for the channel as well, and they still have the ad revenue they had before, but twice as much of it due to twice as many ads.

with HBO/Max/Showtime, you always paid for the channel if you wanted it, and not if you didn't want to.

but with HBO, Max and Showtime, requiring a subscription was inefficient from a business pov, in that you may not want to subscribe.

how much better if instead of charging the consumer for the channel, you just charged the cable company instead for the ability to carry it, taking the decision out of the consumers' hands as to whether they wanted to pay for it or not.

Hoosier.com, your local newspaper, and many other internet sites want you to subscribe, but again, we see the obvious inefficiency in that model..

how much better from a business perspective, if that obvious "inefficiency" was eliminated all together.

think Facebook, Instagram, Tic Tok, You Tube, Porn Hub, Ebay, Reddit, Linkdlin, Amazon, Google Search, Twitter/X, WhatsApp, Yahoo, etc etc etc.

if your home internet provider/mobile phone company didn't provide internet access to any of those sites, but the other internet and mobile guys did, would many to most not jump to the other mobile phone company or internet provider who did provide access, rather than loose all of those.

and what if allowing your internet provider, thus you the customer, access to all those sites was only one half of one cent per sub per month per site to allow access to the top 40 internet sites, would that not be worth it for your wired internet provider or mobile phone company to pay a measly 20 cents a month per sub to insure access to all the top 40 favorite websites, and not lose you entirely as an internet or mobile customer to another provider if the other provider paid that 20 cents and your wired internet/mobile provider didn't?

nothing extra to subscribe to, no buying decisions needed, as everything is billed to your internet provider and mobile phone company, who in turn collects from you as part of your monthly fee.

and once your home internet and mobile phone company agree to pay that mere one half cent per sub per month for internet access to all those great top 40 most popular web sites, with all their great content and appeal, then does it not immediately become worth it to your home internet company's and your mobile phone company's direct competitors to pay 1 cent or even 1.5 cents a month for access to said sites?

could never happen?

well, that exact scenario absolutely did happen on the cable side of the equation, exactly as laid out above.

and that once $9.95 a month cable bill became $100 plus a month, one cent more per month per channel at a time, and the consumer never had any say in any of it, or any say in if said consumer wanted to pay for every channel regardless of what the cost went from zero cents per month to, or lose access to everything, including local tv for many.

it happened just as laid out.

could that exact recipe be duplicated on the internet side? why couldn't it?

of course that doesn't mean it necessarily would.

of course it only could be duplicated, if allowed to be duplicated.

of course it only happened on the cable side because it was allowed to happen. despite being blatantly against literally every monopoly/anti trust law ever written.

that said, we all know multi national conglomerates would never do anything that blatantly monopolistic just to increase share holder value for both the home internet/mobile phone providers, and every one of the web sites involved, and the legislators and regulators all only serve the interests of the consumer and the citizenry, and not just the investor class and the multinational conglomerate corporations, do they not.

if so, then of course it could never happen again.

that said, even if never duplicated, it still already happened on the cable side.

 

[i'vegotwinners]

not one reply, so i'll add another bit important to this story.

pay tv and internet are two sides of the same coin in a lot of ways.

the primary difference in models is that the internet is 100% ala carte where you pay the infrastructure provider for access only, and everything you subscribe to using that platform you subscribe to at your own choosing. (as pay tv was for decades before all that changed).

the pay tv side is now the exact opposite, none of the buying decisions are controlled by the subscriber, but rather by the platform provider, and to have access to anything one now must submit to subscribing to the entire monopoly bundle.

do those who think the pay tv forced monopoly bundle is a better way to go than ala carte where the subscriber/consumer, not the platform, decides what they do or don't want to subscribe to, and for how much, also think it would be better if the internet side took that same approach????

if one thinks the forced monopoly bundle decided on by the pay tv provider and the networks is a better way to do this on the pay tv side, why would you not think such a forced mandatory bundle of things you subscribe to, and for how much, should be decided on between the internet provider and the subscription services, with the consumer themself left out of the buying decisions, and for how much, all together.

and again, for those assuming the now 100% ala carte internet side could never go the way the pay tv side has been forced to go, with the forced monopoly bundle with the consumer having no say in what he does or doesn't subscribe to, and for how much, think again.

absent the regulators and the legislators stopping them, the streaming services, as they contractually tie up more and more hi demand "must have" content, (such as sports rights), absolutely could force the same obligations on the internet providers, thus in turn the internet subscribers, those very same rights holders forced on the pay tv providers, thus in turn the pay tv subscribers, as mandatory force is just a far more efficient way of selling a product, and controlling how much one can charge, than leaving the buying decision to the consumer.

your thoughts,

 

[Bloom.]

You Tube, Hoosier.com, Tic Tok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google.com, Yahoo, Pornhub, What'sApp, Amazon, Wikipedia, Reddit, Ebay, etc etc etc.

most are ad supported, some have other revenue models, but most can be accessed for free, you just need to pay for the internet connection..

at one time the same could have been said for all your favorite cable channels.

then the cable channels DISCOVERED the "dual revenue stream" model, where you pay for the channel as well, and they still have the ad revenue they had before, but twice as much of it due to twice as many ads.

with HBO/Max/Showtime, you always paid for the channel if you wanted it, and not if you didn't want to.

but with HBO, Max and Showtime, requiring a subscription was inefficient from a business pov, in that you may not want to subscribe.

HBO, Max and Showtime (premium channels), you paid separately for that content.

I don't know when carriage fees started in the cable industry, but it invited more content, which invited more subscribers. The cable industry, along with content providers, found plenty of profit to go around. The advertising is very much part of that.

In the early days of cable, I wonder if and how much it cost stations to be on cable. Then I wonder when it flipped to carriage fees.

how much better if instead of charging the consumer for the channel, you just charged the cable company instead for the ability to carry it, taking the decision out of the consumers' hands as to whether they wanted to pay for it or not.

That's what channels did.

Hoosier.com, your local newspaper, and many other internet sites want you to subscribe, but again, we see the obvious inefficiency in that model..

how much better from a business perspective, if that obvious "inefficiency" was eliminated all together.

think Facebook, Instagram, Tic Tok, You Tube, Porn Hub, Ebay, Reddit, Linkdlin, Amazon, Google Search, Twitter/X, WhatsApp, Yahoo, etc etc etc.

if your home internet provider/mobile phone company didn't provide internet access to any of those sites, but the other internet and mobile guys did, would many to most not jump to the other mobile phone company or internet provider who did provide access, rather than loose all of those.

Your examples aren't fully comparable. LinkedIn and Amazon have subscription models. So does Twitter/X now, but its core functionality is free (for now).

Addressing your point, I think, we have laws on books that don't allow cable providers to discriminate access. Keep in mind, most of us started off using Prodigy then AOL to 'get online' thinking THAT was the internet.

(I was courted by Peegs to be part of his site because of a few interactions on the IU board on AOL.)

and what if allowing your internet provider, thus you the customer, access to all those sites was only one half of one cent per sub per month per site to allow access to the top 40 internet sites, would that not be worth it for your wired internet provider or mobile phone company to pay a measly 20 cents a month per sub to insure access to all the top 40 favorite websites, and not lose you entirely as an internet or mobile customer to another provider if the other provider paid that 20 cents and your wired internet/mobile provider didn't?

Net neutrality laws make that illegal. It also makes it illegal for ISPs to charge sites to be accessible online.

 

[Bloom.]

not one reply, so i'll add another bit important to this story.

pay tv and internet are two sides of the same coin in a lot of ways.

the primary difference in models is that the internet is 100% ala carte where you pay the infrastructure provider for access only, and everything you subscribe to using that platform you subscribe to at your own choosing. (as pay tv was for decades before all that changed).

the pay tv side is now the exact opposite, none of the buying decisions are controlled by the subscriber, but rather by the platform provider, and to have access to anything one now must submit to subscribing to the entire monopoly bundle.

We are at a point where, outside of a few channels, TV is what we want to pay for it. Once ESPN goes DTC, the number of people who can get exactly what they want increases at a large scale.

There will be gaps, especially for sports fans, but if you don't care about sports, most can just pay for what they want.

 

[i'vegotwinners]

We are at a point where, outside of a few channels, TV is what we want to pay for it. Once ESPN goes DTC, the number of people who can get exactly what they want increases at a large scale.

There will be gaps, especially for sports fans, but if you don't care about sports, most can just pay for what they want.

i get it, you're here representing IU who is a huge beneficiary of the pay tv monopoly rip off.

 

[Bloom.]

i get it, you're here representing IU who is a huge beneficiary of the pay tv monopoly rip off.

Still no. LOL

 

[i'vegotwinners]

HBO, Max and Showtime (premium channels), you paid separately for that content.

I don't know when carriage fees started in the cable industry, but it invited more content, which invited more subscribers. The cable industry, along with content providers, found plenty of profit to go around. The advertising is very much part of that.

In the early days of cable, I wonder if and how much it cost stations to be on cable. Then I wonder when it flipped to carriage fees.


That's what channels did.


Your examples aren't fully comparable. LinkedIn and Amazon have subscription models. So does Twitter/X now, but its core functionality is free (for now).

Addressing your point, I think, we have laws on books that don't allow cable providers to discriminate access. Keep in mind, most of us started off using Prodigy then AOL to 'get online' thinking THAT was the internet.

(I was courted by Peegs to be part of his site because of a few interactions on the IU board on AOL.)


Net neutrality laws make that illegal. It also makes it illegal for ISPs to charge sites to be accessible online.

you have absolutely zero knowledge on the subject, so i have no idea why you are pretending you do.

if you wish to actually have knowledge on the subject, listen more and talk less.

btw,

we don't have net neutrality laws is the US, (Pubs/conservatives always kill it), and even if we did it wouldn't affect what i posted.

in my hypothetical about the internet morphing exactly as pay tv did, it would be the sites themselves, not the internet providers, driving it and restricting access. (pay attention).

i pointed out that HBO, Max, and Showtime, were premium channels from day 1 in my initial post. (pay attention again).

carriage fees haven't invited any more content.

the only thing that has invited more content is increased channel capacity, which took a big jump in the early 80s, then again in the 90s. (channel capacity was 12 channels before the very late 70s early 80s).

when digital, then digital compression came in, that is what allowed for a BTN, as previously there wasn't enough channel capacity for a BTN.

cable subscribership has consistently gone down, not up, as carriage fees have gone up.

in the early days of cable, stations paid nothing to be carried, and pretty much have paid nothing to be carried for the history of the industry other than maybe home shopping channels.

try shutting up and listening and actually paying attention to what i say, and maybe you'll learn something.

 

[Bloom.]

you have absolutely zero knowledge on the subject, so i have no idea why you are pretending you do.

if you wish to actually have knowledge on the subject, listen more and talk less.

btw,

we don't have net neutrality laws is the US, (Pubs always kill it), and even if we did it wouldn't affect what i posted.

in my hypothetical about the internet morphing exactly as pay tv did, it would be the sites themselves, not the internet providers, driving it and restricting access. (pay attention).

i pointed out that HBO, Max, and Showtime, were premium channels from day 1 in my initial post. (pay attention again).

carriage fees haven't invited any more content.

the only thing that has invited more content is increased channel capacity, which took a big jump in the early 80s, then again in the 90s. (channel capacity was 12 channels before the very late 70s early 80s).

when digital, then digital compression came in, that is what allowed for a BTN, as previously there wasn't enough channel capacity for a BTN.

cable subscribership has consistently gone down, not up, as carriage fees have gone up.

in the early days of cable, stations paid nothing to be carried, and pretty much have paid nothing to be carried for the history of the industry other than maybe home shopping channels.

try shutting up and listening and actually paying attention to what i say, and maybe you'll learn something.