TheAgitator.com
Dinosaurs and Monsters
Saturday, September 25th, 2010Here’s a fun 1970s anti-cable TV propaganda ad from broadcast lobby. If the broadcasters had been more successful in their lobbying over the years, we’d have had no cable TV; no VCRs, DVDs or Blu-Ray; no recordable cassette tapes; no iPods; and certainly no satellite radio.
Nor would we have a giant cable company setting the price for what we watch (and access online), while all the time increasing the length of the commercials we’re subject to anyway and lobbying to keep things going its way. Just saying, there’s a some-a good some-a bad-a.
I have no love for the cable companies and their state-granted quasi-monopoly, but come on.
The comparison is ridiculous. You have hundreds of channels of TV entertainment, a couple hundred channels of satellite radio, and instant and portable music at your fingertips–all of which you wouldn’t otherwise have. And you’re complaining that the commercials are too long? Or that you have to pay a monthly fee to the company that provides you access to the billions of bits of information on the Internet?
My point is that, if things keep going the way they are, access to the best and most relevant shows will only be achievable through a single source. Of course, one could argue that you take you dollars elsewhere, but that’s a bit like the people who say you don’t have to deal with airline security by just not flying. My complaint isn’t the commercials, it’s precisely that ‘state-granted monopoly’.
This was from the time frame when we could reliably get one station over the air, even with a 40 foot antenna tower. That station carried both ABC and NBC programming, and changed their nightly lineup depending on which was most popular.
If the weather was just right, we could pick up a second ABC station.
Then we got cable in the late 70s, and there was a whole new world of programming. Suddenly we were paying station owners who had fought against us being able to do so, even though we couldn’t get their broadcasts for free.
Matt I.: I’d argue that with DirecTV and DISH, there are places you can take your money to if you don’t like the cable company. The days of the quasi-monopoly when it comes to television are mostly over due to the competition the satellite companies provide.
Unfortunately, it’s still there when it comes to internet. My only internet choices are AT&T DSL (UVerse hasn’t made it out to where I live) and Comcast cable, neither of which is particularly a good choice.
I remember the 70s.
Cable TV was a freakin’ godsend. Even the crappy 13 channel type we has back then. (You could ‘fine tune’ each channel manually! It was Rocket Science!)
The alternative? Motor driven antenna! Sweet! You had to adjust the position of the antenna whenever you changed channel, and at best… you got a few channels reliably.
its hard to take issue with fee-for-service. i get a lot of stuff from cable. i barely use any of it. they could take away 90% of the stuff they send my way (HGTV, Food, QVC, etc) and i would still feel like i’m getting a good deal.
Oh… I also like the way they had to use Movie Theaters to put out their propaganda message… they couldn’t reliable expect people to be able to even watch their over the air broadcasts.
Those fuckers all work for the RIAA now, I bet. Their motto should be “The Dark Ages were great! Let’s go back!”
Matt I, even when there’s a ‘state granted monopoly for’ for cable, there are many more options coming in. Internet might come in over cable… or it might be on your 3G phone from a completely different company, or even a different company from that. Or you might have FTTP like UVerse or FIOS, which are outside the granted cable franchise.
Way, way back in the day:
New technology, cassette tapes. Music executives said, this is horrible! bad! people will record music and we’ll go broke!
Instead, prerecorded cassettes became a huge revenue source.
New technology, video tapes. Studio executives said, this is horrible! bad! people will record movies and we’ll go broke!
Instead, prerecorded movies became a huge revenue source, and started an entire new industry, movie rental.
New technology, songs as computer files (mp3′s). Music executives said, this is horrible! bad! people will swap files and we’ll go broke!
Instead, individual song sales became a huge revenue source; Apple alone has grossed over a billion from iTunes downloads.
No matter what the new technology is, entrenched interests will scream and moan that it’ll ruin them. Smarter people use the technology to make a lot of money.
Future prediction:
New technology, ??????????????. xxxxxxxx industry executives said, this is horrible! bad! people will use it and we’ll go broke!
Instead, ?????????????? became a huge revenue source.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I think every smartphone should come glued to a radio, tv, flashlight, book, Ma Bell operator, and the flashlight should itself be glued to a bottle of lamp oil, which should be glued to flint and tinder.
GET TO LEGISLATIN’, CONGRESSCRITTERS.
@11, now that’s a phone that you won’t accidentally send through the wash.
This works pretty well as an ad for Hulu.
Mike said: “New technology, songs as computer files (mp3’s). Music executives said, this is horrible! bad! people will swap files and we’ll go broke! Instead, individual song sales became a huge revenue source; Apple alone has grossed over a billion from iTunes downloads.”
Fact is, overall music industry revenue has collapsed in the last decade. I mean, intellectually I think that’s a good thing, but still.
“Total revenues for CDs, vinyl, cassettes and digital downloads in the U.S. dropped from a high of $14.6 billion in 1999 to $9 billion in 2008.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000s_in_the_music_industry]
“Global recorded music revenues declined 7% in 2009″ [http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_news/20100428.html]
I can’t speak for everyone but I buy a LOT less music these days. I’m not the type that pirates either. I just don’t have many “MUST BUY” CD moments these days..
#14 delta,
There are 2 possible factors for this that I can see. One, music is a ‘young person’s entertainment” and they’re downloading it all for free, or…
More likely:
There are just more options today.
Internet, Easy access to movies, far superior games, far better TV viewing options… all these things compete with music, which, with the exception of becoming portable with the ‘walkman’ devices, hasn’t changed substantially in hundreds of years. (Yes, I’m aware that musical STYLES have changed. But the actual ability to make quality music has not. There was quality music in the Baroque period, there is quality music now.)
Funny thing. The major downturn for music sales also coincided with a general economic downturn during that time. It’s like people were saving their money and not buying the latest dogshit on a disk!
That’s something else too. There’s some decent bands nowadays, but I remember the late 90′s in particular as having NOTHING good. Music industry execs wanted to churn out assembly line bands, and nobody was listening to them. It didn’t help that when CD technology initially came out, we were told ‘Oh, the prices will go down as the tech becomes more common!’ (normally true) Well, here we are, and we’re still paying full price for albums with maybe 2-3 good songs.
And that’s why I buy CDs from smaller indy bands, and give the finger to the RIAA every chance I get. Because while I don’t buy into ‘information wants to be free’, I also think the RIAA is its own worst enemy.
I want to be able to pay for just the channels I want to watch. We have to pay for several hundred channels to get the 20 or so that we want. We should be able to cut our cable bill by 90% if we could just pay for only the channels we actually want. This should be trivial on a digital box (if they can block any one channel, they can block any group of channels). Instead, we’re forced to buy “packages” of channels, most of which we don’t want. I don’t know of any other service provider that does this, and it is the monopoly power they’re granted that allows them to get away with it. How long would the local grocery store last if, when you tried to buy a $1 can of pears, they required you to buy $29 worth of other goods? Particularly if they were goods you’d never use? I have to pay for spanish channels, and nobody in my house speaks spanish, for instance.
Normally, government granted monopolies are also government regulated. A la cart programming has been agitated for for years, but as far as I know, no municipality has required a cable company to offer it. It makes me wonder who’s getting paid off.
#18 the problem with the “only paying for channels you want” model is two-fold.
1) The cost of service cannot be easily divided on a channel by channel basis, there is a certain floor on the price required to maintain the infrastructure that provides you with any cable. So rationally the company could only divide up your bill based on a PROFITS/channel basis. This would mean you might pay like $38 for the 20 channels you want but 45$ for the 200 you currently get. The fewer channels you order the more you have to pay per channel in order for the company to justify doing business with you at all. Your comparison to pairs is a little flawed, think of it more like printing business cards. You can get 100 for 40$ or 500 for 50$, because most of the cost is involved in the initial set-up of the machines, they print quickly but downtime between changing patterns/materials/ink requires a heavily weighted cost. This is similar to the infrastructure/servicing costs of cable companies.
2) It stagnates the selection of channels. If it weren’t for the package deals that cable companies offer, many new channels would never find an audience. If the model you suggested were in place there is a good chance that many popular networks of today would have not exist. The cable companies would have no incentive to offer you more channels for free if they have already cut you a deal to offer you the minimum channels you want. If the system had been different we very well might not have Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, Discovery, MTV, Nickelodeon, or many other channels that would not have had the support needed in their early (and unprofitable) years to find an audience.
Just for the hell of it, I bought one of those digital converter boxes and hooked it up to an old portable with a set of rabbit ears. I could only get FOX, ABC and several ION channels but the picture quality was amazing. Still, I’m not giving up cable; no matter how much of a raw deal I think I’m getting.
Toastrider said: “Funny thing. The major downturn for music sales also coincided with a general economic downturn during that time. It’s like people were saving their money and not buying the latest dogshit on a disk!”
Not true — 2000′s recession was from 2007-2009 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-2000s_recession]. Record sales slipped regularly almost every year from U.S. $14B in 2000 to $10.4B in 2007. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000s_in_the_music_industry#Industry_Finances].
Okay, now take that sales data, and remove all sales of albums and songs produced before 1995. Then further break it down into albums and songs recorded the previous year across all years. If your revenue is declining by the same percentage across all metrics, you probably have a point. If it’s not, than you’ve merely reached market saturation of the product.
The ad agency that did that should offer their services to the net neutrality folks.
I’m going to say the music business died because the record companies started trying to churn out the exact same singer/band as the last hit. Ooh, people bought a lot of Backstreet Boys’ last album, let’s make another boy band and another…
I, for one, like listening to local music or nationally touring acts that are in town. When I’m there, I buy their music, from them. I cut out the middleman and let the artist know that it is them I appreciate, not the record company. I haven’t had a single singer/band tell me that they like their record company.
The myth of the monopoly. Markets don’t work this way…at least not without government enforced monopolies or some kind of gun that freezes time.
Mike at #10 has the template down. When a disruptive technology comes along, the established/dominant companies have several choices:
1. Smear the new stuff and play to paranoia, but still compete.
2. Change to the new technology.
3. Increase lobbyist budget, hire a fleet of hookers, and buy-off a few dozen politicians to protect your ass. WARNING: Your hookers must be better than the new guy’s hookers.
Any good politicians knows how to get paid as soon a big industry faces disintermediation or obsolescence. Must protect the children from the cruelty of capitalism.
Might be fun to look for legislation (actual and proposed) during the early cable years that tried to protect broadcast TV.
Record sales down? Anyone over 30 knows that’s because today’s music sucks! Now get off my yard!
“…we’d have had no cable TV; no VCRs, DVDs or Blu-Ray; no recordable cassette tapes; no iPods; and certainly no satellite radio.”
Ah, but we would have better movies and music.