I'm surprised to see AT&T acting so aggressively with its Time Warner purchase so soon. The government argued that the merger would harm consumers and competition. I expected AT&T to wait a year or two before starting to milk extra profits - especially since the DoJ has appealed its loss.
After the merger, AT&T removed HBO from its lower-priced wireless plan, raised wireless prices, raised DirecTV NOW prices, and now this. Frankly, I would have expected a year or two of AT&T saying, "see, nothing bad happened! If anything, we're giving consumers more!" Then a couple years later, "because of inflation, costs, whatever, we're raising prices...it wasn't because of the merger at all!"
It just seems like AT&T decided to forego plausible deniability. And the merger is being appealed to the DC Circuit court. Literally the DoJ argued that AT&T would have, "both the incentive and the ability to raise its rivals' costs and stifle growth of innovative, next-generation entrants that offer attractive alternatives to AT&T/DirecTV's legacy pay-TV model—all to the detriment of American consumers," and that AT&T would have more power in negotiations with competitors. Now they're proving that.
I'm just surprised that AT&T couldn't wait 18 months. 18 months later, the merger wouldn't be on people's minds as much and they could argue that the market had shifted (production costs, more competition from YouTube, whatever). Doing these things so soon makes a really clear cause and effect. Waiting gives you deniability.
Oh yes I am sure the Republican government will act in the best interest of consumers any time now... AT&T is well aware who runs the FCC at this moment. They bought and payed for it after all.
I am more and more certain that there need to be strict legal blocks to the vertical integration of content production, content distribution, and Internet/network services.
Nobody wins when any of these three can be owned by the same interest.
I think this is more a question of enforcement then a requirement to actually change any laws. This merger was approved when it clearly shouldn't have been.
US anti trust enforcement often looks at consumer harm (which seems to focus on immediate obvious harm, or lack thereof). So adjusting the law such that the anti trust rules are stricter.
The massive consolidation in soo many US industries I think has done a large disservice to the country and long term prospects for the economy by massively reduced competition
The courts believed that the merger would not be a problem with our current anti-trust laws. The governments response should be to pass stricter laws that address the concerns of the court.
Perhaps, beyond a given company size, mergers+acquisitions should be considered illegal until proven legal (i.e. the burden of proof should be on the merging companies.)
With a preponderance of evidence standard as the US uses for civil cases, who bears the initial burden of proof really should only matter in the case where neither side can present substantial evidence, since of there is conflicting evidence, the winner should be the same either way.
Courts are too OP. Un-elected officials with 0 accountability getting to override legislation put forth by elected officials seems silly.
I don't know what the 'right' system is, but the current one allows for situations like the one in the article to be perfectly OK and, IMHO, is broken.
There was a lot of judicial push back on the Muslim ban. Pretty sure they forced the Trump administration to make significant changes to it before it could be enforced.
We went through this in the early days of movie theaters. Laws were passed forcing separation as you are mentioning. Its a shame we to revisit this over and over again each time technology changes slightly.
Fascinating about that history is how splitting up standard oil was lucrative for rockefeller, as the combined income of the smaller companies was larger than of the single monopolist. If more of these acquisitions occurred as mere ownership of competing entities instead of trying to roll them all into a single business the overall profit for the shareholders would probably be higher, since the competitors would capture more of the potential market.
I'll agree to the first part of your statement, but I'll correct the last: regulation has solved many, many problems known to man, but not every problem. Let's not be hyperbolic here.
Lots of ordinary people complain about regulation. One of the top stories on HN right now is a StrongTowns article. What do you think it’s complaining about? The whole new urbanism movement is a reaction to decades of bad regulation.
Bad regulation hurts consumers. Ticket prices plummeted after airlines were deregulated. FedEx and UPS and (eventually) Amazon sprang to life after freight was deregulated. Conversely lack of regulation has enabled great products. Restrictions on vertical integration, for example, would have precluded the most popular mobile phone product lines on the market (Samsung Galaxy and Apple iPhone).
> Restrictions on vertical integration, for example, would have precluded the most popular mobile phone product lines on the market (Samsung Galaxy and Apple iPhone).
It was my understanding that Apple had to fight against a different kind of vertical integration to get the iPhone off the ground. Before that came out, the carriers ruled your phone with an iron fist. They determined what apps could run and so on. (And the AT&T exclusive during the first years of iPhone show what they had to give up to get the device released)
This isn't disagreeing with the general point of your comment, mind you. The vertical just shifted from carrier control to device maker control.
While I agree that both those groups complain about regulation, people who study the effects of regulation also complain about regulation because there's a large literature on how counterproductive many intuitive-seeming types of regulation actually are.
Honestly, I kind of hope Dish and Sling hold out. I don't have cable any more, but many of my family members do, and constantly complain about rates going up all the time. If enough cable companies toe the line with HBO, and ESPN, it would put a stop to that..
Dish/Dish Network/Sling/Echostar have been involved in these carriage disputes on and off over the decades. The CEO doesn't willingly give into price hikes and unilateral changes without a fight. He'll just switch the network off (or let it get cut off) and apply the viewer pressure until something is worked out.
Granted, the landscape has changed and it's a lot easier to change streaming providers than the old days when you had to physically switch out your satellite system for DirecTV or go back to CATV/Cable.
I once have sat at the war room table in such a dispute.
Typically a carrier has a weapon which it can use abet reluctantly ( because it can only be used once every few years ) -- it is dropping the multiple channels associated with the content provider. Since typically a carrier has a local monopoly on access, such drop impacts cash flow of the content provider, which needs the cash flow to create new content.
The problem is that this weapon does not work against AT&T which owns DirectTV -- Dish would need to drop all AT&T controlled content a the worst possible time for AT&T - such as right before the elections ( CNN would take a major hit ) as well as channels such as TBS/TNT/etc, which may not be possible due to other contracts while betting that AT&T's campaign to switch Dish users to DirectTV won't be successful ( it will - there's really no difference between the two providers it is just a question of AT&T having the installation operation ready )
Dish is a dinosaur of the carriers - it has too many channels and no content to put on it. Its only long term play is heavy investment in creating its own programming. Even Netflix and Amazon realized it.
For many Americans who live in rural areas and have very limited/poor choices for internet service, satellite TV is still one of the best ways to get live or near-live media. WISPs are often oversold so during peak hours (the hours you'd really care to watch) streaming becomes unreliable. 4G connectivity is really expensive if you tend to consume a lot of video. This is satellite TV's market.
Does the backhaul capacity exist for 5G in those areas? From a quick Google it seems lots of people are betting on microwave links rather than fibre for that.
I think it is beginning to. not to mention, its not outside the realm of possibility to use microwave backhaul in front of the 5g. Sure, it wont perform as well as it could, but for those in rural areas the coverage of LTE with good antennas is easier/better than microwave (mostly because of line of sight needs)
How do you get them to cooperate though? What's to stop AT&T from playing them against each other and just saying the first one to accept their terms gets a sweetheart deal, and everyone else is going to have to pay even more?
Since now AT&T has the content it makes no sense not to squeeze everyone who needs this content.
Turn on your cable or satellite TV and scroll through the channels. Notice everything that is on. Should you do it every day for a month you would realize that it is the same recycled content that is being re-pushed. That's because for all big talk there's just not enough broadcast quality content that is being produced to fill the available slots. Production of the content is not just expensive, it is time consuming.
I'd also add that linear content is becoming more and more of an anachronism. As more and more people get access to streaming services, it makes less and less sense to time-box content. Most of Dish's stuff is DVR-based anyways, and everyday channels are telling people to set their DVRs in the promo material. Forcing everything into a time box makes the content problem look worse.
AT&T heavily subsidizes HBO for TV and telecom subscribers. $5 with DTV Now or free with AT&T Unlimited plan.
They are definitely playing long game if they’re willing to lose 2.5 million Dish subscribers. HBO makes about $8 per sub from cable companies, so $20m per month. They are probably trying to push it up to their OTT price ($15).
People can still subscribe to HBO Now. Mildly annoying to get it from a separate interface or you have bad internet, but at least there are options.
"Is HBO Now good these days? Last time I used it, it was terrible."
This isn't an issue for me because I have DirecTV, etc., but if it were I would simply sign up for HBO Now, pay full price, but never use it and download from bittorrent in leech mode[1].
I will happily defend that behavior to a jury of my peers.
[1] Or whatever your client calls the mode where you don't seed the torrent.
Why in leech mode? I agree with you that you'd be morally ok by paying for HBO to consume the content, but I'd say you're morally wrong for leeching without seeding. If you want to participate in the network, you should take and give.
I remember having HBO now for a while and it seemed fine. I just got rid of it because Netflix has much more content, and the price point was a bit unjustified IMO. Does HBO Now have all of HBO content or is it just a subset?
What's terrible about it? It's the only way I've consumed HBO shows since the day it came out (and the reason why I instantly dropped my cable subscription as soon as standalone HBO became an option with HBO Now).
> Is HBO Now good these days? Last time I used it, it was terrible.
If you don't watch live shows anyway, it's (IME) better than HBO-on-Cable, even accompanied by the HBO Go app (which is far more terrible than HBO Now ever was.)
It is time to break up AT&T. Their abuse of HBO customers on Dish network is an outrage. Senators and Cobgressman from rural districts need to band together, regardless of party and work together to break up AT&T. I know that as of today I will never consider switching to DirectTV and I’m going to take a long look at switching phone and internet carriers. Hey Hey Ho Ho AT&T must go!
Seriously though, the fact that AT&T can get away with this is just another sign that our government is in steep decline!
Prefix: Speaking generally, with regard to "blackouts" impacting immediate and short-term, essentially already sold and "committed to" services.
Pertaining to this instance, that would include taking on and honoring the contracts and commitments already made by your acquisition.
--
Here's an idea: Regulation that says the moment they do such, they have to discount all impacted customers' billing by the amount represented by these services.
And, up the food chain, the other parties lose their corresponding revenue. No grace period, no exceptions. Every hour of blackout costs them, for what they are not providing on the packages they've sold customers.
I'd also argue for an additional penalty assessment for lack of notice to customers of service change.
When it starts costing them all money, negotiations may go a bit more smoothly and willingly -- and planfully.
"But, contracts!"
Commercial contracts face all sorts of legal limitations. This proposal seems a pretty simple and purposeful limitation, that is overdue.
--
P.S. Once it's coded into their systems, it can be generalized. Failed Internet connectivity? Discount! Missed service call? Discount!
In other words, stop them from externalizing the costs of poor support. (Which they can do all the more readily in the absence of effective competition, a known issue here in the U.S.)
P.P.S. You can also see the pressure/incentive this situation provides, for customers to move to online streaming over a neutral carrier (if they can get it), for such programming -- including access at time of release as opposed to through an archive.
ATT didn't sell it; Dish and sling did, and I'm pretty sure customers aren't going to continue paying for HBO while it's blacked out. I don't understand your approach at all.
My fault, for reacting more to another headline about "blackouts", than to the specifics. I've tried to clarify, a bit, in my original comment.
Customers make commitments, both contractual and personal in terms of time and effort and availability, to media distribution purchases. I think they have a right to receive the product they paid for. If that product fails or changes substantially, they have a right to recompense -- to a corresponding adjustment, at least.
They get jerked around by the big media companies: Programming and distribution.
Make those companies absorb the costs of their own machinations and failures, instead of passing them on -- financially and otherwise -- to relatively captive customers.
I still don't understand why ATT would pay anything here. Dish customers aren't going to be paying for HBO any longer (until it returns), and this sort of logic would never allow any supplier to raise their prices.
Let's say I'm a lumber supplier and happen to be the only supplier in the world capable of manufacturing AwesomeWood. I want to raise my prices, but some contractor/land owner decides they won't pay. But they really like AwesomeWood. Does the manufacturer now owe the contractor/land owner compensation? Seems silly.
Speaking generally (not to this specifically): Cable company offers customer package that has X. Then gets into dispute with provider or distributor of X -- a pricing fight -- and X goes away. Customer keeps paying for the package they were sold.
Again, speaking generally, if cable company had to, hour one, cut customer's bill by the portion that X represents. If, in other cases where provider/distributor of X is still getting paid essentially out of customer's pocket for X, that too has to stop.
Maybe these sudden blackouts would go away.
In this case, as I understand it, ATT bought HBO. ? -- I can't even keep up with all the mergers, anymore; that kind of rings a bell.
Suddenly, a couple of months later, pricing/contract dispute makes HBO go away for these customers. They should get a discount on their packages, and I'd love to see ATT eat it for not honoring the relationship HBO had with these downstream providers and providing some continuity.
At least in this case, if they have decent high speed internet (Sling at least implies this, for part of them), they can get HBO through another avenue. Does HBO stream directly, now? I know you can subscribe to their... "channel"?, addon?, through Amazon Prime video and presumably (without requiring eating the $120/year cost for Prime) through Amazon video.
In other cases, customers may not have such a ready, easy option for alternative access. No high speed internet (Dish customers, maybe). Or content that doesn't stream (some sports). And this lack of options all the more so, in past but still recent and relevant years.
In many cases, due to lack of options, or to one-time cost and time barriers (getting another physical distribution channel set up, if one's even available), customer subscription choices are significantly "sticky".
Every time these big media companies "fight it out", with blackouts and such, they are imposing costs on those customers. Costs they can externalize, because customers are "stuck" with them in a marketplace that is severely lacking in effective competition.
Finally, that lack may be lessening -- IF those customers have access to adequate, affordable, and neutral data delivery. Something that remains untrue or under threat, for many customers.
Anyway, I hope I made some sense, here.
As for me, I spent 16 years with only one high-speed Internet option, because the one competitor in this area chose not to repair or replace the ancient and degraded copper line along my back lot line. And that was after they received approximately 750 million in tax breaks and other... "gifts", I have to call them, from the state, in return for a commitment to deploy "universal" high speed Internet access to the entire state (with a little wiggle room for hard to reach areas) -- years prior. A commitment they promply reneged on and spent money lobbying to get out of.
That was what is now called ATT, by the way.
So here, I see another instance of their shafting customers, because they can.
Make them pay. Nothing else works -- well, there's been no effective political will to throw their executives in prison, yet. (Were there, I'm not entirely dubious that criminal activity could be found in some of their behavior.)
AT&T continues to act like an old dinosaur with it's crude business tactics, shady telecom deals/mergers and practices.
Why hurt customers? This looks bad regardless who's right.
Those are all luxury entertainment products. No one actually needs them, and hopefully a temporary black out will remind viewers that they can live just fine without that video content.
I bet some people will think this comment is unduly snarky. But if you take the time to step back a moment and think about it, it really is pretty good advice.
I will probably just find the show I want to watch through usenet or something. Outside is a pretty dangerous place, I prefer digital worlds where I can respawn if I die.
Well, in a past career I worked in film/TV. I needed them. This is an industry like any other. It employs lots of people. Things like blackouts and, in my day, writers strikes impact the livelihoods of a great many.
Now facebook, that is pure luxury that we can all do without. And don't get me started on air travel. Get out and walk. Take a train.
As a software engineer who has to have a facebook for API integrations and other bullshit. Facebook is not pure luxury. Wish I could do my job without having to have an account but it is not possible.
I don't think you want to compare industries and determine the importance by the number of workers.
Facebook is trying to be a content platform for everything. If it had it's way, it would be YouTube++. To be locked out of YouTube these days would be pretty bad if you wanted to be a vlogger. And Air Travel is pretty critical for remote towns in America. Train isn't really competitive for cross america travel in terms of time even if we have to put up with all the security theater.
Read the post again. Take it a little less literally. Do you really thing that I meant that people should literally walk instead of flying? I was saying that the OP's description of the film/TV industry as a "luxury" and that people should "get outside" was just as ridiculous as my description of Facebook or air travel. This is a tech forum. I was illustrating the point by re-telling the narrative in terms more understood to this crowd, with the hope that doing so would create some empathy in the minds of readers. But of course this is HN where metaphor is too complex a concept.
For the Sheldon out there: When you see someone equate two wildly different things, such as FLYING and WALKING, that is code for not literal and you should examine the wording in context. There is probably another meaning, one often opposite to that literally described by the text. And if you don't understand what I mean by "Sheldons" then I give up.
Wow, that was too much typing. It is almost like metaphor allow us to express complex ideas with far fewer words than literal description of the facts. I wonder if anyone else has discovered this trick?
Re-reading and honestly. I just don't think your response to thread OP was clear in the way you have imagined it.
You mention walking vs flying as an appeal to extremes, but you dropped in trains right after. That takes away from your point at the critical moment. And your Facebook as a luxury comparison just doesn't really get your point across. It's not like you told me to sell my children to fix my financial troubles.
As the OP for this thread I have nothing against the film/TV industry. There are a zillion sources of video content out there. No one actually needs HBO or Cinemax. For those who want to sit and watch TV there's more other content available than they can get through in a lifetime.
I can understand facebook, but air travel? You musn't be of the USA. A train from Seattle to New York costs $350 and takes at least 3 days and there is only one carrier - Amtrak. A flight is $200 or less, and takes 6 hours.
Or a boat? Air travel is pretty necessary for going across the oceans these days. I don't really understand that as being a luxury compared to watching television.
This is the kind of behavior that drives cord cutting
And drives them right into the arms of the HBO Now $15/month plan. Oh, yeah, cord-cutters have 'em so torn up at HBO, they're crying rivers of gold bars over there.
> AT&T acquired HBO when it bought Time Warner for USD 85.4 million
Holy crap, I didn't know this. That seems like absolute peanuts.
Edit: As pointed out, the article dropped a factor of 1000. Mildly infuriating, to the say the least. I guess they pointed it out at the end of the article, shame on me then.
This kind of dispute between content providers and content distributors happens all the time.
Comcast - Disney - AT&T - Nextstar - Sinclair, etc... It's an everlasting dance that's been doing on for decades.
The only reason this is interesting to the HN community is because it's happening to Sling. But if Sling wants to play on the level of Scripps, Gannet, etc... it has to play by those rules, and expect these sorts of things to happen.
I'm not saying AT&T is right here. But I witnessed at least a dozen of these temporary content blackouts in my previous life in broadcasting. Just because your TV company doesn't have towers doesn't mean you get a free pass.
No, it doesn’t happen all the time. In fact the article is quite clear that this never happened with HBO before the merger.
And also no, Sling being included is not the only reason this is interesting. It’s interesting because it’s a major telco using their newly acquired content as an anticompetitive bludgeon, in direct violation of their quite recent promises to the contrary.
Yes, it does. You are correct that this is the first dispute between HBO and Sling. But as I stated, this type of dispute between content creators and content distributors happens all the time.
Welcome to professional broadcasting. So much for the SV "disruption" strategy.
It does with Dish/Sling. Fox has been blacked out multiple times on Dish. There is nothing inherently wrong with ATT or the fact that they own HBO that caused this. They want to raise prices and Dish doesn’t want to pay. This is how Dish negotiates and they tell their customers it’s to keep prices low. Channels get blacked out all the time on Dish.
There is no free pass expected. This is a simple result of ATT flexing its muscles after consolidation. I don't think you can genuinely say this is business as usual if it is the first time in HBO's history it has happened.
As for it happening to Sling/Dish, yes, absolutely I think ATT picked a fight with them first due to it being their main competition with DirecTV.
No worries. Eventually, the online streaming services will become so fragmented it'll be just like cable tv all over again.
That's probably why AT&T has the upper-hand in this case. People can just stream HBO. This hurts rural customers who don't have reliable internet connections, though.
I worry that some of the news and politics show might have to get their content approved by some kind of corporate board. So far they seem to be pretty hands off, I just hope it stays that way.
I cannot wait for cable/sat networks as content providers to come to an end. Everything should be on-demand, leaving the only purpose of cable or sat being live events like sports.
BitTorrent over Tor (or I2PSnark, which needs more <3) is the superior solution to bad guy big-media. It's free and only needs a minimal amount of patience.
Compare the barrier to entry for publishing a website to that of establishing a television or ISP company and then you might get why one should be more strongly regulated than the other.
While this is a practice that is harmful to consumers, it has nothing to do with Net Neutrality. These kind of pissing contests have been going on for decades.
It has a whole lot to do with net neutrality when an IP-based video streaming service is being blocked by an ISP. This isn't an ordinary cable carriage dispute. If they were blocking YouTube Red, Hulu, and Netflix would you claim that has nothing to do with NN either?
> It has a whole lot to do with net neutrality when an IP-based video streaming service is being blocked by an ISP.
No, it doesn't, because it isn't being blocked for the ISP’s customers, except incidentally in that some SlingTV customers are probably using it over AT&T internet.
> This isn't an ordinary cable carriage dispute.
Yes, it is. Or, at least, it's special only because the content provider is also competing multichannel video distribution platform operator by way of its U-Verse cable, DirecTV satellite, and DirecTV Now OTT services; their ISP business is basically irrelevant to the issue.
> If they were blocking YouTube Red, Hulu, and Netflix would you claim that has nothing to do with NN either?
If they were blocking any of those to their own ISP customers as such, it would have something to do net neutrality. But that's not the issue.
Exactly. Paid television subscriptions (i.e. cable television) is not the Internet, and has always been regulated differently. Even under Net Neutrality, it would get an expedition as bing a specialized service.
After the merger, AT&T removed HBO from its lower-priced wireless plan, raised wireless prices, raised DirecTV NOW prices, and now this. Frankly, I would have expected a year or two of AT&T saying, "see, nothing bad happened! If anything, we're giving consumers more!" Then a couple years later, "because of inflation, costs, whatever, we're raising prices...it wasn't because of the merger at all!"
It just seems like AT&T decided to forego plausible deniability. And the merger is being appealed to the DC Circuit court. Literally the DoJ argued that AT&T would have, "both the incentive and the ability to raise its rivals' costs and stifle growth of innovative, next-generation entrants that offer attractive alternatives to AT&T/DirecTV's legacy pay-TV model—all to the detriment of American consumers," and that AT&T would have more power in negotiations with competitors. Now they're proving that.
I'm just surprised that AT&T couldn't wait 18 months. 18 months later, the merger wouldn't be on people's minds as much and they could argue that the market had shifted (production costs, more competition from YouTube, whatever). Doing these things so soon makes a really clear cause and effect. Waiting gives you deniability.