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Links: EchoStar Pulls, Reinstates Viacom Channels
Posted by James Grimmelmann on Friday, March 12 @ 15:25:24 EST Telecommunications
Two days after dropping all Viacom channels from its lineup, satellite TV provider EchoStar restored them to the air after signing a long-term deal with Viacom. The initial contract talks broke down, leading EchoStar to go nuke-ular as a negotiating tactic; during the outage, EchoStar promised to refund its customers on their monthly cable bills for the missing channels.

All of which underscores, I think, how horrifically stupid our TV distribution infrastructure is becoming. Cable and satellite both lock consumers into long-term deals with providers. When a particular provider changes its lineup in a way consumers don't like, they have no real option other than to get ferociously angry and stew in their own juices as they contemplate the hassle and expense of switching providers. This is no way to run a railroad.

As smart telco scholars have been saying for years, this system violates good separation of layers and proper end-to-end neutrality: the provider of the pipes is in the business of making deals about content. Things aren't as bad as they were when there was just cable: now, at least, consumers can switch at all. But still: if we sent this traffic over general-purpose pipes, consumers would be cutting deals directly with content companies and everyone would be a great deal happier.

 
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Re: EchoStar Pulls, Reinstates Viacom Channels (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Friday, March 19 @ 13:01:06 EST
"everyone would be a great deal happier" except Comcast, SBC, et al. I certainly would prefer to deal directly with Sony or Paramount when I want to download a nice piece of conent, but cherry picking by consumers doesn't make the infrastructure folks any money. If HBO is $12/month for, hypotethically, 120 hours of unduplicated programming, I should be able to pay them a dollar and watch 4 episodes of 6 Feet Under, 4 episodes of Sex in the City and 2 two-hour movies. Or at least give them $6 and get just 6 Feet and Sex. I certainly don't need the 6 versions of HBO that Comcast wants to foist on me, take it or leave it. All the more reason to oppose their vertical-integration-creating Disney merger proposal. Look at comcast.net or similar to see how the infrastructure providers keep trying to elbow their way into the content business. If I have a nice big pipe from Comcast (or whoever) then I should be able to go to content providers and get what I want, piecemeal, service by service. I could get my voice service from Vonage and my news-satire service from Viacom (Comedy Central) and my jazz service from Sony. I don't want, and shouldn't have to pay for, any content from Comcast (or SBC or Earthlink or...). I'm not holding my breath. It's simply unamerican (read: would give consumers too much power) and wouldn't make the infrastructure owners enough money.


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