Thanks To Crappy Cable Channel Bundles, Non-Watchers Hugely Subsidize Tucker Carlson And Fox News

from the fossilized-business-models dept

We've talked about the problem with bloated, expensive cable TV channel bundles for a long time. You might recall the push for "a la carte" TV channels (being able to buy cable TV channels individually) was even a pet project of the late John McCain, though his legislative efforts on that front never really went anywhere. And while the rise of streaming competition helped mitigate the problem somewhat, the tactic of forcing US cable TV consumers to buy massive bundles filled with channels they don't watch remains a very real annoyance.

The latest case in point: many folks are realizing that the attempt to drive advertisers away from white supremacy apologists like Tucker Carlson aren't really working, in part thanks to the traditional cable TV bundle. In short, because Fox News is included in most cable TV lineups, millions of Americans are throwing money at Fox News despite never watching the channel:

I spent much of February talking to as many media scholars as I could for a piece trying to find a solution for the Fox News disinformation problem. The reality is there are very few policy proposals that wouldn't run afoul of the First Amendment, especially with a rightward-lurching Supreme Court. One that might actually help work remains pushing actively to eliminate the bloated cable TV bundle:

"You’d kill those stations in a heartbeat if they didn’t get bundled in every cable package,” said Christopher Terry, assistant professor of media law at the University of Minnesota. “All of those outlets thrive in the delivery to the audience they get by being included in every package, but in an a la carte cable package, only a handful of the true believer crowd would be willing to pay extra for them."

“Imagine if they had to survive in an actual market-based scenario where the number of viewers they could have was limited by the people who would pay to have access to that specific content,” he added. “You’d cut them off at the knees and use their own rhetoric to do so while making cable companies more accountable to the local customer base."

Actually competing for attention, imagine that! Again, this was something that was supposed to be addressed by market forces via the streaming revolution, though many of the same failures in traditional cable simply wandered over to the streaming sector (not surprising since the same broadcasters and telecom giants dominated both arenas). And while streaming does provide greater choice, cable TV remains the dominant platform. As a result, Fox News still hauls in massive subsidies from a dated business model that involves tens of millions of Americans paying for a channel they never watch:

"Fox News makes $1.8 billion from the carriage fees it charges cable TV providers to include the channel in bloated, increasingly expensive cable TV bundles. But just 3 million of the nation’s 90 million cable TV subscribers actively watch the channel. In other words, 87 million Americans pay their cable company for and thus subsidize Fox News—despite rarely if ever actually watching the channel."

"According to a survey conducted late last year, about 14% of cable TV subscribers watch Fox News regularly. But every cable TV subscriber pays an average of $1.72 a month to receive Fox News. In contrast, 31% of cable TV subscribers regularly watch FX (owned by Disney) but the channel adds just $0.81 to an average cable bill.

Judd Legum recently crunched the numbers further, showing how a lot of Fox News' income comes utterly unearned, from people who may have zero interest in the racist tirades of a frozen TV dinner empire heir:

"According to a survey conducted late last year, about 14% of cable TV subscribers watch Fox News regularly. But every cable TV subscriber pays an average of $1.72 a month to receive Fox News. In contrast, 31% of cable TV subscribers regularly watch FX (owned by Disney) but the channel adds just $0.81 to an average cable bill.

This means, for every actual viewer, Fox News receives a $7.75 subsidy from people who never watch Fox News. This is a higher subsidy than other non-sports channels, like FX ($1.79), CNN ($3.18), and TBS ($2.79), receive. And none of those channels regularly spreads white nationalist talking points to millions of viewers."

But again, as John McCain showed, breaking this logjam is easier said than done. Maine, for example, recently tried to pass a law forcing cable giants to sell channels individually, but found itself quickly sued by Comcast, which claimed the law violated the company's free speech rights (Comcast's winning that battle so far). The cable and broadcast industry has lobbied relentlessly to ensure this shift to individual channels never happens, claiming that moving to an a la carte model would kill niche channels and raise consumer prices (both things that repeatedly happened anyway).

Granted this isn't just about not liking the channel or disagreeing with the channels politics. There's clear evidence, especially on the COVID front, that the bullshit pouring out of the Rupert Murdoch empire is actively harming human health:

"A media watchdog found over 250 cases of COVID-19 misinformation on Fox News in just one five-day period, and economists demonstrated that Fox News had a demonstrable impact on non-compliance with public health guidelines,” the lawmakers wrote."

If you can't rely on the wisdom of the courts, free market competition, or regulators to disrupt the Fox News disinformation parade, that leaves activists like Media Matters, which have increasingly been trying to target the problem with it's Unfox My Cable Box campaign. But even if we're to simply wait for the purely organic death of the traditional cable TV channel bundle at the hands of the streaming television and pissed consumers, it's not entirely clear, based on the popularity of many bigoted influencers, that dangerous dipshittery won't just find a new form to inhabit.

Bullshit is more profitable than truth under the engagement-driven, ad-based business models we're building, and that's simply a fact. Policies that change this reality won't be easy to come by. The world's top media policy experts are glacially pondering practical solutions to the toxic sludge of disinformation pouring out of the face of trolls like Tucker Carlson, but you may want to go read a book, because it's gonna be a long wait.

Filed Under: bundles, cable bundles, fox news, subsidization, tucker carlson
Companies: news corp

News Corp. Sends DMCA Notice Over Glenn Greenwald Trashing The Sunday Times' Ridiculous Snowden Story

from the yeah,-that's-convincing dept

We already wrote this morning about the ridiculous claims by The Sunday Times that Snowden's documents had been either given to the Russians and Chinese or that they had cracked the encryption to get them -- and that, because of this, the UK had to move intelligence "agents" out of Moscow for their safety. We pointed to numerous problems with the article, including many direct factual mistakes. One of the links we pointed to was Glenn Greenwald himself challenging many of the claims in the Sunday Times. This included highlighting the flat out lie that David Miranda was detained in Heathrow after visiting Snowden in Moscow (a claim the Sunday Times later simply deleted, with no correction or retraction).

Many people have been asking if the Sunday Times will say anything about the myriad problems with the article, and we now finally have a response. And it's... to send a DMCA takedown notice to Greenwald's publisher, First Look Media, claiming that, because he posted an image of the Sunday Times' front page layout, he is violating their copyright. Here's the section of Greenwald's article the Times (really, Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of News UK, which is a subsidiary of News Corp) is complaining about: The idea that this is somehow infringing is ridiculous. But here's what the lawyers at News Corp are claiming:

We write on behalf of Times Newspapers Limited (TNL) the publishers of The Times and The Sunday Times. TNL owns the copyright in the typographical arrangement of the front page of The Sunday Times published on 14 June 2015 (Material). The Material is an original work created by employees of TNL. A copy of the Material is enclosed.

A copy of the Material appears [on First Look's website] under the headline "THE SUNDAY TIMES' SNOWDEN STORY IS JOURNALISM AT ITS WORST -- AND FILLED WITH FALSEHOODS" (Infringing Content). The Infringing Content has been reproduced, communicated to the public and published onto the Website without TNL's permission and as such infringes the intellectual property rights of TNL....

Later, it notes:

... we have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized by the copyright or other intellectual property rights owner, by its agent, or by law...

To put it mildly: this is ridiculous. Of course it's authorized by law, and that law is fair use. The UK may not have fair use, but the US does, and First Look is a US publication. The use above clearly and easily is fair use -- so much so that the lawyer for News Corp pretending otherwise is either the worst lawyer ever, or is being deliberately disingenuous with this threat letter.

Even more to the point: how could anyone at News Corp not realize how this would end up? There was no way that such a letter would have the intended purpose of taking down the content and the only thing it could do would be to draw extra attention to the fact that News Corp is trying to censor one of the people forcefully criticizing its ridiculous article, and highlighting what it got wrong. And, thus, the end result is further ridicule for News Corp, and further reasons to question the credibility of the Sunday Times.

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, dmca, ed snowden, glenn greenwald, sunday times
Companies: news corp, news uk, sunday times, times newspapers

Temporary Paywall Removals Only Highlight The Fundamental Paradox Of Paywalls

from the backwards-economics dept

While there's room for debate on whether Rupert Murdoch's paywall strategy for the UK Times and Sunday Times has been disastrous or just mediocre, it certainly hasn't been a massive success or reinvented any online news business models. Now we're beginning to see some telling cracks in the facade: the Times paywall recently came down during the Queen's jubilee weekend, and now TNW reports that a similar free-access period is being considered for the 2012 Olympics.

Now, promotional giveaways are hardly a new or crazy idea, and they don't typically say anything bad about a business model—but I don't think that's really what's happening here. Certainly the Times hopes to convert some of those free readers into paid online subscribers, but there's also a clear pattern in the items they choose to make these exceptions for: huge social events that are attended and discussed by lots of people. In other words, precisely the sort of thing where blogs and social media offer the most competition to a newspaper. Why would anybody pay for Olympic reporting when the web is going to be absolutely flooded with constant updates on every little thing that happens, supplied for free by the fans and hangers-on? If the Times content is behind a paywall, it will be all but ignored.

And this really goes to show why, in the long run, paywalls are unsustainable. If the biggest, most popular topics are the hardest to control—and the ones that lose value the most when controlled successfully—while at the same, time social media and citizen reporting output is growing and expanding to new areas constantly, then the inevitable conclusion seems clear: paywalls are, at best, a temporary way of extracting a little bit of cash at the expense of long-term relevance. If your goal is to directly sell news as a product, but you discover that you have to eliminate your prices whenever product demand is highest, something is clearly wrong—you're trying to apply an old model where it doesn't actually fit, and getting kooky results. The solution is not to keep compromising the broken model, but to embrace the underlying realities (infinite content, no barrier to publishing, the huge value of share-ability) that broke it, and build new models around them.

Filed Under: newspaper, olympics, paywall, rupert murdoch, uk
Companies: news corp

News Corp. Wonders If There Could Possibly Be Any Arguments Against Anti-Piracy Efforts

from the apparently-paying-attention-isn't-a-core-competence-at-murdoch-and-co. dept

The International Institute of Communications is hosting a particularly one-sided "roundtable seminar" in Hong Kong this week about "content piracy." Just from that phrase, you should know the deck has been stacked against a reasoned analysis of the nature of internet communications. So, it shouldn't be a surprise that the RSVP email is actually from News Corp., or that the "agenda" of the session is entirely one-sided, and suggests a pretty impressive tone-deafness to the worldwide protests against SOPA/PIPA and ACTA. For example, the final question is particularly amusing:

Are there arguments against actions aimed to reduce the impact of these overseas rogue websites?

Apparently, all the concerns about collateral damage, free speech, due process, internet security and the like fell on deaf ears at News Corp. Instead, they seem to be wondering how anyone could possibly have an argument against the next SOPA. An intellectually honest discussion would at least admit that there are arguments being made both for and against these kinds of actions, and actually explore the reality. As we've noted plenty of times in the past, it's no secret that online infringement represents a challenge for established players, but that doesn't mean the immediate reaction should be to go on the attack in a way that creates many more problems, and is unlikely to solve the problem they think they're attacking. So, the argument "against" going after such websites is that it won't work, it's a waste of time and money, it will have tons of collateral damage... and you can better deal with the "problem" by providing more quality legitimate services without restrictions and at better prices. See? Not that hard.

Filed Under: acta, pipa, piracy, rogue sites, sopa
Companies: news corp

Fox Issues DMCA Takedown To Google Over SF Chronicle Article... Claiming It Was The Movie 'Chronicle'

from the on-the-penalty-of-perjury dept

So, Google just revealed its copyright takedown transparency report and it's turning into the gift that keeps on giving. We've already discussed how it shows Microsoft DMCAing links that remain in Microsoft's own search engine... and now reader David Sanger points us to another amusing one. On March 14th, apparently BayTSP (one of the more well-known "anti-piracy" firms), working for Twentieth Century Fox (a News Corp. company), demanded the removal of a link to SFGate.com.
SFGate? That's the website for the San Francisco Chronicle -- the main newspaper in San Francisco. So what was infringing? According to the DMCA notice (which says the filing came from Irdeto, the company that acquired BayTSP last year), insisted that what was actually at that link was:

"The copyrighted work at issue is the film "Chronicle", which is owned by "Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation"

Now, wouldn't that be something if the SF Chronicle was distributing the movie Chronicle illegally? But, of course, that's hogwash. The truth is that BayTSP and Fox screwed up. The SFGate article is now back online and you can see it's just an editorial about how SF Muni (the local public transit authority) should let students ride for free. That has nothing, whatsoever, to do with the movie Chronicle. What's amazing is the word "Chronicle" doesn't even show up in the article. It obviously shows up elsewhere on the page. After all, it is the website for the SF Chronicle.

Of course, in filing this DMCA takedown, BayTSP -- who is a "trusted user" of the takedown system -- swears upon the following statements:

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described in all notifications submitted through the Program as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

The information in all notifications submitted through the Program will be accurate, and I swear, under penalty of perjury, that with respect to those notifications, I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

That's clearly bunk, however, since nothing on that page is even remotely related to the movie Chronicle. How do you have a "good faith belief" that there's infringement when you clearly didn't even take the briefest second to look.

Filed Under: chronicle, dmca, sfgate, takedown
Companies: baytsp, news corp, twentieth century fox

SEC Investigating Hollywood Studios For Alleged Bribes To China

from the open-markets dept

When the MPAA came out with its annual report about the movie market worldwide, it showed that China was a huge growth market. However, now it appears that perhaps some of that growth was the result of Hollywood studios bribing Chinese officials. For years, China has limited how many Western movies can be released in the country. While Hollywood loves to decry all of the "piracy" in China, much of it is due to the fact that the movies can't be released there under the law. That's a situation where the problem is not piracy, nor the MPAA itself (even as it whines about Chinese piracy), but local laws. However, there has been a loosening of those restrictions lately -- and the SEC is exploring whether or not that came about due to bribes from the studios:

The Securities and Exchange Commission has sent letters of inquiry to at least five movie studios in the past two months, including News Corp's 20th Century Fox, Disney, and DreamWorks Animation, a person familiar with the matter said.

The letters ask for information about potential inappropriate payments and how the companies dealt with certain government officials in China, said the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the letters.

That said, there is an interesting tidbit in the Reuters article about all of this, that really serves to highlight how ridiculous the MPAA's fight against "piracy" is. It shows that despite the fact that piracy is rampant for Hollywood movies -- once the MPAA was able to get legit movies into the country, people flocked to the theaters. In other words, despite the cheaper pirated options -- or even free options -- people have no problem paying for the legit product when it's offered in a quality fashion:

China's booming middle class is increasingly willing to pay tickets prices for a cinema experience, forgoing cheap pirated DVDs and free internet downloads.

Once again, this seems to demonstrate why the problem is not piracy. If consumers are offered what they want in a reasonable manner, they are more than willing to pay -- and the Hollywood studios seem to recognize this implicitly (which is why they may have bribed Chinese officials to release authorized versions in that market, even with "piracy" being so common).

Filed Under: bribes, china, hollywood, mpaa, sec
Companies: 20th century fox, disney, dreamworks, news corp

Hulu's Owners Unable To Find Idiots Willing To Overpay To Take Hulu Off Their Hands Before They Kill It

from the tough-luck dept

We recently noted that the attempt by Hulu's owners to sell Hulu wasn't going well, mainly because those same owners had made it clear that they hoped to kill Hulu, by limiting how much it could compete with their lucrative legacy business of cable TV. No one was willing to offer more than $2 billion -- significantly less than what Hulu's owners wanted -- other than Google. But Google would only do it if the TV companies agreed to certain conditions (i.e., not killing off Hulu by limiting content, requiring a paywall, etc.)

So it comes as little surprise that Hulu has now announced that its owners are no longer trying to sell the company off. Instead, they'll focus on suffocating it from within. Well, that part wasn't mentioned, but watch what happens to Hulu execs over the next few months. I think it's likely that we're going to start seeing some departures of key people. Hulu was an amazingly well executed offering with a really capable team... but as we predicted, the fact that the only way it could really succeed was to cannibalize the business of its owners, almost certainly meant that Hulu would never be allowed to execute on the strategy it needed to become a massive player.

Of course, what the big TV companies still fail to recognize is that killing off Hulu doesn't stop the move to an a la cart, online driven world. It just means that when it comes, they will be even less relevant, and less able to capitalize on it.

Filed Under: online, tv
Companies: fox, hulu, nbc, news corp

How Murdoch's Paywalls Meant Some News It Broke Went Unnoticed & Uncredited

from the whoops dept

The saga of how ridiculously disappointing News Corps.' paywalls have been continues. We've already seen that the number of subscribers looks dismal, advertisers are running away and even publicists are avoiding pitching The Times stories, because it's just not worth it, considering the diminished audience. Now, as a bunch of you sent in, it's gotten so bad that when The Times actually breaks a story, almost no one notices -- and the eventual "credit" for breaking the story goes elsewhere.

Apparently, The Times first had a particular political insider story concerning UK politics -- but the story got almost no attention until nine days later when a blog called Labour Uncut re-"broke" the story and got all the credit for it. That seems only likely to drive tipsters to make sure to avoid the Murdoch paywalled papers even more.

Filed Under: journalism, paywalls
Companies: news corp

Custom Toy Blogger Accused Of Infringing On Wolverine

from the take-a-look-at-the-photos dept

Reader shaniac points us to a blog post on a custom toy blog, where the blogger explains how some of his photo galleries of custom toys he made were forced offline due to a DMCA takedown notice from 20th Century Fox, claiming that they infringed on intellectual property from the Wolverine movie. Except, if you look at the images, it seems pretty clear that they've got nothing, whatsoever, to do with Wolverine. In other words, 20th Century Fox appears to have broken the law, in claiming it held the copyright over the figures in those images, when it appears it did not. Unfortunately, the site hosting his content doesn't fully understand that under the DMCA it can re-enable his content if he files a counternotice and 20th Century Fox fails to file a lawsuit within a specified period of time. Instead, it's told the blogger that he needs to get the lawyer from 20th Century Fox to agree that the content doesn't infringe -- and the lawyers don't seem to be responding to any emails, meaning that the blogger is stuck in limbo for no good reason.

Filed Under: copyright, custom toys, dmca, takedown, toys, wolverine
Companies: 20th century fox, news corp