# DirecTV Loses an Estimated 400,000 Subscribers in Q2 as Base Dips Below 14 Million



## mitchflorida (May 18, 2009)

The video business has increasingly come under the control of tech giants like Apple, Amazon and Google, which bury customer data and other key metrics in diffuse reports to the SEC.

Other key operators, like DirecTV -- which was, not that long ago, the biggest pay TV company of them all -- have been recently spun off into private concerns from their publicly traded parent corporations, and are no longer beholden to any such quarterly scrutiny. (The OTT joint venture recently established by Comcast and Charter also falls into this spinoff bucket.)

Thus, when navel gazing over issues like cord cutting, estimates from third-party research companies -- hopefully well-founded! -- are all we have to go on. Amid that backdrop, Leichtman Research Group estimates that DirecTV lost around 400,000 customers across its DirecTV satellite, DirecTV virtual and U-verse TV platforms in the second quarter.

LRG postulates that DirecTV, jointly owned by AT&T and private equity company TPG Capital, has around 13.9 million remaining subscribers. This is around 12 million fewer than existed between DirecTV satellite and U-verse back in May 2014, when AT&T agreed to pay $49 billion to buy DirecTV and -- briefly -- usurped Comcast to become the nation's No. 1 pay TV operator.



https://www.nexttv.com/news/directv-loses-an-estimated-400000-subscribers-in-q2-as-base-dips-below-14-million


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## mitchflorida (May 18, 2009)

TPG Capital has made no changes in DirecTV since buying it, except for dropping the One America News Channel.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

mitchflorida said:


> TPG Capital has made no changes in DirecTV since buying it, except for dropping the One America News Channel.


Did they promise make DTV better ?


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## mitchflorida (May 18, 2009)

P Smith said:


> Did they promise make DTV better ?


No one can accuse TPG of improving DirecTV, good point.


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## AZ. (Mar 27, 2011)

mitchflorida said:


> TPG Capital has made no changes in DirecTV since buying it, except for dropping the One America News Channel.


And ATT stopped funding OANN.


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## mitchflorida (May 18, 2009)

AZ. said:


> And ATT stopped funding OANN.


I said that already.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

mitchflorida said:


> I said that already.


You said TPG dropped the channel. AT&T's funding was separate from the carriage contract. They gave money to help OANN launch.

As for the estimate, I hope it is well-founded. Anyone can guess a number. I don't see how a company that stopped reporting numbers publicly when they were losing three million subscribers per year could stop the bleeding that quickly. Their last official report was 15.4 million a year ago ... now the estimate is 13.9 million. 1.5 million lost in a year following two 3 million subscriber loss years. It is a shame that TPG doesn't make the official numbers public because that kind of turn around would be something to brag about.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Yawn.

Guess this has nothing to do with people cutting costs due to high inflation? Or there being "nothing on TV" in general? What big hits are there? The Big Bang Theory was the last one. Content has been light the last 2+ years due to Covid. The big hits like TBBT have all been cancelled and they've been unable to replace them. I'd say due to them trying to throw silly woke sitcoms & shows at us, but that's a different rant lol. Dish also lost subs as did cable companies and streaming services.

By the same account, you could say that streaming is dying because Netflix has been bleeding customers the last 2 quarters? *Netflix lost over TWICE the customers this quarter*. 

No, you can't really say that because in reality the issue isn't that streaming is dying, its that the arrogance of Reed Hastings killed Netflix (well, starting to at least). His opinion that he doesn't need any "popular content" and people will watch whatever third world, poorly dubbed garbage content (which is mainly what Netflix has now except for the occasional Ryan Reynolds movie which are also garbage) he puts on has turned out to be false. Who'd have seen that coming?

Do a google search for "Reed Hasting manifesto" & "Netflix Culture Document" and read it, especially "The Dream Team" section and you'll smell the arrogance of this guy a billion miles away. Weird that the dream team section doesn't apply to him.

Anyways, do you see a common thread here? (aside from the Reed Hasting bashing lol)

Common thread is, even without inflation, what's the point of paying for "no content" on ANY service? Ask me several years ago and my DirecTV DVR Recording List for the next 2 weeks would have had 40+ items. Now I'm lucky to get 10. Netflix lost all of its "popular content" and now only has 1 or 2 hit shows? AND they raised their prices? No thanks.

*No, at the end of the day, people are cutting costs by eliminating services with little or no content and going where the content is. That's the Disney Streaming Family which just added 14M subs and overtook Netflix.*


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

James Long said:


> You said TPG dropped the channel. AT&T's funding was separate from the carriage contract. They gave money to help OANN launch.
> 
> As for the estimate, I hope it is well-founded. Anyone can guess a number. I don't see how a company that stopped reporting numbers publicly when they were losing three million subscribers per year could stop the bleeding that quickly. Their last official report was 15.4 million a year ago ... now the estimate is 13.9 million. 1.5 million lost in a year following two 3 million subscriber loss years. It is a shame that TPG doesn't make the official numbers public because that kind of turn around would be something to brag about.


I'm not as skeptical as you I guess . There's plenty of evidence that the cord cutter movement of cutting traditional cable/sat services for OTT type services had a flurry of activity for a few years and has plateaued. Not saying it stopped, just that it slowed down significantly.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

I don't believe the estimate is off by much - perhaps correct for 2nd Quarter. But I expect that the loss since the last official report a year ago is greater than 1.5 million. The last quarter AT&T|DIRECTV reported a 400k or less loss was in 2018. Since then the officially reported losses were over half a million every quarter with over a million lost one quarter.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

James Long said:


> It is a shame that TPG doesn't make the official numbers public because that kind of turn around would be something to brag about.


If they report numbers only when they are positive (to the extent losing fewer customers can be considered positive) then when they didn't report numbers it would be assumed they are bad.

TPG is an asset manager, they care about providing returns to their shareholders. Their shareholders care about those returns, not the details of every business. Warren Buffett doesn't break out such details for companies Berkshire Hathaway fully owns either, so if he had bought Directv you'd have the same mystery.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> Common thread is, even without inflation, what's the point of paying for "no content" on ANY service? Ask me several years ago and my DirecTV DVR Recording List for the next 2 weeks would have had 40+ items. Now I'm lucky to get 10. Netflix lost all of its "popular content" and now only has 1 or 2 hit shows? AND they raised their prices? No thanks.


If you had 40+ items queued up every two weeks a few years ago you probably had more spare time. That's a pretty big time commitment unless those are all half hour recordings.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> If you had 40+ items queued up every two weeks a few years ago you probably had more spare time. That's a pretty big time commitment unless those are all half hour recordings.


Mostly half hour sitcoms in prime time, some 1 hr shows on ID, Discovery, History, some 30 min shows on DIY plus some re-runs of older stuff here and there.

I probably have more time now that I WFH & Covid lol.


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## mitchflorida (May 18, 2009)

slice1900 said:


> If they report numbers only when they are positive (to the extent losing fewer customers can be considered positive) then when they didn't report numbers it would be assumed they are bad.
> 
> TPG is an asset manager, they care about providing returns to their shareholders. Their shareholders care about those returns, not the details of every business. Warren Buffett doesn't break out such details for companies Berkshire Hathaway fully owns either, so if he had bought Directv you'd have the same mystery.


One of the reasons that ATT sold 30 percent of DirecTV to TPG was so that they wouldn't have to report their big subscriber losses every quarter. It was hurting ATT's stock price.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

mitchflorida said:


> One of the reasons that ATT sold 30 percent of DirecTV to TPG is so that they wouldn't have to report their big subscriber losses every quarter. It was hurting ATT's stock price.


Doesn't seem to have helped lol since their stock is down -50% since the pandemic hit.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

mitchflorida said:


> One of the reasons that ATT sold 30 percent of DirecTV to TPG was so that they wouldn't have to report their big subscriber losses every quarter. It was hurting ATT's stock price.


AT&T sold an interest to TPG to get them to take over operations of DIRECTV and prepare it for "monetization". I bet it had very little to do with hiding numbers and would guess that if they had set it up as a "privately owned subsidiary" (rather than a division), they could have similarly avoided reporting numbers.


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## krel (Mar 20, 2013)

P Smith said:


> Did they promise make DTV better ?


None!!!!


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## pappasbike (Sep 19, 2006)

slice1900 said:


> That's a pretty big time commitment


I think that’s a significant issue for all “tv” providers especially streaming services. For us Disney+ and Netflix still are well worth the fees, we also subscribe to Apple TV+, Amazon we get by being Prime members but rarely watch anything and would not pay for it separately. Even being retired there just is not enough time to watch all these much less pay for apps that may only have one, perhaps two, productions that are of any interest. I suspect there is a big shakeout coming for all these services as many are either merging or just failing altogether.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

pappasbike said:


> I think that’s a significant issue for all “tv” providers especially streaming services. For us Disney+ and Netflix still are well worth the fees, we also subscribe to Apple TV+, Amazon we get by being Prime members but rarely watch anything and would not pay for it separately. Even being retired there just is not enough time to watch all these much less pay for apps that may only have one, perhaps two, productions that are of any interest. I suspect there is a big shakeout coming for all these services as many are either merging or just failing altogether.


Seems to be going the other way to me. Netflix used to be the "one stop shop". Then everybody under the sun spun up their own services. Plus having separate services under the same umbrella gives companies more money & separate branding. Disney+ is the family oriented service and just added its first R rated content. They should keep that separate because the Disney brand is about G rated content. You wouldn't hide ESPN under Disney branding because the ESPN brand is valuable (even though I personally watch less then zero sports).

If you mean different services are getting gobbled up under the same parent umbrella, that's different.

Can't predict if Netflix will go belly up in the US, but they have lost pretty much all their content. Still they haven't had a big subscriber bleed yet. 1 - 2 million is nothing there.


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## Mike Lang (Nov 18, 2005)

There will still be a lot more shakeup between all the major providers over the next few years. In the end, the viewers will no doubt be paying more for less.


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## StangGT909 (Mar 9, 2007)

3 Predictions:

1) They gave Sunday Ticket away to practically everyone this year. Seems pretty obvious their goal was to reduce subscriber loss, as you have to imagine this is keeping a lot of people.

2) Q1 2023 Loss - Watch out…. you’d have to figure when football is over this to be the RECORD loss of all time quarter. Without ST, well you get the point

3) Post ST Future / Flat Pricing -My opinion has always been that the pricing model of over charging a high percentage of customers and discounting some eventually would come to an end due to flat pricing.
Almost everyone I know that’s cancelled some form of Pay Television has done so because their ”basic package” cost $120-150 and streaming was cheaper.
For those on here that call retention and get. $50-60 credits, sure it “normalizes” the price to where it’s a marginal difference.

Seems they should just charge $75-85 month for choice with no discounts from day 1 and at that point there wouldn’t be strong financial motivation to switch.

We’ll see, those are my Predictions!


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

StangGT909 said:


> Q1 2023 Loss - Watch out…. you’d have to figure when football is over this to be the RECORD loss of all time quarter. Without ST, well you get the point


For many, the change probably won't be noticed until the 2023-4 season starts. Some think further ahead but others just keep paying the bill.


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## StangGT909 (Mar 9, 2007)

harsh said:


> For many, the change probably won't be noticed until the 2023-4 season starts. Some think further ahead but others just keep paying the bill.



I don’t know I’d agree with this, I think people paying the high bills do it simply as the means to have access to ST. I think the minute football ends this group of people will jump to cheaper provider, Not continue to pay high prices for 6 more months then realize wow DTV doesn’t have ST anymore in the fall off 2023.

Prediction # 4 - I would suspect this “fall” when they announce Amazon/Apple/ESPN/ or Google as the 2023 ST provider, that this tech company will promote this and it will be pretty big headline news, And you’d have to literally be living in another universe to not know this !


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

StangGT909 said:


> 1) They gave Sunday Ticket away to practically everyone this year. Seems pretty obvious their goal was to reduce subscriber loss, as you have to imagine this is keeping a lot of people.



Based on what? Because you've seen people mention it in forums like this? People here are hardly representative of average Directv customers.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> Based on what? Because you've seen people mention it in forums like this? People here are hardly representative of average Directv customers.


Agreed. I couldn't POSSIBLY care less about sports then I already don't . ST doesn't factor in my decision in the least. That being said, yes, lots of people sign up / signed up due to the exclusive ST.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

StangGT909 said:


> My opinion has always been that the pricing model of over charging a high percentage of customers and discounting some eventually would come to an end due to flat pricing.
> Almost everyone I know that’s cancelled some form of Pay Television has done so because their ”basic package” cost $120-150 and streaming was cheaper.


Streaming is cheaper when you have more then 2 or 3 TVs due to the outlet fees. At 1 or 2 + discounts, you'll be cheaper on DirecTV unless you do to a really skinny streaming package. Apples to apples comparison, DirecTV would be cheaper at the 1-2 TV range.

As for why they don't just give everybody the "discount" rate vs. having you call in? 

1) Well, not everybody would qualify for the loyalty discounts. If your account has a low rating, you wouldn't get them.
2) The people that even know you can get discounts much less call in every year to re-up is effectively 0%. So no need to give it to everybody.
3) This is no different then when your employer low balled you coming in, never promoted you and gives you chinsy raises. Then you notice a new guy that got hired after you got $20k more and you quit in disgust and then thy want to offer you $30k to stay even though your new employer gave you $40k and then the new guy quits in disgust because he got $50k at another place. Rinse/Repeat.

As with everything in life, its up to you to stay on top of things and get the best deals on everything. Lots of people don't want to bother doing that and just take whatever.


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## spec1alk (Sep 6, 2008)

StangGT909 said:


> 3 Predictions:
> 
> 1) They gave Sunday Ticket away to practically everyone this year. Seems pretty obvious their goal was to reduce subscriber loss, as you have to imagine this is keeping a lot of people.
> 
> ...


This is essentially what I did for several years on DTV. The promotions would run out, I would call retention and say I wanted to leave (and I legitimately would). They would give me a promotion for another year that would bring it back to within $5-10 of a streaming option. This mitigated the financial incentive of leaving, so I would stay.

Eventually, 1 year my plan raised to something like $120/month. I called to cancel. They offered a $20 discount this time instead of a $50-60 discount. I said that $20 wasn't enough, they wouldn't do anything else, so I canceled. I then signed up for YTTV and haven't really missed DTV.

My biggest gripe about YTTV is they raised their base package from $50 or $55/month to $65 when they added all the MTV, VH1, and BET channels. None of which I want to watch. I would have rather they kept those channels and kept the price at $50/month.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> Agreed. I couldn't POSSIBLY care less about sports then I already don't . ST doesn't factor in my decision in the least. That being said, yes, lots of people sign up / signed up due to the exclusive ST.


If you don't care about sports, I'm curious why you subscribe to Directv. Other than people like my mom, who don't want to be bothered to learn new things at her age, I don't understand why anyone with decent internet who doesn't care about sports is still subscribing to traditional cable or satellite when cutting the cord and going streaming is a lot cheaper.

Is it the convenience of having everything in one place instead of having to hunt it down on different streaming services? Do you have crappy internet options where you live?


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> If you don't care about sports, I'm curious why you subscribe to Directv. Other than people like my mom, who don't want to be bothered to learn new things at her age, I don't understand why anyone with decent internet who doesn't care about sports is still subscribing to traditional cable or satellite when cutting the cord and going streaming is a lot cheaper.
> 
> Is it the convenience of having everything in one place instead of having to hunt it down on different streaming services? Do you have crappy internet options where you live?


No, I have 1Gbps service. I do have a 1.25TB data cap with Cox though and currently use ~400GB/mo with no streaming.

I don't mind learning new stuff, I'm a software engineer .

1. with my promos, I'm only paying $91/mo for Preferred Xtra + HR54 + AM21
2. none of the OTT services give me all my channels in a single package that's cheaper then what I'm paying now
3. dunno if I'd go over my data cap with streaming and to remove it is $50/mo lol, so wouldn't have any savings there
4. I do use my AM21 and love the seamless integration, but I'd probably give it up if everything else was perfect
5. I like getting the east coast feeds of nationals (I'm in California) because it shifts the shows I watch into prime time vs. the middle of the night. I did audition TVision before it went belly up, and they gave me west coast feeds. VERY jarring & annoying.
6. yup, everything under one roof and not double paying for channels is definitely a bonus
7. I don't like YTTVs user experience of not being able to delete shows. I have mentioned this before, but if I'm bored at home and looking for stuff to watch, I'll scan the guide and w/ Page Down and looking at 2-100 and 200 - 350 I can scan 2-4 hours in under a minute and pick out a few drive by episodes to rewatch. With YTTV that's going to trigger recording the whole series and I'll never find the one ep I wanted to rewatch. Just my own usage pattern since I do the "drive by recording" thing a lot.

DirecTV stream is close to traditional in terms of functionality, but DirecTV Stream Choice would be MORE then what I'm paying now lol since its $90 + taxes + RSNs and I'd lose channels & OTA integration and have to worry about data caps.


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> Streaming is cheaper when you have more then 2 or 3 TVs due to the outlet fees. At 1 or 2 + discounts, you'll be cheaper on DirecTV unless you do to a really skinny streaming package. Apples to apples comparison, DirecTV would be cheaper at the 1-2 TV range.
> 
> As for why they don't just give everybody the "discount" rate vs. having you call in?
> 
> ...


your spot on with the outlet fees.. the problem now is even if i wanted to go back I cant get enough equipment.. The max they would sell me is 8 clients.. I have 10 boxes right now lol with spares!


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

compnurd said:


> your spot on with the outlet fees.. the problem now is even if i wanted to go back I cant get enough equipment.. The max they would sell me is 8 clients.. I have 10 boxes right now lol with spares!


I've always said outlet fees on Sat is a straight up greedy money grab. Not like it taxes the infra like cable boxes or streaming does. I can't imagine that streaming will give you free "unlimited" streams forever.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

SledgeHammer said:


> I've always said outlet fees on Sat is a straight up greedy money grab.


The money grab is the sum that DIRECTV demands to obtain equipment that is leased.


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> I've always said outlet fees on Sat is a straight up greedy money grab. Not like it taxes the infra like cable boxes or streaming does. I can't imagine that streaming will give you free "unlimited" streams forever.


Considering they started with 3. Then 20 and now unlimited I think it’s a lock


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

compnurd said:


> Considering they started with 3. Then 20 and now unlimited I think it’s a lock


Could also be their "encouragement" to get people to switch to streaming and shutdown the Sat service and then start tacking on fees.

As a computer nerd , video streaming infra in AWS is very expensive.

I just can't see how a streaming service would turn profitable when they offer unlimited streams and have to have all the infra in place to handle that. Unless their metrics say people using more then a few concurrent streams is so low they just want to use this as marketing shpiel.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Modern CDNs are fairly scalable. If they need to bump capacity occasionally, it is surely cheaper than being 100% all the time. Obviously most home connections won't need to endure more than a few streams at once so claiming 20 separates them from Netflix that charges extra for small increments.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

harsh said:


> For many, the change probably won't be noticed until the 2023-4 season starts. Some think further ahead but others just keep paying the bill.


I'm sure there will be people holding weeks into the 2023 season sure that DIRECTV will add the service. Convinced that whomever gets the rights can't survive without DIRECTV residential distribution. Love is blind.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

James Long said:


> I'm sure there will be people holding weeks into the 2023 season sure that DIRECTV will add the service. Convinced that whomever gets the rights can't survive without DIRECTV residential distribution. Love is blind.


I used to work with a guy who was a football fanatic and signed up for DIRECTV for the ST. I asked him how he watches so many 3 - 4 hour games and still has time to work and live and play in a band. He said he didn't. He only watched a few of his favorite teams.

If I was a betting man (and I'm not), I'd wager it'll go to Disney. They have the most eyeballs.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

SledgeHammer said:


> If I was a betting man (and I'm not), I'd wager it'll go to Disney. They have the most eyeballs.


Amazon (205 million subscriptions internationally) brings many more (and arguably a more suitable group of) eyeballs than Disney (130 million subscriptions internationally) but it still comes down to how much of their war chest that they're willing to spend.

I'm not at all convinced that ESPN is high on Disney's list of priorities. Since the 4K non-event, they don't appear to have plowed a lot into their sports product (while all the Disney tentpoles are in 4K Dolby Vision). In terms of subscribers, ESPN+ has around twice as many subcribers (22 million) as DIRECTV and DIRECTV apparently wasn't able to make the math work at $1.5 billion.

The Sports media pundits seem convinced that the remaining battle is between Amazon and Apple so I'm not sure I'd bet on Disney but I suspect that none of the three is really interested in sharing in the exclusive. Disney in particular has been active not sharing their Disney content with other services. For their part, Apple built their brand on exclusivity and without EU pressure, probably wouldn't have considered going to USB C on their smaller devices.


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

The NFL doesn't care if no eyeballs are watching as long as someone will pay them $2.5 - $3 billion.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

b4pjoe said:


> The NFL doesn't care if no eyeballs are watching as long as someone will pay them $2.5 - $3 billion.


Good luck with that. DirecTV supposedly always lost money on it. And ST numbers have always been "shady" since DirecTV gives it to a lot of people for free / heavily discounted. NFL supposedly gets $300/sub on it per contract rights. If no eyeballs are on it, advertisers will pull out and then how are you going to charge $1M/sec or whatever outrageous fee they do for a commercial during the Super Bowl?

And Disney has 221.1M streaming subs which beats Netflix. Certainly a lot better then Apples 40M. And who knows how many Amazon has since they don't break out PV numbers. Most people think people just have AP for the fast/free shipping vs. PV which doesn't have too much free/included content that you'd want to write home about.


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

NFL ST has nothing to do with the Super Bowl. NFL ST ends after the regular season is over. Ad revenue for ST games is through FOX and CBS that produces the games.

And of course zero eyeballs was an exaggeration. The NFL just wants its money. That is why they want a flat rate instead of being paid an amount based on number of paid subscribers.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

SledgeHammer said:


> Most people think people just have AP for the fast/free shipping vs. PV which doesn't have too much free/included content that you'd want to right home about.


It is probably folly to assume that an Amazon Prime subscription will be required. You only need an Amazon account to subscribe to Amazon Music or any of the Prime Video "channels" or rentals.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

harsh said:


> Amazon (205 million subscriptions internationally) brings many more (and arguably a more suitable group of) eyeballs than Disney (130 million subscriptions internationally) but it still comes down to how much of their war chest that they're willing to spend.


NFL ST is a domestic offering.





SledgeHammer said:


> Good luck with that. DirecTV supposedly always lost money on it. And ST numbers have always been "shady" since DirecTV gives it to a lot of people for free / heavily discounted. NFL supposedly gets $300/sub on it per contract rights. If no eyeballs are on it, advertisers will pull out and then how are you going to charge $1M/sec or whatever outrageous fee they do for a commercial during the Super Bowl?


NFL ST isn't driven by ad revenue. And the NFL is not getting paid per subscriber. The currently get $1.5 billion per year regardless of if DIRECTV sells it to 2 subscribers or 2 million or 20 million.

The broadcast exclusives such as the Superbowl are sold to the networks as part of their contracts. The networks care about viewers of their affiliates ... Not ST.

<typo corrected>


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

James Long said:


> NFL ST is a domestic offering.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


From CNBC:

The winner of the rights won’t be able to significantly lower the price of Sunday Ticket from its current $300 because of contractual language with broadcasters CBS and Fox, sources say.

But yeah... they're actually trying to get $3B now.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

James Long said:


> NFL ST is a domestic offering.


NFLST has long been available in Canada. It isn't impossible that someone with a wider reach than the US couldn't offer NFLST to an international audience.


> NFL ST isn't driven by ad revenue. And the NFL is not getting paid per subscriber.


Though the outfit that offers the package absolutely is.


> The currently get $1.5 million per year regardless of if DIRECTV sells it to 2 subscribers or 2 million or 20 million.


You missed a full rank of 000 in your numbers. AT&T is likely paying a good chunk of the 1.5 billion for NFLST.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

James Long said:


> NFL ST isn't driven by ad revenue. And the NFL is not getting paid per subscriber. The currently get $1.5 million per year regardless of if DIRECTV sells it to 2 subscribers or 2 million or 20 million.



That's not quite true. The NFLST rights holder can insert commercials into the local ad slots (1 or 2 minutes an hour) where normally your local station would have ads from the big Ford dealer in the area or similar.

Presumably that's more valuable to an Amazon due to the amount of information they have on an Amazon Prime customer's buying habits, or an Apple because running ads for their own products based on the knowledge of what, if any, Apple products you currently own.

The NFL doesn't get any money from those ad slots, but they are a consideration for the buyer when determining how much they think NFLST rights are worth.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

slice1900 said:


> The NFL doesn't get any money from those ad slots...


Yet they do their own advertising in many of those slots.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> The NFL doesn't get any money from those ad slots, but they are a consideration for the buyer when determining how much they think NFLST rights are worth.


Well, at the end of the day 1.5B on DirecTV was not a profitable venture, so they bounced. They are supposedly trying to partner with the winner to at least keep DirecTV in the bar market.

The one football nut I know cancelled ST & DirecTV the second the intro rate fell off. He said it was cheaper to just go to a bar and let them worry about paying for it.

Are there any stats on how many people actually pay full price for it? They'd need 500k out of 14M subs paying $300/mo just to break even lol.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

SledgeHammer said:


> Are there any stats on how many people actually pay full price for it?


Any figures from when they reported numbers wouldn't apply in the current environment of relative giveaways. IIRC, even commercial accounts get a substantial discount on NFLST in year one.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

harsh said:


> Yet they do their own advertising in many of those slots.


No, the NFL advertisers in the national slots, not the local ones.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> No, the NFL advertisers in the national slots, not the local ones.


I don't suppose DirecTV is going to pass on this 1.5B in savings to us is it? 🤪


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

SledgeHammer said:


> I don't suppose DirecTV is going to pass on this 1.5B in savings to us is it? 🤪


You didn’t get your check?


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

DIRECTV will not be losing "tens of millions of dollars" on NFL ST when they cease carrying it but they will probably find another way of decreasing their profit. For example, by losing customers who only subscribe due to the availability of NFL ST.


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## Rob37 (Jul 11, 2013)

I hope whatever streaming service gets Sunday Ticket it backfires on them big. The NFL is seeking $3 Billion for the rights. (That is A LOT) whoever gets the rights can’t really lower the price or offer discounts because of the CBS & FOX contractual language. People want their football in real time (most streaming) as of now in most places is delayed unless you have super fast high speed (not available) in all areas yet. We will see if a deal with a streaming service actually happens. (Probably will) But will the product be as good as DIRECTV can deliver it. We will see. My opinion is no. Because with DIRECTV you have the options of getting every out of market game in crystal clear high definition something that DIRECTV can and has delivered for years. There is the 8 games on one screen. Again can a streaming service deliver? We will see. A lot of we’ll sees.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

b4pjoe said:


> You didn’t get your check?


If they divided it among us, we'd get $107 haha.


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## HolmesCo (Dec 4, 2006)

slice1900 said:


> If you don't care about sports, I'm curious why you subscribe to Directv. Other than people like my mom, who don't want to be bothered to learn new things at her age, I don't understand why anyone with decent internet who doesn't care about sports is still subscribing to traditional cable or satellite when cutting the cord and going streaming is a lot cheaper.
> 
> Is it the convenience of having everything in one place instead of having to hunt it down on different streaming services? Do you have crappy internet options where you live?


As one of those who is likely in your mom's age group or significantly older in fact, I can answer your question, for me anyway. 

And I am technical, been around computers since the 70s, hardware tech for IBM. Not afraid of anything technical. I tried FUBO a year ago and immediately realized I wanted nothing to do with it for one simple reason, no remote control for direct access to a channel. No remote with a number pad, previous station, etc etc.

I am definitely not going to poke around with an arrow key on the guide, didn't even have a page down feature. If I want to go to channel NNN I want to do it with the numpad. On Fubo, there was no way to do that. Major PITA.

I am writing this also hopeful that maybe there is something this old tech (who, yes doesn't learn as much and keep up as much as he used to lol) that maybe there is something I don't know. That I could get Youtube tv and have a functioning remote control. Is there an answer to this personal dilemma? Thanks


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## B. Shoe (Apr 3, 2008)

HolmesCo said:


> As one of those who is likely in your mom's age group or significantly older in fact, I can answer your question, for me anyway.
> 
> And I am technical, been around computers since the 70s, hardware tech for IBM. Not afraid of anything technical. I tried FUBO a year ago and immediately realized I wanted nothing to do with it for one simple reason, no remote control for direct access to a channel. No remote with a number pad, previous station, etc etc.
> 
> ...


Based on what some of the priorities listed in your post are, most of the streaming services may not be in your best interest right now. Directv Stream is currently the only streaming service that assigns channel numbers. I can create a custom order of channels on my YouTube TV account, which keeps some scrolling and button pushing to a minimum since we simply don't watch many of the channels provided. But no channel numbers with YTTV, Fubo, etc.

Page down/previous station functionality is dependent on the remote you're using. For example, my Apple TV remote doesn't provide that feature. My brother's Samsung remote allows page down features and others through the Samsung TV remote. There are some third party remotes out there that you can pair up with a streaming device and have it learn functionality to give you more of that traditional remote feel, also.


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## krel (Mar 20, 2013)

b4pjoe said:


> You didn’t get your check?


you got your check   🤣😂


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

krel said:


> you got your check   🤣😂


Technically, they've been giving me a monthly check for, what 10+ years? in the form of no RSN fee (Preferred Xtra). The RSN fee for LA is $11.99/mo, so 11.99 x 12 = 143.88/yr in savings which is better then what my "Sunday Ticket check" would be. I'll take the "Sunday Ticket check" regardless, but between my monthly RSN check and monthly loyalty check, I'm not complaining.


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## krel (Mar 20, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> Technically, they've been giving me a monthly check for, what 10+ years? in the form of no RSN fee (Preferred Xtra). The RSN fee for LA is $11.99/mo, so 11.99 x 12 = 143.88/yr in savings which is better then what my "Sunday Ticket check" would be. I'll take the "Sunday Ticket check" regardless, but between my monthly RSN check and monthly loyalty check, I'm not complaining.


i just got a $140.00 credit yesterday from the mgnr in the back room qoute on qoute for all of there screwups from system glitches discounts dissapearing LOL. i even told the rep that i'm afraid to call in if i need to because another disaster might happen


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## krel (Mar 20, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> I don't suppose DirecTV is going to pass on this 1.5B in savings to us is it? 🤪


nope not considering it was an add on LMAO


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## JosephB (Nov 14, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> I've always said outlet fees on Sat is a straight up greedy money grab. Not like it taxes the infra like cable boxes or streaming does. I can't imagine that streaming will give you free "unlimited" streams forever.


I'm pretty sure outlet fees are a requirement from the programmers. Technically most cable companies have outlet fees too, and have for decades. Before all the cable companies went all digital, it was impossible to enforce because you didn't need to tell the cable company you put in a splitter. But even in the 90s outlet fees were on the rate cards


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## Bender The Lab (7 mo ago)

JosephB said:


> *I'm pretty sure outlet fees are a requirement from the programmers.* Technically most cable companies have outlet fees too, and have for decades. Before all the cable companies went all digital, it was impossible to enforce because you didn't need to tell the cable company you put in a splitter. But even in the 90s outlet fees were on the rate cards


Doubtful because some providers do not charge outlet ( boxes) fees.

Both Charter/Spectrum and Comcast do not as long as you use a Roku type device, my Step-Father still has Comcast ( needs his RSN) but uses the Roku on all his Televisions, no box fee at all.

Both Hulu Live and YouTube gives you a certain number of streams ( outlets) before charging extra, Hulu Live is 2, YTTV is 3, both services charge a flat charge for unlimited, 3 is enough for my house.


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## JosephB (Nov 14, 2005)

Bender The Lab said:


> Doubtful because some providers do not charge outlet ( boxes) fees.
> 
> Both Charter/Spectrum and Comcast do not as long as you use a Roku type device, my Step-Father still has Comcast ( needs his RSN) but uses the Roku on all his Televisions, no box fee at all.
> 
> Both Hulu Live and YouTube gives you a certain number of streams ( outlets) before charging extra, Hulu Live is 2, YTTV is 3, both services charge a flat charge for unlimited, 3 is enough for my house.


Streaming rights and restrictions are different than the contracts for facilities based MVPDs. The rules applied to Comcast's actual cable and streaming are different

I think allowing those differences to continue is part of what's killing the traditional TV providers. There's no reason they should not be demanding from every content provider the same deal or better that YouTube is getting


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## Bender The Lab (7 mo ago)

JosephB said:


> Streaming rights and restrictions are different than the contracts for facilities based MVPDs. *The rules applied to Comcast's actual cable and streaming are different*
> 
> I think allowing those differences to continue is part of what's killing the traditional TV providers. There's no reason they should not be demanding from every content provider the same deal or better that YouTube is getting


Since you put that in your post, show me evidence that is true or are you just assuming?

I doubt that is true since Comcast and Charter only stream in their areas while You Tube and Hulu are nation wide, so if these rules exists, they would be different.

No content provider is forcing any Traditional Service to charge for boxes, the only monies they receive is per sub, not per box or number in households.


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## JosephB (Nov 14, 2005)

Bender The Lab said:


> No content provider is forcing any Traditional Service to charge for boxes, the only monies they receive is per sub, not per box or number in households.


Do you have a source or are you just assuming? Because my source on the fact that those charges are in programming contracts is from public statements MVPDs have made in SEC filings and earnings calls over the past 20 years


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Bender The Lab said:


> Since you put that in your post, show me evidence that is true or are you just assuming?
> 
> I doubt that is true since Comcast and Charter only stream in their areas while You Tube and Hulu are nation wide, so if these rules exists, they would be different.
> 
> No content provider is forcing any Traditional Service to charge for boxes, the only monies they receive is per sub, not per box or number in households.


Media rights are waaaaay more in depth & granular then you're giving them credit for. You can restrict down to content providers, device types, resolutions, time windows, DAs (distribution areas -- groups of zips) and more. Read up on "Avails". Its the industry standard for distributing tv & movies: Avails—MovieLabs

That being said, is there any content that says you can only watch the 4K version on a Roku in Beverly Hills between 1/1/22 and 1/7/22 and everybody else can only watch the HD version? 

Well, there "probably" is some content out there with weird rights like that. But probably not a lot.

In general, yes, Comcast, Charter, Youtube, etc. will all have different avail rights for different DAs, etc. that MAY be specified at the media level. There's a hierarchy and it can be specified at the top level content provider contract, but then be overridden down to the series and episode levels.


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

JosephB said:


> Do you have a source or are you just assuming? Because my source on the fact that those charges are in programming contracts is from public statements MVPDs have made in SEC filings and earnings calls over the past 20 years


Show us some


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

compnurd said:


> Show us some


Might be hard since cable companies pay per subscriber, not outlet.


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> Might be hard since cable companies pay per subscriber, not outlet.


Shhh don’t tell him that


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## leww37334 (Sep 19, 2005)

Directv priced themselves out of the market


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## wmb (Dec 18, 2008)

leww37334 said:


> Directv priced themselves out of the market


I’m not sure it’s ‘pricing themselves out’ as opposed to having capital expenses they need a return on. To some extent, the same is true for cable companies and telecos, except cable and teleco infrastructure can be used to provide both tv and internet connectivity, giving them a second potential revenue stream.

Streaming allows the streamers to disentangle the infrastructure costs from the content costs. In this regard, DirecTV is at a unique disadvantage due to their single use distribution system.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

leww37334 said:


> Directv priced themselves out of the market


Strange. My DirecTV bill is less then it would be on DirecTV streaming or Cable or the various streaming services  . Gotta love the Preferred Xtra package with no RSN fee + loyalty program.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> Strange. My DirecTV bill is less then it would be on DirecTV streaming or Cable or the various streaming services  . Gotta love the Preferred Xtra package with no RSN fee + loyalty program.


What is strange? You are comparing your bill with a single TV, a limited package, and discounts not everyone will get.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

wmb said:


> I’m not sure it’s ‘pricing themselves out’ as opposed to having capital expenses they need a return on.


What CapEx does DIRECTV have?

It isn't as if they're building new satellites, designing and building new residential hardware or installing new terrestrial infrastructure. I'd imagine that almost all of DIRECTV's expenses (other than debt) are operational (OpEx).

Clearly, DIRECTV needs to plow their efforts into controlling operational expenses and I'd imagine that's going to have to involve reductions in content. Clearly, their bargaining power isn't improving as customers downgrade or walk away.


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## Buffalo Sue (Jul 14, 2002)

SledgeHammer said:


> Well, at the end of the day 1.5B on DirecTV was not a profitable venture, so they bounced. They are supposedly trying to partner with the winner to at least keep DirecTV in the bar market.
> 
> The one football nut I know cancelled ST & DirecTV the second the intro rate fell off. He said it was cheaper to just go to a bar and let them worry about paying for it.
> 
> Are there any stats on how many people actually pay full price for it? They'd need 500k out of 14M subs paying $300/mo just to break even lol.


I have been paying full price for ST every year since 1998. Maybe I could have called them and tried to get it cheaper but I never bothered. I buy it to see my Bills and if they had a single team package, I would have gone with that. 

Up until the past couple of years, the Bills really sucked and were almost never a national game. So assuming that 15 of my games were only available on ST, the cost would be $20/game. Going to a bar and getting food + beers + tip costs $30 or more. So to me, it's worth it.

That said, I will drop DirecTV after 25 years since ST is really the only thing keeping me as a subscriber.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

leww37334 said:


> Directv priced themselves out of the market


Would $10 less per month put them back in the market?

As last reported (restated revenue and operating contribution for the Video division) AT&T|DIRECTV was not clearing $10 per month per subscriber in profit. The last two reported quarters were better. Cutting everyone's bill by $10 per month would have made AT&T|DIRECTV run at a loss for 2019 and 2020.

DIRECTV is not overpriced for what one gets. If you want less you can pay less. The vMVPDs that compete on the same content level as DIRECTV are either just as expensive or are losing money while they build their subscriber base. The ones losing money are going to need to raise rates or cut content to survive.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

James Long said:


> Would $10 less per month put them back in the market?
> 
> As last reported (restated revenue and operating contribution for the Video division) AT&T|DIRECTV was not clearing $10 per month per subscriber in profit. The last two reported quarters were better. Cutting everyone's bill by $10 per month would have made AT&T|DIRECTV run at a loss for 2019 and 2020.
> 
> DIRECTV is not overpriced for what one gets. If you want less you can pay less. The vMVPDs that compete on the same content level as DIRECTV are either just as expensive or are losing money while they build their subscriber base. The ones losing money are going to need to raise rates or cut content to survive.


We've seen several go belly up already and those that are still around have raised their prices WAY more on an annual basis then DirecTV ever did.

We all knew (well most of us at least) that the ultra low streaming prices weren't going to last and they were just set that low to get people to switch.

They're all going to monetize streams at some point whether that's "hidden" in a flat price (so you get 1 TV households paying the same as 6 TV households) or they break it out into stream fees.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

SledgeHammer said:


> They're all going to monetize streams at some point whether that's "hidden" in a flat price (so you get 1 TV households paying the same as 6 TV households) or they break it out into stream fees.


That's going to be a tough model to implement.

At the very least, we probably won't see streaming companies claiming more than two or three streams in their base product. One, because it isn't necessary and two, because anything more encourages account sharing.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> They're all going to monetize streams at some point whether that's "hidden" in a flat price (so you get 1 TV households paying the same as 6 TV households) or they break it out into stream fees.


The thing is households with six TVs don't watch all six TVs at once. People are paying for having the capability to watch on six TVs. With streaming that same household might be able to get by with two or at most three streams at once.

Unless you have a big extended family in one house, pretty much any house would be fine with three streams. Even a modern Brady Bunch - because kids don't watch linear TV today. If/when they do, it would be on the "main TV" with others in the family but none of them have any desire to watch that in their room. They are on Youtube or Tik Tok.

So there isn't going to be much of a way to monetize more streams, because the market for more than three streams is likely quite limited.


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> The thing is households with six TVs don't watch all six TVs at once. People are paying for having the capability to watch on six TVs. With streaming that same household might be able to get by with two or at most three streams at once.
> 
> Unless you have a big extended family in one house, pretty much any house would be fine with three streams. Even a modern Brady Bunch - because kids don't watch linear TV today. If/when they do, it would be on the "main TV" with others in the family but none of them have any desire to watch that in their room. They are on Youtube or Tik Tok.
> 
> So there isn't going to be much of a way to monetize more streams, because the market for more than three streams is likely quite limited.


Pretty much yes but no. I have 3 TV’s going in my bar at any given time. Couple that with the wife and kids we can knock down 6 streams several times a week pretty easy


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> kids don't watch linear TV today. If/when they do, it would be on the "main TV" with others in the family but none of them have any desire to watch that in their room. They are on Youtube or Tik Tok.


I don't have kids, but I'd imagine a teenager would pretty much want to do ANYTHING but sit in the living room with their parents and watch TV, even if its the same show. I do have a 13 yr old niece though and she's kind of in that I'm too cool for parents phase.

And as I mentioned, if they don't monetize the stream by breaking it out as a line item, they'll just raise the price 25% in one year for everyone like they've been doing.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

SledgeHammer said:


> They're all going to monetize streams at some point whether that's "hidden" in a flat price (so you get 1 TV households paying the same as 6 TV households) or they break it out into stream fees.





harsh said:


> That's going to be a tough model to implement.


Netflix has one, two and four stream tiers. They are also SD, HD and 4K tiers so maybe you didn't notice the stream count limits.

As the number of streams per account increase the streamers will need to increase their prices. After all, every additional stream costs the streamer money for infrastructure. Perhaps they will come up with a discounted "one stream" account for individuals who don't need three streams or six streams or whatever becomes the standard limit. Account sharing can be combated by limiting additional streams (like the 20 max for DIRECTV Stream) to one IP.


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

James Long said:


> Account sharing can be combated by limiting additional streams (like the 20 max for DIRECTV Stream) to one IP.


They should base the location using GPS location instead of IP location. My IP changes often. Usually it shows the IP location as St. Louis, MO. Sometimes it shows my IP as Brooklyn, NY. I am in neither location. My GPS location always shows my exact location. Small town in south central Illinois.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

James Long said:


> Netflix has one, two and four stream tiers. They are also SD, HD and 4K tiers so maybe you didn't notice the stream count limits.
> 
> As the number of streams per account increase the streamers will need to increase their prices. After all, every additional stream costs the streamer money for infrastructure. Perhaps they will come up with a discounted "one stream" account for individuals who don't need three streams or six streams or whatever becomes the standard limit. Account sharing can be combated by limiting additional streams (like the 20 max for DIRECTV Stream) to one IP.


As we see with DirecTV, additional outlets doesn't cost them anything. So that's just for the $$$.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

b4pjoe said:


> They should base the location using GPS location instead of IP location. My IP changes often. Usually it shows the IP location as St. Louis, MO. Sometimes it shows my IP as Brooklyn, NY. I am in neither location. My GPS location always shows my exact location. Small town in south central Illinois.


Yeah, they couldn't use IP since every TV in your house will have a different IP. Geo location wouldn't work either since you could share with your neighbor or somebody "close enough". On the WHDVR, they restrict it to your local network, but you could just VPN in if you are somewhere else.

I really don't see the point to DirecTVs 20 stream limit unless they are just trying everything to get people to switch, except the obvious of lowering the price lol.


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> Yeah, they couldn't use IP since every TV in your house will have a different IP. Geo location wouldn't work either since you could share with your neighbor or somebody "close enough". On the WHDVR, they restrict it to your local network, but you could just VPN in if you are somewhere else.
> 
> I really don't see the point to DirecTVs 20 stream limit unless they are just trying everything to get people to switch, except the obvious of lowering the price lol.


It goes off your main IP from your ISP. Your internal device IPs are irrelevant


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

compnurd said:


> It goes off your main IP from your ISP. Your internal device IPs are irrelevant


What if you're on mobile/tablet and not on the wifi network?


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

SledgeHammer said:


> What if you're on mobile/tablet and not on the wifi network?


The 20 stream limit is for your home network define by your public IP address. When using a mobile device outside of your network you are limited to 3 streams.


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

SledgeHammer said:


> Yeah, they couldn't use IP since every TV in your house will have a different IP. Geo location wouldn't work either since you could share with your neighbor or somebody "close enough". On the WHDVR, they restrict it to your local network, but you could just VPN in if you are somewhere else.
> 
> I really don't see the point to DirecTVs 20 stream limit unless they are just trying everything to get people to switch, except the obvious of lowering the price lol.


Like I said my IP changes all of the time from T-Mobile because their gateway uses CGNAT because they don't have enough IPv4 addresses for everyone to have their own IP address. I have read the IP address is for the tower you connect to so many other users will have your exact IP address. Even though the tower is in my local area if I look up that IP address some sites report it is in St. Louis, MO while others say it is in Brooklyn, NY. That would be a problem for any service that ties you to a specific IP address. For example DirecTV Stream limits you from changing your home IP address to 4 times a year. I have had the t-mobile service now for two months and I have already had more than 4 different IP addresses so DirecTV Stream would claim I am out of my home area and would limit me to 3 streams total. Also I understand with the T-Mobile internet service that Hulu Live TV won't work at all. People don't seem to have a problem with Youtube TV because I believe it uses your billing zip code for your home area.

Also my location services show me at my specific house address. Not just the local neighborhood or town so using that you couldn't share it with your neighbors.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

b4pjoe said:


> They should base the location using GPS location instead of IP location. My IP changes often. Usually it shows the IP location as St. Louis, MO. Sometimes it shows my IP as Brooklyn, NY. I am in neither location. My GPS location always shows my exact location. Small town in south central Illinois.


Alas, other than phones, and some tablets, most devices used for streaming don't have GPS capability to that's a non-starter.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

b4pjoe said:


> They should base the location using GPS location instead of IP location. My IP changes often.


On mobile devices that have GPS some streamers do use the GPS information ... especially for geoblocking content. It helps on wireless service based internet where an IP isn't as accurate as land based providers. It sounds like T-Mobile needs more IPs for their service.

The big issue is not all clients have GPS. Everyone connected to the Internet is assigned a public IP number ... usually shared with everyone connected through the same router in a household. Even if your ISP shares IPs with several customers there is an IP assigned. Can't say the same thing about GPS. The streamers can only use the information provided by their apps. They always have an IP ... they don't always have GPS information.


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

James Long said:


> On mobile devices that have GPS some streamers do use the GPS information ... especially for geoblocking content. It helps on wireless service based internet where an IP isn't as accurate as land based providers. It sounds like T-Mobile needs more IPs for their service.
> 
> The big issue is not all clients have GPS. Everyone connected to the Internet is assigned a public IP number ... usually shared with everyone connected through the same router in a household. Even if your ISP shares IPs with several customers there is an IP assigned. Can't say the same thing about GPS. The streamers can only use the information provided by their apps. They always have an IP ... they don't always have GPS information.


Unfortunately the world is running out IPv4 addresses. Not sure if it is just T-Mobile being cheap or what. I am actually surprised the government lets them get by with this as it is now impossible for anyone to trace an IP address to a specific user account since there are many users that all have the same IP address. I understand Verizon Home Internet doesn't use CGNAT so they don't have these issues. Verizon Home Internet isn't available here so that is not an option. With CGNAT it basically turns your router into bridge mode as most functions on the router no longer work such as port forwarding. For example I used to be able to access my PLEX server from away from home but that is not possible anymore because while I do have an actual IP address it is not assigned to my router. The T-Mobile gateway gives the router an internal IP from the gateway 192.168.12.x.

To solve these kinds of issues every device needs to either have built in GPS or use IPv6. It will eventually happen but it will take a long time I am sure.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

James Long said:


> They always have an IP ... they don't always have GPS information.


You can get a general geolocation from an IP address. Assuming they got registered in the location the ISP uses them. If I look up mine, I'm reported as being about 20 miles south of where I really am. And both location and source IP can be easily spoofed with a VPN if you want.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

b4pjoe said:


> To solve these kinds of issues every device needs to either have built in GPS or use IPv6. It will eventually happen but it will take a long time I am sure.


IPv6 has been around over a decade and its still not in wide spread use and everything just falls back to IPv4. It's kind of like how they can't switch us to metric either.


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

SledgeHammer said:


> You can get a general geolocation from an IP address. Assuming they got registered in the location the ISP uses them. If I look up mine, I'm reported as being about 20 miles south of where I really am. And both location and source IP can be easily spoofed with a VPN if you want.


With T-Mobile 5G Home Internet some sites show my IP as St. Louis, MO. (80 miles away) Others show it as Brooklyn, NY.


SledgeHammer said:


> IPv6 has been around over a decade and its still not in wide spread use and everything just falls back to IPv4. It's kind of like how they can't switch us to metric either.


Well we will never run out of inches but we will eventually run out of IPv4 addresses.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

b4pjoe said:


> Well we will never run out of inches but we will eventually run out of IPv4 addresses.


They better getting moving then. Global adoption is only at 34% (46% US) as of March 2022.


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

Actually surprised it is that high in the US.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

SledgeHammer said:


> You can get a general geolocation from an IP address. Assuming they got registered in the location the ISP uses them. If I look up mine, I'm reported as being about 20 miles south of where I really am.


Over the years changes in my IP have confused the separate geolocation services. A couple of times my ISP has outgrown their allotment and added new blocks. Until the geolocation services update their databases the locations can be off by hundreds of miles. Most ISPs will keep their blocks in the same general area for route aggregation. I have changed my ISP a few times over the years ... the current one serves an IP that the geolocation services have registered to the corporate headquarters for the ISP 60 miles from my home. That may get corrected over time.

I have not had a problem with geoblocking but I generally don't watch streamed content that isn't available nationwide. The only geoblocking I have noticed is when I was trying to watch content not available in the US from a particular website. 



SledgeHammer said:


> And both location and source IP can be easily spoofed with a VPN if you want.


One can use a VPN to try to get an IP in a specific city but the only way to spoof the location is to choose a VPN that allows you to choose an IP in the city where you want to be. If your VPN company doesn't have IPs in the area where you want to appear to be you need to find another VPN company. The end user cannot force the geolocation companies to use the address of the end user's choice.

I believe VPNs will be the next battleground for streamers. They know people are using them and with web browsers with built in VPN designed for defeating geoblocks and routers with similar features the streamers should be fighting back by detecting and blocking access from VPN services. I have had some access blocked when using a VPN by savvy Internet sites that had "VPN" in their database for the IP I was using.

I use a VPN when traveling to provide an encrypted connection from my device to the VPN server before going out to the Internet. I don't trust hotel and public WiFi to protect me from packet sniffing from my fellow users.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

SledgeHammer said:


> They better getting moving then. Global adoption is only at 34% (46% US) as of March 2022.





b4pjoe said:


> Actually surprised it is that high in the US.


Off topic for this thread, but I'd like to see the methodology. My current ISP does not support IPv6. I have IPv6 enabled on my router. My last ISP did support IPv6 but I don't believe it was ever used by my equipment (which also has IPv6 enabled). Sure, I have adopted IPv6 and so have many of the companies I deal with - but even when I had an IPv6 compatible ISP at home I can't say I ever had and IPv6 connection to endpoints on the Internet.

At work we have a public /24 block but it is landlocked to our ISP so we can't take it with us. (The ISP has a /20 that they divide among the companies they serve.) That is a problem that I would like to see resolved. If /24 blocks were fully portable the IPv4 world would be better off. We now have a redundant ISP connection but cannot use it for our public IPs. The solution is to get yet another IPv4 /24 block and advertise both routes.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

James Long said:


> Off topic for this thread, but I'd like to see the methodology. My current ISP does not support IPv6. I have IPv6 enabled on my router. My last ISP did support IPv6 but I don't believe it was ever used by my equipment (which also has IPv6 enabled). Sure, I have adopted IPv6 and so have many of the companies I deal with - but even when I had an IPv6 compatible ISP at home I can't say I ever had and IPv6 connection to endpoints on the Internet.
> 
> At work we have a public /24 block but it is landlocked to our ISP so we can't take it with us. (The ISP has a /20 that they divide among the companies they serve.) That is a problem that I would like to see resolved. If /24 blocks were fully portable the IPv4 world would be better off. We now have a redundant ISP connection but cannot use it for our public IPs. The solution is to get yet another IPv4 /24 block and advertise both routes.


Just for fun, I enabled IPv6 on my router and it looks like Cox supports it. I am able to ping a few large sites like Google and get an IPv6 address back. Dbstalk is only IPv4 . Meh, no advantage to it right now, so back to disabled (just to prevent any issues). Unless you are trying to hit an IPv6 only site (which is probably at least a decade away if not more).


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

b4pjoe said:


> Like I said my IP changes all of the time from T-Mobile because their gateway uses CGNAT because they don't have enough IPv4 addresses for everyone to have their own IP address.


That doesn't matter, if you use cellular for your broadband provider all the devices in your house will appear to come from the same one. Same as with other technologies where you may have longer lived or permanent IP addresses.

The "what if people in the house are using cellular" isn't something streamers wanting to check will care about. If they ding those, you'll connect those phones/tablets to your home's wifi network so they are all coming from the same IP.


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

slice1900 said:


> That doesn't matter, if you use cellular for your broadband provider all the devices in your house will appear to come from the same one. Same as with other technologies where you may have longer lived or permanent IP addresses.
> 
> The "what if people in the house are using cellular" isn't something streamers wanting to check will care about. If they ding those, you'll connect those phones/tablets to your home's wifi network so they are all coming from the same IP.


Each individual user account on T-Mobile does not get an IP address that is only used by that account. That IP address is used by many other T-Mobile user accounts. So yes all of my devices will show the same IP address which will be the same IP address for many other T-Mobile users that connect to the same tower. Public IP's for each individual user account is not possible wtih T-Mobile Home Internet. And the IP address it uses is not local to my location. I live in Illinois and can't buy lottery tickets online from the Illinois Lottery because my IP address is not in Illinois. And that IP address changes often.



> *What is Carrier Grade NAT ( CGNAT )*
> 
> CGNAT is a technology designed to allow for the use of fewer public IP addresses. With CGNAT your real public IP address is shared with others and you can’t properly set up port forwarding. CGNAT is very commonly used by cellular and satellite internet providers. For web browsing, Netflix streaming, and most other online activities CGNAT makes no difference. Gaming is one of a few activities that are negatively impacted by CGNAT. A great way to test whether this is going to be an issue for you is to test using a mobile hotspot. A 5G home internet connection is really nothing more than a mobile hotspot that is designed to be left on at all times and not intended to be moved from location to location.


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## Ms. J (Aug 13, 2018)

SledgeHammer said:


> I don't have kids, but I'd imagine a teenager would pretty much want to do ANYTHING but sit in the living room with their parents and watch TV, even if its the same show. I do have a 13 yr old niece though and she's kind of in that I'm too cool for parents phase.
> 
> And as I mentioned, if they don't monetize the stream by breaking it out as a line item, they'll just raise the price 25% in one year for everyone like they've been doing.


My 13yo watches no tv at all only TikTok & YouTube & some streaming cartoon app. My 16yo streams Disney+ if watches TV at all. He will watch game shows with me that come on after 8.


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## Bender The Lab (7 mo ago)

Ms. J said:


> My 13yo watches no tv at all only TikTok & YouTube & some streaming cartoon app. My 16yo streams Disney+ if watches TV at all. He will watch game shows with me that come on after 8.


My kids watch TV, just do not have a Live TV service.

They are 32 and 27 and both have their own place, can easily afford a Live TV service just do not find a need or a want to have one.

Son has Hulu Bundle ( with Disney/ESPN) Commercial Free, Paramount+( Commercial Free) and Netflix (4K), so pays under $50 a month, also watches Pluto TV, also CBS News and ABC News on it’s app, those are free of course.

Daughter-Hulu Commercial free and Netflix, probably a lot of You Tube.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

b4pjoe said:


> Each individual user account on T-Mobile does not get an IP address that is only used by that account. That IP address is used by many other T-Mobile user accounts. So yes all of my devices will show the same IP address which will be the same IP address for many other T-Mobile users that connect to the same tower. Public IP's for each individual user account is not possible wtih T-Mobile Home Internet. And the IP address it uses is not local to my location. I live in Illinois and can't buy lottery tickets online from the Illinois Lottery because my IP address is not in Illinois. And that IP address changes often.


That's not a problem for streamers that want to make sure you are using the same IP for all your devices. The fact other people might also be on the same IP is irrelevant, they would be streaming from different accounts.


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

slice1900 said:


> That's not a problem for streamers that want to make sure you are using the same IP for all your devices. The fact other people might also be on the same IP is irrelevant, they would be streaming from different accounts.


It is a problem for people with Hulu Live TV and DIRECTV Stream. Both want you to always have the same IP address and with T-Mobil internet service the ip changes all of the time.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

b4pjoe said:


> It is a problem for people with Hulu Live TV and DIRECTV Stream. Both want you to always have the same IP address and with T-Mobil internet service the ip changes all of the time.


If the services can't figure that out, they're the ones that are going to suffer and it is likely to be brutal.

You, as a user, have other options. If you can't bring yourself to part ways with either of the services, you probably have other broadband options that will allow you to satisfy their unsustainable requirements. A fixed-IP VPN service is probably the easiest option if your router sports a VPN client. If DIRECTV is going to be stupid about this, you do what you have to do.

For my part, my Xfinity IP address hasn't changed in a number of years and has survived several modem resets (usually due to a long-term power outage).

Verizon and Tmobile require a business account to get a static IP address so that's an option as well.


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

I don't use either service but if I ever wanted to I would either have to change ISP or look elsewhere. The T-Mobile business account is not unlimited data. With my current services I am not having any issues other than not being able to use port forwarding. Can't access my plex server from outside of the network but I really don't use it much anymore so it isn't an issue. If I ever do need to use port forwarding I would have to make a change.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

*Update your DIRECTV STREAM home network*
Make sure you only do this if you’ve changed your internet service provider or moved. You can only do it 4 times in a 12-month period.









Get Info on Your DIRECTV STREAM Home Network | DIRECTV STREAM Customer Service & Support


When you first set up DIRECTV STREAM in your home, you set the home network for connecting devices and watching your favorite content.



www.directv.com


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

Yes. You can change it 4 times a year. My ip changes more than 4 times a month. Good thing I don’t use DIRECTV Stream.


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## krel (Mar 20, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> Might be hard since cable companies pay per subscriber, not outlet.


SHHH don't give broadcasters any ideas


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## dtv757 (Jun 4, 2006)

All "TV" providers had a loss this quarter 

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


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## Bender The Lab (7 mo ago)

dtv757 said:


> All "TV" providers had a loss this quarter
> 
> Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


You Tube TV did not, now up to 5 million but Hulu Live did and those subs probably went to YTTV.


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## dtv757 (Jun 4, 2006)

Forgot to post link ...





__





Major Pay-TV Providers Lost About 1,925,000 Subscribers in 2Q 2022 - Leichtman Research Group


Durham, NH — August 12, 2022 — Leichtman Research Group, Inc. (LRG) found that the largest pay-TV providers in the U.S. – representing about 92% of the market – lost about 1,925,000 net video subscribers in 2Q 2022, compared to a pro forma net loss of 1,235,000 in 2Q 2021. The top pay-TV...




www.leichtmanresearch.com






Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

There really cherry picking there operators there to show that loss


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## dtv757 (Jun 4, 2006)

That company post results every quarter ... 





__





Research Notes Archives - Leichtman Research Group







www.leichtmanresearch.com





Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


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## dtv757 (Jun 4, 2006)

compnurd said:


> There really cherry picking there operators there to show that loss


I am very shocked by your comment , as much as you know about the Telecom industry you should definitely know about LRG quarterly report. 

and for reference here is a report from 2006 , just to show they have been doing quarterly reports for 20 years 





__





Wayback Machine






web.archive.org


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

compnurd said:


> There really cherry picking there operators there to show that loss


How so? The companies they listed are the ones of significance in each category.

My beef is that I have little confidence in LRG's estimates.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

dtv757 said:


> That company post results every quarter ...


If only they published reports based entirely on real numbers. You did notice that among the conventional providers, fully half of the numbers were in-house estimates.


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

dtv757 said:


> I am very shocked by your comment , as much as you know about the Telecom industry you should definitely know about LRG quarterly report.
> 
> and for reference here is a report from 2006 , just to show they have been doing quarterly reports for 20 years
> 
> ...


There missing providers. Where is YTTV? My cable company is missing and there larger then the 3 bottoms ones they have


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

compnurd said:


> There missing providers. Where is YTTV? My cable company is missing and there larger then the 3 bottoms ones they have


And Spectrum / Adelphia / Time Warner? and Pluto? and Philio? Can't really take the report seriously if they leave off YTTV though.

If you go by that report, streaming is a niche product that "nobody" uses anyways. Traditional is 65M vs. 7M streaming.

Not really surprising anyways since there's not usually a whole lot on TV during the summer and TV hasn't produced a hit in YEARS. The Big Bang Theory was the last one and that ended THREE years ago if you can believe that.


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## dtv757 (Jun 4, 2006)

compnurd said:


> There missing providers. Where is YTTV? My cable company is missing and there larger then the 3 bottoms ones they have


Did u not read the report 

It clearly says YTTV doesn't report evey quarter ... 

^^ List does not include YouTube TV or Philo, as neither regularly report results

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


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## dtv757 (Jun 4, 2006)

SledgeHammer said:


> And Spectrum / Adelphia / Time Warner? ....


Spectrum = charter
TWC = charter as of 2016
Adelphia = charter in 2009

Those 3 are under charter..

really... your reaching with Adelphia ... it went defunct in 2006...
TWC died in 2016
what's next.. where's Road Runner ? 

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


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## dtv757 (Jun 4, 2006)

LRG had measured broadband and TV providers for the past 20 years and a lot of major news websites uses their results. I am truly shocked you guys are showing them this much disrespect.


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

dtv757 said:


> Did u not read the report
> 
> It clearly says YTTV doesn't report evey quarter ...
> 
> ...


They did last quarter so where is it?


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

dtv757 said:


> LRG had measured broadband and TV providers for the past 20 years and a lot of major news websites uses their results. I am truly shocked you guys are showing them this much disrespect.


That doesn’t mean there information is good. Moffett has been doing the same forever and no one takes him seriously


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## Bender The Lab (7 mo ago)

compnurd said:


> That doesn’t mean there information is good. Moffett has been doing the same forever and no one takes him seriously


The numbers are accurate, I have been following the numbers here-



https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/amc-warner-bros-discovery-tracking-video-earnings-q2-2022



The only numbers that might not be accurate are the estimated DirecTV numbers, from the insider reports I still get ( one of my old jobs before I retired was doing future reports for Media and entertainment industry trends as a freelancer that were presented to the boards of those companies, all of my reports were focused on TV Providers), the numbers are seriously underestimated.

Even if the numbers are correct ( they are not), the Sat side of DirecTV has about 10 million subs left, if they are losing 400,000 a quarter, that is 1.6 million a year, so year two-3.2 million gone, year 3 4.8 million gone, year 4 6.4 million and year 5-8 million gone.

By Year 4, they are maybe breaking even, year 5 they are no longer profitable ( if not sooner).

This is why TPG started merger talks with Dish back in January ( which went nowhere), they want to make their investment back and no one else wants a slowly dying TV Provider, specially in today’s business environment.

By the way, DirecTV Stream is not growing ( around 1.5 million) and Uverse subs (2-3 million left) are not leaving, one of the reasons is multi-dwellings ( Apartments), AT&T signed a bunch of agreements where Uverse were the only option for Complexes and still are.


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## Bender The Lab (7 mo ago)

compnurd said:


> They did last quarter so where is it?


Here is the YTTV info-



https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/youtube-tv-surpasses-5-million-users


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

Bender The Lab said:


> The numbers are accurate, I have been following the numbers here-
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Never said they weren’t accurate. May want to re read


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## Bender The Lab (7 mo ago)

compnurd said:


> Never said they weren’t accurate. May want to re read


You wrote-


compnurd said:


> *That doesn’t mean there information is good.* Moffett has been doing the same forever and no one takes him seriously


Which to some ( most) would mean you are calling the information inaccurate or at the least, somewhat incorrect.

As far as Moffett goes, it is easy to be incorrect because everything changes so quickly.

My last report I did before I retired ( 3 years ago) was on Traditional Providers vs Streaming Services, I wrote that we were about 10-12 years before all programming on Traditional Services would be on Streaming Services, looks like I was about 7 years off from that happening.

The majority of programming on Traditional Channels is now on Streaming Services, the only hold out was sports but that is quickly changing.

One example, ESPN has lost about 25 million households in per sub fees, they have to recoup that because Sport Rights are not getting any cheaper, if the number of losses do not go up ( it will) that is still 8 million a year leaving Cable/Sat. TV.

That is a lot of per sub fees gone.

My guess is ESPN+ will become ESPN once they get all the contracts worked out with Traditional Providers, what the monthly costs would be, I have no idea, it will be more, $15 seems to be the sweet spot lately.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Bender The Lab said:


> By the way, DirecTV Stream is not growing ( around 1.5 million)


Why would it? Its effectively the same price as the Sat side with a bunch of gotchas, less channels, no OTA, affects your data cap, etc.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Bender The Lab said:


> Even if the numbers are correct ( they are not), the Sat side of DirecTV has about 10 million subs left, if they are losing 400,000 a quarter, that is 1.6 million a year, so year two-3.2 million gone, year 3 4.8 million gone, year 4 6.4 million and year 5-8 million gone.


I'm not sure what the fascination is with holding the net adds constant regardless of how many subscribers remain. I expect that the adds will drop quickly as the prices continue to climb and cancellations will taper off as there are fewer left to defect.

There's the matter of practicality to look at here too. DIRECTV is losing ground and the investors will only sustain that for so long. Every year the debt gets harder to pay back.

It isn't just about people who can't part with their DIRECTV service or the projected life expectancy of their fleet.


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## Bender The Lab (7 mo ago)

harsh said:


> I'm not sure what the fascination is with holding the net adds constant regardless of how many subscribers remain. I expect that the adds will drop quickly as the prices continue to climb and *cancellations will taper off *as there are fewer left to defect.


I expect the cancellations will not taper off because of those price increases, they will increase, especially when people come to understand you can get the majority of programming that is on their Live TV Service plus all the exclusive programming that only on the streaming services for a much less expensive price.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Bender The Lab said:


> I expect the cancellations will not taper off because of those price increases, they will increase, especially when people come to understand you can get the majority of programming that is on their Live TV Service plus all the exclusive programming that only on the streaming services for a much less expensive price.


You underestimate inertia.

Some will continue to pay through the nose because they're afraid of learning something new or losing some channel that they never watch.


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

Bender The Lab said:


> You wrote-
> 
> 
> Which to some ( most) would mean you are calling the information inaccurate or at the least, somewhat incorrect.
> ...


As I stated above the report is cherry picking the losses. They are missing several larger cable co’s in there and a streamer


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

compnurd said:


> As I stated above the report is cherry picking the losses. They are missing several larger cable co’s in there and a streamer


Do you believe that the companies that they didn't list would skew the numbers significantly?


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Bender The Lab said:


> One example, ESPN has lost about 25 million households in per sub fees, they have to recoup that because Sport Rights are not getting any cheaper, if the number of losses do not go up ( it will) that is still 8 million a year leaving Cable/Sat. TV.
> 
> That is a lot of per sub fees gone.
> 
> My guess is ESPN+ will become ESPN once they get all the contracts worked out with Traditional Providers, what the monthly costs would be, I have no idea, it will be more, $15 seems to be the sweet spot lately.



It will be far, far higher than $15. Someone already did this research, and to replace current revenue if ESPN & ESPN2 content went streaming only so only sports fans were paying for it they'd have to charge over $40/month as of 2020. Future increases in sports rights pricing will only drive that figure higher.

Does anyone believe that all sports fans who currently watch ESPN would pay $40/month? I have to think some less ardent fans would decide sports aren't worth it for them making that price even higher.









The True Cost to Consumers of Pay TV’s Top Channels


Note: An extended version of this analysis is available exclusively for VIP subscribers. It’s no secret that pay TV is facing a mounting existential challenge. A record 6.2 million subscribers can…




variety.com


----------



## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> Does anyone believe that all sports fans who currently watch ESPN would pay $40/month? I have to think some less ardent fans would decide sports aren't worth it for them making that price even higher.


I mentioned earlier I had a sports nut co-worker sign up for DirecTV just for the free Sunday Ticket. After the promo fell off, he just cancelled it and went to a sports bar. I told him he could call in, but he didn't want to bother. Doubtful he would have paid $40/mo.

But as long as they stick it all on the RSN fee, raise it as high as you want, I'm on Preferred Xtra .


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Bender The Lab said:


> Even if the numbers are correct ( they are not), the Sat side of DirecTV has about 10 million subs left, if they are losing 400,000 a quarter, that is 1.6 million a year, so year two-3.2 million gone, year 3 4.8 million gone, year 4 6.4 million and year 5-8 million gone.
> 
> By Year 4, they are maybe breaking even, year 5 they are no longer profitable ( if not sooner).


Most of DIRECTV's costs are passed through from their content providers. Losing a couple billion dollars in annual revenue due to the loss of 1.5 million subscribers doesn't mean DIRECTV is losing billions in profit. They could probably get down to 2-3 million subscribers and still make a profit. As long as the subscriber loss levels off at a point where they are still profitable they will be fine.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

James Long said:


> Most of DIRECTV's costs are passed through from their content providers. Losing a couple billion dollars in annual revenue due to the loss of 1.5 million subscribers doesn't mean DIRECTV is losing billions in profit. They could probably get down to 2-3 million subscribers and still make a profit. As long as the subscriber loss levels off at a point where they are still profitable they will be fine.


Also DirecTV (and Dish) have a distinct advantage vs. cable/fiber/streaming where as any additional outlets are pure profit in satellite vs. cable where additional outlets/streams put a load on the infrastructure where with Sat you don't. That's why cable charges you $17/mo for additional outlets .


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## Bender The Lab (7 mo ago)

SledgeHammer said:


> Also DirecTV (and Dish) have a distinct advantage vs. cable/fiber/streaming where as any additional outlets are pure profit in satellite vs. cable where additional outlets/streams put a load on the infrastructure where with Sat you don't. *That's why cable charges you $17/mo for additional outlets *.


Both Charter and Comcast allows you to use a Roku to receive the content on all outlets, at no charge, just click on the Comcast app on the Roku, it will basically be a Cable Box, you do not have to rent any boxes from them ( not even the first) and avoid the charge, also can have multiple Rokus with the app if you so wish, again, no charge.

It is also still their infrastructure.

My step father has 3 rooms with Rokus with Comcast, all have been in use, no monthly charge.

By the way, neither DirecTV or Dish does the same.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

James Long said:


> Most of DIRECTV's costs are passed through from their content providers.


While likely true, it may also be said that some of their biggest line items aren't subscriber sensitive. NFLST has been this way for many years (if not since inception) and I'd bet that some of their other sports properties are far from per subscriber priced. Those are the kinds of contracts you have to make to be able to declare yourself a "leader".


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Bender The Lab said:


> Both Charter and Comcast allows you to use a Roku to receive the content on all outlets, at no charge, just click on the Comcast app on the Roku, it will basically be a Cable Box, you do not have to rent any boxes from them ( not even the first) and avoid the charge, also can have multiple Rokus with the app if you so wish, again, no charge.


Well, you need at least one DVR. I'll have to ask my parents what they're doing on the second TV. They had a second box for a while, but I think they dropped it due to the cost. They might just use the Roku on that TV now.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

harsh said:


> While likely true, it may also be said that some of their biggest line items aren't subscriber sensitive. NFLST has been this way for many years (if not since inception) and I'd bet that some of their other sports properties are far from per subscriber priced. Those are the kinds of contracts you have to make to be able to declare yourself a "leader".


All their sports contracts are subscriber based. NFLST was an aberration in the sports industry, everything else like MLBEI, NHLCI, NBALP, etc. are based on number of subscribers.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

slice1900 said:


> All their sports contracts are subscriber based.


Aside from immediately contradicting yourself, I'll bet that the ESPN contract isn't particularly subscriber dependent. I'll bet that other channels have some baseline cost with a coarse schedule per some large number of customers. A 1:1 ratio doesn't work for anyone.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

The experts that report facts report them on a per subscriber basis. I will defer to such experts every day. Good luck on your betting sites.

"In the normal course of business, we enter into contracts to purchase programming content in which our payment obligations are generally contingent on the number of Pay-TV subscribers to whom we provide the respective content. Our “Cost of services” have and will continue to face further upward pressure from price increases and the renewal of longterm programming contracts on less favorable pricing terms. In addition, our programming expenses will increase to the extent we are successful in growing our Pay-TV subscriber base." (DISH Network explaining a $55 million drop in "Cost of services" 2Q 22 vs 2Q 21. DISH reports 59.8% of their revenue went to "cost of services".)



harsh said:


> .. it may also be said that some of their biggest line items aren't subscriber sensitive.


Got proof? A lot of stuff can be said that simply isn't true. "Some" infers more than one. Name another line item that isn't subscriber based.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

harsh said:


> Aside from immediately contradicting yourself, I'll bet that the ESPN contract isn't particularly subscriber dependent. I'll bet that other channels have some baseline cost with a coarse schedule per some large number of customers. A 1:1 ratio doesn't work for anyone.


You'll "bet" huh?

Well golly gee, some blowhard who knows nothing and trolls forums for a service he doesn't even use will "bet" that something ridiculous is true so it must be so!

Nevermind that you can find any number of articles that talk about how much channels cost per subscriber for cable/satellite providers, using sources from media analyst companies that research this sort of thing for a living.

Your claim doesn't even make any sense, if ESPN charged some sort of fixed fee then smaller cable companies with 50K subscribers would have all gone out of business decades ago because they wouldn't have been able to afford that while it would be a rounding error to companies with 10+ million subscribers like Comcast and Directv.

But nevermind, keep spewing your nonsense without regard to facts, and we'll keep laughing at your ignorance.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> You'll "bet" huh?
> 
> Well golly gee, some blowhard who knows nothing and trolls forums for a service he doesn't even use will "bet" that something ridiculous is true so it must be so!
> 
> ...


I heard from my sisters babysitter that her brothers landscaper has an uncle that went to school with an old fishing buddy who's 3rd cousin, twice removed, used to date a girl in the biz who claimed ESPN charges cable providers around *$10 - $12/mo per subscriber*.

Add in the the $12/mo RSN fee that I'd be paying if it wasn't for the generous Preferred Xtra package and you can see why I've stuck with DirecTV.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

SledgeHammer said:


> ... ESPN charges cable providers around *$10 - $12/mo per subscriber*.


Not far off. More reliable reports state ESPN charged $8 per month per subscriber but the reports are dated and noted that ESPN (and other channel providers) expect an annual increase. It could be $10. Per subscriber, of course.

It is not a flat rate that ESPN charges every MVPD / vMVPD the same per subscriber. AT&T was reportedly paying 14% more than DIRECTV for their channels (not specifically ESPN) for UVERSE before they purchased DIRECTV. There are plenty of references for MVPDs paying per subscriber. Consider it a volume discount ... when a MVPD delivers the channel to 20 million subscribers they can get a better rate per subscriber than when they deliver the channel to 5 million subscribers.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Here's the data from 2020. ESPN + ESPN2 were about $8.50/month so if you include SECN & ACCN one or both of which are included for customers who in the footprint of one of those conferences it is easily over $10 today.









The True Cost to Consumers of Pay TV’s Top Channels


Note: An extended version of this analysis is available exclusively for VIP subscribers. It’s no secret that pay TV is facing a mounting existential challenge. A record 6.2 million subscribers can…




variety.com


----------



## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

James Long said:


> when a MVPD delivers the channel to 20 million subscribers they can get a better rate per subscriber than when they deliver the channel to 5 million subscribers.


I would be interesting to see a reason for such discount. Technically, they provide a signal by just fiber cable to MVPD, regardless how many will have/see it.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

P Smith said:


> I would be interesting to see a reason for such discount. Technically, they provide a signal by just fiber cable to MVPD, regardless how many will have/see it.


Most companies will give you a bulk discount even though it costs them the same to manufacture and deliver. They are just willing to take slightly less profit per widget to get a bigger profit overall.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

James Long said:


> The experts that report facts report them on a per subscriber basis.


When the experts are estimating, how does that work?


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

P Smith said:


> I would be interesting to see a reason for such discount. Technically, they provide a signal by just fiber cable to MVPD, regardless how many will have/see it.


So UVERSE should have paid the same total price to deliver a channel to 5 million subscribers as DIRECTV paid to deliver the same channel to 20 million subscribers? Both companies are only getting "one signal" from the channel provider. And when AT&T bought DIRECTV they would continue to pay one fee and deliver to 25 million subscribers (for half the total cost previously paid)?

More like DIRECTV saying we will deliver your channel content to 20 million subscribers for $8 per month per subscriber and UVERSE saying they will deliver the same channel content to 5 million subscribers for $9 per month. To reach four times as many homes the channel was willing to make a little less money ... negotiating at the risk that if they tried to force DIRECTV up to the $9 level that DIRECTV would simply say no and the channel would lose 20 million subscribers.

Of course, that didn't work out for AT&T|DIRECTV thinking they could pay $8 instead of $9 for each UVERSE subscriber when they bought DIRECTV. The channels stuck to their separate contracts and by the time the contracts came up for renewal the combined company didn't have 25 million total subscribers to use as clout. The channels were also seeing a decline in MVPD subscriptions and an increase in rights fees that led them to ask for more per subscriber just to "break even".



harsh said:


> When the experts are estimating, how does that work?


Start with good sources and build a reputation of being right over decades of aggregating factual data. Most experts are not estimating ... they are aggregating and reporting facts received from sources - some that cannot publish directly. Real experts are not making guesses from an arm chair at home after a couple of "adult beverages". The experts have the day job of being embedded in the industry they are reporting on. It isn't a hobby for their off hours.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

James Long said:


> Real experts are not making guesses from an arm chair at home after a couple of "adult beverages".


lol, wow that was... harsh 🤪

In the context that the thread is discussing (i.e. tech & TV, etc), I'd "estimate" that you are 100% correct. I wouldn't say that's true as a blanket statement though for every group of so called "experts".

I'd cite stock analysts as "experts" who guess. If you check a site that ranks those "experts" by their success rates, you'd find that on average they're only right ~30%, if that, of the time which is even worse then guessing. One such lady who was cited as an "expert" by other "experts" has recently found her fund down -70%, far worse then the overall market. Not much of an expert.

Also a guy on the team that I lead at a large company recently ACTUALLY told me that I should listen to him because he is an "expert" on all these technologies implying that I was not. He suggested that we needed to migrate the entire gigantic database to a new platform to fix the performance issues. I disproved his theory in a few hours by optimizing a section of code that cut the runtime of an API down by 90%. Then again, this "expert" also claimed he was an "expert" because he wrote a book on the subject. When I looked this up, he "wrote" that book 20 years ago and was listed 5th on the author list which means he contributed almost nothing to the book. And oddly enough, he joined the company 3-4 months before me and has yet to deliver a single feature while I have already delivered several large ones.

Also disproved the "experts" / bosses at the "abusers" multiple times.

So there are definitely plenty of cases where "expert" is used very loosely.

But as far as TV & tech industry stats that are widely reported and widely tracked, yup, I'll trust the industry and tracking sources and blatant anecdotal evidence over arm chair hobbyists every time. Impossible to take them seriously based on some of the ridiculous claims I've seen them make.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

The post was made in the context of this thread. MVPD industry experts that know what they are talking about and have proven it. Not the self appointed who only know what they have read on speculation based websites.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

AT&T gave getting better rates as one reason for buying Directv, though the magnitude of the difference is unclear. It can't be TOO big of a difference, or all those small cable systems with hundreds of thousands or even tens of thousands of subscribers (there are several hundred cable providers overall in the US) could not possibly survive.

There is one that serves a town and surrounding rural area less than 10 miles from where I live that can't possibly have more than 10,000 subscribers, but its prices are actually slightly CHEAPER than what I pay for Mediacom (with under 1 million subscribers is small compared to Comcast or Directv but huge compared to that little rural provider)

Even if companies had to provide info on how much they pay for various channels it would be hard to compare since it would depend on how old their contract was, how long it was compared to other contracts, etc. Someone who signs a new contract with Disney today is undoubtedly paying more than someone who has a five year old contract, and how much more Disney is able to ask than five years ago is going to be different than how much more Turner or NBC/Comcast is able to ask.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> AT&T gave getting better rates as one reason for buying Directv, though the magnitude of the difference is unclear. It can't be TOO big of a difference, or all those small cable systems with hundreds of thousands or even tens of thousands of subscribers (there are several hundred cable providers overall in the US) could not possibly survive.


Wasn't that under the guise of negotiating a single contract for all of AT&Ts TV services which would theoretically give them a bigger bulk discount per sub? Except in reality, its unlikely that all the contracts expired at the same time and equally unlikely that a content owner would re-negotiate a contract mid-contract for less money.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

slice1900 said:


> AT&T gave getting better rates as one reason for buying Directv, though the magnitude of the difference is unclear. It can't be TOO big of a difference, or all those small cable systems with hundreds of thousands or even tens of thousands of subscribers (there are several hundred cable providers overall in the US) could not possibly survive.


There are several organizations for small cable operators where they can negotiate as a group for carriage contracts as well as for equipment and services. It isn't a big enough coalition to give them the buying power of Comcast but it is better than each tiny independent trying to make deals on their own.

The apartment complex I lived in decades ago is listed as a cable company. When I lived there they had 12ft satellite dishes to receive signals from a "head end in the sky" service. Several complexes in my area are listed similarly although many complexes have gone with DISH or DIRECTV and installed MDU service or they have connected their complexes to a cable provider.



SledgeHammer said:


> Wasn't that under the guise of negotiating a single contract for all of AT&Ts TV services which would theoretically give them a bigger bulk discount per sub?


One of the stated goals was to have enough buying power to be able to get channels at a price where they could launch an OTT service. As far as I can tell they did not reap the benefit that they expected.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> Wasn't that under the guise of negotiating a single contract for all of AT&Ts TV services which would theoretically give them a bigger bulk discount per sub? Except in reality, its unlikely that all the contracts expired at the same time and equally unlikely that a content owner would re-negotiate a contract mid-contract for less money.


They negotiated new contracts that covered both as they expired. Not quite sure how they dealt with one expiring before the other, but they seemed to end up with combined contracts at least for for the important stuff like Disney and local station groups.

Whether they accomplished that by getting temporary extensions on the first contract until the second was up for renewal or by negotiating the second contract early who knows. They wouldn't get a contract owner to negotiate early for less money, but since media rights have only gone up that was never going to happen anyway.

Let's say you are paying an average $1/month for some package of channels over a contract. These contracts (at least the sports rights ones, so I assume the same is true of the rest) have escalators built in so you might pay 90 cents in the first month and $1.10 in the last. If you negotiate early when you are paying $1.05 you might jump to $1.20 and end up paying more for the remaining duration of the contract. But if you waited for it to expire you might be paying $1.30 to start so maybe you come out ahead. Maybe with more subscribers you negotiate that down to $1.25, who knows.

Since providers are just marking up the cost and passing it along (about 2/3 of cable/satellite revenue goes to paying rights) it is probably the long term certainty that is more important than the actual amounts. You want to know as best you can what your rights costs will be next year and the year after if you are offering people price lock deals, or cable/internet bundle discounts and so forth. People who are cutting the cord over cost probably wouldn't make a different decision if a service that costs $140 could cost $133 instead, because they're comparing to for example Netflix + Disney + Apple TV and saving $100/month regardless.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

The most important element in their negotiations was making sure that the new deal allowed for OTT streaming. Renewing a contract that allowed closed system streaming like UVERSE or satellite retransmission like DIRECTV without including OTT streaming would be a non-starter.

I'd expect the first contract that comes up for renewal would be the trigger for adding OTT and combining with the other contract. If they couldn't get a good deal they could simply let the contract end and deal with the lost channel when the other contract expires (or the content provider misses a few million subscribers).


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

James Long said:


> Start with good sources and build a reputation of being right over decades of aggregating factual data. Most experts are not estimating ...


The problem with your theory is:

Fewer companies are reporting numbers for their services in favor of combining several into a single number or not reporting at all
The "good source" cited previously estimated fully half of the conventional services
Extrapolating during a paradigm shift is unreliable
Even Craig Moffett used to be fairly good.


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## Starchild (Sep 4, 2007)

I discontinued my DIRECTV satellite service yesterday after *26 years* as a continuous customer. When asked why I said “no longer reliable for me”. They processed it and it was over. Less than 5 minutes on telephone. *Never* even attempted to retain me! Completely shocked. And frankly disappointed.

I have moved on to DirectvStream, but I didn’t mention it to them. im happy with the service, but miss a few options the satellite service gave me. Just not enough to pay double the price!


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Starchild said:


> *Never* even attempted to retain me! Completely shocked. And frankly disappointed.


Don't be surprised if you are contacted in the future.


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## mitchflorida (May 18, 2009)

Starchild said:


> I discontinued my DIRECTV satellite service yesterday after *26 years* as a continuous customer. When asked why I said “no longer reliable for me”. They processed it and it was over. Less than 5 minutes on telephone. *Never* even attempted to retain me! Completely shocked. And frankly disappointed.
> 
> I have moved on to DirectvStream, but I didn’t mention it to them. im happy with the service, but miss a few options the satellite service gave me. Just not enough to pay double the price!


You should at least request a discount before canceling your service, especially when you speak to the retention department.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

mitchflorida said:


> You should at least request a discount before canceling your service, especially when you speak to the retention department.


No discount is going to halve the price.


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## mitchflorida (May 18, 2009)

harsh said:


> No discount is going to halve the price.


How much does it cost to ask? Streaming isn't as good as satellite, he said that himself. Plus he wanted to be offered something.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

mitchflorida said:


> Streaming isn't as good as satellite, he said that himself.


The justification given to DIRECTV was that satellite is "unreliable". Thats not good at half the price.


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## dod1450 (Dec 16, 2009)

After 25-plus years with Directv, I am now a cord (airwave) cutter. They wanted to reduce the bill, but I said no. Thank you for all the information on the DirecTV forum.


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