They finally saw the train of cord-cutters coming towards them and started an over the top service. But they still screwed it up by shifting the lesser-watched (in the US) sports over there.
That particular equation ("they still screwed up") is correct, but only from the perspective of mainstream US sports consumers.
From the perspective of fans of outlier sports, it's even worse. For the last few years the inclusion of ESPN3 (over the top) in the regular cable sub was a huge boon to fans of "foreign" sports. One could watch cricket, rugby and any soccer not on the cable channels on Roku and other platforms.
Then they moved cricket and rugby over to the ESPN+ service but **kept** the majority of the soccer on the cable channels. Thus splitting the baby.
So now, if you want to see the games the majority of the world watches, you have to have both the cable *and the ESPN+ sub.
The acquisition of Formula 1 rights in the US merely strengthened the splitting of the baby. The venn diagram of these sports is almost a circle.
Ugh.
PS: ESPN is not alone in splitting the baby in this way. NBC Sports has done the same with their Premiere League, Cycling and Rugby coverage. They have moved many off to the NBC Sports Gold service. And from there you have to buy individual passes for individual sports. Where one used to be able to see all Premiere League games on cable, one must now pay for the Premiere League Pass. If one want to watch all the cycling they used to have, one must now pay for the Cycling Pass.
I'd be really interested to see the figures on exactly how many ad spots Spectrum uses for its own house ads.
You know, those spots where they try to tell people who are already watching their damned service how great it would be if they used Spectrum. I think it has to be larger than any other cable co. House ads are in almost every local break and it's been going on for almost two years. Imagine how much money they could earn if they sold those spots to real advertisers.
Further, the volume of junk mail they send me is huge. At least one piece a month. And I'm already a user
... and there are vast swathes of the USA where an antenna will do you no good. That's where the cable industry started, of course. As with other commentators, I watch only a small subset of the available channels, but my subset is different than theirs.
Likely Anonymous Coward, Jan 20th, 2016 @ 3:31pm was talking about watching soccer on NBC Sports channel. For a soccer fan in the US, you'll want: NBC Sports (English Premier League) Fox Sports (FA Cup, UEFA) (with more games on associated channels) ESPN (UEFA) Fox Deportes (Bundesliga) ESPN Deportes Univision And the really hardcore go for Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV. No cord-cutting possible for any of those channels. Unfortunately.
I suspect that the very biggest reason that the Times has not gotten there yet is revealed in this section:
The Challenges
To successfully move to HTTPS, all requests to page assets need to be made over a secure channel. It’s a daunting challenge, and there are a lot of moving parts. We have to consider resources that are currently being loaded from insecure domains — everything from JavaScript to advertisement assets.
If the assets for an advertisement aren’t able to serve over an HTTPS channel, the advertisement will probably not display on the page, directly affecting revenue. It can be difficult to determine if each advertisement will load over HTTPS. Considering the importance of advertisements, this is very likely to be a significant hurdle to many media organizations’ implementation of HTTPS. While some advertising platforms, including Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP), do support HTTPS loading, there are still a number of ad networks that may not be HTTPS-compatible.
That particular NY Times article has references to (at minimum) the following third-party resources: Dynamic Yield, Google Analytics, New Relic, Web Trends, Adobe Typekit, Scorecard Research, Revsci, Chartbeat.
Mike, can you tell us how difficult it was for you guys to go HTTPS? This very TechDirt article is pulling even more third party resources: Bizo, ChartBeat, DoubleClick, Facebook Connect, Flattr, Google Analytics, Google+ Platform, Gravatar, Quantcast, Reddit, Scorecard Research, Twitter Button, Akamai (not sure that counts), Google APIs, Google Tag Services. And possibly others I cannot see.
My weekly listens: TWiT (This Week in Tech) - Quality depends on the guests, but it generally moves right along and hits most of the points it should.
Security Now - Security "guru" (opinions differ) Steve Gibson reviews the week's net security news. The second part of the show is alternately given over to listener Q & A and larger, often quite technical, subjects.
Guardian Football Weekly - Twice a week review of the football (soccer) scene. Mostly EPL, but also La Liga, Champions League and others. Lots of puns and often quite well argued football punditry.
TWiG (This Week in Google) - Not really that much about Google, more about the cloud in general. Also, given that recognized curmudgeon Jeff Jarvis is a co-host, a fair amount of discussion about old media dinosaurs. Gina Trapani, the other co-host, brings the developer's perspective.
TWiL - (This Week in Law) - IANAL, but the discussions here are consistently interesting. Most guests are practicing lawyers or professors. Smart people talking about the intersection between tech and law. (TechDirt often cited)
Why in the HELL would I ever want to listen to this? You should listen to our show because it is funny, plus it will help you. Specifically: John Roderick is an opinionated polymath who knows literally everything and who genuinely wants to help set everyone straight. Plus, he can’t understand why anyone would even be allowed not to hear everything he has to say, and Merlin is mostly tolerant of this. Merlin Mann is a fairly dim blabbermouth who knows literally nothing but who genuinely wants to help John set everyone straight. Plus, he knows how to post things on the internet, and John is mostly tolerant of this.
WTF - As you cite above
The Vergecast - After a hiatus, this one just came back last week. "Show about technology, culture , technology culture and culture culture.
NY Times Popcast - Production sometimes just a little suspect. But the the content is usually interesting, with a roster of critics thinking carefully about music and "the industry".
Record industry old-timers I know have told me lurid tales of "the front door" and "the back door" of pressing plants.
The people who ran the plant would press a certain number of records and send them out "the front door" to be counted by the client/artist. A whole 'nother number went out "the back door" to be sold off the books, with the artists seeing nothing on the books. In extreme cases, it was a the record company itself selling off the books.
If you should still want the component items in the above mentioned elaborate hoax, they will be available separately at a more affordable price in the New Year, unless you are one of those pirates who imagines they are evangelists or that other people?s rights absolve their own thievery, in which case this is between you and your dim conscience.
So that's his record company AND the pirates told, then.
Sen. Schumer (D NY) wrote back to me on November 2:
Dear Mr. xxxxxxxx
Thank you for your contacting me in opposition to S.968, the PROTECT IP Act. Like you, I believe that consumers should have access to a vibrant and innovative online community to discuss their ideas and opinions. At the same time, we must not let the internet become a haven for intellectual property thieves.
The threat to intellectual property owners over the internet is clear. Every year, the US Chamber of Commerce estimates that copyright theft costs our nation about $58 billion in lost output, 373,375 in lost jobs, and $16 billion in lost employee earnings. These numbers present an unacceptable burden to US businesses. In addition, companies may be less likely to innovate because their products may be stolen by intellectual property pirates, creating a drag on the US economy.
The PROTECT IP Act addresses the problem of intellectual property theft online, but it also contains important due process protections to ensure that legal activity over the internet is not disrupted. As you may know, the PROTECT IP Act would allow the Department of Justice to file a claim against a website that 1) has no significant purpose other than engaging in or facilitating copyright infringement, circumventing technology controlling access to copyrighted works, or selling or promoting counterfeit goods or services; or (2) is designed, operated, or marketed and used to engage in such activities. A judge would have to find that a website is intentionally violating intellectual property rights of an American entity before he could issue an order against that site. I believe PROTECT IP Act would provide law enforcement and intellectual property holders additional tools to protect American intellectual property from websites while still ensuring the constitutionally protected rights of free speech and due process. The PROTECT IP Act currently is awaiting action on the floor of the Senate, and I will continue to monitor this bill as it moves through the Senate.
Thank you for contacting me on this important issue. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can ever be of assistance to you on this, or any other matter.
Sincerely,
Charles E. Schumer
United States Senator
Interestingly, this is the exact same boilerplate I got when I wrote about PROTECT IP at the end of August. It appears that he is so bought and paid for that he is not even bothering to update his responses.
My other senator (Kirsten E. Gillibrand D, NY) said thanks for the contact but did not even send a boilerplate response. My Representative (Hinchey, NY 22) has not responded in any way to my contact, although as I recall he has had a pretty decent record on 'net affairs.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by markzip.
Splitting the baby
They finally saw the train of cord-cutters coming towards them and started an over the top service. But they still screwed it up by shifting the lesser-watched (in the US) sports over there.
That particular equation ("they still screwed up") is correct, but only from the perspective of mainstream US sports consumers.
From the perspective of fans of outlier sports, it's even worse. For the last few years the inclusion of ESPN3 (over the top) in the regular cable sub was a huge boon to fans of "foreign" sports. One could watch cricket, rugby and any soccer not on the cable channels on Roku and other platforms.
Then they moved cricket and rugby over to the ESPN+ service but **kept** the majority of the soccer on the cable channels. Thus splitting the baby.
So now, if you want to see the games the majority of the world watches, you have to have both the cable *and the ESPN+ sub.
The acquisition of Formula 1 rights in the US merely strengthened the splitting of the baby. The venn diagram of these sports is almost a circle.
Ugh.
PS: ESPN is not alone in splitting the baby in this way. NBC Sports has done the same with their Premiere League, Cycling and Rugby coverage. They have moved many off to the NBC Sports Gold service. And from there you have to buy individual passes for individual sports. Where one used to be able to see all Premiere League games on cable, one must now pay for the Premiere League Pass. If one want to watch all the cycling they used to have, one must now pay for the Cycling Pass.
Spectrum leaves money on the table with their own house ads
I'd be really interested to see the figures on exactly how many ad spots Spectrum uses for its own house ads.
You know, those spots where they try to tell people who are already watching their damned service how great it would be if they used Spectrum. I think it has to be larger than any other cable co. House ads are in almost every local break and it's been going on for almost two years. Imagine how much money they could earn if they sold those spots to real advertisers.
Further, the volume of junk mail they send me is huge. At least one piece a month. And I'm already a user
Oy.
Re: Re: Re: NBC
... and there are vast swathes of the USA where an antenna will do you no good. That's where the cable industry started, of course.
As with other commentators, I watch only a small subset of the available channels, but my subset is different than theirs.
Re: Re: NBC
Likely Anonymous Coward, Jan 20th, 2016 @ 3:31pm was talking about watching soccer on NBC Sports channel.
For a soccer fan in the US, you'll want:
NBC Sports (English Premier League)
Fox Sports (FA Cup, UEFA) (with more games on associated channels)
ESPN (UEFA)
Fox Deportes (Bundesliga)
ESPN Deportes
Univision
And the really hardcore go for Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV.
No cord-cutting possible for any of those channels. Unfortunately.
Exactly
The page I was on immediately before this one was the Fandango site.
Buying tickets to the 70mm roadshow of The Hateful 8.
In a town 2 hours from my house.
This is a fine example of Masnick's Maxim: "Be awesome with fans and give them a reason to buy"
Tracking and advertising
I suspect that the very biggest reason that the Times has not gotten there yet is revealed in this section:
That particular NY Times article has references to (at minimum) the following third-party resources:
Dynamic Yield, Google Analytics, New Relic, Web Trends, Adobe Typekit, Scorecard Research, Revsci, Chartbeat.
Mike, can you tell us how difficult it was for you guys to go HTTPS? This very TechDirt article is pulling even more third party resources: Bizo, ChartBeat, DoubleClick, Facebook Connect, Flattr, Google Analytics, Google+ Platform, Gravatar, Quantcast, Reddit, Scorecard Research, Twitter Button, Akamai (not sure that counts), Google APIs, Google Tag Services. And possibly others I cannot see.
Just how much of a challenge is it?
My weekly listens:
TWiT (This Week in Tech) - Quality depends on the guests, but it generally moves right along and hits most of the points it should.
Security Now - Security "guru" (opinions differ) Steve Gibson reviews the week's net security news. The second part of the show is alternately given over to listener Q & A and larger, often quite technical, subjects.
Guardian Football Weekly - Twice a week review of the football (soccer) scene. Mostly EPL, but also La Liga, Champions League and others. Lots of puns and often quite well argued football punditry.
TWiG (This Week in Google) - Not really that much about Google, more about the cloud in general. Also, given that recognized curmudgeon Jeff Jarvis is a co-host, a fair amount of discussion about old media dinosaurs. Gina Trapani, the other co-host, brings the developer's perspective.
AAA (All About Android) - News, apps, hardware.
TWiL - (This Week in Law) - IANAL, but the discussions here are consistently interesting. Most guests are practicing lawyers or professors. Smart people talking about the intersection between tech and law. (TechDirt often cited)
Roderick on the Line From the FAQ:
WTF - As you cite above
The Vergecast - After a hiatus, this one just came back last week. "Show about technology, culture , technology culture and culture culture.
NY Times Popcast - Production sometimes just a little suspect. But the the content is usually interesting, with a roster of critics thinking carefully about music and "the industry".
Sounds the old days of the record biz
This reminds me of record pressing plants of old.
Record industry old-timers I know have told me lurid tales of "the front door" and "the back door" of pressing plants.
The people who ran the plant would press a certain number of records and send them out "the front door" to be counted by the client/artist. A whole 'nother number went out "the back door" to be sold off the books, with the artists seeing nothing on the books. In extreme cases, it was a the record company itself selling off the books.
UPDATE: He has a "clarifying" post up
A subsequent post entitled "Let's Mke Things Sparklingly clear" contains the following rather wonderful paragraph:
So that's his record company AND the pirates told, then.
I wrote my Senator about SOPA and this is what he said:
Sen. Schumer (D NY) wrote back to me on November 2:
Interestingly, this is the exact same boilerplate I got when I wrote about PROTECT IP at the end of August. It appears that he is so bought and paid for that he is not even bothering to update his responses.
My other senator (Kirsten E. Gillibrand D, NY) said thanks for the contact but did not even send a boilerplate response. My Representative (Hinchey, NY 22) has not responded in any way to my contact, although as I recall he has had a pretty decent record on 'net affairs.