Paying for TV, One Way Or Another

By James Poniewozik | @poniewozik | January 4, 2010 | +

I don’t know if you’ve heard about this, but sometime this month Apple is likely to announce its giant iTouch, which will singlehandedly make people fall in love with reading again, persuade them to pay money for electronic publications and thus save journalism. Crisis over! Problem solved! Screw all you guys, I’m going to be rich now!

TV, though, still has business problems. It’s true, that, unlike with the news, people are not likely to stop watching The Office in order to read an unpaid blogger on the Huffington Post sum up The Office in three paragraphs. But more people are finding ways to watch TV for free online, skip ads with TiVo, or otherwise undermine the old TV business model. And as some recent network-vs.-cable-company fights have shown, the TV business is still going to try to get you to pay for TV somehow. Even for the “free” stuff.

Over the New Year’s holiday, Time Warner Cable and Fox reached a deal in which TWC will pay Fox to rebroadcast the local affiliates that carry Fox broadcast programming, i.e., the stuff you could get for free with an antenna. Cable providers have long paid for the privilege of carrying cable channels (and passed that privilege along to you). Now, increasingly, it looks like broadcast networks and stations, who have a bad case of cable-business-model envy, are going to try to get a piece too.

Which means that you can watch shows for free on Hulu if you like—well, free for now, anyway—but the cost of TV is like a bubble in an air hose: squeeze it in one place and it pops up somewhere else along the chain, in this case, your cable bill. The New York Times’ Brian Stelter has a good analysis of the situation today.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that cable creep will start driving people away from cable providers altogether, especially if they have other ways of cobbling together a schedule of their favorite programming. Is there a limit to what you’ll pay for cable? And if you’ve already cut the cord, how are you getting TV?

Related Topics: Business News, cable companies

@TIMECulture

Latest on Entertainment

Music February 9, 2012

Listen to TIME’s Fashion Week Playlist on Spotify!

It’s Fashion Week in New York City and Manhattan is crawling with eccentric designers, stylish socialites and hungry models looking for next season’s big trend. It seems that our invitation to Marc Jacobs’ show got lost in the mail, so to console ourselves we’ve put together a stylish Spotify playlist.
From our Partners
"The Woman in Black": A Good Old Fashioned Scary MovieSlate

Can Katharine McPhee 'Smash' The Hype?Huffington Post
Total Recall: Unconventional SuperheroesRotten Tomatoes
Movies February 9, 2012

In Darkness: How a Swindler Became a Schindler

Agnieszka Holland’s Oscar-nominated film tells the true story of a Polish-Catholic sewer worker and thief who kept Jews alive in Nazi-occupied Lvov

nycgeoff

News and sports are holding us back – the root immediacy of the medium.

As for scripted shows, even now, while paying $90/month for cable, we’re still getting about 1/3 of them on DVD (due to our lack of premium channels/channels not available from our provider/cluefulness to watch them when they aired)

The most resonant line from the NYT article is this one: “Of course, broadband is not free, either, and it is often provided by the same companies that distribute television programming.” Until that separation happens, entertainment will continue to get more expensive via either pipe.
van68

It seems clear that the increasing technology-driven churn in media distribution will reach something of a critical mass in 2010. As with all paradigm shifts, the transition will be painful, but hopefully on the other end will come new distribution models that empower viewers — namely, the a la carte process that seems increasingly possible (and ultimately democratizing, in much the same way that the music industry has been transformed by iTunes and file sharing).

But what do I know? Just so long as I can still watch LOST…
Matt

We dropped cable a year ago due to the ridiculous subscription fee. These days we use an HD antenna + TiVo for the network stuff and a Mac Mini with Hulu, Netflix and iTunes for must-see cable shows (i.e. Mad Men). I do miss a few of the Discovery shows (Mythbusters mainly), and the wife misses What Not to Wear and such, but we’re still getting 90% of what we want to watch for about 10-15% of the cost.

The TiVo cost a bit up-front, but even accounting for that and spending on iTunes, etc, we’ve still saved about $800-$1000 over the course of the year.
DaWarMage

I’ve already cut the cord.

Reasons: A) Cost/Benefit, cable isn’t cheap and I don’t watch enough of it to offset that. I really enjoy watching a select few shows, but I can’t justify $600 a year for them. B) What I watch, I like doing on my schedule. I could get DVR but that’s a cost and alternative sources already provide the flexibility. C) I tend to like the premium stuff, so that would be an additional cost (HBO etc).

My primary method of getting TV is online. First stop is Hulu. It’s like a free and effortless DVR.

Beyond that I watch DVDs. I can purchase 2 seasons of TV for the price of 1 month subscription. Of course I don’t actually do that. I buy a season here or there and then lend them to my friends/family to show them how cool the show is. Correspondingly I borrow TV shows from others. So I might lend Firefly out to someone, and borrow Prison Break from someone else. In fact I’m more likely to buy a show I’ve already seen at least part of, either through lending or online.

One thing worth mentioning, although you’ve heard it before. I grew up watching TV, but today I have a lot more options. Games, surfing the internet, hobbies, books, etc compete for my time ever diminishing time. So I don’t want to surf channels anymore. I want to have someone I trust recommend a TV show that will blow my mind, and then I want to sit down and watch it whenever I’m available. I’ll pay money for this, much like I’ll pay money to go to the movies, but the cost has to be balanced against my other options. DVDs come in at less than $2 an episode, which sounds about right.
pbmama

the reason i still have paid cable…sports. if someone can tell me how to watch college and professional football in real-time w/o having to go to my local bar (that would require a babysitter and way too much commitment), i’ll drop TW like a … whatever object a person would drop quickly. until then, i’m stuck.
http://kewinters.wordpress.com kewinters

I was going to drop cable, but Comcast told me I could either pay $60 for internet alone, or pay $30 for internet if I had a $30 cable package.

I like watching TV with others, comfortably seated around the family room with the TV in the corner. Watching online shows on my 14″ laptop screen just is not the same experience. $30 seems a fair price to pay, though I’d love for it to be cheaper.
lou58lou

I watch TV with an antenna. I do not have cable or Satellite. And if there is nothing good on I can play free games online, or put in a movie, or read a book. So if they want to charge for TV, and people do not want to pay; cancel the service and show big business who owns the purse strings.
kenwrob

There is no such thing as FREE TV. If you shop for
anything, buy insurance or cars or anything advertised
on TV,you are paying for it! Unless you are paying for
premium channels only,the money you pay to your
cable company only provides you with ACCESS, not
CONTENT. TV is a for profit business and we all pay
for it whether or not we watch it.The cost of advertising
is a tax we all pay, yet hardly anybody complains about
it.
doubleang

My parents being sadistic monsters, I grew up without cable. Due to that, I grew up without expecting anything outside broadband.
Currently, I get by solely on Hulu and DVD
doubleang

im tired and not reading what my fingers are typing. I obviously meant broadcast cable, not broadband
doubleang

and by broadcast cable, I obviously mean broadcast television via rabbit ears. *sigh*. Im going home
darxa2

I was watching TV over the air until it was decided that those signals HAD to go digital. I thought it was a great idea, the picture would be better and the experience of watching my fave shows would improve. That was not the case. Every time someone drove by my window or walked by talking on the cell phone or listening to their MP3 I lost my signal. In the high traffic area I’m in, this meant I missed half or more of every show.

I caved in and got cable just so I could watch the one show I like that is not available online… Criminal Minds. I still mainly watch the channels I used to get for free but occasionally watch Discovery Health, HGTV, or NatGeo. I irks me that I now have to pay to watch these shows. I’m considering giving up on TV all together. It’s just too expensive and a waste of time.
http://money.blogs.time.com/2010/01/05/in-the-future-no-more-%e2%80%a6-well-no-more-lots-of-things/ In the Future: No More … Well, No More Lots of Things – It's Your Money – TIME.com

[...] do? You could play the game and watch only movies and shows on the Internet. But, as my colleague James Poniewozik wrote, "You can watch shows for free on Hulu if you like—well, free for now, anyway—but the cost of [...]
DaWarMage

That’s strange. Comcast sells me the internet for $30 without any TV. Admittedly it’s a promotion, and I have to get a new promotion every once in a while, but still.