Community Chat

[chessylady]

It looks like Dish will be eliminating comcast sports in my area either temporarily or permanently. I just bought a smart TV. Is there a way to stream local sports on my TV or my Ipad independent of Dish? If so, how?

[terrier3]

Subscribe to Comcast, if they own the local sports station.

DISH did that in Buffalo too....no Sabres games there for years - they now have very few local subscribers.

[chessylady]

I've just started with Dish in June because Comcast was so expensive. From what I've read online it will cost me $17 a month for what is left on my contract with Dish ($289). I'm trying to find a low cost way to watch my Kings and Giants. I wish the feds would allow ala carte television choices but they don't care about consumers just corporations.

[terrier3]

On 11/30/2014 chessylady said: I've just started with Dish in June because Comcast was so expensive. From what I've read online it will cost me $17 a month for what is left on my contract with Dish ($289). I'm trying to find a low cost way to watch my Kings and Giants. I wish the feds would allow ala carte television choices but they don't care about consumers just corporations.

Comcast and other cable companies pay big bucks for the rights to broadcast live sports. Time Warner spent BILLIONS in LA to run basketball. They even created two sports stations just to carry the live events.

They, in return, "re-sell" the rights to the games to other services, like DISH. If DISH refuses to pay, then won't run the games. It's simple.

Comcast is expensive BECAUSE they buy high priced items like local sports.

[gardenman]

I have this pet theory that a close look at the accounting books of Comcast would show some questionable practices. It seems like one of the major advertisers on their Sportsnet and other Comcast owned channels is (Surprise!) Comcast/Xfinity. It seems like every other commercial on those channels is advertising a Comcast product. So they're selling their advertising time to themselves and paying themselves to advertise on their own channels. It seems like there's a lot of internal money shuffling going on from one part of the company to another and I suspect there's something a tick questionable about some of their accounting.

I'm betting their advertising expenses are written off as a tax deduction and since they can buy as much as they want, they can shield pretty much all of their profits by using those profits to buy airtime on their channels to promote their products. They've got a virtual monopoly on consumers, so why advertise so much? Perhaps to take profit, convert it into a business expense and reduce the tax burden? My gut says there's something iffy (at best) going on there.

[terrier3]

On 12/1/2014 gardenman said:

I have this pet theory that a close look at the accounting books of Comcast would show some questionable practices. It seems like one of the major advertisers on their Sportsnet and other Comcast owned channels is (Surprise!) Comcast/Xfinity. It seems like every other commercial on those channels is advertising a Comcast product. So they're selling their advertising time to themselves and paying themselves to advertise on their own channels. It seems like there's a lot of internal money shuffling going on from one part of the company to another and I suspect there's something a tick questionable about some of their accounting.

I'm betting their advertising expenses are written off as a tax deduction and since they can buy as much as they want, they can shield pretty much all of their profits by using those profits to buy airtime on their channels to promote their products. They've got a virtual monopoly on consumers, so why advertise so much? Perhaps to take profit, convert it into a business expense and reduce the tax burden? My gut says there's something iffy (at best) going on there.

I worked in cable for 20 years - that's not how it happens.

Most networks give the cable companies 2 minutes of advertising time per hour - 2 breaks with 2 :30 commercials in each one. The cable companies usually reserve 25% for their own marketing - one :30 commercial per hour. They don't sell these to themselves - they just don't offer that time to advertisers. They then sell the remaining three :30 spots to local advertising clients. They don't make money on the 25% of the inventory they reserve - but they DO make a lot of upsells with that advertising.

The most effective form of advertising for cable companies is television advertising. People decide to buy more products when they are actually in front of their TVs. Cable companies are usually the #1 local advertiser on the broadcast stations too. They DO pay for that time, and it's a business expense.

The average cable company places local ads of 40-50 cable networks. That's a LOT of inventory. They use it to maximize profits and it pays for them to advertise on their own networks. When there is unsold inventory, they run more of their marketing spots as fill.