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The Nation's Pulse
Brother, Can You Spare a Billion?
The DirecTV-Viacom cable war is intense because nothing of value is at stake.
There is a Bradburian quality to the DirecTV-Viacom standoff that has left twenty percent of the pay-television public without MTV, Comedy Central, BET, and Nickelodeon.
In the late Ray Bradbury’s “Almost the End of the World,” two miners emerge from the underneath to find the world above to be without television. They gaze upon “the soft snow falling down and that humming screen in an eternal winter” in the local barbershop. Instead of watching, people bowl, play bandstand concerts, eat homemade ice cream, and socialize at keg parties. They literally (and metaphorically) paint the town. The 1957 short story ironically dubs life without television the Great Oblivion.
“DirecTV-Viacom Dispute Turns into Blackout Reality,” reads a New York Times headline. Like the sunspots that whited-out television transmission in “Almost the End of the World,” today’s real-life Great Oblivion shows that we didn’t know what we weren’t missing.
This isn’t the reaction that DirecTV and Viacom desire or expect. The ostensible adversaries want you to want your MTV — to paraphrase a marketing slogan from cable’s golden age. But after Snooki, Big Ang, The Situation, and Kurt Angle leave your living room, you don’t clamor for them to come back. In fact, viewers might now venture out of the living room and become doers.
When watchers attempt to click on any of the missing Viacom channels, DirecTV directs TV watchers to E!, Style, Bravo, and a host of other options that might have filled the void — if they weren’t so empty in substance, too. Viacom’s idea of winning the public over is an advertisement featuring the angry and obnoxious star of Mob Wives lamenting the injustice of DirecTV keeping her off the air.
Doing their best impersonation of African-orphan pitchwoman Sally Struthers, Viacom argues that their desired hike amounts to just a few pennies a day per subscriber. But Viacom collected $15 billion last year. All they want is another measly $1 billion from DirecTV.
DirecTV, collecting $27 billion in revenues last year, is no fly-encircled swollen-bellied charity case, either. DirecTV counterpropaganda blames Viacom for undermining them by offering their programs for free on the net, calling for higher fees amidst lower ratings, and ultimately pulling their networks from the satellite service.
Both corporations hope the denial of channels will cause the other side to wilt through a denial of income. But an unforeseen outcome is that viewers might find the glut of disposable programming — built for interludes of click-and-go watching and endless repeats — utterly disposable. Sometimes you don’t realize how much you don’t need something until it’s taken away.
Pay television, which reportedly lost seven million subscribers last year, might free itself from these internecine battles by embracing freedom. So much of what is wrong with America, from schools to medicine, involves the lack of choice. Subscription television, though dominated by big corporations rather than big government, is no different.
Viacom forcing an-all-or-nothing collection of networks onto DirecTV restricts viewer choice. So, too, does DirecTV’s one-size-fits all channel packages. The cable companies that initially seized local monopoly rights really haven’t transcended their anti-market origins.
To beat the competition — free fare on the Internet and the broadcast networks — pay television must first embrace competition. The ability of television providers to block or permit access to scores of premium channels suggests that doing the same for garden-variety cable television networks isn’t out of their technological reach.
Why not allow networks to compete for viewer dollars through an à la carte system rather than force-feeding weak channels owned by strong companies onto subscribers?
The sound DirecTV and Viacom executives hopefully soon hear is Americans switching off televisions and wandering into the Great Oblivion of books, parks, beaches, and barbeques. As one of Bradbury’s miners asks, “What have we ever seen on TV?” The other miner responds that he saw a woman wrestle a bear two falls out of three.
Has the idiot box improved much in the 55 years since Bradbury published that story?
On Tuesday, DirecTV customers could watch Logo’s 1 Girl 5 Gays, Spike’s 1000 Ways to Die, and BET’s Brothers to Brutha. Today, they cannot.
Are you better off than you were four days ago?
About the Author
Daniel J. Flynn, the author of The War on Football: Saving America’s Game, blogs at www.flynnfiles.com.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (16) | Leave a comment
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DTOM| 7.13.12 @ 6:53AM
It's sorta like when the Federal Government shuts down. There's a lot less traffic and everyone seems a little happier...
We really wouldn't miss EPA, DOE, HHS, FEC, FCC, the Fed, Freddie and Fannie and the rest of the freedom and wealth destroyers.
Not even a little, once we remembered to "caveat emptor!"
Okay, so maybe Ron Paul had a point...
Sorry about the RP thing - it was a compulsion...
chuck| 7.13.12 @ 7:34AM
That why they are so afraid of shutting down the federal government. After 2 days everyone except the parasites would realize we are better off.
c. j. acworth| 7.13.12 @ 7:12AM
Years (I mean YEARS) ago my outside antenna got hit by lightning or something. Out here in the woods I could only get a few channels anyway, so I let it go all winter, figuring that maybe I would call Direct TV in the spring. Spring came. Then summer. Autumn followed, and I realized I had gone almost an entire year without TV. I had also read a lot more books. From what I see of TV in other folks homes, I'm missing even less than I think. (Except maybe NOVA on PBS.)
LindaF | 7.13.12 @ 8:11AM
DISH is losing AMC - one of the few channels I like. I'm trying to convince my husband to dump all cable (sadly, he's a sports nut who is unlikely to go along - well, he also likes Wheel of Fortune).
Poppakap| 7.13.12 @ 6:21PM
AMC is already gone on Dish. It's a shame, since it's one of the few channels I actually watch. Dish pulled a major brain fart with this move because two of cable's most popular shows are on AMC; Mad Men and Breaking Bad. As a result, I'm seriously considering dropping Dish altogether. Between Netflix, Redbox, and Hulu Plus, I get almost all the movies and TV shows I'd ever want to watch at a fraction of the cost of Comcast, Dish, DirecTV, or TimeWarner. These dinosaurs will quickly fossilize if their business models don't evolve and offer more choice.
tankrtrash| 7.13.12 @ 8:20AM
I dropped Direct 3 yrs ago because I was tired of spending $50-$60 a month for garbage that I never watched.....It's been great. Since then, internet for news, Netflix ($7.99/ month) for entertainment and a lot more reading and "projects". Direct and Viacom can both go down the crapper and please, take Snooki and and the other nitwits with them.
John Navratil| 7.13.12 @ 8:59AM
I'm just waiting for Brett Baier and John Stossel to be available on the net.
PolishKnight| 7.13.12 @ 10:31AM
My wife gets her three Russian TV channels and loves them. My father-in-law, when we're not out doing stuff, likes to sit and watch them. Yes, I know in theory he could be out on the patio enjoying nature and going for walks, but they really like them. I like the military channel and find their documentaries on WWII and WWI history fascinating and illuminating. I also watch alternative news coverage on French and Russian TV. They're leftist as well, but at least in a different way. Other channels we surf include animal planet, G4, and TruTV. Yeah, a lot of it is crap but what's neat is that with so many choices you can find something you like and if it's not on now, you can go ondemand. Which leads us to... someday everything will be OnDemand and that will make channels meaningless much like record albums are today. Channels will merely be for branding purposes rather than "tuning" in.
Poppakap| 7.13.12 @ 6:22PM
I can't wait til the day...
Bill84728| 7.16.12 @ 12:58PM
I miss albums, though...
BD57| 7.13.12 @ 10:15PM
Not a problem for me - - - but the kids wish they had their SpongeBob.
gazinya | 7.15.12 @ 9:43AM
It isn't the end of the world to be 'disconnected'. I have found myself left out of the opinion page of 'did you see' conversations. When I made the simple statement that I had never seen 'this or that' or did not subcribe to 'this or that', to my friends it sounded like 'gloating'. It is not meant to be but in the last year 3 more of my friends have 'disconnected' and say they 'don't understand where they even had the time to watch such tripe.'
When I was free of pay TV and left with 'Broadcast T.V.' I was stunned by the sophistry and 'mind numbing' Pablem that was presented as 'entertainment'. I do enjoy some of the old tv, without commercials, on Netflix. Though even their 'streaming' library is thin.
Don't fear not being 'well informed'. Watching people 'tell you' what the news is, can cause ignorance. It is better to 'search' out all the news.
mitch| 7.15.12 @ 4:16PM
I'm a Dish customer, great for Direct TV, I've written to Dish to do the same, mainly against FOX which are frauding the people. Over two years ago we were held hostage to all the Fox channels for a big increase in pricing, Dish somewhat caved. Fox owns F/X, they always show 2 hour movies in 3 hour spots, but it's worse, a few times, they show a 2 hour movie in 3 1/2 hour spots, FOX also owns TNT, but the worse offense, the Fox Movie Channel. Even though they sell channels in a package format, channels like the Fox Movie Channel without commercials are charged out at a higher price, so we are paying more, then FOX turns around and makes it a commercial movie channel. No price reduction and to go along with that is the false advertisement from Fox, saying limited commercials from 3 pm to 3 am, but they start a movie at 2pm and 10 minutes later, commercials. They are the biggest crooks in the TV industry. False advertisement and fraud, yet no one is on the customer side and with Obama's FCC, nothing, which is suprising with how much Obama hates FOX.
So I hope Dish tells FOX, stick it where the sun doesn't shine. Let me also say, I joined Netflix for 7 days, to stream movies to my computer and TV, they are also dishonest. Alot of movies can not be streamed, just order thru their dvd mailing system, I went looking for some movies, very few of the current hits could be streamed, so I looked at others, Pretty Women, over 20 years old, couldn't be streamed from NetFlix.
trainman55| 7.16.12 @ 3:28AM
I never watched any of the crap that Viacom offered in the first place, but I doubt that DirecTV will lower my bill any time soon. What they have offered as a temporary replacement is worthless too! Encore only means one thing to me, and that is "repeats" of junk I wouldn't watch the first time they were shown!
Bill84728| 7.16.12 @ 12:57PM
I have always enjoyed Ray Bradbury's story The Pedestrian, in which he discusses the title character's perceptions of his neighbors' houses, as the flickering black and white light comes from their windows and is seen in the deserted streets.