Unbundling? Sky's Falling? Panic on the Street!

Media stocks amp160according to Bloomberg amp160quotwere the bestperforming stocks of the bull market rising 531 to eclipse automakers retail stores and banksamp160 The industry39s market capitalization was about 650 billion compared with 135 billion in 2009amp160 That value is evaporatingamp160 In just five stocks amp160Disney Time Warner Inc Fox CBS and Comcast Corp almost 50 billion has been erased in two daysquotBoth conduit and content companies got dingedamp160Netflix of course continues to go up on the pipes of the ISPs formerly known as cable companiesSometime before September 4thamp160amp160because STELAR Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization demands it amp160the Federal Confusion Commission will start an examination of the quotstate of retransmissionquot rulesamp160 That might be good timing After all the rules started the rush to add more and more channels to the cable bundleamp160 When Congress decided broadcasters should be paid for their free TV channels in order for cable subscribers to gain access cable operators really didn39t want to pay cashamp160 So ABCowned ESPN created ESPN2 and Fox created FX amp160Cable ops paid for the new channels instead of directly paying for the overtheair quotfreequot broadcast channelsamp160 We can thank Dr John Malone Rupert Murdoch and the late Ray Joslin for that quotopportunityquotamp160 But after too many new channels cable discovered it would have to pay cash for the quotfreequot channels but the rush to the mythic 500 channels had already commencedAnd nowamp160 Now many consumers can see that CBS wants to get paid as much as ESPN on a persubscriber basis as some bills reflect the retransmission feesamp160 And at the same time consumers are pretty fed up with paying for a lot of retransspawned channels they never watchSo obviously something39s gotta give And Wall Street noticed But I think they are overreacting gee surprised driven by shortterm thinkingLast year the collective payTV market dropped 320000 subscribers in the second quarter this year the same group dropped 20000 fewer subs leaving of course that loss of 300kLong term content cannot totally disregard the conduit amp8230 content will eventually share revenues with conduitamp160 The impending deal between Starz and cable operators might provide the templateRandom NotesMy new book amp8220The Revolutionary Evolution of the Mediaamp8221 continues Goamp160here to read it from the beginningFascinating to watch as a major political party effectively outsourced primary election set ups in favor of commercials interrupted by questions and sort of answersamp160 Still parts of the socalled minor and major league Fox News debates were entertaining if not enlighteningamp160 Interesting that a cable news channel seriously dominated the quotnewsquot last week while at the same time pundits were putting down cable well the bundleamp160 In fact only NBC showed a broadcast audience gain during the debate the show was Food FightersWho knew Fox News was biased amp8230 against the DonaldThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecom management or associated bloggers amp160

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Unbundling? Sky's Falling? Panic on the Street!

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Paul S. Maxwell

Empowering Women in Media: Insights from Industry Leaders (Video) - By E.B. Moss

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Unbundling? Sky's Falling? Panic on the Street!

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Empowering Women in Media: Insights from Industry Leaders (Video) - By E.B. Moss

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