Seattle, WA - Comcast - Page 7

KCTS is a local station.

alex

Amen....the progress is slow, but this is great news!

Yay more HD for Washington!!! yahoo!!!!!

How hard is it to lead when you're the ONLY GAME IN TOWN?!?!?.

I mean honestly, it's not like I can call Charter cable up and have them hook me up. Or call Time Warner cable and have them set up me up even though I don't live in a carriage state. How hard is it to lead when you're a monopoly and the only reason you're the "leader" anywhere is you bought the company which was the monopoly previously..... I mean sheesh..

I love PR spin.


Ok, I'm done ruminating now....

Steve, I find your musing interesting, but I think I may have some alternate viewpoints on to the whole battle between Comcast and the locals. I honeslty think now that it's Comcast who's dragging their feet. Your musing brings up the argument that the locals have spent a fair amount of money to broadcast in HD, and the contention that they would not want to give it away for free.

KOMO is spending even more money to advertise the very fact that it is free today. They do this knowing full well that if people aren't going to be able to receive an OTA signal, they will hammer their cable co to pick up the HD channel. Why would they spend advertising revenue, place ads in lucrative spots (during the news and prime time shows - higher per ad costs) to say their digital / hd signal is free today if the wanted money for it?

Would they do this if they were wanting to charge money for cable carriage in the first place? I can find some tactful, clandestine reasons why there may be a yes to this question, but all in all, the overall picture really slants to a no at that point.

Sorry, I'll turn my "Tom Clancy interpretation of local television politics" mode off now

Oh boy, I think KCTS is spooling myabe two hours a night of HD?

And ESPN-HD, IMHO, who cares. I'm sure some folks do but I'm not one of them.

Here's an idea, go 100% digital and deliver high bitrate SD and all the HD locals as well as neat stuff like Discovery.

Wasn't the whole argument around the out of market singals on satellite based on projected losses in ad revenue? Yes, I'm sure they hit the panic button heavy and used Enron-ian accounting to pull a number out of thin air...

But, the only method they really have to pay the bills and turn a profit is by selling local ad time. If they lose x number of viewers to DBS subscribers w/ out of market signals they have to set their ad pricing index lower based on projected market share.

I don't think in this case they are really seeing an influx of money from a satellite subscriber base (certainly not at 4.95 amonth split between all the other channels), but if they can claim 10 thousand more households on their advertising rate charts, they sure can get more money from Albert Lee Appliance or Jet Chevrolet on a per ad basis.

I came in to this Comcast vs. Locals on HD thing kinda late..I had beautiful OTA signal until I moved, and have been cable free for 6 years. So, I admit I haven't seen all the press releases and sound bites by all the sides involved, but I have to say, it just doesn't make a lot of sense to advertise a free signal and in turn risk losing all of the potential revenue you could have if the cable company had caved in to your demands to be paid for carriage.

Maybe its EXACTLY why you say.. they realize WE (actually regular NON informed customers) will see that commercial, call up their cable company and says "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS BS? IT SAYS I CAN GET IT FREE AND YOU GUYS STILL DONT HAVE IT? WHATS GOING ON HERE? I THINK ILL CANCEL MY CABLE BECUASE YOUR SO USLESS!"

in turn by doing so, the cable company gets MORE pressure to just break down and pay the channels the money they want to keep their customers.. I think your previous analysis would be lower level tom clancy, this would be a high up analogy because the stations would be trying to manipulate the cable company with its own customers.. if it worked my hat would be off to them! (not just becuase we'd FINALLY have locals but becuase its a longshot that comcast even gives a damn about its customers)..

Well, ESPN HD is gone, so it looks like you got your wish.

The thing ESPN HD has that folks are interested in is NFL Football in HD.

I don't know about KCTS, but I'm not going to complain about getting more HD. It looks like Discovery HD is not in the picture, unless they decide to cut a deal like ESPN did. I imagine the guys on TWC would trade Discovery HD for ESPN HD in a New York minute, though.

For the sake of getting lost in too many debates on the business practices and ethics of the locals and Comcast, I'll just keep my mouth shut after this.... Well, maybe some more glib comments here and there, but no more hypotheticals and Clancy-eque-ing.

See, this is what I get for ignoring local TV stations & cable until I was sans OTA. Thanks for the link on the KIRO story. Fully unaware that happened.

But, that article leaves opens some holes in my view. And they are likely to be holes that aren't going to be closed because that's the nature of business.

I guess what I'm trying to get at (and not doing a terribly wonderful job of) is that you really can't lay blame fully at the feet of one side or the other in this debacle.

If I was to stand here and say it's somebody's "fault", I'd have to go with a 60/40 break. The 60 would be Comcast. I firmly believe the 40 for the locals really wouldn't have much to do with some outrageous carriage fee being shoved down Comcasts throat. I've seen no evidene that locals are withholding their signals, in fact two of the emails in that HDTVPUB thread basically said, "they can have it anytime they wish", and another station is risking the loss of this revenue from a large segment of customers by playing the "you can have it free today" commercials and getting the word out that they are open for your HDTV business today, all you need is the HDTV hardware and an antenna.

Could KOMO be playing hardball by turning Comcast customers who can't get their locals OTA against them? Sure, but another likely scenario is, they want to start adding households viewing HDTV to their advertising rate books so they can claim a more affluent market and get Albert Lee Appliances to buy another set of ads on their HDTV stream.

Do the locals want money? Sure, show me a business that wouldn't in the same situation. Do I believe that's purely for the purpose of offsetting their upgrade costs? Nope. They can cover that in a few months with the new revenue stream advertising on their HD channels will open up. And I'd also suspsect that most of the big 4 have it already paid for. KOMO is the only station with full HD local production capabilities, and they've had those for some time. The rest aren't doing much of anything other than retransmission of their national feed. Had they all built full in-house production facilities and armed almost every one of their trucks with HD cameras, I could see this, but so far KOMO is the only player that has those features.

You could argue that they want the money so they can upgrade their studios and trucks, but here again I'll point you to the crowned jewel, the local ad money.

Add the fact that KCTS still isn't on the air when the deal has been done for some time and this opens a whole different can of worms...

KCTS is not-for-profit, but they are in a world of hurt financially. They are the only announced local HD deal Comcast has done. The fact that it's still not being piped into homes and there is no ETA in sight is a nice little twist here. Especially when you see that ESPN-HD, where the ink is hardly dry on the deal, has been tested on channel 100 and a press release sent confirming an August 4th launch.

Are there technical difficulties with KCTS' multi-casting feed? Why did Comcast sign and announce the deal not knowing when they could have it in homes? Or knowing they wouldn't have it in homes for some time? Why are they advertising it constantly knowing any number of the aforementioned is true? Maybe Comcast is looking to offset their facility upgrades by encouraging customers to sign up for an elevated pckage and then stringing along before delivering any promised content to them. That's just as likely as any of the locals holding Comcast over a barrell demanding outrageous fees.

Why did KCTS sign and not any of the others? Could this mean that KCTS was so financially strapped they had to take a low ball offer from Comcast? Did they do this hoping they could get into more affluent households with HDTVs and hopefully start generating more contributions? And usually when one station signs, one of the others in a similar situation will "break ranks" and follow, and then another one. Eventually one of the big 4 will want to open up that new revenue stream and get the jump on their competition so they'll blink. But that hasn't happened yet.

Will Lassie be able to get Timmy out of the well? That's about the only question I think we'll ever really know the answer...

Like I said, there are too many omissions and contradictions in this battle to make me stand here waving my finger and shouting "j'accuse" to the local channels alone.

Now I'll go sit silently with a candle lit in my window hoping my Local HDs can find their way home again.

Wait a minute - that article says, "There was no interruption of KIRO broadcasts to Millennium cable customers."

Read the press release again - it says in there that KCTS will be on as of August 7.

I'm not a cable insider, but as a computer guy, the KCTS and ESPN HD thing looks just like a capacity issue. The maintenance thing they did on July 30 probably added some capacity. Next, they need to ensure that the fix didn't cause any problems, and that they actually could get ESPN HD on and working. Because lots of people are clamoring for ESPN HD, they put priority on that over KCTS.

They've been telling people all last month that KCTS would be added in August.

Missed that in the press release, my A.D.D. strikes again.

But you act like the revenue generated from ads on HDTV will be as much as regular tv.. this cannot be so.. there cant be 10% of the homes with HDTV in them yet even.. sooo may more people have simple regular TV.. so it doesn't make much sense for advertises to advertise on an ONLY HDTV channel they'd be limiting their own market.. I think these locals want some money up front to help cover the costs.. I dont think their trying to get payed every month.. the reason the OTA is free is becuase they have the equipment and they'll NEVER get paid for OTA, who's gonna pay em? You? They either give it away frree or not give it away and waste all that money on the HDTV.. the cable company's is the only place where they feel they have a bit of power to try and squeeze some money out.. I personally feel that comcast makes way more than enough money to jump start these channels for us and just close the deal... but alas greed strikes again.

is anyone getting the game on channel 100? (sat nite, 8pm)

I'm getting a "channel should be available shortly" message...grrrr....

Rich

Well, then the FCC needs to step in and put a stop to it. They could say that as long as a station still has an analog broadcast signal in addition to a digital one, then they must provide the HD signal to cable systems on request at no charge. When the analog signal is returned to the FCC, then negotiated broadcast fees would transfer to the HD signal.

They could say this because they want to encourage the migration of analog to digital and expedite the return of the analog bandwidth to be auctioned off by the government. The existing standoff serves no one except for greedy broadcasters.

not to change the subject or anything, but...

has anyone else noticed that the black level for tonights mariner's game seems low? compared to my HD output from directv, I've had to crank the brightness up on my projector when watching the mariners feed. actually, it seems as though the ntsc/sd channels seem dark too... (I'm using the component outputs)

anyone else noticed this?

from the moto 5100 manual, I couldn't see that I could increase the brightness of the unit itself.

Looks like ESPN-HD is up & running in its permanent slot on Ch. 173 as of this morning. Of course, they're still showing 4:3 programming stretched & mangled to 16:9, making it unwatchable. I can only imagine this decision was made by ESPN's lawyers; no doubt terrified of "plasma screen burn-in" lawsuits.

I wonder if the stretch mode is really for sports bars who would rather not have their brand new plasma screens burned in by black sidebars. I noticed at Seahawks Stadium on Saturday that all the screens in the club area are widescreen plasmas, showing the Seahawks scrimmage action in stretch mode.

I asked a Comcast guy at Seahawks Stadium if the Seahawks will be in HD this season. He said yes. I then asked if the preseason games would be in HD. He said no. This was a lone guy sitting in the Comcast booth after it was all cleared out at the end of the event, so I'd give him a credibility rating of 10 percent.

I guess I'm missing the problem here.

If you don't like ESPN's pre-done stretching of the picture, then watch the 4:3 stuff (standard definiton that's been upcoverted) on the standard definition channel and you can watch in whatever mode (normal, stretch, zoom, etc.) that you prefer/that your TV will permit. Upconverted standard definition broadcast on an HD feed really won't look much better than simply watching at native standard resolution anyways. When a true HD game/event comes on then switch back to the ESPN HD channel. This way you can get the best of both.

These same principles apply with the current Showtime, HBO and Mariners HD/standard definition channels as well. Obviously, when everything goes HD then this won't be needed, but until then it seems to be a suitable compromise.

Am I overlooking something else?