New NFL franchise: the SCs

[TNT]

I'm glad that your company switched the NFL channel over to a special pay section. It's too expensive for what is essentially a niche market (even a large niche) especially when the big games are always group viewing events.

re: Cable vs Satellite

When I switched to Satellite, I did the math, checked the differences, and never looked back.

I ended up paying $30 less per month to get about twice the channels (not including all the music stuff) and suffer many, many fewer outages. Plus, the customer service for DriectTV was outstanding, and the customer service for Charter sucked like a black hole.

^-.-^

I think it's sound economics to have a sports tier for certain channels... the value of the NFL channel isn't enough to charge every subscriber for a relatively few games. The same holds true for soccer, which is still a relatively niche sport in the US.

As far as cable vs. satellite goes, most of my dim view of satellite comes from working for two different companies (outsourced both times) -- I've never actually had a dish. Though I've heard things are somewhat better, the fact still remains that much of satellite's cost advantage comes at the expense of its employees.

As far as the cable companies (and increasingly, the telephone companies) are concerned, satellite is irrelevant. Being an inherently one-way medium, satellite is a singularly futureless business in a two-way world.

[Andara Bledin]

As far as the cable companies (and increasingly, the telephone companies) are concerned, satellite is irrelevant. Being an inherently one-way medium, satellite is a singularly futureless business in a two-way world.

Eventually, it will become obsolete. However, in a world where cable doesn't cover everywhere, and you have no choice about which cable provider you go with, satellite will be around for some time, yet.

^-.-^

[TNT]

Eventually, it will become obsolete. However, in a world where cable doesn't cover everywhere, and you have no choice about which cable provider you go with, satellite will be around for some time, yet.

^-.-^

It's hard to say.

But, when it all comes down, this fact remains: satellite was the best thing to ever happen to cable... and cable was the best thing that ever happened to satellite. And the ultimate winner was the the public. A lot of people don't want to believe that, but I'm confident it's true. It's actually a rather fascinating story... and it's not something I learned while working at the cable company.

[Andara Bledin]

Competition is always a boon for the end users.

IE was left to languish until Firefox stepped up to the plate. Dropping usage lit a fire under MS' butt and they went back to development on IE about 2 years ahead of what they had scheduled.

^-.-^

[Rapscallion]

Two weeks ago, FF was the most common browser used for viewing this site. This week, it had increased - I think it's about 32% FF, 30 IE7, 28% IE6 at last count. Of course, the figures are slightly skewed by having two versions of IE common at the same time, and by the 0.036% of users browsing with IE4 (I kid you not - we had one...).

This isn't a browser pissing contest, by the way, just noting, so please don't start making debates about this. We've got a section on Fratching for that - Yahurd did his best to ... debate things from his point of view a while ago.

Rapscallion

[TNT]

Competition is always a boon for the end users.

IE was left to languish until Firefox stepped up to the plate. Dropping usage lit a fire under MS' butt and they went back to development on IE about 2 years ahead of what they had scheduled.

^-.-^

Usually it is. What could have happened with cable vs. satellite is that cable could have elected to get into a price war. Cable had a solid 20 year head start, plus considerably deeper pockets... they could have hurt satellite very badly during its formative years.

Instead, cable avoided a price war and devoted their resources to developing things like Video on Demand, broadband internet and telephony.... things satellite can't do. Consumers didn't get the price breaks they were hoping for, but we did get much of the US wired for broadband... largely creating the infrastructure for internet we have today.

Browsers... the field got more complicated this week with the introduction of Apple's Safari for Windows.

[Demolition Man]

The funny part is other than the couple of games a season they air now, NO ONE watches the NFL Network. Seriously, if the channel disappeared from March to July, no one would even realize it.

Actually the NFL Network does air the Europa league during most of that timespam on Saturday. That's quite a bit of fun to watch if you don't mind most teams being the players that might at best get 1-2 plays the entire year on any NFL team normally.

Outside of that... yeah I might occasionally tune into the daily news program between March to July but other then that I don't watch it much. Tho I did watch the rerun of the Patriots vs Raiders playoff game from 2002 last Thursday. That game is still a blast to watch five years later.

[Andara Bledin]

Instead, cable avoided a price war and devoted their resources to developing things like Video on Demand, broadband internet and telephony.... things satellite can't do. Consumers didn't get the price breaks they were hoping for, but we did get much of the US wired for broadband... largely creating the infrastructure for internet we have today.

Seriously, though, I wouldn't begin to trust my local cable company for broadband and telephony. I had their broadband, and after 6 months, I was willing to pay to get out of my contract, they were just that bad. Thankfully, their record-keeping sucked as bad as their service, and they didn't even show I was on a contract, so I got away without having to pay.

^-.-^