Glenn Beck
I've written extensively about the Glenn Beck boycott: that its "success" is being distorted and exaggerated, and why it is doomed to fail.
I don't just mean that the boycott has turned off powerful companies that maybe, just maybe, boycott organizers Color of Change might have wanted as allies one day -- not to mention the ordinary consumers and Glenn Beck fans who've countered by "buy-cotting" the boycotted sponsors.
I also intuited that there was something about the way cable networks operate, as opposed to old fashioned broadcasters, that made Glenn Beck's show particularly immune from boycott damage. However, I don't know enough about the business to explain that coherently.
Luckily, last week, a network TV veteran emailed me with his thoughts on the Glenn Beck boycott. He agreed to let me print his comments here, on the condition of anonymity. They're fascinating because once again, we witness so-called "progressives" continuing to form their worldviews and action plans upon early to mid-twentieth century political, business and cultural models.
I'm reprinting the TV insider's comments here, redacted only to conceal his identity. He writes:
You need to have an insider's view of why the boycott against Glenn Beck is so laughable.
One of the major differences between broadcast operations and cable networks is how they generate income. For broadcasters advertising dollars rule the day. But in cable it is subscriber fees.
Each cable net charges the cable/satellite operator a fee for carriage. You set a rate and once you reach a certain saturation point you begin to make money. It doesn't matter at that point if you sell ads or not.
In return the operator gets inventory to sell in the networks. So the operators and the networks get cash directly from the viewers and whatever ad money they generate is mere icing on the cake. Fox News could run PSA's and AbCruncher spots 24/7 and still make money.
The broadcasters tried to get in on this a few years back by demanding deals for retransmission consent but most of them blew it by exchanging retransmission for carriage of other channels run by their corporate owners. (Disney used their ABC O&O's to launch ESPN2 and ESPN News.)
The funny thing is, is that one of those hits is to a CBC article that claims, "As for conventional TV networks in the U.S., there are no carriage fees there for over-the-air channels carried by cable or satellite companies."
They don't call it a carriage fee, they call it retransmission consent. When the FCC passed that law they allowed for "other considerations."
Here's how this works: I am Disney and own the ABC affiliate in your market. If you are an MSO (Multiple System Owner) like Time-Warner or Comcast, we can deal in multiple markets. But I want to launch ESPN 42. If you, the cable guy, want to keep carrying the ABC station(s), lest you incur the wrath of armed "Dancing With the Stars" fans, you'll find a spot for ESPN 42. And the neat thing is that the retrans consent will eventually lapse and I get to shove something else down your throat in three to four years.
The other laugh is this: 18 million of Fox News Channel's viewers are on DirecTV... that's owned by NewsCorp. Those fees go into Murdoch's pocket if FNC aired a test pattern, let alone Glenn Beck. Same thing with Time-Warner and CNN.
In 1948 the Justice Department brought antitrust action against the Hollywood Studios because they showed their own pictures in their own theatres. Now, Warner Brothers sells to TNT who runs the picture along a Time-Warner cable right into your living room.
Comments
And there is also the fact that he continuously brings facts to light and the left continues to play on words and never refute anything that is exposed. They only attack the logic stream that follows. It is the same thing over and over. The idealists and the liberals who support rewarding weakness, ignorance and failure in the hopes that people will somehow magically rise up and learn how to be responsible for their own lives without ever being forced to, will not understand the folly of this election until years after the racist claims have been disproven. Please report on the criminal activities of George Soros or the conflict of interest between Immelt / G.E. / and our national policies and tax dollars. PLEASE JUST ONCE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING REAL!!!!!!!!!!
Lord, I figured this stuff out when I first got cable tv back in the mid-Eighties. Remember when one of the draws of cable was "no more commercials!" Well that didn't last long -- that "icing" must taste good -- but I thought everyone knew that these days advertisers don't matter when it comes to getting rid of tv shows through them. (You can still, of course, threaten not to buy the advertisers' stuff but that will only bring _those_ companies down, not the tv shows they advertise on.)
The basic outlines of what your source told you are correct. Apparently you are the last person in the free world to know that cable operators pay license fees for the programming they retransmit on a per sub basis.
Fox has 102 million subs (according to the wikipedia). Two years ago, Multichannel News reported that under new contracts Cablevision and Time Warner Cable average around 75 cents per subscriber, per month for the channel. That yields an annual income of $76.5 million.
The NYT in 2008 reported O'Reilly's salary at $10 million, Shep Smith at 8, no telling how much Beck and Hannity earn. Add to that the infrastructure costs of running the network: The technology, the engineers, writers, producers, and they could burn that 77 mil pretty fast.
No, advertising is not icing on the cake, it's bread and butter.
And without meaning to, you've made a great case for a la carte programming on cable. If folks don't like fox they shouldn't have to pay for it, right? Rig
The basic outlines of what your source told you are correct. Apparently you are the last person in the free world to know that cable operators pay license fees for the programming they retransmit on a per sub basis.
Fox has 102 million subs (according to the wikipedia). Two years ago, Multichannel News reported that under new contracts Cablevision and Time Warner Cable average around 75 cents per subscriber, per month for the channel. That yields an annual income of $76.5 million.
The NYT in 2008 reported O'Reilly's salary at $10 million, Shep Smith at 8, no telling how much Beck and Hannity earn. Add to that the infrastructure costs of running the network: The technology, the engineers, writers, producers, and they could burn that 77 mil pretty fast.
No, advertising is not icing on the cake, it's bread and butter.
And without meaning to, you've made a great case for a la carte programming on cable. If folks don't like fox they shouldn't have to pay for it, right? Rig
Interesting!
Did anybody on the left boycott Kanye West when he said "Bush doesn't care about black people" -- ie, that the President was a racist? Bit of a double standard there, guys.
"um, Kathy? says:
Fox has 102 million subs (according to the wikipedia). Two years ago, Multichannel News reported that under new contracts Cablevision and Time Warner Cable average around 75 cents per subscriber, per month for the channel. That yields an annual income of $76.5 million."
If your numbers are correct, then your math is not very good.
102 million subs at 75 cents per month is 76.5 million per month for a total of 918 million per year. No small chunk of change I would say and if Fox only got half of that would be 459 million per year.I dont know what they get though.
Your math is correct, mine is as bad as it ever has been. However, being a TV insider myself (who didn't have to deal with math) $460 million is still not a lot to fully underwrite an expensive operation like Fox News. There's a reason why they go after advertising, and that reason is they need the money.
Good girl, always on the watch for another of your fan to post a follow-up to one of your learned missives.
as part of your continuing education on how the cable tv machine works here's a piece to take to school for show and tell: bit.ly/ZO0HS
bit.ly/SRw13
Fox rakes in more ratings than any other news station out there. They have turned down numerous amounts sponsors because of their belief system. They are the only station that gives both sides of each story and have a designated line for the White House; just in case the information is wrong and needs to be corrected. The White House has not called the phone line once. So, with that being said I would also like to add that wikipedia should never be used a reference for any information. My 15-year-old nephew posts false information on that website for fun.
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