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Stupid media tricks

by — ,

I think I may have broken the law. Or maybe not. I’m not sure.

With my daughter vegging around the house Sunday, desperately avoiding her homework, I decided to watch a little bit of the Eagles-Panthers game, the problem being, the game wasn’t on TV. Still, I figured, nearly everything is available streaming online these days, and it didn’t take me too long to find what I was looking for.

Sure, I had to boot up my cranky old copy of Parallels/XP, and download some awkward piece of Windows software, but ten minutes later my MacBook was hooked up to my TV, and I was watching Donovan McNabb getting his ribs fractured in a live, if somewhat pixelated, full-screen picture. I would have paid for an easier, higher quality streaming option, but since the NFL wasn’t offering me one, I joined the thousands of other expatriate football fans willing to do what it takes to follow their out-of-market teams.

And following my team has been exceedingly difficult since moving to Seattle in 1992, the problem only exacerbated by the Seahawk’s 2002 move to the NFC West. The Eagles, perennial contenders, tend to be featured in a few nationally broadcast games each season, but during the intervening weeks the pickings are slim; even when the Eagles are featured in one of the weekly regional match-ups, Channel 13 tends to opt for something geographically closer.

Two or three times a year I trudge to a local sports bar to root on my Eagles, but I wasn’t about to drag my daughter to a bar, particularly at 10 in the morning. And I’m sure as hell not gonna pay the $1000-plus a year it would cost to both subscribe to DirectTV and purchase its NFL Sunday Ticket package, just for the privilege of watching maybe an additional dozen games at most.

So while Sunday’s stream kinda sucked, if the quality were a tad better I could imagine it becoming a bit of a habit.

Which raises the question… how fucking stupid must the NFL and the media companies be to drive potential paying customers like me into the arms of pirates, hackers and cheats? They certainly could stream games, but I suppose that would threaten Rupert Murdoch’s out-of-market monopoly. So instead, by refusing to address the demand that is already there, they are creating a market for free streaming that is technically impossible to quash, and will be very difficult to compete against once fans become conditioned to paying nothing.

Furthermore, it’s not at all clear that my private viewing of a live stream of an Over-The-Air broadcast from a Philadelphia station is even illegal. The unauthorized retransmission of this broadcast, that can’t be kosher, but my viewing of it on the Internet? I’m not so sure. How is this different from viewing infringing material on YouTube? And as for the ethical issues, it’s hard to feel guilty about watching an otherwise free, OTA broadcast, commercials and all, even if the NFL and News Corp. would rather I not.

I don’t know if I’ll watch another stream like this, but the point is I can, and there’s nothing the NFL can do to stop it. So rather than pretending these new technologies don’t exist, wouldn’t the NFL be better off offering a higher-quality, reasonably priced, paid streaming alternative, that didn’t turn avid fans into avid pirates? Hasn’t the rest of the entertainment industry learned anything from the mistakes of the music industry and its disastrously failed efforts to maintain the status quo?

It doesn’t take more than a few minutes of Googling to realize that nearly everything remotely streamable is available for streaming on the Internet, authorized or not, and yet Hollywood has its panties in a knot over the growing dominance of RedBox and its $1.00 rentals, while consumers in most of the rest of the world are exploiting the anarchy that is the Internet to remove themselves from the sales channel entirely.

If the studios are worried that $1.00 rentals might decimate their DVD sales, just imagine how hard they’ll find it to compete with free. The solution of course is to out-compete both RedBox and the pirates by aggressively putting their libraries online for streaming at competitive prices, before consumers learn habits that they’ll find very difficult to unlearn. Because one way or another, their content, just like the NFL’s is going to find its way online. The only question is who, if anybody, is going to profit from it.

Comments

  2. 2

    FWIW, yesterday I watched the men’s US Open final, streamed live in HD by the United States Tennis Association. It was the ESPN feed, announced by Enberg, McEnroe, and Carillo.

    I don’t think they would have carried it had the final been on Sunday — more to the point, on CBS — as originally scheduled. As evidence, consider this text from the above-linked page:

    From 9/12 – 9/14, US Open Live is available on USOpen.org for the first Men’s Singles Semifinal and the Women’s Singles Final on 9/13 and the Women’s Doubles Final and Men’s Singles Final on 9/14.

    Note that the second men’s semifinal, which took place at the time originally slotted for the men’s final, wasn’t carried online. That match was shown on CBS, at the same time as the Seahawks’ game (on FOX).

  3. 3

    If the studios are worried that $1.00 rentals might decimate their DVD sales, just imagine how hard they’ll find it to compete with free.

    If they’re scared of that they must be petrified of their local public library…

  5. 5

    Patricia Nell Scott “Pat” Schroeder of the Association of American Publishers has said that libraries were ripping her clients off. So Michael might be more accurate than he may think.

    I should point out that anything that is streamable is also storable with the right software. It just takes a little effort. As with DRM, the lock only works with a key, and to be at all usable you have to give the users the key.

  7. 7

    @4

    I hadn’t heard about Pat Schroeder’s comments, but I wasn’t just joking around.

    I quit Netflix when I realized I could order 80% of what was on my que for free from the library 3 miles from my house.

  8. 8

    They certainly could stream games, but I suppose that would threaten Rupert Murdoch’s out-of-market monopoly.

    Interesting how a rant about the NFL not airing Eagles games to Goldy’s satisfaction always circles back to Fox News and Rupert Murdoch. Did Murdochs success with the NFL games bring about the rise and prosperity of Fox News channel which didn’t exist previously? Some say yes. Nothing like kicking Goldy in the balls twice is there?

    This piece is worth a read on how Murdoch got the rights to air the NFL games…

  11. 11

    @ 8 ~ Rather than posting a dumb question like that, perhaps through the bong filled haze you may want to simply click on the link provided and it may make sense then.

    @ 9 FNC is the viewers choice for reliable news- as the Van Jones and Acornholers criminal organization has proven- The rest of the pom poms for Obama media are largely irrelevant.

  14. 14

    Two comments:

    1) this blog post is so 2001…

    2) Try justin.tv for your sports TV fix. You can find just about any game.

  15. 15

    Hmmm Goldy said this…

    They certainly could stream games, but I suppose that would threaten Rupert Murdoch’s out-of-market monopoly.

    How Goldy? How did you cum with this comment? From DUmmys? Puddy had heard this lame argument before…so Puddy decided to recheck if things changed.

    All found on the web…

    —Murdoch’s News Corp. used to own DirecTV.

    —In a splattering blow to the satellite biz, Rupert Murdoch supposedly called DirecTV a “turd bird” on Thursday and is considering selling News Corp.’s controlling stake to Liberty Media.

    —Liberty bought about 40 percent of DirecTV last year from News Corp. in exchange for Liberty’s 16 percent stake in Rupert Murdoch’s media company. Liberty, based in Englewood, Colorado, said Sept. 3 it planned to separate the entertainment unit.

    —Media baron Rupert Murdoch says he “might have been wrong” to sell off DirecTV in February.

    —In the DirecTV deal, Liberty, the holding company of John Malone, exchanged its 16.3% stake in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. for a 41% controlling stake in DirecTV. Liberty also gets $625 million in cash for ceding its stake, as well as two RSNs.

    The deal closed after Liberty won regulatory approval from the Federal Communications Commission for its purchase. News Corp. agreed to sell the controlling stake in DirecTV in 2006, three years after it took control of the company.

    —Liberty Media – In November 2006, News Corporation announced its intention to transfer its managing interest in The DirecTV Group to John Malone’s Liberty Media; in return it bought back Liberty’s shares in News Corp., giving the Murdoch family tighter control of the latter firm. On February 29, 2008, after receiving FCC approval, Liberty completes its acquisition of News Corporation’s shares of DirecTV. Liberty was required by the FCC to sell its shares in either DirecTV’s Puerto Rico operations or Liberty’s cable provider in the island.

    —On February 2, 2008, Liberty Media acquired 41 percent of Direct TV Group. Announcement of the deal was made on December 22, 2006. In the announcement, Liberty Media stated that, “We are happy to become the largest shareholder in the world’s largest satellite television
    provider.”

    —John Malone is known for orchestrating companies and transactions that are highly complex financially. On Monday, the Liberty Media (NSDQ: LINTA) chairman was it again. Liberty Media announced it would spin off its entertainment unit (Liberty Entertainment) and merge it with DirecTV (NYSE: DTV) in a stock transaction. (DirecTV will also assume about $2 billion in Liberty debt). Liberty Media actually announced back in December plans to spin off Liberty Entertainment, a holding company that would control about half of DirecTV, as well as the Game Show Network, FUN Technologies and Liberty Sports Holdings. But at the time, it made no mention of merging the company with DirecTV.

    The deal rids Liberty of $2 billion of debt and should simplify the equity structures of both Liberty Media and DirecTV, making both stocks more attractive to investors. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.

    —Hmm, now isn’t this interesting? Just months after Liberty Media reached out at the eleventh hour and rescued Sirius XM from imminent bankruptcy, it’s now spinning off its entertainment division (Liberty Entertainment) and combining it with DirecTV (which Liberty already controls). We’re told that the new Liberty Entertainment will hold 54 percent of DirecTV Group shares and 65 percent interest in the Game Show Network, not to mention three regional sports networks and a few other things not worth mentioning. The move is being made as the “John Malone-controlled vehicle looks to simplify its capital structure,” and if all goes well, the paperwork should be completed by the end of the year. Oh, and so far as we can tell, DirecTV consumers won’t even notice the shuffling going on behind the scenes.

    Butt Puddy wonders if anyone read this on Yahoo?

    Hmmm… it’s all there!

    It’s curious how the HA faithful took someone’s word on this one too!

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