davgreg

The TV business is essentially a cartel and is closely aligned with the distributors. AT&T owns satellite, streaming, fiber and copper delivered TV content and Warner Media as well as being a large ISP. Comcast owns NBCUniversal and is the second largest cable and wired ISP company in the country. Disney, Discovery, and CBS/Viacom (common ownership) and the above listed companies all leverage popular content to force stuff nobody wants onto bundles to get paid more- forcing users to subsidize channels with tiny audiences.

In a competitive and free consumer market we should see prices dropping and what we are seeing is prices rising and streaming packages priced increasingly like cable. People did not turn to streaming because they wanted the same crap by a different delivery system- they wanted the few channels they actually watch at a reasonable price. This is why it is almost impossible to get a package without subsidizing ESPN- Disney says you put it in or you cannot have the other stuff they have like ABC. They lard your bundle with channels few watch, but get paid anyhow by the forced bundle.

Streaming is theft.
Here is a tweet from Peter Frampton:

“For 55 million streams of, ‘Baby I Love Your Way’, I got $1,700. I went to Washington with ASCAP last year to talk to law makers about this. Their jaws dropped and they asked me to repeat that for them.“

https://mobile.twitter.com/peterframpton/status/1025584924609400832?lang=en

Do you think Hollywood would take $1700 for 55 million tickets to a movie?

The NYT and WaPo both went through near-death experiences transitioning from ad-supported free online to a subscription-based model. Both are now highly profitable and have subscribers from an upscale demographic set. Why would they want to cut their prices and then share revenue with Apple only to be dumped in a cesspool with Fox News and the Murdoch Street Journal?

I pay the NYT $20 a month for unlimited digital access. That funds high-quality reporting that is exclusive to that organization. If they give it away on Apple's platform they will have nothing unique and will be getting far less than now.

I really do not know exactly why Eddy Cue still has a job considering his track record with music and video.

The right to repair movement should strive to push products that are designed to be easily repaired and with as few proprietary components as possible.

In my business, Medical Imaging/Radiology, the manufacturers switched over from using industry standard components to proprietary stuff down to the level of switches and lamps. This greatly inflated the price of maintaining equipment and slowed down the process of getting equipment back on line. This was not to improve performance of anything but the bottom line of their service business. 

Getting into bed with Goldman is like sleeping with a working prostitute- you run a very high risk of disease.

Given how low the prime rate is, the range of rates for the card are simply usury- excessive and rapacious. A real revolution would have been to offer credit at a rate much closer to Prime. So Goldman gets the money for 3% or less, loans it to you for 13% (and up) and you get a 3% rebate- that is quite a spread.

I see no value here.