From: roby@chopin.udel.edu (Scott W Roby)
Subject: Re: Will we have to pay to see Star Trek?
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 20:53:17 GMT

In article <4goesB7w164w@cellar.org> kbarger@cellar.org (Kyle Barger) writes:
>roby@chopin.udel.edu (Scott W Roby) writes:
>
>> I subscribe, too.  I'm simply asking why commercial TV on cable can't 
>> be funded (via advertisers alone) the same way that commercial TV by 
>> broadcast is.
>
>Don't forget the viewership numbers involved.  Channels like CNN or the
>Comedy Channel can get along with rating shares like 1% and 2%.  That would
>be unbelieveably pathetic for a network, where even a dud of a show will
>usually get 8 or 9.  So these cable channels cannot charge as much for their
>advertising, because they do not reach as many people.  

This is a good point.

>Where is the
>difference made up?  In the per-subscriber fee that all the cable channels
>charge.  They just get bunched together in the "basic" part of the bill,
>instead of being billed separately like HBO et al. 

It would be good to know the actual numbers.  Does anyone have them?
Assuming (perhaps wildly incorrectly) that the total revenue is divided 
up into 5% from per-subscriber basic fees and 95% from advertising charges 
for all commercial channels carried, then the proposal I have made would 
be that all advertising charges be bumped 5% across the board and that the 
basic fee be dropped. This would then make basic cable funded in the same 
manner of broadcast TV and would make the commercial time fully justified 
rather than just partially justified.

I suspect that this proposal could be made to work in the long run 
even if the division was initially 50/50.  (i.e. even if the 
advertising charges were doubled)  The difference is that you might 
want to raise the advertising charges over a longer period of time 
(as I pointed out earlier, the proper time to have done this would be 
during the formative years of cable).  I mean after all -- if they 
were able to convince the consumer that cable was worth the extra cost, 
surely they could convince the sponsors that it was worth the extra 
cost (better demographics, etc.).

Where's that alternate universe where basic commercial cable is free?
Hmm...  Seems I saw an inter-dimensional doorway around here 
somewhere...         Oh...  Her
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Gad.. That was terribly inefficient!  Sort of like sending out cable 
bills to millions of subscribers, when you only really need to send 
out advertising bills to hundreds of advertisers.  How inefficient.

Cheers.





-- 
Scott W. Roby           *This sentence no verb.*      "No Matter where you go..
Phys.& Astr.Dept.    ///// / /  /  *|*  \  \ \ \\\\\      there you are!"
Univ.of Delaware    ((((( ( (  (  * + *  )  ) ) )))))   -> Buckaroo Banzai
roby@brahms.udel.edu \\\\\ \ \  \  *|*  /  / / /////   *Standard Disclaimer*
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.current