[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] porkenhimer:
You do not have to agree, but it is a fact that no cable channel gets anywhere near the revenue for commercial time as do the four major networks. NBC, ABC, FOX and CBS all air shows that get the best ratings and no shows, except Monday Night Football, on cable can compete. Why do you think the ratings system is divided between the four major networks and the cable networks? It is because the cable networks would have to cancel every show they have based on low ratings if they had to compete with the four major networks. The only show on cable pulling down major network type numbers is Monday Night Football. You can have a show on cable that gets a couple million viewers in primetime and they call it a success, but if you have a show in primetime on one of the major networks and you can't pull down 10 million viewers then its a failure. Cable networks charge a fraction for commercial time of what the four major networks charge. Shows like American Idol, the Super Bowl, NCIS can get a million plus for 30 seconds of commercial time, and that will never happen on a cable network, period. The UK has PPV. As a matter of fact the reason thw WWE Network took so long to come to the UK was because of a PPV deal they had in place. WWE PPVs were $15 in the UK. Also WWE is not giving PPV for free now. When they sell PPV the price is set by the providers, not the WWE, UFC etc. The WWE would get a few dollars from each PPV buy, but now they can just sell their PPVs on the network and add some original programming in between and still come out making more than they were making on PPV buys. Did you really think that the $50+ goes to the WWE UFC etc? They get the smallest cut of everyone involved, and thats why they cut out the middle man. It is gonna force everyone to do the same, cause nobody is gonna wanna pay $50+ for an event when they can get it for $10 a month. Wait and see, within a year or two the UFC will be doing the same. The only reason they have not done it yet is because Dana White predicted the WWE Network would never get a million subscribers, and would fail, but now he can see that it worked, and he will have to follow eventually, cause nothing last forever and PPV is on its last leg. Its not that other countries are giving free PPV events, those networks in other contries have deals in place and they pay the WWE, UFC etc about the same as they would get from a PPV buy here in America. Like I said, the UFC and WWE get a few dollars per buy. The PPV business was basically a scam by entertainment companies. It was called closed circuit TV and whenever you wanted to see Ali fight or something special like that you would pay money and go to a theater to watch it live, but Vince got the same idea, but instead of going to the theater you would not have to leave your house. So the cable companies seen it as an opportunity to get money. So they charge people whatever people will pay, give the WWE a few dollars per buy and everyones happy. It worked for about thirty years, but the providers are charging so much that it was becoming a real headache for anyone to make money except the cable providers, and thats not good for the WWE so they created their own network. The PPV business will die soon, and thats a fact. You must not know business, but the entertainment business is the shadiest business of all. Its like when you buy a CD at the store, the store gets the biggest cut, and whats left goes to the record comany and gets filtered down through everyone that worked on the music. Every successful music person will tell you that selling albums does not make you rich, its doing shows that makes you rich. its called a point system, and each CD sold the artist gets a certain amount of points, which is usually pennies on the dollar, and the PPV business is basically the same way. A UFC or WWE PPV gets a million sales, but they get pennies from those sales. Google the record point system and maybe you will understand why PPV is dead, cause its basically the same thing, and then you will understand why record stores, book stores, video rental stores are all going out of business in droves. The internet gives entertainment companies all the controll, and entertainment providers are hanging on by a thread, cause they know that everyone is going digital and when they do a lot of those companies will die out. I know it seems hard to believe that a company everyone knows would go out of business, but a goood example is blockbuster, digital movie sales put them in the dirt. Five years ago nobody would have guessed that, but its happening to all the companies that provide entertainment. Everything is dying out. Players to play your content on are even becoming a thing of the past, cause everyone has smart TVs, tablets and carry laptops. The internet is killing everything from an entertainment standpoint, and if these entertainment companies do not conform they will be left behind. Just ask Borders, Walden Books and Blockbuster.