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Hopper mascot at Dish Network's CEDIA booth

Hopper mascot at Dish Network’s CEDIA booth

“What nimbleTV is doing, Dish regards as illegal.” That’s what a press relations contact for Dish told me this afternoon immediately after consulting with Dish executives at their booth at CEDIA Expo. I had asked Dave Arland about the nature of Dish’s relationship with nimbleTV, prompting him to withdraw to a lengthy discussion before returning with that short answer.

When I pointed out that Dish had already shut down nimbleTV once and asked why Dish didn’t simply continue cutting off its service, Arland replied, “It’s not that simple.” He said that nimbleTV had “workarounds” and declined to elaborate further.

That description of nimbleTV contradicts its often-stated goal of keeping its programmers fully paid and therefore happy. I’ve reached out to nimbleTV for a reaction to today’s Dish comment, but at the time of this post, I haven’t received a reply.

Clearly something happened in the weeks between Dish cutting off nimbleTV and the resumption of nimbleTV’s Dish-based packages. I had theorized that Dish required certain changes that nimbleTV implemented in the interim – local channels restricted to in-market subscribers, and fewer simultaneous recordings. There was one other change that I hadn’t mentioned, one that Dish would be unlikely to request. In my bottom-tier package, drawing from channels in Dish’s Welcome Pack, my non-local channels such as Comedy Central and TBS are now in HD. Before the service interruption, nimbleTV had delivered those in SD, matching the quality that direct subscribers to the Welcome Pack would see. If Dish mandated those changes, why allow HD upgrades to Welcome Pack subscribers? If Dish didn’t mandate those other changes, why did nimbleTV make them?

If Dish is right, could it have been that nimbleTV’s programmers somehow created some “workarounds” to continue offering service despite Dish’s desire to cut them off? Is nimbleTV account stacking, running too many receivers on each Dish account and letting too many subscribers view the results? I have a hard time believing that nimbleTV’s slow, careful buildup would culminate in aw-heck-with-it illegal access. NimbleTV could clear the air by simply telling the world how it delivers all those Dish-originated channels to all those streaming customers. In the absence of those facts, I’m confused as usual about nimbleTV. And even now, I sure hope it’s legal.

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ebruscreenAfter I wrote about DishWorld last week, I knew I needed to give it a try so I could let you know what it’s like. It turns out that DishWorld offers some interesting wrinkles on how to stream TV over the internet.

DishWorld offers TV programming packages in 15 non-English languages. All of them include a bonus set of international English channels, and some also include a few English sports channels. I chose the Mandarin package, which includes 22 Chinese channels plus the English and sports sets for $14.99 per month. Other languages are more expensive. For example, Filipino provides just two native channels plus English and sports for $19.99, and Hindi provides almost as many channels as Mandarin but for $44.99. Since I don’t get any special discounts for being a Dish shareholder, and since I can’t speak any of the 15 available languages yet, the cheapest package works best for me.

In addition to all that programming, there are plenty of on-demand movies available on DishWorld. A few dozen Bollywood movies are free on demand, and hundreds of US-made new releases and older films are available to rent, most for $3 or $4.

The English-language bonus pack includes:

  • ND 24×7 – News channel from India.
  • Fashion TV – My old favorite former-FTA channel featuring people who dress skimpy and walk funny.
  • France 24 – News channel from France.
  • Ebru TV – US-based general entertainment channel majority-owned by Samanyolu Broadcasting Company.
  • BabyTV – International channel for babies and toddlers. Not to be confused with Baby First TV.
  • Blue Ocean Network – News channel from China.
  • Eurochannel – European culture and lifestyle movies and shows.
  • Euronews – News channel from Europe, of course.
  • Trace Urban – International urban music channel.
  • Luxe.TV – Luxembourg-based channel “dedicated to the world of luxury and art of living”.
  • RT – Formerly Russia Today, news channel from Russia.
  • Zoom – Bollywood channel from India, of course.
  • Bloomberg – US-based business news channel.

And the four or five sports channels include:

  • One World Sports – International sports offshoot of the America One over-the-air network.
  • Nautical Channel – Covers boating and board sports.
  • Universal Sports – Former over-the-air digital sub-channel concentrating on Olympic sports.
  • BeIN Sport – Qatar-based channel with lots of soccer.
  • BeIN Sport 2 – Bonus soccer that wouldn’t fit on BeIN. Off the air otherwise.

That’s an interesting set of channels for $15/month, not to mention the bewildering (to me) variety of Mandarin channels I can watch. It’s all available to stream on PC and Mac, Android devices, and particularly Roku. DishWorld offers a free Roku LT or half off a Roku 3 for prepaying the first four months of service. (I picked the Roku 3, which is very interesting in its own way. More about that Roku 3 in a future post.)

Unlike nimbleTV, FilmOn, and Aereo, DishWorld doesn’t offer a cloud-based DVR, but it provides an interesting alternative. DishWorld’s guide shows the last eight days of programming on each channel, and every show from that period is available on demand. When I first activated my subscription, I was able to watch an episode of Doctor Who that had aired a week earlier on Ebru. When I change channels in the middle of a program, DishWorld asks whether I want to watch it live or from its beginning. It’s like having the PrimeTime Anytime feature from Dish Network’s Hopper, except all day for all channels, but without automatically skipping commercials. This week-back feature is so cool, I almost don’t miss being able to record. Almost.

For some channels that are hard to find anywhere else, $15/month is okay. For plenty of entertainment in your non-English native language, it’s probably worth whatever your package costs. For a glimpse of how all TV might be delivered 10 years from now, DishWorld is priceless.

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A world map montage over a blue background.With all the talk about FilmOn and Aereo and nimbleTV, I keep forgetting to mention another really important internet-based TV service. Janko Roettgers of GigaOM reminded us recently that for years, Dish Network has been streaming TV channels from other countries through its DishWorld brand. I remember when Dish started the service and saw it both as a smart way for Dish to shift transponder space to more English-language HD programming and as another sign that internet-delivered content would eventually supplant most satellite TV programming. We’ll see how that goes.

Dish is in a great position to run this international offshoot because of its longstanding relations with foreign programmers. On the other hand, a big part of nimbleTV’s true potential is to provide parallel programming packages by providing virtual cable subscriptions from Bangalore or wherever nimbleTV can work out a good deal. Never mind watching New York channels as you travel; imagine the folks from India and other countries on long-term assignments here with a chance to tap into everything they’d get at home. FilmOn has also been adding a fair number of foreign-language channels, so it’s always possible that it could become a player in this market segment.

True one-to-many broadcasting makes a lot of sense when a lot of people want to watch the same live event at the same time. For programming that only a small fraction of viewers want to see, DishWorld is showing what the TV world is coming to.

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Old WSBK TV logo

WBSK logo from the 1970s, courtesy of Logopedia

One of the distinguishing characteristics of Dish Network vs. DirecTV or cable is that Dish sells a la carte subscriptions to the five legally protected superstations. As rare examples of distant over-the-air TV, stations WBSK, WWOR, WPIX, KWGN, and KTLA are available through Dish individually or in a package.

That’s all going to end September 19, less than two weeks from now, when Dish will no longer offer the superstations, although existing superstation subscribers will be grandfathered indefinitely according to an email from Dish to its retailers. That news was reported by the SatelliteGuys site, which is usually right about such things.

Those five superstations don’t include the two you might guess, WGN and WTBS, not any more. Those five are the suvivors of the brief superstation wave that hit cable TV in the 1970s and 80s, with their grandfathered status preserved by a specific clause in the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA). (WGN and WTBS evolved to add non-OTA national versions of themselves, partly to skirt rules about cable systems importing distant OTA signals. Long story.)

Now Congress is debating STELA’s renewal, and some legislators want to add on an overhaul to all retransmission consent rules. There are contentious committee hearings going on now, and I’ll bet that no one at those hearings even mentions superstations. My guess is that Dish sees that Congress will overhaul STELA one day soon and that when it does, the superstation exemption will be gone.

When I chose Dish 12 years ago, the superstations were a large factor, but now it would be easy to say that these grapes have already soured. All five superstations once provided plenty of major-league baseball coverage, but this year they combined for only about 50 games, split between WWOR and WPIX. With the rise of second-tier networks (WB and UPN, then CW and My TV), these “independent” stations had less and less unique programming. And with HD as the new basic standard for most TV viewers, Dish still delivers only the SD version. A few years ago, I noticed how little I was watching them, so I dropped them.

If you want one last chance to get distant OTA channels delivered via pay-TV satellite, this might be it. I don’t know if they’re really worth $7/month, but I figured I’d subscribe to them one more time before it’s too late.

Update: It’s September 19, and sure enough, Dish no longer offers the Superstations on its a la carte programming page. Hope you subscribed if you really wanted them.

by ·Comments Off on How we all could have won the CBS showdown
Two businessmen arm wrestling.

© DepositPhotos / photography33

The following is a guest blog post by David McAdams, professor of economics at the Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and author of the forthcoming book, “Game-Changer: Game Theory and the Art of Transforming Strategic Situations”. This article, titled “How Time Warner can win its CBS showdown”, originally appeared in the (Durham NC) Herald-Sun on Aug. 29, a few days before Time Warner Cable settled its retransmission dispute with CBS.

Since Aug. 2, Time Warner Cable has blocked about 3 million of its customers in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and other areas from receiving their local CBS broadcast. The cable giant is balking over the network’s demand for higher fees to retransmit CBS programming.

Most industry watchers seem to agree that Time Warner is likely to lose this showdown, giving in to CBS sometime around the start of the NFL season in early September. But with new tactics and a little strategic imagination, Time Warner can turn the tables on CBS and win. Here’s how.

It starts with a seemingly submissive announcement by Time Warner chairman and CEO Glenn Britt:

“The CBS blackout ends today. Despite all our misgivings at the unfairness of this deal, we will accept CBS’s demand to charge our subscribers $2 per month to view its broadcast programming over our cable network.”

This might seem to be admitting defeat, but then Britt adds the following condition:

“There’s just one thing. We believe that subscribers who don’t want to watch CBS over our cable network shouldn’t be forced to pay this unreasonable fee. Everyone pays the same amount for most channels, because that sort of pricing typically allows us to negotiate lower rates. But when a channel goes off the deep end and refuses to accept a reasonable price, only those who want the channel should be forced to pay.”

CBS would never willingly accept this deal, as many cable subscribers would undoubtedly “opt out” and view their favorite CBS programs for free through a standard rooftop antenna. But what can CBS do? Undoubtedly, CBS’s chief Leslie Moonves would come out and decry the notion of giving customers an opt-out option as a “sham,” as he has in the past, but there’s a problem.

Now that Time Warner has restored CBS programming and even accepted CBS’s demand for $2 per month, CBS is in an awkward position. If access to CBS programs really is so valuable to cable subscribers, as the network has insisted all along, how can CBS demand that they be forced to pay?

Certainly, if CBS were to take a hard line and withhold its permission to rebroadcast over this issue – thus triggering another blackout and denying all Time Warner subscribers access to CBS programming because they insisted on charging people who don’t even watch CBS over cable — CBS would now be the one in the hot seat. Knowing this, Time Warner would now be the one comfortable to “wait it out” as long as necessary.

In the end, CBS would have no choice but to accept an opt-out clause for Time Warner’s cable subscribers, or else back down and accept a lower per-subscriber fee. Time Warner would not only “win,” but also lay the groundwork to control cable content costs while avoiding disruptive blackouts in the future.

The recipe for cable-company victory is actually quite simple:

  1. Allow every channel to charge whatever it wants. However, if a channel’s demand is “unreasonable,” only accept if the channel also agrees not to charge for subscribers who opt out.
  2. If the channel insists on charging everyone, refuse but do nothing. Force the channel to block its own transmission so that customers understand that blackouts are not Time Warner’s fault.
  3. Inform subscribers of their opt-out options and make sure that the opt-out process is simple and transparent. If few subscribers opt out of a channel, you will have learned that that channel’s demand wasn’t so unreasonable after all. But if many do opt out, you’ll have a powerful argument in hand when the next negotiation rolls around.

If cable companies like Time Warner (and satellite-TV providers like DirecTV) stick to this strategy, content providers like CBS won’t have an incentive any more to demand fees that even they believe are beyond what most subscribers are willing to pay. That’s a good thing for Time Warner, and a good thing for consumers as well.