So, even as Time Warner Cable raises your rates, it isn’t keeping up with how much it’s paying for the content.

In other words, you’re only partially right to blame your cable company for why you’re shelling out big bucks each year. You also have to look further downstream at the content companies or programmers who are charging the cable operators — News Corp., Disney, CBS, etc.

Now, even cable operators are becoming content companies. Time Warner Cable just agreed to buy the right to carry LA Dodgers games through a new regional sports network. Last year, the company debuted another regional sports network that carries LA Lakers games. Comcast and DirecTV also own sports networks. Plus, Comcast owns 51 percent of NBC Universal, one of the largest programmers.

So the picture is muddled. But for the most part, cable economics is straightforward: Operators pay cable and broadcast networks money for the right to broadcast content, and the cable and broadcast networks make a profit from these deals. Then, the cable operators charge you more money so they can pass along some of those costs and make a profit themselves.

Lots of people are sick of their cable bills rising — including Britt, who again today labeled the current cable TV ecosystem as anti-consumer.

So why not let customers choose which networks they want and pay for only them? Not everybody wants sports channels anyway, right? And who really needs 800 channels? If you think that idea — called a la carte pricing – would work, think again. The math just doesn’t work.

For a video explanation with some cool graphics, check this out.

Let’s take ESPN, one of the most popular cable networks. I’m going to borrow this general line of thinking from Craig Moffett, cable and satellite TV guru, who has written at length about this.

Disney, which owns ESPN, makes almost $6 per month for every single basic cable customer. You don’t watch ESPN? Too bad. You’re paying $6 a month for it.

If you could suddenly just pay for only the channels you want to watch, let’s say 50 percent of you would pay for ESPN. That’s probably too high, but let’s run with that.

Disney would immediately have to charge $12 a month for ESPN to make up for the lost revenue. They’ve just lost half their viewers. Plus, ESPN makes money from all of the other networks they make cable providers buy to get access to ESPN — like ESPN2, ESPN Classic, etc. That’s another few bucks per month.

And then there’s advertising revenue — in an a la carte world with half the audience, ad rates just dropped, big time, on ESPN. And then there’s the lost advertising on the other networks, such as ESPN2 and ESPN Classic.

Now Disney is charging, say, $25 a month just for ESPN to make up for the lost revenue. Just one channel. And chances are you probably want at least a few more  — MTV, Comedy Central, AMC, TNT, whatever. Those may not cost you $25 each but the same math applies. They’re going to cost more than you think.

Dish CEO Joseph Clayton says he knows there’s an audience of 18- to 28-year-olds that just wants to pay $20 a month for video — preferably streamed online. But Dish has struggled to figure out a way of giving consumers the content they actually want for that price, because programmers aren’t exactly handing it over at low cost. Clayton once told me he could put up a channel of the moon for very low cost — but that doesn’t mean people would actually watch.

This isn’t to say that the current system is always here to stay. What’s likely to happen is that cable operators will begin to offer you smaller, more personalized packages of channels. In other words, you may still have to pay for ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN8 The “Ocho“ if you’re a sports fan — but you may not have to pay for three cooking channels in addition if watching food isn’t your thing.

The cost will be lower and you’ll get more channels you actually watch. So stop focusing on a la carte, and refocus your attention to mini-packages, because that’s what is far more likely to occur.

Original post is Your Cable Bill’s Going Up Again, But Forget a la Carte Pricing by Tech Blog.

Photograph by David Becker/Getty Images

Journalist Greg Sandoval (L) with actor/director Danny DeVito on stage during the 2013 International CES at the Las Vegas Convention Center on Jan. 9, 2013.

(This post was updated with information from a CNET blog.)

CNET reporter Greg Sandoval said on Twitter today he has resigned from the digital media site after its parent company, CBS, forced staff to withdraw a new product by Dish Network from its Best of CES awards.

Sandoval said on Twitter he is no longer confident “that CBS is committed to editorial independence” and that “CNET wasn’t honest about what occurred regarding Dish.”

Dish complained last week that its Hopper with Sling set-top box had been eliminated from a best-of-show award at the Consumer Electronics Show. CBS said at the time that a new policy would prohibit it from reviewing products of anyone in litigation with the company. CBS, based in New York, is engaged in a lawsuit with Dish over one of the features of the Hopper that allows consumers to skip commercials.

CNET said in a blog post today that the Hopper had actually won its top prize, only to be rejected by CBS. The parent company forced CNET’s staff to re-vote, according to Editor-in-Chief Lindsey Turrentine. The Razer Edge gaming tablet ended up winning the Best of CES award.

“I wish I could have overridden the decision not to reveal that Dish had won the vote,” Turrentine wrote. “For that I apologize to my staff and to CNET readers.”

CBS, which acquired CNET in 2008, said in an e-mail that the situation was an “isolated and unique incident in which a product that has been challenged as illegal was removed from consideration for an award.”

The move didn’t affect CNET’s news gathering, CBS said.

“In terms of covering actual news, CNET maintains 100 percent editorial independence, and always will,” the company said. “We look forward to the site building on its reputation of good journalism in the years to come.”

The Razer Edge gaming tablet ended up winning the Best of CES award.

Dish spokesman Bob Toevs said he wished CNET’s editorial staff was able to express its original view and praised the “collective wisdom” of the website’s newsroom.

“What we want is fair, critical coverage from independent reporters and editors,” Toevs said. “We want honest brokers to come to their own conclusions. When you earn that praise, that’s praise hard won. It’s unfortunate that CNET has to deal with this.”

Sandoval didn’t immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

Original post is CNET Reporter Resigns After CBS Interferes With Coverage by Tech Blog.

Photograph by David Becker/Getty Images

Dish's Hopper with Sling is displayed at a press event during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Earlier this week at CES, Dish Chief Executive Officer Joe Clayton unveiled the satellite TV provider’s newest product, the Hopper with Sling, and tech website CNET liked it.

The set-top box has Sling built right into the hardware, allowing customers to get their TV shows live on mobile devices. It’s Dish’s take on the “TV Everywhere” experience, and CNET named the Englewood, Colorado-based company a finalist for its Best of CES awards.

There’s just one problem. CBS owns CNET. And CBS is engaged in a lawsuit with Dish right now over AutoHop, a feature of the Hopper that allows customers to automatically skip commercials for day-old shows with the touch of a button. No more fast forwarding. CBS says it’s copyright violation.

So, according to Dish, CBS has told CNET’s staff it must disqualify Dish from getting an award at the show.

“We are saddened that CNET’s staff is being denied its editorial independence because of CBS’ heavy-handed tactics,” Clayton said in a statement. “Hopper with Sling is all about consumer choice and control over the TV experience. That CBS, which owns CNET.com, would censor that message is insulting to consumers.”

CBS responded with an e-mailed statement confirming the award was pulled for litigation reasons: “The Dish Hopper with Sling was removed from consideration due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp. We will no longer be reviewing products manufactured by companies with which we are in litigation with respect to such product.”

Original post is CBS to Dish: No CES Award for You! by Tech Blog.

Several stories have posited ideas about why the show doesn’t bring out the heavy hitters like it used to. But part of the reason is likely in the name of the show itself — consumer electronics.

The fact is, top executives at companies don’t need big shows anymore to come together and strike deals. They can use Skype and Facetime and Google video chat. In other words, some of the same technologies showcased at CES can be used to skip CES. Of course, they could also just hop on their private jets to meet in person. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer did make a surprise appearance yesterday during a presentation by Qualcomm to tout the new Windows tablets.

As demonstrated by companies such as Apple and Google, the digital world is as much about software as it is hardware. A vast convention floor may not be the ideal setting to showcase the latest apps and operating system upgrades.

The idea of a consumer electronics show today is also so broad. The lack of specificity adds to the confusion and may hurt the show’s focus. The future of TV, mobile, personal computers, smartwatches and the inevitable 2015 ”Back to the Future”-style hovercrafts are all lumped together at CES. Smaller, more focused conferences at other times during the year tend to bring out the CEOs. Apple, which has long avoided CES, typically dominates the news when it holds its events.

CES continues to grow in size and number of participants but increasingly shifts toward small startups and middle management, as Bloomberg TV’s Jon Erlichman notes. The size of the show actually makes getting business done more difficult, especially for easily recognizable CEOs who border on celebrity status.

And thanks to the wonders of technology, many of the biggest names in tech may not come back.

Original post is Are Consumer Electronics Killing the Consumer Electronics Show? by Tech Blog.

Photograph by Paramount/Everett Collection

Patrick Stewart tweeted that he has given up on Time Warner Cable and is opting for Dish.

It seems even celebrities have trouble with their cable service. Patrick Stewart, the “Star Trek” and “X-Men” star who has taken up residence in Brooklyn, New York, said he’s switching to Dish Network Corp. for television service after complaining about Time Warner Cable Inc.

The actor, best known for playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard, posted a Twitter Inc. message today saying Dish had rescued him from the “Faustian” Time Warner Cable by offering prompt and professional service. He complained last week that after 36 hours of trying to set up a Time Warner Cable account, he’d “lost the will to live.”

Not exactly a warp core breach, but yeah, it can be frustrating.

Original post is Dish Makes It So for Patrick Stewart by Tech Blog.