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06 Jan 2010 10:12

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Biz: Cable TV is going to eat up larger amounts of your money over time

  • $75 average cost of digital cable for subscribers each month
  • 5% average increase in cable prices each painful, depressing year
  • $95 the expected average cost of digital cable in five years; blech source

02 Jan 2010 15:38

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Biz: Time Warner and News Corp. come to a deal, freaking finally

  • We’re happy to have reached
    a reasonable deal with no disruption in programming for our customers.
  • Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt • Regarding the deal made between his company and News Corp. over content. News Corp. wanted a dollar per subscriber for its content each month; Time Warner wanted to pay them closer to twenty cents. They found a happy medium or something. Customers still lose because it means higher cable prices either way. source

01 Jan 2010 11:22

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Biz: Did News Corp. and Time Warner Cable settle their differences?

  • NO but they’ll give some more time to their money spat source

27 Dec 2009 11:32

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Culture: Will someone give NASA TV a kick in the butt? It needs it.

This guy runs the most boring network on TV. Despite the fact that the subject matter is fascinating (space!), the commentary often puts people to sleep. source

29 Jun 2009 20:46

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U.S.: Busy day on the Supreme Court tip. Here’s a sampling.

  • A seismic shift The biggest, most notable decision the court made today was ruling in favor of a group of white firefighters who felt they were discriminated against due to the city of New Haven, Conn. hiring black firefighters with lower scores on a test. This will affect hiring practices across the board.
  • Cable > big mediaThose with cable set-top boxes have reason to be happy, as the court also ruled in favor of cable companies who wanted to allow their users to store their shows on a central server. That means you don’t have to buy a DVR with a massive hard drive – and that TiVo is screwed.
  • Spitzer’s phoenix risesThe Court made one fairly surprising decision, letting state regulators take on national lenders for discriminatory practices, such as high interest rates. The decision should help former New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer’s rep, as it’s based on moves he made as the state’s attorney general.

09 Feb 2009 10:57

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Tech: Who needs cable TV when you have online video services?

  • 14.3 billion videos were watched online in December, many at YouTube, the medium’s 900-pound gorilla
  • 24 million were watched on Hulu, the network-run video site that’s good enough to ditch your TV for source