jdw Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 At any rate, with online backup, high quality streaming video, etc. getting bigger and bigger, there probably will be a big revolt against the caps soon. Having said that, at least with Comcast, they're not doing it to gouge people. There's no higher consumer tier, they dont suggest an uncapped business account (and if you want one hey may require proof that you have a business), and you can be banned from being able to pay them for internet access. It's incredibly strange since it's not like the extra data costs them more. There won't be a revolt. They won't instantly gouge the "masses", but instead the "high data users". They'll take 10% of their customers and gouge them, which: (i) makes them money; and (ii) slows the growth of some of the remaining 90%... which saves them money What they'll in inturn do with the remaining 90% is slowly increase their rates to (i) allegedly cover increasing overall data costs, but really (ii) increase profits. My current regular (i.e. not during the NCAA Football Package) cable bill is pretty batshit, and it's not like I've added any new service/tier to it since getting cable internet. How has it gone up? Probably half of the increase was that initial low 1 year deal to sucker you in expires and you go to the normal rate. The other half is simply a constant jacking up of the rates. A chunk of that is TWC passing along the costs of what they pay to ESPN and other content providers. A chunk of it is profit. Data isn't exactly free for the ISPs, especially as people not only increasingly use the net, but the content they get off the net massively increases in size. Netflicks alone is a beast, and there remain a ton of potential customers *raises hand* who haven't even tapped into that. Watching episodes of TV, or buying them off of Amazon... big load, which is barely tapped into yet. Then add onto it that likely over time Phone ISP and Cable ISP will combine, and how people are using their phones for ISP access a shitload... The ISP's are going to give it away for free if they don't have to. Why? You have to think of this in terms like a bank. In an honest, truthful world, going to an ATM to withdraw money should cost us less than it costs to stand in line to withdraw cash inside the bank. Why? Think of all the costs associated with the inside part of the bank. Then think of all the costs of running a cash machine. They're not even close. Yet we have all these Transaction Fees from the Banks for using ATM's and Credit cards, even for getting *our* fucking money. Why? Because the banks can. It's a massive profit center for them with a captive customer base. We've been trained to go to the ATM to get cash. We've been trained to use our Visa/MC/AMEX or Debit Cards to buy stuff. And we've accepted those transaction fees. 99% of us in the world hate transactions fees. In a sense the easiest thing to run on would be a bunch of pols saying that they're going to cap transactions fees at $0.05 a transaction, and the savings to the average person would be $xxx.xx per year. Yet how hard has it been to pass caps on transaction fees? The masses don't matter. The don't revolt. In fact, not only can the banks buy off the pols, but they can con the rubes into think that capping transaction fees is a Jobs Killer (or some other bullshit). In the long run, the national ISP business will be run by 2-3 major telecoms who will understand there's no reason to fight, that it's better to come up with similar price plans, and look for ways to soak the marks while both manipulating them into being fine with it and buying off enough pols to keep it from being changed. Christ, we've already seen this with Net neutrality where the telecoms are rolling the FCC and Obama Admin. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 I did the old Ctrl+F on the WON this week, and I don't see anything on Punk signing a new contract. Dave had a few read-between-the-lines sentences on "They wouldn't let him do this..." and "scripted", but I'm not sure if he came right out and said he's obviously signed. Am I missing something from this, or is Dave just being way too cute... or way too clueless? John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bix Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 John, you missed a big point: Comcast isn't doing this to increase profits. If you go over the cap and they decide to take action, they're not making money from you for a year. As far as the technical side goes, The best way I saw it explained was on Tech News Today last week when Tom Merritt said they must think "routers with the light on must cost more than with the light off.". This isn't bandwidth, which is a limited resource. This is data transfer. It doesn't cost them more to transfer more data during a month. If it was, why wouldn't more ISPs be jumping at the opportunity? Plus, 250 GB is an outdated cap. It was a lot more reasonable a few years ago when it was an end-run to stop heavy bit torrent usage after they it in trouble for throttling torrent transfer speeds. Noobdy else was coming close to transferring tha much in a month. Now, with so much high quality streaming video content (that competes with them...hmm...), online backup, stuff like Amazon Cloud Drive/Google Music/MP3Tunes, etc, the average person can blow past 250GB transferred in a month. At least it's better than the paltry caps in Canada and Australia. It'll get to the point where a very large percentage of customers will go over cap. It's been a much bigger issue in Canada thanks to the even bigger monopoly and the lower cap. Comcast is a national broadband ISP, probably the biggest, and the US has more robust internet video services, so it could very well come to head What credit card do you use that has transaction fees on the consumer end? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bix Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 $45 is just ridiculous and it's surprised me that Dave Meltzer et al never mention that as a breaking point for PPV buys. To be fair, Alvarez and mookieghana did an article about PPV buyrates and what would be a fair price earlier this year or late last year. Also, the HD stream for the PPV in SA was $45 for Time Warner. As far as the HD PPVs go, I'm not sure why it varies by provider, since that's another $4/buy for WWE. Bryan and Chris did more of a wide reaching survey where price was a factor and the answers were the substantive part. Still, before and since I've heard none of the usual suspects mention it. $39.95 was probably the "screw it" point for me but $44.95 is beyond the impossible. It's a terrible, terrible value. I could be wrong, but hasn't Dave Meltzer argued against it being a factor because the 1995 and 1997 price increases coincided with PPV prices increasing? If so, it's a terrible argument based if just because there IS a point of no return for a lot of people, but also the context of the earlier price hikes. In 1995, they went monthly with In Your House filling the non "Big Five" slots. The big 5 were about 3 hours for $29.95 while IYH was about 2 hours for $14.95. Two thirds the show for just half the price. Buys got very low with IYH 3 & 4, and they went up to $19.95 for IYH5 in December, which did worse, IIRC. After that, house show business rebounded. So with a hotter product and the price per hour being the same, they did fine. In 1997, the IYHs went to 3 hours and $29.95 like the big 5, which instantly solved the company's financial woes. The shows were still ostensibly less important than the big 5, but the same length for the same price. This ALSO coincided with a boom period, just a much bigger one. The company also abandoned the priced for rental VHS market when they stopped working with Coliseum Home Video around the same time, which planted some of the seeds for where we are now, although that would've happened eventually with the DVD boom, anyway, when Hollywood also dropped that pricing scheme. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sean Liska Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 Dave has always just said that price doesn't matter if you put on something that people want to see, and has pointed to the 1997 raise being a big boost for the company He also talks about house show attendance rising when ticket prices went up in the late 90s, but again, that coincided with a boom. And he points to UFC selling a ton of PPVs at $55. But I still think there's a limit when you're doing 14 wrestling PPVs a year, and $55 is nuts. I can't imagine getting many impulse buys at that price. I've bought a ton of wrestling PPVs over the years, but there's no way I can justify that price for anything besides a mega-event. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bix Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 UFC is a real sport. People watch real sports live and they're more likely to be watched in large groups that could split the price. Pro wrestling is fiction. Watching live matters a lot less. Once UFC got momentum, it as inevitable. Sure, they're competing for PPV dollars but there are different elements at play in spending habits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smkelly Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 The $45.00/$55.00 thing depends on the cable provider and I don't really understand how legally it works because I moved 3 miles down the road in the last 3 months and switch from Comcast (where PPV's were $45 across the board) to AT&T (the $45/$55 split)Kind of like how Hughes Net has an Internet monopoly over the township I live in. And they charge something like fifty bucks more than any other provider that can't reach my house. One of which I have a cell phone through. UFC is a real sport. People watch real sports live and they're more likely to be watched in large groups that could split the price. Pro wrestling is fiction. Watching live matters a lot less. Once UFC got momentum, it as inevitable. Sure, they're competing for PPV dollars but there are different elements at play in spending habits.You have an excellent point there. I'll add that one of (fiction) professional wrestling's largest fanbases has largely transitioned over to (real) professional wrestling. I go to a school that has something like 26,000 students. The bars, dance club, late teen/early twenty themed restaurants, and pretty much any other hangout spot in town have UFC on PPV whenever a show is happening. I never once have seen a Vince McMahon or Panda Energy PPV ever be shown in the MMA fan setting spots. Only individual fans would "host" a wrestling PPV party. There'd be like ten dudes watching a PPV together while thousands of others watched an MMA PPV (on the same day or some other weekend). Dudes would literally post flyers in all of the building's hallways. Those were usually covered up by the 'for sale' signs, 'religion of some kind' signs, and "UFC THIS WEEKEND~!" signs. A professor of mine was a long time wrestling fan and honestly thought that the WWE and all major wrestling companies will ultimately fail in obvious competition against mixed martial arts, just as boxing largely has too. Only that wrestling will not and cannot recover. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovert Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 So Dave Meltzer gave Punk & Cena the full ***** What other matches got the full 5 (outside of brawls) that weren't technically smooth? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NintendoLogic Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 So Dave Meltzer gave Punk & Cena the full ***** What other matches got the full 5 (outside of brawls) that weren't technically smooth? TM/DK? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GSR Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 CM Punk and the World of Darts Taken from last nights World Matchplay. The Punk fan is resident Darts 'bad boy' Paul Nicholson. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 So why didn't the rating go up more? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovert Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 So why didn't the rating go up more? The hype on the internet stayed on the internet is the most succinct way of putting it Ive seen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kjh Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 One night tournament's tend to do mediocre in the ratings. Moreover, Punk not being there hurt a lot. The pattern was a good (but far from great) opening quarter with people tuning out over the next couple of quarters and not coming back till the overrun segment, which did very well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovert Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 So Dave Meltzer gave Punk & Cena the full ***** What other matches got the full 5 (outside of brawls) that weren't technically smooth? TM/DK? Should have known that was coming but that like brawls kind of gets a style pass as they were doing grounding stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 So why didn't the rating go up more? The hype on the internet stayed on the internet is the most succinct way of putting it Ive seen. Did Rock showing up before Mania pop a rating? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 John, you missed a big point: Comcast isn't doing this to increase profits. If you go over the cap and they decide to take action, they're not making money from you for a year. I'm not talking about *now*. I'm talking long term. The ISPs/Telecoms do and will view it as an area to increase revenue and profits. The notion of unlimited data at no increased costs will be dead within 20 years, if not earlier. If it was, why wouldn't more ISPs be jumping at the opportunity? Because there still is competition right now for ISPs, and they are leary of taking the first step. On the other hand, we are seeing some take the first step with phones. Plus, 250 GB is an outdated cap. It was a lot more reasonable a few years ago when it was an end-run to stop heavy bit torrent usage after they it in trouble for throttling torrent transfer speeds. Noobdy else was coming close to transferring tha much in a month. Now, with so much high quality streaming video content (that competes with them...hmm...), online backup, stuff like Amazon Cloud Drive/Google Music/MP3Tunes, etc, the average person can blow past 250GB transferred in a month. At least it's better than the paltry caps in Canada and Australia. I totally agree on this, and frankly that number is going to skyrocket over time. We're at a stage very similar to what anyone whose done e-mail system admin or works closely with their company's e-mail team has seen. The amount of data passing through a company's servers, and being stored on it, went through the roof year after year in the 00s as people went beyond just ending e-mail with text and started attatching more and more shit to it. It's easy to send a 30MB PPT to 20 people... or to get a 250MB db file to review. Users don't really see the impact. With data like video content, especially as it's (i) getting higher in quality, (ii) more is being put up there, and (iii) ISP speed has increased where it's quicker for consumers to get their hands on... usage is going through the roof. It'll get to the point where a very large percentage of customers will go over cap. It's been a much bigger issue in Canada thanks to the even bigger monopoly and the lower cap. Comcast is a national broadband ISP, probably the biggest, and the US has more robust internet video services, so it could very well come to head That's generally my point. And Comcast's ISP business will likely overtime be merged into one of the other major ISP. It's hard to tell if the ISP+Content provider model of Comcast and TWC will survive when those two end up (i) gobbling up the rest of the smaller Cable providers, and (ii) inturn merge their ISP business into one of the Phone Telecoms. You may see the Comcast and TWC content spun out while the ISP/Cable business end up one each with Verizon and ATT... or maybe they stay together. One suspects that the other major content providers (Disney/ABC/ESPN, Fox and the former Viacom empire) would probably bitch and moan even stronger if the TW and Comcast content remains in the arms of the new mega telecoms. Who knows... What credit card do you use that has transaction fees on the consumer end? I don't. I avoid CC debt like death. I was tossing ATM/Debit Cards/Credit Cards all in the same bucket of items that we all use in one for or another, are wedded to using them, and the Banks (and other financial entities) have trained us to accept certain transaction fees/costs that are vastly higher than they should be. And something that the majority of people should be up at arms about is instead just accepted. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovert Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 http://ie.tv.ign.com/articles/118/1183201p1.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricky Jackson Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 http://ie.tv.ign.com/articles/118/1183201p1.html ...and so begins the internet-only side of the angle. HHH vs. Punk at Mania is a possibility (but not the only one). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strummer Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 well Hunter let Punk imply that he was nailing his wife! We're off to a good start at least! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jingus Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 And he videotaped it: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 Yeah: Punk knew when it was, flew out "on his own dime" and had his own videographer ready to film. This is good red meat for The Base. It will be interesting if it gets on Raw next Monday. They should. But it's also a sign of how quickly they are pushing this. This is no slow developing storyline where Punk is "fired" and wanders off for a Jericho-like break to refresh himself. Right to the hard sell as a continuing storyline. John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovert Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 Cant wait Hunter punching him on Letterman Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dylan Waco Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 well Hunter let Punk imply that he was nailing his wife! We're off to a good start at least! Well Punk is a pretty big fan of Savage so.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bix Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 Yeah: Punk knew when it was, flew out "on his own dime" and had his own videographer ready to film. It's not that implausible. Punk is a big comic fan, the panels are on a rigid public schedule, and whoever was with him whipped out his phone. Plus they actually planted the seeds for this in the Cabana newspaper interview where he pointed out that Punk had tried to go to SDCC one year but got pulled away from having fun to replace someone who was on official WWE business. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jingus Posted July 21, 2011 Report Share Posted July 21, 2011 It's not that implausible. Punk is a big comic fan, the panels are on a rigid public schedule, and whoever was with him whipped out his phone.In theory that could happen, but how likely is it that Punk would honestly crash the party without letting his boss-in-training HHH know about it first? It's much more probable that the whole thing was planned to some extent. The WWE is pretty notorious for being very strict on its employees when it comes to making public appearances, with everything having to be okayed by the office first. And walking about the biggest fan convention in the world with the title belt and a bullhorn would certainly fall into that category, especially when he's interrupting their own official panel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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