Gilded Age for Cable
3 Comments
Recent Posts
The Missing Bill C-18 Charter Statement: Why Did the Justice Department Remove the Document Confirming the Online News Act Includes Payments for Internet Linking? 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 132: Ryan Black on the Government’s Latest Attempt at Privacy Law Reform 
CRTC Chair Ian Scott Confirms Bill C-11 Can Be Used To Pressure Internet Platforms to Manipulate Algorithms 
My Appearance Before the Senate Transport and Communications Committee on Bill C-11: The Senate Starts Review As Bill Receives House Approval 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 131: The Bill C-11 Clause-by-Clause Review – What “An Affront to Democracy” Sounds Like
Another reason for those tidy UBB profits …
For the two boys and father JR Shaw, the company faces a future retirement bill of some $147 million, according to its own actuaries. The amount these three men have paid into this plan: zero.In the end, the Shaw family gets away with it only because the other shareholders don’t complain about it. Why don’t they complain? Because despite all the fat, the company remains ridiculously profitable, just like the rest of the major players in the Canadian cable and phone racket.
And remember the cablecos Rogers, Shaw, Videotron(all of which have stolen landlines from Bell and Telus) are all responsible for this. The telco bashing at Bell and Telus has to stop.
So what
This is going to be mighty unpopular to say, but so what? If you don’t like what they charge you, you can always go over-the-air. Take the middleman out of the deal. Ok, you won’t get TSN, etc. The cable companies provide a luxury service for television. If enough people start to do this, then they’ll lower the prices (after all, they make more money if they get $50 profit from 100 customers than $60 from 50 customers).
Add to this that the revenues for the cable channels will also go down; if more people go over the air, the viewership of those channels goes down. They lose subscription money and advertising revenue, and start to put pressure on the cable companies to lower the margins and may in fact have to take a cut in their own margins.