Month: December 2011

A reader writes:

You quoted a reader who believes that cable bundling "enables" Fox News and that the network would be economically devastated if cable channels were a la carte. First off, this argument seems to me to be the flip side of the FCC's reasoning that bundling is necessary because otherwise many niche networks (women-oriented networks, minority-oriented networks, foreign language networks, MSNBC, etc.) would fail.  Now, I suspect that your reader who does not want to pay his cable company for channels he does not watch would be happy to have the government tax me to subsidize channels that I don't watch.

Seriously, though, I think your reader gets the economics wrong.  

As has been stated more eloquently in other reader pieces you've published that FoxNews, or ESPN for that matter, would have to charge much more on a "per loyal viewer" basis than on a "per cable system subscriber" basis to make the same revenue.  And, they likely will be able to.  Maybe people will be willing to pay a la carte for 10% or so of the channels they now get.  Guess what – their cable bill will not go down by 90%!  Maybe it will go down by 15%?  20%?  The end result is that they will be paying 75% to 80% of their current bill for 10% or so of the channels.  

ESPN won't go away, and neither will FoxNews.  In fact, their ratings will probably go up, because their loyal viewers will have a smaller lineup of channels to choose from if on any evening they fell like watching something else.

Another is on the same page:

Your reader who wrote that a la carte cable would sink Fox News missed the mark:

Black and Hispanic viewers would flee the network en mass. It would suffer crippling losses in the Northeast, West Coast and parts of the Midwest. … Needless to say, the loss of such huge demographic swaths would cause many advertisers to jump ship.

But those demographic swaths wouldn't be "lost" if cable changed to a la carte, because they are already not watching. Keep in mind that advertisers don't advertise to "subscribers"; they advertise to "viewers." A Fox News advertiser would really have to have their head in the sand if they think that their ads during Hannity are reaching Black and Hispanic viewers in the Northeast and the West Coast.

The real consequence of a la carte pricing would be to force active viewers to pay more. If liberals choose not to pay $.70 a month for a channel they hate, Fox would not have to change a thing so long as the viewers who love them are willing to make up the difference. So the real question is how many Fox viewers – not mere subscribers – would flee if their per-month cost went from $.70 to, say, $5.00. Plenty of Fox viewers are very devoted to the network, and in economic terms there are few substitutes so demand for Fox is pretty inelastic, so I suspect the network would be able to continue to exist.

Another:

If you want a perfect example of what your reader is proposing, look to your friends to the North. Last spring, Sun News Network (slangily called Fox News North) launched their populist right-wing news network, regularly going on about the war on fun, heretical leftists and beaming in some big-name conservative pundits from the US. They were doing this on basic cable for awhile, because they owned a basic cable channel low on the spectrum (channel 15). However, they got that channel years ago when it just gave weather updates and the like. Our National Communications Control Board (CRTC) saw that they had switched over to a specialty channel without updating their license and they were forced to move after six months or so. Now you can only get them as a specialty channel, and their ratings have dropped like a stone.

This article should fill on any gaps. I couldn't find their numbers for last month, but they only went off channel 15 recently. Check it out. There is a market for this stuff, but once it submits to the all-mighty dollar, it can't hold its own.

At least not in Canada, that is. Dish coverage of "Fox News North" here and here. Pareene said of a similar promo as the one above, "in case you're curious about what hardcore nationalism looks like in the world's most modest country."

Ezra Klein thinks Romney's ideological reincarnation is the main reason GOP voters aren't supporting him:

Whatever Gingrich’s heterodoxies, conservatives never worry that he’s not, on some fundamental level, a committed member of their tribe. He’s an odd member, maybe. A member who has unexpected ideas about the moon, perhaps. But a member. With Romney, they worry about it constantly. 

Chait considers the Democratic party's perspective:

Democrats fear Romney precisely because his history suggests he will try to escape the GOP primary with minimal ideological commitment and then run to the center, and that his progressive record in Massachusetts will help him appeal to moderates. Obviously they would rather run against a Republican who’s more heavily encumbered by actual beliefs. For the same reason, Romney is the one Republican (also save Huntsman) they'd most want to be president.

An astounding mashup of 2011 cinema:

Amitai Etzioni poses the question by looking at respective records on sovereignty:

Several leading Western progressives have sought to legitimize armed humanitarian intervention, under the rubric of "the responsibility to protect." Others have gone even further, seeking to legitimize interference in the internal affairs of other countries if they develop nuclear arms, invoking "the duty to prevent." Both concepts explicitly make sovereignty conditional on states' conducting themselves in line with new norms that directly conflict with the Westphalian one. The issue, in other words, is not simply whether China will buy into the existing rule-based order but whether it can be persuaded to support the major changes in the rules that the West is seeking. 

China is behaving in a more classically realist fashion in the world than the US has been, even under the milder forms of intervention favored by Obama. G. John Ikenberry counters:

China's disagreement with the responsibility-to-protect norm also needs be put in perspective: that norm represents only a tiny aspect of the larger set of global rules and institutions. Indeed, in pushing back against this norm, China is invoking other norms and ideas in the system — most important, Westphalian ones about sovereignty. In doing so, China is being driven further into the existing international order. Moreover, the tension that exists within the international order between norms of state sovereignty and the responsibility to protect should not be surprising, and it is more of a virtue than a defect. Think about the internal politics of Western democracies. In all of them, there are tensions between competing norms, such as social equality and market freedom. But both of these are legitimate norms, and day-to-day politics involves the struggle over them.

Torie Bosch wants to be offended but can't stop laughing:

Despite outliers (I recently caught my boyfriend, who is surrounded by women at his current job, saying, "Sometimes it’s like, oh my God"), these speech patterns are indeed dominated by women. How often do you hear a man say, "Can you do me a huge favor?" or 'I’m half excited and half scared." It seems to me that many of these phrases represent the way women are socialized to behave, such as demonstrating deference and pleasing others, as with "No, you're not!" (apparently uttered in response to a friend making a self-deprecating comment).

Amanda Marcotte has mixed feelings.

"In abandonment of the state of Israel, the West reverts to pagan sacrifice, once again, making a burnt offering not of that which one possesses, but of that which is another’s. As Realpolitik, the Liberal West’s anti-Semitism can be understood as like Chamberlain’s offering of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, a sop thrown to terrorism. On the level of conscience, it is a renewal of the debate on human sacrifice," – David Mamet, WSJ.

(Hat tip: Larison)

The Cold War sure is over, innit?

But this appeal to hipsters is an urban phenomenon, alas, and the middle classes are no match for Putin's thuggery – a man so extreme only the Israeli government validated his rigged election when 128 percent of the voting public went to the polls. I'm with Niall on this:

Russia isn’t quite “Upper Volta with missiles”—West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s immortal phrase. But it’s certainly a shadow of its former Cold War self. The U.S. economy is 10 times larger than Russia’s. Per capita gross domestic product is not much higher than in Turkey. Male life expectancy is significantly lower: 63, compared with 71 on the other side of the Black Sea. And the population is shrinking. There are nearly 7 million fewer Russians today than there were in 1992. By 2055, the United Nations estimates that the population of Egypt will be larger.

Remind me: why did Goldman Sachs group Russia with Brazil, India, and China as the “BRICs,” supposedly the four key economies of the 21st century? Give me Turkey or Indonesia any day.

The reality:

Joe My God's commenters sound off on the video. Money quote:

Yes, people should disclose their status.  But, unless one is deliberately running around with the intention of infecting others, HIV status should not be criminal.

Steve Benen is creeped out by Romney's stump routine: 

[A]s Seth Masket noted, “keep America American” sounds an awful lot like a line we might expect from Bill the Butcher. (It also, of course, reinforces the not-so-subtle attack on President Obama’s patriotism, which has long been a favorite ploy for Romney.)

And a classically McCarthyite one, from an alleged moderate. Apparently Romney's campaign shares the slogan with the KKK.

Yglesias observes:

Romney has quietly managed to skate through this whole campaign while hewing to a much more moderate line on taxes than his rivals. Now moderation is a relative concept. Romney wants to extend all the current Bush tax cuts, which on its own terms implies major long-term cutbacks to federal retirement programs, and would add to that a pretty expensive proposal to eliminate capital gains taxes for everyone earning less than $200,000. But there's tons of daylight between Romney and Perry/Gingrich on this front. Under the circumstances it's strange that the candidates have spent much more time engaged in hair-splitting disagreements about immigration than they have on taxes.