Advertising money cannot buy: a technical problem helped Maine viewers get acquainted... real acquainted with independent candidate Shawn Moody.

Viewers of Bangor’s CBS affiliate watching on Time Warner Cable were treated last week to a one and half hour endorsement of independent candidate Shawn Moody thanks to a technical snafu.

A Time Warner Cable spokesman said an equipment failure caused WABI-TV’s signal to lock up at around 5:40am last Tuesday.  At the time, an ad for Moody was on the air and a frozen picture was delivered to viewers until the problem was fixed at around 7:30am.

“The hour and a half ad for Moody was the biggest exposure this candidate has received all year, all because of a cable company equipment failure,” writes our reader Stefan from Bangor.  “Although the picture was frozen, the sound worked normally so the whole thing was surreal.”

The cable company apologized for the failure and noted there was no implied endorsement of the candidate.

“The signal freeze had nothing to do with the content,” said company spokesman Andrew Russell. “It just happened to be what was on the screen when it happened.”

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WABI Bangor Time Warner Fixes Glitch 10-28-10.flv[/flv]

WABI-TV explains to its viewers what happened when a political ad got stuck on their TV screens for an hour and a half last week.  (1 minute)

Recently, the FCC issued a report claiming Americans are often only getting half the broadband speeds they are promised by providers.  KTVX-TV, the ABC station in Salt Lake City, recently investigated whether that held true for local residents.

The results?  Most Salt Lake City Internet users don’t always get a good deal from providers that often deliver inconsistent speeds, even on premium priced plans that can cost up to $130.

Ookla, which has been compiling speed test data as well, reports the United States was in 11th place globally when it comes to being honest about what broadband speeds providers actually deliver.  Don’t get too excited — we score 30th on the download speed index.  More than two dozen nations deliver faster service.

Which nation scores at the very top of the honesty chart?  The Republic of Moldova, a largely-Romanian speaking former Soviet Republic.  In fact, ISPs in Chişinău, the capital city, are too modest, claiming speeds lower than they actually provide customers.  The rest of the top-10 honesty ranking contains a number of countries in eastern Europe — countries that blow the United States out of the water when it comes to telling the truth about broadband speed:

1. Republic of Moldova, 109.21%
2. Russia, 98.65%
3. Slovakia, 98.64%
4. Lithuania, 97.97%
5. Ukraine, 97.58%
6. Hungary, 96.80%
7. Switzerland, 96.72%
8. Bulgaria, 95.96%
9. Latvia, 94.83%
10. Norway, 93.97%

Five states manage to score high marks on the honesty chart, most of which are served by Verizon.  We suspect FiOS may be a major factor in why these states lead the others:

1. Delaware, 100.85%
2. Massachusetts, 100.07%
3. Maryland, 99.56%
4. Rhode Island, 98.83 %
5. Virginia, 98.36 %

KTVX found that the area’s incumbent cable company Comcast did manage to deliver promised broadband speeds, often when most customers are not using the service.  Speeds were far lower in the evening — prime-time usage hours — sometimes as low as 3Mbps.

“Qwest’s DSL is best forgotten,” says Stop the Cap! reader Sangi, who writes from the city of Roy.  “It’s so bad a lot of us think of it as dial-up on caffeine.”

Sangi used to receive DSL service from the phone company, which is planning to merge with CenturyLink.

“When we moved closer to town, cable was an option and that made Qwest something we could live without,” Sangi says.  “They never came close to the speeds they marketed and when we complained, they claimed we wouldn’t notice the difference when browsing web pages and checking e-mail.”

“Apparently Qwest considers the Internet good for little else, at least how they deliver it,” he added.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KTVX Salt Lake City You Are Getting Half Your Promised Broadband Speed 10-22-10.flv[/flv]

KTVX-TV in Salt Lake City investigates broadband speed claims and finds residents don’t always get what they pay for.  (3 minutes)

Seymour and Sidell Reiner (Sun-Sentinel)

A Boynton Beach family’s tragic story may give Comcast phone customers second thoughts about whether the cable company’s “digital phone” service is a help or hindrance in an emergency.

Seymour Reiner arrived home last Thanksgiving to find his wife of 62 years dead on the floor from a cut ankle.  But his shock turned to anger when he learned his beloved wife Sidell’s death likely came after Comcast, the company that delivers his phone service, could not quickly manage to provide emergency officials with their home address.

Comcast customers in south Florida who dial “0” from their Comcast phone lines hear a message indicating they should press “0” if the call is a 911 emergency, which Sidell apparently did at least 10 times.

“Help me! Help me, please! Help me! Help me!” Sidell pleaded in disturbing recordings (warning: graphic content) obtained by the Sun Sentinel newspaper.

Sixteen minutes later, when paramedics finally arrived, it was too late.  An hour after that, Seymour arrived home to find the phone laying next to Sidell’s body.

The 81-year old Florida grandmother cut her ankle after dropping some crystal glassware, hitting an artery that caused major bleeding.  She reached for her phone and dialed “0” hoping to reach an operator, but was instead connected with Comcast’s call center.  The cable company eventually transferred the call to Palm Beach County’s 911 emergency services center, but by that time, her anguished pleas for help were barely audible.

The county’s 911 dispatcher asked Comcast’s operator for Reiner’s address, which she could not provide.  Minutes passed as Comcast tried to figure out the address where the call originated from, and an ambulance was eventually dispatched.  Emergency responders arriving at the Sidell’s home left after nobody answered their knocks on the home’s locked front door.  Sidell was unconscious by that time.

Now the Reiner family has filed a lawsuit against Comcast demanding unspecified damages for the cable company’s performance during the tragic events, and also has served notice they may sue the county and fire rescue service for their alleged negligence.

Reiner appeared visibly upset at a press conference held earlier today announcing the lawsuit.  He told several reporters he doesn’t want anyone else to suffer the tragedy he faced when his phone provider couldn’t quickly handle a call for help that ultimately resulted in his wife’s death.

Gary Cohen, the family’s attorney, was livid about Comcast.

“They have her address when it comes to a bill, but when it comes to saving her life, they can’t find her address?” Cohen asked.

The lawsuit led the news across several cities in south Florida, and viewers heard the story first-hand:

“Her phone number, when we put in her phone number, it is showing that there is no information available on that number,” the Comcast operator says.

“Oh, goodness,” the Boynton Beach operator responds.

Cohen accused Comcast of being indifferent about the urgency of Reiner’s desperate pleas for help and said the cable company dropped the ball.

“This was a life-deciding call and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of communication that this is a desperate situation,” Cohen said. “”Nobody took responsibility in saving her — no one went that extra mile and did what they needed to do.”

Cable company and other “Voice Over IP” phone services have been criticized in the past for not passing through important caller-ID information to emergency responders that includes up to date addresses of where the calls originate.  Some traditional phone companies have used past failures by alternative providers to warn consumers not to disconnect landline service because of possible delays in emergency response.  The Reiner family may prove to be a case in point.

Comcast spokeswoman Marta Casas-Celaya said her company does not comment about pending court cases and declined to answer general questions about services provided when a caller dials “0.”  Another statement indicated the company felt “deeply saddened for the Reiner family’s loss.”

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Boynton Beach Tragedy 10-27-10.flv[/flv]

Several Florida TV stations gave this story the lead on their evening newscasts. [WPBF-TV & WPTV-TV West Palm Beach, WFOR-TV Miami, WPEC-TV West Palm Beach]  (9 minutes)

Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, shows off the company's growing reliance on broadband streaming, moving away from its original DVD-by-mail rental business.

Last week, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings was showered with questions from Wall Street during the company’s third quarter-results conference call.  At the top of the agenda — the company’s shifting business model away from DVD rentals-by-mail gradually towards instant on-demand streaming over broadband networks.

At issue is how Netflix can survive a broadband industry that controls the pipeline Netflix increasingly depends on for its continued existence.

Hastings tried to assuage his cable competitors by telling investors the company is hardly a threat to cable-owned movie channels and basic cable.  But he admits ultimately the company will be in a real mess if Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and speed throttles limit the amount of content customers can affordably access:

“We have some vulnerability depending on capped usage and what happens. Comcast has a cap, but it’s 250 gigabytes and so most users feel that they have an unlimited experience, and it gives us plenty of room to deliver a high-def stream. On the other hand, AT&T Mobile data on an iPad is now capped at two gigabytes, [and that’s] not enough room to deliver hours and hours of high-def.  We are definitely sensitive [to the issue] in the long term [whether] the industry ends up at 250 gigabytes or two at the other extreme.”

There is some limited evidence Netflix’s success in Canada is already being tempered by usage limits near-universally imposed in the country.  Rogers, a major cable company in eastern Canada, even reduced usage caps for certain tiers of service around the same time Netflix announced its imminent arrival north of the border.

Barry McCarthy, Chief Financial Officer notes fewer Canadians are converting their free trials of Netflix’s streaming service into paid subscriptions.

“We anticipate we are seeing slightly lower conversion rates in Canada than we see in the U.S.,” McCarthy told investors.

As Netflix moves towards higher quality video streams, the amount of data consumed increases as well.  In Canada, that eats into broadband usage allowances, and fast. As soon as customers start receiving warnings they are nearing their monthly usage limit, or receive a broadband bill with overlimit fees, Netflix is likely to lose that customer.

Cable and phone companies in Canada are already warning customers that online video is a major culprit of exhausted usage allowances.  Both are also happy to remind their customers they are happy to sell them access to unlimited video — through cable or telco TV subscriptions.  Rogers owns a major chain of video rental stores as well.

What can Netflix do about usage capped broadband?  Not much, admits Hastings.

“There is a not a lot of improvement in compression techniques. But what we can do is just deliver a lower bit stream, a lower quality video experience. So, for example, not too high-def. So, that’s one possible way to partially mitigate that impact,” Hastings said.

Netflix will soon face increasing competition, especially from the cable industry’s TV Everywhere projects, and they won’t deliver a lower quality video experience.

Time Warner Cable and Comcast this month both formally introduced their respective video on demand services.

Comcast’s Xfinity online service arrives after months of beta testing.   Comcast customers can watch video selections from nearly 90 movie and television partners, including programming from HBO, Viacom, and Paramount.  Ultimately, the online video service is expected to deliver access to dozens of cable channels and individual programs from studios and networks at no charge to those who subscribe to a cable television package.

Time Warner Cable took a more modest approach last week by introducing ESPN Networks to its cable subscribers who register with the cable company’s MyServices website.  The new customer portal allows subscribers to review and pay their cable bill, add new services (but not cancel existing ones), remotely program DVR boxes, and also verifies subscriber status for future cable subscriber-only online video programming.

Netflix may soon find itself at the mercy of the cable and telephone companies which deliver broadband access to the majority of Americans.  Not only is it difficult to convince customers to pay a monthly fee for programming the cable industry may eventually give away for free, it may be downright impossible for Netflix to survive if those providers decide to squeeze the customer’s pipeline to unlimited Netflix content.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Comcast Xfinity Ad Spot 10-2010.flv[/flv]

Comcast Ad Introducing Xfinity Online.  (1 minute)

Early adopters of Google TV will find nothing but frustration if they want to watch ABC’s “Modern Family” and Fox’s “Glee” with the new broadband-driven TV service.  They can’t, thanks to America’s content companies erecting Berlin Wall-like blockades of programming the service was supposed to provide.

Google TV has already come under a state of siege from a coordinated campaign by the four major broadcast networks to keep programming off the new service until Google agrees to pay retransmission consent fees.  Even Hulu, which delivers online access to hundreds of shows for free, has successfully manned the barricades to keep “unauthorized” Google TV out in the cold.

Some of the virtual barbed-wire fences have become so sophisticated, many wonder whether the biggest players in online video are spending more time and energy on innovating new ways to stop people from accessing content than on actually delivering it.

For a service trying to gain attention out of the starting gate, Google TV has remarkably little mainstream programming to show on it.  To date, their most significant content partners are HBO’s Go service, available only to authenticated HBO subscribers, Turner’s TNT and TBS channels, also only available to current cable, satellite, or telco-TV video subscribers, and a CNBC “app.”

The spat between Google and the broadcasters is similar to the one between Cablevision and Fox in suburban New York City — until a company like Google agrees to pay a fee for the right to deliver content already given away for free online, the online portals that provide access will identify and block Google TV customers from accessing any of it.

Those fees are likely to be passed down to subscribers, and now some are wondering just how successful ventures like Google TV can be if consumers have to pay another monthly TV bill.

Wall Street is one, Variety notes:

That’s a major problem for any business plan, but excessive fees could also destroy interest in Google’s nascent entry into the world of online entertainment television.  Consumers already face steep hardware costs up to $300 just to make Google TV work.  Whether they would also part with a monthly subscription fee should not be too difficult for the folks in Mountain View to answer.

In fact, it’s the same answer Hulu’s owners are getting from viewers about its Hulu Plus pay-TV service, which delivers the same commercials as its free companion and charges $10 a month to watch them.

Subscribers to Hulu’s premium tier were promised access to entire runs of popular shows, programming not available on its free alternative, and a library of episodes that don’t expire and disappear after a few weeks.  But many paying customers complain Hulu Plus still limits most of its shows and offers few exclusives. Even less-in-demand shows like Fox’s “COPS,” profiling the criminally stupid for more than 23 years, remain limited on the premium (and free) service to a single month of episodes.

But nothing causes more annoyance than Hulu’s recently-increased advertising load, dumped equally on both sides of the pay wall.

“Why should I pay $10 a month when I get (mostly) the same shows for free on Hulu, and have to watch the same ads?” asks our reader Stephanie.  “It should be one or the other — ad-free pay or ad-supported free.”

Because Stephanie is hardly alone in asking that question, there are reports Hulu is about to slash its premium asking price in half to attract more subscribers.

Peter Kafka, who writes The Media Memo for All Things Digital, wrote Hulu is preparing to change its pricing as early as this week.

The idea is that paying subscribers get access to a deeper catalog of TV shows and movies than what the free service offers, as well as the ability to watch Hulu on devices like Apple’s iPhone and iPad, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game machine and Internet-connected TVs from Samsung and Sony.

But a price cut would indicate that consumers haven’t bought in to the pitch. That shouldn’t be a shock, considering the other video options that consumers have, and the limits that Hulu’s content providers have placed on the service.

But even at half-price, many former Hulu Plus customers won’t be back.

Zwei, commenting on the rumored price change, said he dropped his subscription before the first month was up because of the Hulu’s byzantine rules and technical limitations over how premium shows can be accessed.

Watch it their way or not at all.

“You aren’t guaranteed the ability to stream to anything but your computer! “Fringe?” Not available to stream to my other devices. “Caprica?” Not available to stream to my other devices.  Why the heck would I want to pay $10 a month if I still have to watch a lot of the content on my Mac,” he writes.

Paul notes it’s also hard to attract paying customers when most of your library consists of old shows already rerun into the ground:

“The problem is that they are cutting all the most appealing content from the service, Hulu Plus has a huge catalog of content, but it’s 95% leftovers from the 80’s.  Give us current content when and how we want it (quickly and on the devices we want) and people will pay for it, even more than $10/mo.  But if they give us 20 year-old content that we might not even have liked the first time, they shouldn’t expect our money,” Paul says. “It’s funny when they get worked up about piracy too. It’s just another market force — people only go to it when they don’t have other valid options,  just like they’re doing here.”

Networks increasingly treat their programming as a valued commodity that can be sold, re-purposed, re-packaged, and re-sold again and again.  Syndication, DVD box sets, online rental, cable company on-demand, and online ad-supported streaming each can fetch plenty of money, and many agreements include temporary restrictions on other distribution mechanisms to avoid “diluting” the programming’s value.

Consumers don’t care about these restrictions, because many will simply search out the shows they want regardless of the source — legal or otherwise, preferably for free.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Google TV 10-25-10.flv[/flv]

Two reports about Google TV — a review of the service from KSTU-TV Salt Lake City’s ‘Kurt the Cyberguy’ and a report from KTBS-TV in Shreveport, Louisiana (5 minutes)