Interesting, I looked at the channels they offer and I couldn't see any reason why they would refuse to carry the network, none of their programming seems in poor taste or extreme.
He used to be on at like 4a when I was in high school. I genuinely dont understand how this guy has had his own shows consistently for 2 decades and STILL most people have never heard of him.
There's a limited amount of bandwidth that can be carried over your cable line and its pretty much tapped out until more carriers switch to an IP based system. Ultimately these providers do need the ability to "discriminate" on which channels they choose to allocate bandwidth to. It's a strange case trying to make a racial discrimination case here (more so for Comcast as apparently someone from Charter said a few things out of line)
Well this isnt so much the case anymore with switched networks. This was a thing 10 years ago when I retired from broadcasting. Basically the headend sets up a video session for the program if someone in the area tunes to the channel. This is like vod streaming except more than one viewer can utilize the session/stream.
I was going to mention this but didn't want to get too far into the weeds. My understanding was the the infrastructure rollout to Switched Video has slowed as providers look at leapfrogging to IP based solutions. Comcast's X1 platform can run IP based.
Hm, I always thought IP based solutions were worse, given my terrible experience with IPTV (Actual IPTV, over DSL on a different VPI/VCI number)... + they can track your viewing habits...
Like I said above I retired from this business a decade ago but I have a hunch that IP is going to be a better experience over docsis or any other broadband link. I don't see much complaining from fios/uverse customers, and I worked independently on a metro WAN iptv development in moscow, which worked pretty well when the residents had fast-ethernet connections, once we got the infrastructure to handle all the multicast traffic.
IPTV like what Centurylink Prism offers is a really good experience. Extremely fast channel switching, live previews of the last couple channels you were on, and a decent UI made for a good experience.
I have yet to find another IPTV provider that offers tthe first two features mentioned, despite it being possible with ddecade old technology running WinCE (in Centurylink's case).
comcast also downgraded their entire lineup to a poorly re-encoded 720p. i think in the last few years.
there was some PR about it being improved this and uniform that.
indeed, the quality is now uniform: complete garbage. really defeats much of owning a good 4k sony :(. i wonder how many additional useless channels they added that no one watches.
at least their set top boxes have abysmally slow UIs.
Agree. The difference between watching "HDTV" on Comcast vs Verizon FiOS was like the difference between watching SDTV and HDTV, with Comcast being SDTV. Everything is so pixelated and "smeary" on Comcast whereas FiOS buttery smooth and fully detailed. I should have noted the bitrate of the two at the time as I use cablecards and can see that data, but FiOS had a MUCH higher bitrate (when comparing 720 vs 720) and most channels were broadcast in 1080 instead of 720. I think it's because Comcast keeps upping their internet speeds, which they need to rob the bandwidth from the tv side to do. They also still simulcast broadcast everything in SDTV wasting bandwidth. How many people actually have SDTV sets anymore? Cable bandwidth is simply outdated with current societal needs, just like the telephone line was 10 years ago.
the 80/20 rule probably applies. 80% of their customers watch 20% of their channels. the other 80% of channels are simply there to grab some small demographic that's only important to advertisers. so they rob everyone of quality to maximize revenue. it's disgusting, and there's not much i can do about it due to local duopoly. my best bet is to move to higher quality streaming services.
i looked into Sling TV recently and their lineup has really improved. does anyone have experience with it, quality-wise?
I had Sling TV for awhile. It was good enough. But, it didn’t have as many local channels as DirecTVNow in my area.
DirecTVNow was flakey the last time I used it on either my RokuTVs or with my Roku sticks. It worked better when I would AirPlay it to my 3rd Gen AppleTV or watch it using the app on my 4K AppleTV.
My wireless connection in the same area as my TVs never dips below 159Mbps so it’s not my bandwidth.
My AppleTVs throughout the house are all connected via gigabit Ethernet throughout my house.
Unless your on AT&T for internet, its likely poor peering between your ISP and AT&T. Those "tier 1" networks like AT&T tend to only freely peer with other tier 1 networks (usually other massive Telcos) and a handful of tier 2 networks, resulting in congested peering points and significant unnecessary latency.
I am on AT&T. Gigabit up and down. But DirecTVNow being flakey on the same WiFi network on the Roku but not on iOS devices (iPhone/AppleTV) doesn’t make sense.
I also noticed it isn’t the same stream sent to Rokus as it was to the AppleTV. The timing would be different.
It depends. Some networks pay the cable company, other networks get paid by the cable company and others just ask for a spot and share ad revenue and allow the cable company to advertise locally.
I think the shopping channels pay for carriage, and they are popular beyond my wildest expectations - if I did anything to make one of them go out there would be calls complaining about it immediately!
"In addition to recounting Entertainment Studios' failed negotiations with Charter, Plaintiffs' amended complaint also included direct evidence of racial bias. In one instance, [Charter VP of programming Allan] Singer allegedly approached an African-American protest group outside Charter's headquarters, told them "to get off of welfare," and accused them of looking for a "handout." Plaintiffs asserted that, after informing Charter of these allegations, it announced that Singer was leaving the company. In another alleged instance, Entertainment Studios' owner, Allen, attempted to talk with Charter's CEO, [Tom] Rutledge, at an industry event; Rutledge refused to engage, referring to Allen as "Boy" and telling Allen that he needed to change his behavior. Plaintiffs suggested that these incidents were illustrative of Charter's institutional racism, noting also that the cable operator had historically refused to carry African-American-owned channels and, prior to its merger with Time Warner Cable, had a board of directors composed only of white men. The amended complaint further alleged that Charter's recently pronounced commitments to diversity were merely illusory efforts to placate the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)."
- The evidence of discrimination is extremely weak. None the things mentioned ("get off of welfare", "handout", "boy", "change his behavior") is necessarily racism. But the result is not surprising, since the ruling is from the 9th Circuit.
A side note. This kind of law suit properly will increase implicit racial bias, because it is trying to reenforce the idea that welfare and bad behavior only or strongly links to African Americans. See: Even completing a Race Implicit Association Test increases implicit racial bias: https://psyarxiv.com/vxsj7/
Not sure about this one tbh. On the one hand this seems an awful lot like compelled speech, OTOH it doesn’t seem like the cable companies have a valid reason to bar broadcasting ESN’s offerings. I’m not really sure what race has to do with it. The CEO happens to be black, sure, but I feel like some details are missing from this story.
They're literally in the article, quoted by the grandparent comment you're replying to. The trial will be to determine if these claims have any merit to them, details are in the article, I suspect more will come with the trial itself.
Again, I am not sure what race has to do with this at all. The CEO happens to be black and had a negative interaction with someone on Charter’s board. Oh well. There are many other cable companies and networks out there. That’s why there is something missing from this story. Why would this guy care so much that he was being barred? It’s like the gay wedding cake thing. The plaintiffs specifically found a baker who had strong religious beliefs.
> Again, I am not sure what race has to do with this at all
That's literally the entire point of a trial and presentation of evidence.
The Charter/Comcast argument was “it doesn't matter if we were actually discriminating on the basis of race, because the First Amendment allows us to do so, so there's no need for a trial to determine if that's what we were doing (which we weren't.)”
This decision simply says: “The First Amendment doesn't allow you to discriminate by race in the way alleged, so the question of whether you did or did not actually will need to be resolved in court.”
I am neither a lawyer nor a US citizen, but I think the ruling was not on "whether or not discrimination took place", but rather on "if such discrimination had taken place, would the 1st Amendment of the constitution have allowed it as 'editorial freedom'".
I didn't read the article, but that's usually how things work. Also a lawyer I know that does patent stuff says law firms will file motions they know have no hope of success because it's free money.
You have to up and up hard bilk your clients or do something illegal to get the bar pissed at you.
Sometimes it's not the lawyers but the clients with deep pockets. My friend spent ten years litigating one case over MOSFET patents for an unhinged client. And they lost 95% of the time against another well funded company.
More like it's a lot easier to argue at the beginning that the plaintiff has no standing to sue than it is to go through a whole discovery process and trial to hope for a judgement in your favor. Let alone the risks of the discovery process itself.
The evidence is weak because this is a motion to dismiss. My understanding (IANAL) is that the bar for dismissal would be that there isn't even a valid allegation. It would be very difficult to have strong evidence that a company discriminated against you at this point.
Once there's an actual trial, both parties get to gather evidence via discovery and they'll get to review internal documents about why these decisions were made.
So much this. It's actually kind of mind-boggling how many people think you need a mountain of evidence to make any legal claim when the reverse is largely true (you made a decision, we think it was done in violation of the Constitution and through discovery want to see if that's the case).
It sounds like the ruling is quite narrow. First, Charter was looking to dismiss the case. The lower court denied the dismissal and the 9th circuit upheld the denial of the dismissal. That doesn't mean ESN wins the case, it means Comcast doesn't have first amendment grounds to dismiss an anti-discrimination case.
It should also be noted that Charter didn't ask to dismiss the case due to weak evidence. They argued that their first amendment rights bar any claim of discrimination against their editorial decision. The judges wrote that the case "does not seek to regulate the content of Charter's conduct, but only the manner in which it reaches its editorial decisions—which is to say, free of discriminatory intent".
Charter's case for dismissal was weak because they were arguing that their first amendment editorial right meant that no discrimination case could be brought against them. The court rebutted that saying that the case isn't about what they put on their system, but how they decide on it. If they deny all African American owned companies from their system because they don't want African American owned businesses succeeding, that doesn't fall under free speech because it's unrelated to the content - the decision isn't an editorial one, but a discriminatory one.
Whether the evidence of discrimination is weak or not isn't part of this ruling. This ruling is just about whether the first amendment's protection of editorial decisions mean that one can't bring a racial discrimination case even if Charter said, "we won't put any African American owned stations on our system". The ruling seems to be hit the nail on the head: you have editorial rights, but those rights about the content; you're not allowed to deny access because of the race of the person who owns the content.
This wasn't a ruling on the merits of the evidence.
Is the solution to ignore bias then? Taken separately those incidents may not scream racism, but most incidents don’t. Taken together they give reason to ask the question at least.
Being openly racist in public is no longer acceptable in most of America, but these types of subtle racism are very common and it’s easy to dismiss them because they’re not explicit.
Yes. It is better to ignore implicit bias. Every time you talk about it, you are reenforcing it. Because every time you talk about it, you are more likely make more people to have this idea, instead of making less people to have this idea.
FWIW I can easily imagine an angry, old white man calling a 30 year old white man 'boy'. It's typically a condescending way of implying dominance and is not necessarily a racist expression in and of itself.
Coupled with his other comments, though, you might start to view these as 'dog whistles'...
FWIW I can easily imagine an angry, old white man calling a 30 year old white man 'boy'
Have you ever actually seen this?
Or, failing that, have you ever read the Alex Haley book "Roots"? or seen the television series based upon? There's an entire scene of protagonist Kunta Kente being whipped savagely as the slave master repeatedly asks "what's your name boy" to dehumanize him and strip him of his birthright and birth-given identity, changing his African name to a white, Anglo-Christian name.
I can't think of a better example than that of how that word came to be weaponized against an entire group of people to the point we have come to now.
"Boy" to black people (hi there, black person here) has a LOT of history of being blatant, unambiguous and pretty darn direct.
Although...
I suppose it's easier if one hasn't lived that life though to rest their laurels on what they "imagine" versus what people like me continually have to point out actually happens because we're the ones living through it.
In the south people use the expression “boy” in non-racial contexts all the time, you’re wrong to suspect he hasn’t seen it before. Have you ever spent time in the southeast, outside of Atlanta?
Your Roots reference is correct but it doesn’t prove your point.
Have you ever spent time in the southeast, outside of Atlanta?
I was born and raised in South Carolina (a town called Moore), and actually went to college in Atlanta, and served in the military in Alabama and later Louisiana, and I recall quite vividly being aggressively called boy from everyone from high school disciplinarians to police officers.
So yes, I have spent considerable time in the southeast. I know quite well where I come from, what's your point?
If you want to sit here and quiz me about my lived experiences as a black man in the southern US, knock yourself out, I suspect most of the answers I give you aren't going to be what you think you want them to be.
I welcome dvtrn to correct me on the matter, as I don't want to speak on their behalf out of line, but taken in context, it seems pretty obvious to me what he was doing was contrasting what someone imagines race relations being like to what he actually lived and experienced is as a black man in the south. No imagination needed on his part.
it seems pretty obvious to me what he was doing was contrasting what someone imagines race relations being like and what his actual experience is as a black man in the south
It's quite annoying that it needs to be explained like this, since it should be pretty painfully apparent, but yes.
Sorry but I'm (personally) not particularly inclined to favorably entertain what someone "imagines" about dog-whistle terminology. Their proximity to the ebbs and flows of southern racial 'charm' doesn't hold a candle to what I actually lived through and experienced first hand for 30 years-as a direct recipient of aggressive, racially loaded behavior and speech.
You would/wouldn’t be surprised how many people don’t know history and may not know or understand that, but that’s another issue and also why you have to look at it in context with the other incidents. Either the guy is regularly unaware of the implications and connotations of his words or he’s using them on purpose as an expression of his prejudice and either would seem to be an issue.
You don’t need proof to start a trail. You just need weak evidence. How could I, a random person outside Comcast, collect information about Comcast’s internal processes?
A trial can be opened on suspicion with evidence, then you use the subpoena power of the court to try to prove it.
> This kind of law suit properly will increase implicit racial bias
That’s a pretty big quantitative claim. How high is your confidence in it?
Are you an example of someone whose bias has gone up from reading about this? Or are you basing this off your expertise in what causes shifts in biased people?
I think you are the racist to make this kind of comment. Those words can be used on anybody. When you say racism is the only explanation to tell a Black person to "get off of welfare", you are the racist. Only a racist can think this way.
I think you are almost correct. A victim of racism or an advocate for a victim of racism is not being racist for calling out the racism. However, a person blaming racism without evidence and where it does not exist is indeed engaging in racism themselves, because it exposes their own notions of the group they are attacking. Calling out "racism" is not automatically a sainted argument above reproach. This is a general statement, not directed at the case in the article.
> > None the things mentioned ("get off of welfare", "handout", "boy", "change his behavior") is necessarily racism.
> All of those are explicitly racist when addressing people of color.
Agreed.
I read that and cringed pretty hard. For someone to say calling a black man "boy" is not racist is either willfully ignorant to an alarming degree or just plain insincere.
I'm all for differing viewpoints, but let's at least call things what they are. If you're going to be racist, at least own up to it.
For someone to say calling a black man "boy" is not racist is either willfully ignorant to an alarming degree or just plain insincere.
It's probably as another commenter alluded below: people are taking this weird position of "I haven't personally lived through it so it must be literally any other explanation" when someone who has direct experience with the type of behavior exhibited points to it happening, live and in living color and says "this is a problem for me as a member of this group".
I couldn't ever in a hundred years imagine telling a blind person who says "this is my experience as a blind person" they're wrong, or what they live through on a day to day basis isn't valid because I, a person with full vision experience it differently.
But here we are. Reading some of the comments in this thread has me cringing just as much as reading the claims alleged in the article [0].
> The evidence of discrimination is extremely weak.
That's immaterial; this ruling isn't weighing evidence and drawing conclusions of fact from it, it's about whether there is a proper justiciable legal complaint with any evidence on the necessary elements. If there is, which this decisions says there is, it is for the trier of fact in the trial court (presumably a jury) to weigh the evidence and draw conclusions of fact.
This is a front-door-of-the-court decision, not a final judgement.
I think the lede for the article is a better summary: "A US appeals court ruling today said that cable companies do not have a First Amendment right to discriminate against minority-run TV channels."
I first read your tl;dr as, "The companies can refuse channels, but not if those channels are racist."
Agreed. If Charter said "too few of our customers will pay for this channel, it's not worth it to us", then they're within their rights. They shot themselves in the foot by having a VP of programming make racist comments to protestors. If those racist comments are found to be evidence that they also refused to carry the channel for race-related reasons, then they've got a problem. If the two facts are unrelated, then they don't.
I wonder what happens if some emails are found during discovery that say "only X% of our customers are African-American, and X is less than our threshold for whether a channel will be profitable for us"?
I suspect that would be an illegal reason, as, of course, customers of any race might be interested in this channel.
Honestly, anything that goes against the interests of these two companies, in particular, I am fine with. I hold an unhealthy resentment towards both of them.
64 comments
[ 0.91 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Unleashed
I have yet to find another IPTV provider that offers tthe first two features mentioned, despite it being possible with ddecade old technology running WinCE (in Centurylink's case).
there was some PR about it being improved this and uniform that.
indeed, the quality is now uniform: complete garbage. really defeats much of owning a good 4k sony :(. i wonder how many additional useless channels they added that no one watches.
at least their set top boxes have abysmally slow UIs.
https://forums.xfinity.com/t5/Non-X1-Service/1080i-channels-...
i looked into Sling TV recently and their lineup has really improved. does anyone have experience with it, quality-wise?
DirecTVNow was flakey the last time I used it on either my RokuTVs or with my Roku sticks. It worked better when I would AirPlay it to my 3rd Gen AppleTV or watch it using the app on my 4K AppleTV.
My wireless connection in the same area as my TVs never dips below 159Mbps so it’s not my bandwidth.
My AppleTVs throughout the house are all connected via gigabit Ethernet throughout my house.
I also noticed it isn’t the same stream sent to Rokus as it was to the AppleTV. The timing would be different.
- The evidence of discrimination is extremely weak. None the things mentioned ("get off of welfare", "handout", "boy", "change his behavior") is necessarily racism. But the result is not surprising, since the ruling is from the 9th Circuit.
A side note. This kind of law suit properly will increase implicit racial bias, because it is trying to reenforce the idea that welfare and bad behavior only or strongly links to African Americans. See: Even completing a Race Implicit Association Test increases implicit racial bias: https://psyarxiv.com/vxsj7/
The ruling just says that the companies do not have that right. The plaintiff still needs to prove it happened, but that's what the trial is for.
That's literally the entire point of a trial and presentation of evidence.
The Charter/Comcast argument was “it doesn't matter if we were actually discriminating on the basis of race, because the First Amendment allows us to do so, so there's no need for a trial to determine if that's what we were doing (which we weren't.)”
This decision simply says: “The First Amendment doesn't allow you to discriminate by race in the way alleged, so the question of whether you did or did not actually will need to be resolved in court.”
IANAL but I'd imagine bar associations would have a lot of issues with this, wouldn't they?
Sometimes it's not the lawyers but the clients with deep pockets. My friend spent ten years litigating one case over MOSFET patents for an unhinged client. And they lost 95% of the time against another well funded company.
Once there's an actual trial, both parties get to gather evidence via discovery and they'll get to review internal documents about why these decisions were made.
It should also be noted that Charter didn't ask to dismiss the case due to weak evidence. They argued that their first amendment rights bar any claim of discrimination against their editorial decision. The judges wrote that the case "does not seek to regulate the content of Charter's conduct, but only the manner in which it reaches its editorial decisions—which is to say, free of discriminatory intent".
Charter's case for dismissal was weak because they were arguing that their first amendment editorial right meant that no discrimination case could be brought against them. The court rebutted that saying that the case isn't about what they put on their system, but how they decide on it. If they deny all African American owned companies from their system because they don't want African American owned businesses succeeding, that doesn't fall under free speech because it's unrelated to the content - the decision isn't an editorial one, but a discriminatory one.
Whether the evidence of discrimination is weak or not isn't part of this ruling. This ruling is just about whether the first amendment's protection of editorial decisions mean that one can't bring a racial discrimination case even if Charter said, "we won't put any African American owned stations on our system". The ruling seems to be hit the nail on the head: you have editorial rights, but those rights about the content; you're not allowed to deny access because of the race of the person who owns the content.
This wasn't a ruling on the merits of the evidence.
Being openly racist in public is no longer acceptable in most of America, but these types of subtle racism are very common and it’s easy to dismiss them because they’re not explicit.
Coupled with his other comments, though, you might start to view these as 'dog whistles'...
Have you ever actually seen this?
Or, failing that, have you ever read the Alex Haley book "Roots"? or seen the television series based upon? There's an entire scene of protagonist Kunta Kente being whipped savagely as the slave master repeatedly asks "what's your name boy" to dehumanize him and strip him of his birthright and birth-given identity, changing his African name to a white, Anglo-Christian name.
I can't think of a better example than that of how that word came to be weaponized against an entire group of people to the point we have come to now.
"Boy" to black people (hi there, black person here) has a LOT of history of being blatant, unambiguous and pretty darn direct.
Although...
I suppose it's easier if one hasn't lived that life though to rest their laurels on what they "imagine" versus what people like me continually have to point out actually happens because we're the ones living through it.
Your Roots reference is correct but it doesn’t prove your point.
I was born and raised in South Carolina (a town called Moore), and actually went to college in Atlanta, and served in the military in Alabama and later Louisiana, and I recall quite vividly being aggressively called boy from everyone from high school disciplinarians to police officers.
So yes, I have spent considerable time in the southeast. I know quite well where I come from, what's your point?
If you want to sit here and quiz me about my lived experiences as a black man in the southern US, knock yourself out, I suspect most of the answers I give you aren't going to be what you think you want them to be.
I welcome dvtrn to correct me on the matter, as I don't want to speak on their behalf out of line, but taken in context, it seems pretty obvious to me what he was doing was contrasting what someone imagines race relations being like to what he actually lived and experienced is as a black man in the south. No imagination needed on his part.
I think the benefit of the doubt there is earned.
It's quite annoying that it needs to be explained like this, since it should be pretty painfully apparent, but yes.
Sorry but I'm (personally) not particularly inclined to favorably entertain what someone "imagines" about dog-whistle terminology. Their proximity to the ebbs and flows of southern racial 'charm' doesn't hold a candle to what I actually lived through and experienced first hand for 30 years-as a direct recipient of aggressive, racially loaded behavior and speech.
A trial can be opened on suspicion with evidence, then you use the subpoena power of the court to try to prove it.
> This kind of law suit properly will increase implicit racial bias
That’s a pretty big quantitative claim. How high is your confidence in it?
Are you an example of someone whose bias has gone up from reading about this? Or are you basing this off your expertise in what causes shifts in biased people?
> None the things mentioned ("get off of welfare", "handout", "boy", "change his behavior") is necessarily racism.
All of those are explicitly racist when addressing people of color.
You overplayed your hand here.
> All of those are explicitly racist when addressing people of color.
Agreed.
I read that and cringed pretty hard. For someone to say calling a black man "boy" is not racist is either willfully ignorant to an alarming degree or just plain insincere.
I'm all for differing viewpoints, but let's at least call things what they are. If you're going to be racist, at least own up to it.
It's probably as another commenter alluded below: people are taking this weird position of "I haven't personally lived through it so it must be literally any other explanation" when someone who has direct experience with the type of behavior exhibited points to it happening, live and in living color and says "this is a problem for me as a member of this group".
I couldn't ever in a hundred years imagine telling a blind person who says "this is my experience as a blind person" they're wrong, or what they live through on a day to day basis isn't valid because I, a person with full vision experience it differently.
But here we are. Reading some of the comments in this thread has me cringing just as much as reading the claims alleged in the article [0].
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18495817
That's immaterial; this ruling isn't weighing evidence and drawing conclusions of fact from it, it's about whether there is a proper justiciable legal complaint with any evidence on the necessary elements. If there is, which this decisions says there is, it is for the trier of fact in the trial court (presumably a jury) to weigh the evidence and draw conclusions of fact.
This is a front-door-of-the-court decision, not a final judgement.
The trial will focus on whether they can prove it was racism, or some other reason.
I first read your tl;dr as, "The companies can refuse channels, but not if those channels are racist."
I wonder what happens if some emails are found during discovery that say "only X% of our customers are African-American, and X is less than our threshold for whether a channel will be profitable for us"?
I suspect that would be an illegal reason, as, of course, customers of any race might be interested in this channel.
http://entertainmentstudios.com/network/
Frankly they look like cheap knockoffs of existing channels.