It’s too early to know what the announced sale of Cablevision and most of its subsidiaries, including Newsday, to Netherlands-based Altice will mean for Long Islanders. The complex deal likely won’t be finalized and approved by federal regulators until next year. I’m not going to explore questions of value and quality right now. I don’t feel it’s my personal place to instigate the inevitable final conflict between independent, community-based news outlets and the corporate conglomerate that so craves control and monopoly of Long Island’s daily media.
The beast is desperate and dangerous.
Long Island’s technology and information landscape is changing, whether Cablevision likes it or not. So instead of the long-expected dumping of Newsday, the Dolan family sold its interests in most of Cablevision. Most. Not the key “content provider” properties, like cable network AMC and Madison Square Garden.
The entire Cablevision business model has been fading. Altice sees a way to make it work, partly by adding mobile phone service and partly by reduction of overhead. Five of the seven top executive salaries on Long Island are paid to Cablevision executives (reminder: “Newsday Bosses Get Raises After Union Members Accept Pay Cuts,” Poynter.org, 2011).
This idea of the cable company owning the region’s daily news outlets is not written in stone. When Cablevision and the Dolans made their move to purchase Newsday in 2008, the decision was criticized in many publishing and investment circles (“Cablevision Offer Baffles Wall Street,” New York Times). They outbid Rupert Murdoch, owner of the New York Post, and Mortimer Zuckerman, owner of the Daily News, both of which were seen as much better fits by analysts. Very soon after Cablevision bought Newsday, it reduced the estimated value of the paper on its books (a “write down”) by nearly two-thirds of the $650 million purchase price.
Newsday’s primary value to Cablevision has been as an advertising platform for the cable television operation, which dwarfs the newspaper in every measure of size and revenue. No matter how many Cablevision advertisements, stickers and inserts show up in Newsday, they’re basically paying themselves.
The paper possibly wouldn’t exist as a seven-day daily print outlet had it not lucked out in a decision made three years ago by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which determines official circulation counts for daily newspapers. Newsday’s circulation fell faster than any other American newspaper in 2010 and 2011. ABC decided to count digital readers and subscribers in a way that perfectly fit the Newsday paywall and Optimum models. Newsday circulation instantly “increased” by 33 percent (37 percent on Sundays, when daily papers earn half their revenues), despite some protests about counting of Optimum subscribers who didn’t read Newsday.
The cable industry’s darkest day came last March, when HBO announced that its HBO NOW video streaming service would be offered directly to consumers, even if they didn’t have a cable television subscription. Other streaming services followed. Cash-strapped consumers, especially under 30, have already been “cutting the cord” to cable companies in favor of Netflix and other online services they can watch on computers and portable devices. By June, Cablevision CEO James Dolan publicly admitted that consumers were shifting away from “big bundles” to a mix of online and over-the-air broadcast programming. Cablevision, as we know it, is going away.
Americans have the highest broadband prices among industrialized nations, and the slowest speeds, because of a lack of choice and competition. Cablevision has been very good at co-opting local officials and keeping them in line. Public libraries and parks are now Optimum hot spots, usually at no cost. Who can compete with zero? What special district official wants to rock the zero boat? Last year, my town board was handed a seven-figure television studio for their public access television shows. What is the word for that?
Nobody asks.
Michael Miller (mmillercolumn@gmail.com) has worked in state and local government. He lives in New Hyde Park.
