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Recently noticed on Xfinity (Comcast), when I went to watch Season 3 of "Suits", there was a $1.99 charge per episode. Suits is on the USA network which is not a premium station.
When did they begin charging for non premium shows and does the charge ever go away.
Just as an aside, isn't Comcast charging enough already, they need to do this?
Free On Demand is offered to MSOs by the video distributor (i.e, USA Network) for a limited time after the episode is broadcast, in a contractual structure similar to limited rerun rights. Currently, only Season 4 Episode 1 and Season 4 Episode 2 are in that window. Other episodes are past the free On Demand window. Separate rights have to be negotiated. In that regard:
Quote:
Amazon announced Thursday its expanding its licensing agreement with the media giant. As part of that agreement, Amazon is getting exclusive streaming rights to five shows: NBC's Grimm and Hannibal, USA Network's Suits and Covert Affairs, and Syfy's Defiance.
So this has nothing to do with Comcast. Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner - all in the same boat. It is the producers of Suits who control who they make agreements with and what kind of agreements they'll make, and that drives the pricing for streaming episodes. Credit them with making the best deal for themselves without kowtowing to corporate masters.
Interesting that it's not a Comcast pricing structure. What I find further interesting, is the pricing is different for my sister (who lives 80 miles away from me) for the same show. That's why it looked like a Comcast pricing issue to us. Our charge is $1.99 per Episode, her pricing is a per Season amount.
I already pay for the shows in my package deal. so why am I being charged to rewatch them or to catch up on past seasons. This is charging for something that was already paid for.
I already pay for the shows in my package deal. so why am I being charged to rewatch them or to catch up on past seasons. This is charging for something that was already paid for.
Welcome to Comcast, where no potential fee is overlooked.
It's interesting to me that in my area the charges per episode coincided nearly exactly with charging for "excess" bandwidth usage. In other words, I have to limit streaming from Hulu, Netflix, Amazon (Prime), etc to avoid paying the over-use fee and the shows that I would have watched through those venues are now individually priced at $1.99 per episode through Comcast.
That's probably a coincidence. $1.99 is a pretty well-established price-point for television episodes.
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