Been following your updates on the new network, and wishing I had high speed access to make this a reality. However, I've noticed that you have to do some DNS spoofing to get the WWE Network to work in Canada. Why is that? Is it the same reasoning as why we can't access video from most US TV sites (and why Netflix in Canada can be kind of sucktastic), namely being the draconian CRTC Can-Con policies? I can understand this with first-run stuff that you could be paying satellite providers to watch (well.... actually, I can't, but whatever), but with this not being a "real" television network..... How difficult would it be to sort out the royalties so that true "region-free" viewing could some day be supported? Or, is the WWE planning to roll out a "WWE Network Canada" at some point, to get around this restriction? Considering that some of their greatest stars of the past and today are Canadian, it would seem that they are throwing money away by not having an option available to Canadian fans. If they were to start showing old episodes of Stampede Wrestling on the network (as I'm sure they will soon enough), I would be RABID at having to technically engage in mail and communications fraud to be able to watch them.
It's a matter of TV rights as far as I know, because Sportsnet 360 has exclusive broadcast agreements with them in Canada and they'd have to get around that before launching the network up here. It probably has to do with their PPV agreements, too. Canadian content wouldn't be an issue because it's already been established that the CRTC can't mandate the internet.
And WWE has been saying all along that it'll launch in Canada at the end of the year, so obviously they have plans in place to make it happen. I wouldn't panic. That's why I'm so happy it's the way it is, because a "real" network wouldn't launch up here for YEARS due to CRTC regulations and convoluted rights issues, if ever.
Or you could just get it around like me and enjoy!
Canadians want to be American so bad it hurts.
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure about CRTC regulations uneffecting it. Canadian Netflix is very different from Canadian Netflix because it still requires a certain percentage of Canadian content.
ReplyDelete"And WWE has been saying all along that it'll launch in Canada at the end of the year, so obviously they have plans in place to make it happen. "
ReplyDeletethey also said there would be no edits to any of the ppv's
and that the network was going to be launched last year
Granted I'm not the expert on the subject, but I've always been under the impression that the differences in Canadian Netflix are due to the movie & TV rights for the stuff being offered is tied up by the Shaw/Bell mega-conglomerates, and thus can't be shown.
ReplyDeleteAh, I hadn't heard that. I'm also not an expert on the subject, but I thought I'd heard somewhere that it had to do with CRTC's rule of percentage of Canadian content.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.canadianbusiness.com/companies-and-industries/why-netflix-wont-conquer-canada-part-2/
ReplyDeleteThere you go -- as I thought, Bell owning everything shuts out Netflix, whereas the CRTC has no say over the internet content.
Not if you count when he initially signed his WWE contract on October of 1998.
ReplyDeleteIf he stays sober (supposedly he's been sober for a few months now) and wrestles a part-time schedule at best, he'd definitely be an asset to the company. He'd be a perfect RAW GM-type candidate, playing the Stone Cold role during the Bischoff era. At his best there, he had a tremendous sense of humor, and as good as he is as a wrestler, he really comes alive in those sort of skits that the WWE loves.
ReplyDeleteThen again, that might not work for him too well, because a GM guy has to be on the road, and that's hard for anyone just getting clean, I'm sure. Maybe a Lesnar schedule works best.
This whole "not welcome back" stuff might have been true for a long time while he was lying to himself about the extent of his problem. But we've seen Jake and the Warrior reconcile, and those guys were probably as deep (if not deeper) in the "don't call us" hole than Angle. I mean, they never made "The Self-Destruction Of Kurt Angle" DVD, did they?
That's a totally different show. But I don't imagine why they'd cut that. Maybe bleep the "shit" out of it.
ReplyDeleteAnd that it would be a...you know.
ReplyDeleteTV Network
I apreciate the quota of Canadian music on the radio.
ReplyDeleteBeyond that, I have very little opinion on it
I think the Network is a great thing for the fans. However, for the life of me, I don't understand the business strategy behind it. It seems like they're going to be losing money from it. From what I've heard, they have to pay the MLB streaming company 30 percent of their revenue, plus they've already put 12 million dollars into the network out of their own pocket. WM itself usually breaks a million buyrates. They're estimation buyrate for the network is going to be around the same number. Of course, this is excluding international buys because the Network isn't available to them just yet. However, people are basically buying WM for 10 dollars cheaper and yet are getting 5 additional PPVs for free, in addition to all the content as well.
ReplyDeleteI hope it doesn't hurt too bad, I don't want to go broke staying in one of your hospitals...;)
ReplyDeleteIs anyone still having problems with thing loading on demand videos? Live stream is fine but I can only watch about 3 minutes of on demand ppvs before it has to buffer for 30 seconds. I don't get it at all.
ReplyDeleteSure don't!
ReplyDeleteTake off, eh.
ReplyDeleteIt's a brilliant business strategy: Make people pay for stuff that they've already seen, take the old fans that dislike the current product and figure some way to make them shell out money to re-watch the old product that was free the first time around.
ReplyDeleteNow why everyone's excited to participate in that, I have no idea.
But that it's working makes Vince the most brilliant man in all of media history. Somewhere out there Rupert Murdoch is trying to figure a way to get people to pay money to stream old episodes of Hannity.
PPVs were free the first time around?
ReplyDeleteYou get a good job with great benefits and it's a non issue. Obviously I'm not up there, but just curious, is there any form of entertainment being produced in Canada that Americans should be envious of? I'm being 100% serious.
ReplyDeleteNot sure. If there was something I was super into I'd be sure to recommend it, but I don't tend to follow a lot of entertainment. My presumption is that if there was something that great, I'd already know about it and/or there'd be a US version of it already. =)
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