dslreports logo
 
    All Forums Hot Topics Gallery
spc
uniqs
11

wesm
Premium Member
join:1999-07-29
Seattle, WA

wesm to Ben J

Premium Member

to Ben J

Re: [FiOS] Verizon (thus, Frontier?) dropping two channels

I wonder if Tennis Channel negotiated the crappy deal with NCTC so that it could do "sweetheart" deals with the cable companies it wanted to mess with. (If it did, why not just bail on negotiating with NCTC?) It's telling that Comcast--not known for just rolling over on price increases; it hurts their bottom line--and Time Warner are both still putting it in a "sports" package. Maybe their contracts have not yet expired.

It looks like Tennis Channel is trying to pull an MLB Network but without the huge quantity of content MLB has through Extra Innings.

My point about Comcast is this: Comcast has relatively few markets where it has to compete with a "strong" competitor like Verizon or UVerse. I'm not bashing Frontier--I like Frontier better than Verizon in many ways--but 100,000 FiOS video customers (that keeps dropping every time quarterly reports are released, though I hope to see this reverse now that Frontier is actively advertising TV again) is not something that Comcast will fear. Ergo, if Tennis Channel wants to be available in those markets, they have to take Comcast's requirement of being sold separately. While Comcast can raise rates pretty much as high as it wants, people can quit and it looks bad in the few competitive markets Comcast serves.