| reply to OwlSaver
Re: Regional Sports Network fees coming for Midatlantic region.. You're right, and this is all a relatively new phenomenon. It used to be that only premium channels had significant carriage fees, and they were offered fully a la carte. The rest of the cable channels were not charging a significant amount, and the cable companies were basically making their profits minus the infrastructure costs. Now that the sports channels are charging per subscriber rates in line with premium channels, they should be treated the same as premium channels. At least force a la carte to the providers, and let the providers determine how to charge and bundle and not bundle their channels. Then you could see some real competition in pricing and more custom bundles.
As it stands now, it is pretty close to a case where the ranchers bought up the full supply of cows and chickens, and are forcing every grocery store to bundle eggs and milk with a filet mignon. |
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| reply to bohratom
As for making RSNs a la carte they did that in the past. |
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 matcarlPremium
join:2007-03-09
Franklin Square, NY | Who tried it? Not Verizon. Verizon has a sports package with channels like Tennis in it, but not all sports like ESPN. The RSN's are not in the sports package. |
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| reply to bohratom
Im talking about systems in the old school days 80s-mid 90s
Boston had NESN and Sportschannel (now Comcast Sportsnet) and it was $10 for one $16 for both |
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1 edit | And Philadelphia had Prism which was a hybrid sports/movie channel. They had live Phillies, Flyers and Sixers games and when there wasn't a game on they ran Premium-Cable style films. IIRC it was bit more expensive than HBO.
It eventually morphed into what is now CSN Philly. |
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Mac973
join:2009-05-18
West Orange, NJ | reply to matcarl
said by matcarl:Who tried it? Not Verizon. Verizon has a sports package with channels like Tennis in it, but not all sports like ESPN. The RSN's are not in the sports package.
Cablevision did this years ago with Fox Sports Pro Live. Fox Sports programming was available for free, but any live games from the Mets, Devils, Islanders, and Nets required a $20/month subscription. I remember this at least through 2001 and possibly beyond. |
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