said by djcrazy: The cable companies hands are tied on this one. It is an all or nothing from the content provider and they require that ESPN be on basic cable. Disney owns the 80% and Hearst owns the rest. If a cable company refuses to carry ESPN as a basic channel, they get zero programming from Disney.
Then that is when you bring on the carriage disputes. Many times programming providers give in just to get their channels back on the air. KCRG (Cedar Rapids, IA) just had a bitter carriage dispute with Dish and they even offered their sub channel (9.2) for free but Dish would not budge.