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OwlSaver
OwlSaver
Premium Member
join:2005-01-30
Berwyn, PA

OwlSaver to bohratom

Premium Member

to bohratom

Re: Regional Sports Network fees coming for Midatlantic region..

The only sport I want to watch is Soccer and am happy to pay a lot to see it. I already pay about $15/Month for Fox Soccer Plus and about $80 a year for MLS Direct Kick. But, this fee just annoys me. I do not watch College Sports, Baseball, Football, Basketball or Hockey. This needs to be fixed. Either a completely ala carte model where I pay for each channel or a bundle where every channel is included. But having Verizon or Comcast decide what I need to watch and pay for does not work. I think the end is near for Cable TV as we know it.
ansky
join:2009-05-18
West Orange, NJ

ansky

Member

said by OwlSaver:

But having Verizon or Comcast decide what I need to watch and pay for does not work. I think the end is near for Cable TV as we know it.

As I already mentioned, it's not the cable companies that are making these decisions. It's the sports networks that demand their network be carried on the lowest tier of service. So Verizon has 2 options: carry the sports networks and charge all customers, or don't carry the sports networks at all. Clearly they are finding that option 1 is better. They would likely lose more customers by not carrying the sports networks at all, than they would lose from people who don't want sports networks cancelling the service.

Ultimately, as a customer you have the final say. If you feel your cable company is not giving you good value, then you can leave and find other options. Many will threaten to cancel. Few will actually do it.
OwlSaver
OwlSaver
Premium Member
join:2005-01-30
Berwyn, PA

OwlSaver

Premium Member

said by ansky:

said by OwlSaver:

But having Verizon or Comcast decide what I need to watch and pay for does not work. I think the end is near for Cable TV as we know it.

Ultimately, as a customer you have the final say. If you feel your cable company is not giving you good value, then you can leave and find other options. Many will threaten to cancel. Few will actually do it.

You make good points. I also have the option of petitioning my elected officials and the regulatory agency to enforce change. As it is now, I could leave Verizon but Comcast realistically only offers similar options as Verizon. I actually applaud Verizon for creating the Select tier to give their customers an option.

What I would really like to see is a separation of delivery from content. Imagine if Comcast owned NBC (oh, wait, they do) and Verizon owned CBS (not yet). They could each refuse to offer the content to each others subscribers. So, I would have to have both Comcast and Verizon to get NBC and CBS.
nfotiu
join:2009-01-25

nfotiu

Member

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.