said by chances14:said by tiger72:said by joebear29:That's fine as long as they can buy only the sports channels. Making them pay for everyone else's crap and then pay extra for sports is unfair.
Last I checked, the most expensive stations are the sports stations. Easily. Most evidence points to non-sports-watchers subsidizing the rest of our sports-watching habits. If you're watching sports and don't want to pay for "everyone else's crap", then you *might* save about 10% off of what you're paying. Maybe. It's not like you're actually paying for BET, Lifetime and Oxygen... They're getting throwin in with A&E and MTV...
Frankly the only non-sports stations on Cable which can command much at all are Discovery, A&E, MTV, and Comedy Central. Possibly FNC and CNN.
ESPN, Big10, CBS, NBC, FOX, NFL, NBA, NHL sports networks are all expensive anchors during network negotiations where the Cable Companies frankly have no bargaining power. They're the reason why Cable is expensive. And you're sorely mistaken if you watch sports and think a-la-carte will be some magical way to cut your cable-viewing costs by heaps.
Regardless, people who only watch sports channels are paying for those channels that non sports fans are watching on a regular basis, even if it is a smaller amount than those who don't watch sports channels.
Maybe. But the content companies aren't stupid. Disney owns ABC Family, but it also owns ESPN. It owns Lifetime, but it also owns A&E.
Same goes for Viacom.
And Fox
Really, have a look: »
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Di ··· on_Group»
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li ··· networks»
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ne ··· ation#TVIf Disney feels that it's going to lose money due to no longer being able to dump Lifetime and ABC Family in a package deal for ESPN, then they're simply going to charge more for ESPN and give Lifetime away for free (which is what they're doing anyways). News Corp will charge more for their FOX RSN's, Big10 Network and FNC.
Viacom will charge more for Comedy Central and MTV.
They'll make up the losses - Content companies will not accept losing money over a-la-carte.
The only way you will pay less is if you cut out content from an entire content company. If you want to cut out ABC, I hope you don't like ESPN.
If you want to cut out FOX, I hope your local sports aren't delivered by Fox Sports Networks.
If you want to cut out Viacom (probably the easiest if you only watch sports), I hope you don't watch Comedy Central.
Let's get real here, the cable companies don't want to hear you complain about price increases. They're just the middlemen and aggregators. They're probably more than happy to just charge you a $10 or $15 access fee and let you deal with the content companies yourself. It would cut their support costs, and they'd only need to set up a proper automated station provisioning system (which wasn't possible 30 years ago).
It's the content companies that like the system as it is. They charge the cable companies whatever they want, and everyone gets mad at cable for price increases or blackouts rather than the content companies which are the cause of the price increases in the first place.