said by SpottedCat:Why wouldn't CBS want EVERYONE to receive their channel as easily as possible?
When the law was changed permitting negotiations for retransmission consent starting in the 1993 season, the average rating for a top 20 TV show was 16.9; last season it was 4.4 .
In 1993 cable companies (including Time Warner Cable) would never pay re-transmission fees. As far as they were concerned they should not have to pay for something you could get with an antenna. One tiny cable company in Iowa agreed to pay $250 a month for retransmission fees to one NBC station, and it was noteworthy.
What the networks did is use the minor leverage they had with the consent requirements to push cable deals. ABC granted consent if the cable companies would all agree to carry their new channel ESPN2 for a fee. CBS did not own a cable company in 1993 so they got nothing.
Starting in 2006 the over the air networks got serious about bumping up retransmission fees to sizeable revenue. In 2006 retranmission fees for all tv stations was about $227 million. By last year that had increased by 675% (matter of record). I assume that is the source of the reported 600% increase by CBS.
CBS is probably getting $1 per household from Time Warner Cable, and is trying to get $2. So bottom line is that an extra $4 million a month from TWC is worth a lot more compared to advertising revenue from the tiny fraction of the 4 million households that are watching CBS at any one time. More importantly it is a precedent in negotiation with the thousands of cable companies in USA. If TWC can paint CBS as evil in public perception, than if the same thing happens with small cable companies they will be able to blame CBS.
Many government people are pushing to hurry up the transition of public television to the internet, as they feel the frequencies allocated to broadcast TV would be more valuable to their economies if they could be sold to cellular companies.