Sports is the big sticky wicket in all of this. Most of the entertainment networks and programming are either mostly advertising supported (ie, FX, A&E, History, Discovery, AMC) or a la carte pay supported (showtime, HBO). Both of those models could move easily to an a la carte model being sold by whoever. The problem is all these new massive tv deals for pro and college sports are being signed based on the the fact that ever cable/dish subscriber in the US is paying north of $20 a month in carriage fees to ESPN, TNT, TBS, NBC sports, CBS sports, and all the local sportsnets, and the vast majority of those subscribers don't even watch those channels. So Disney is not going to give any of their Disney channel, or ABC programming away to anyone not willing to force every customer to pay 7 dollars a month for ESPN, and Fox is going to give their's away to anyone not willing to make every customer pay 5 dollars a month for their RSNs, same with Comcast/NBC, and so on.
Something's got to give though, as these RSNs and ESPN get more and more greedy, the model will break itself, either by requiring regulation or too many people will move to piracy.
|