Quote:
Originally Posted by Hockey Fan #751
Agreed. The biggest correction is going to be with stations like ESPN which currently make $8 for every single cable subscriber out there. That's somewhere around 90 million.
If and when cable goes away, how is ESPN going to recoup that $700 million annually? The answer is that they're not but they won't be able to pay as much money for products like Monday Night Football. ESPN will eventually be an online subscription service, probably something like $10 per month.
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It isn't $700 million annually. It's
per month:
http://blogs.wsj.com/numbers/how-muc...-channel-1626/
In 2014, U.S. cable companies were paying an average of $6.04 per month per subscriber for ESPN. That figure has been rising steadily and quickly. And that, I agree, is unsustainable. That's a pool of billions of dollars a year for ESPN to spend on programming, and while it isn't going to go away entirely, it could shrink very quickly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Enoch Root
People want sports, so demand isn't likely going anywhere.
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The current model allows ESPN to levy a tax of more than $70 per year on millions of cable subscribers who
don't want sports and never watch their channel. Their product is not being demanded by consumers, but by middlemen who want to be able to say that they carry every major channel. As the middlemen are disintermediated, that particular chunk of demand is going to go away. Can you imagine an ISP adding several dollars a month to your Internet bill so they can say, ‘We have access to espn.com’? Of course not; the Internet doesn't work that way. And the Internet is steadily eroding the market position of cable TV.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist
Not ever, just since this model began. There's disruption coming. It's inevitable
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Yup. I'm an old hand at disruption, myself. Most of the jobs I've had in the past came about because new technology disrupted a previous industry and created new opportunities; and most of those jobs don't exist anymore because newer technology came along and disrupted them in turn.
At present, I'm seeing the disruption happen up close and personal in the publishing industry, which is a kissing cousin to other media businesses. The people running old-line publishing companies think they've found the golden goose because new tech allows them to cut their costs. But they are not going to survive in the long run, because the same new tech allows writers and readers to bypass them entirely. Every media business is vulnerable to this form of disruption, including broadcast sports.