Why Cable Sucks (no offense to Breand)

[Grieve]

I think its the other way around, ESPN is consistantly one of the top rated channels, its the fans of Sci Fi and niche networks who are subsidized by sports fans and fox news watchers.

Okay, let's take a look.

Let's say there are 100m (way too high, but a nice round number) subscribers to the providers (via cable, satellite, Fios, etc).

Based on the bulk costs below, that means the following four channels would get this amount of monthly income:

Code:

ESPN              $4.08   $408,000,000.00
Fox Sports       $2.37   $237,000,000.00
SyFy             $0.21   $21,000,000.00
Science Channel  $0.06   $6,000,000.00

Now let's say that in a-la-carte, 60% of those households want ESPN, 50% want Fox Sports, 10% want Syfy, and 5% want the Science Channel. To get the same income the price would need to be:

Code:

ESPN              $6.80 (60m subscribers)
Fox Sports        $4.74 (50m subscribers)
SyFy              $2.10 (10m subscribers)
Science Channel  $1.20  (5m subscribers)

So...if you just wanted the sports channels, the cost basis would be $11.54. If you just wanted SyFy and the Science Channel, the cost basis would be $3.30 - less than a third. Whatever you ended up paying (obviously more than the cost basis), you would still be paying far less if you didn't care about sport.

Also, there is some element of a-la-carte available now. I can pay $15 extra for HBO, $10 extra for Showtime, $10 extra for Playboy (I only watch it for the articles!), and $5 extra for HDNet. Obviously that model works out fine for those guys...