Unbundling Cable and the Potential Effect of Sports Programming

[Mavric]

A couple good articles - the first on the potential forced change in how cable is currently distributed and the second following up on it and how it could affect sports programming, and thus sports revenue.

 

My cable bill is the same way. I don’t watch Animal Planet or TruTV, but I pay for them as part of a package that includes the channels I do want.

 

The cable industry books that inefficiency as profit. It is the lucrative lifeblood of the current entertainment business. Last year, media analysts at Needham & Company estimated that $70 billion — half the total revenue in the television universe — would “evaporate” in an unbundled world, and that all but 20 channels would disappear. (It’s also important to consider that the bundle, for all its shortcomings, helps add a great deal of diversity to cable offerings.)

On Tuesday, Aereo was in front of the Supreme Court with what once seemed like a preposterous notion: that a third party could grab broadcast signals through an array of antennas and serve up the programming over the Internet without paying retransmission fees. I was there, and you could see the justices struggling to balance current copyright law against the technological future. It seemed clear that if they had a bullet that would just kill Aereo and not claim innovation as collateral damage, they would.

 

But it’s not that simple. Despite the deep skepticism the justices displayed toward Aereo’s argument, the company might survive simply because it represents digital entrepreneurialism that the court is loath to suppress.

NY Times

 

This has meant that sports networks -- and thus sports leagues -- have become more powerful (and rich) than ever before; they're essentially subsidizing non-sports channels at this point. Studies have shown that the average cable consumer pays 15 percent of their bill to sports channels whether or not they even know where they are on the dial. If you have a friend who has cable but doesn't watch ESPN, know that they are giving them roughly $5 a month, personally, for literally nothing. This advantage of cable bundling works to the advantage of the sports fan. But only us.

The bundling model of cable companies had seemed indestructible; cord-cutters were waved away as pointless pedants. But the way cable companies work -- the way they've sustained their power -- is antithetical to the way people now consume media. (It's no wonder the service providers are now fighting to do away with net neutrality; they're trying to box us in from all sides.) We are an a la carte culture now: The notion that people should pay for big bulks and bundles of channels -- that they should purchase things they don't want in order to get things they do -- is standing against every emerging consumer attitude, against actual progress. This is just not what people want anymore.

Full Article

[BigRedBuster]

If cable or satellite companies don't bundle channels together, I see the divorce rate increasing in the US.

 

I'm sure I am not the only one in this boat, but, I see this causing a huge argument in my house hold.

 

My wife is an accountant and watches every penny. So.....I would see me having to justify every channel that I watch that she doesn't. That sucks. With the bundle, I simply say I if we get XYZ package, we all get the channels we want and there isn't much of a discussion.