ESPN's High Cost Gathers More Views 11-24-03!

From Gary Wilson: I don't mind ESPN charging some $3 from me to be on the cable system, but what makes me mad is being threatened by Cox to have to find ESPN on a digital tier that costs me $3 a month just for the box rental, and then I have to pay for at least two digital tiers at $9 because I can't get just the one sports digital tier for a low price. Music Choice sucks. I don't need that crap. Cox is using the $3 a month threat from ESPN to get me to pay them for additional channels I don't need or care to watch just so I can get the sports channels. This will drive me to DirecTV when Cox decides to drop ESPN from channel 3 and 28.

From Jared Wilton:

Fact #1: player salaries are too high.

Fact #2: Disney pays so high a price for a major league sports package that they can't cover it with the advertising money.

Fact #3: Disney uses their owned network TV stations to milk the cable systems for money so that my mother in a rest home can watch All My Children.

Fact #4: Disney is charging the local affilliates money to air Disney's ABC programming, so the affilliates are getting money from cable systems for the right to carry their lame brained programming.

Fact #5: Disney's ESPN is demanding more money from the cable systems to keep their channels on the cable system.

Question: where are the cable systems getting all the money from so that they can carry their crap ABC and ESPN programming?

Answer: you're looking at him right now.

Conclusion: Disney is an evil empire.

Case closed.

From Mark Elliott:

The days where cable systems are freely raising their cable rates are going to have to end soon. $40 for 73 channels a month is outrageous. Sure, ESPN has the big sports now, but we need to write Congress and tell our representatives to put a lid on how much money a cable channel can charge a cable system for the right for the cable system to carry their channel. Wait a minute. What am I saying? This should be the OTHER way around! Cable systems should charge the cable channels to be on their system since the cable systems are the ones paying for the overhead that brings in all the channels on the system. If the cable channels don't like it, then they should convert themselves to pay channels and let the cable system carry all the free channels.

Furthermore, the NFL and other major sports leagues should offer their packages to more than one pay sports channel so that the pay channels can compete with each other while offering the same games, and competetion will get the prices down for each channel. That's what's wrong with cable in many areas. There is no competetion in cable (satellite TV dishes doesn't count). Prices will continue to go up up away as long as there is only one cable system serving a particular area. There is no pressure from the cable companies to tell the cable channels to get their prices down; the arrogant Cox cable admits that they still don't mind raising prices as long as ESPN doesn't force them to do so that fast.

Great value, my ass. Cox doesn't care about you, just their own bottom line. Corporate cable companies suck.

Aron Kemp:

Get ESPN off the basic tier, now! Make the major league sports mad enough to no longer consider ESPN when the time comes for a new round of bids for the cable packages once those on ESPN expire. Let Spike pay for a new sports package, but if Spike pays so much that they would have to ask the cable companies more money from us to help pay for the sports package, then Spike can take a hike to digital.

Money goes from the cable customer, to the cable company, to the cable programming supplier (ESPN, Fox, etc.), then to the major league organizations (NFL, NBA, MLB, etc.), then to the greedy underperforming ball players. This trickle down theory from the cable customers to the overpaid players has got to stop. This is highway robbery. I don't want my money going to pay for people who don't deserve my business, and the sports leagues who can't get a handle on economics by bleeding red are not going to use me to help pay for the high salaries of ball players.

Needless to say, I no longer go to games run by the major leagues.

Stan Butler:

Your idea of a two-way cable box in a VCR and TV is what's long been needed ever since cable channels decided they need to get more money from the cable subscribers by way of carriage fees.

The cable companies are completetly without vision as they tell me that I can't pay for just the five or six cable channels that I watch and not pay for the channels I never care to watch. They tell me that I can have just the basic broadcast channels for less, but that means that I can't get what I want.

A cable company somewhere in the USA probably is scrambling all of the cable channels and requiring a converter box just so you can watch them on TV; this arrangement won't allow you to tape any of the channels on your VCR for later viewing, as you can't with the digital cable boxes either. They think that the solution to offering alacarte programming is to scramble all of the channels, then unscramble each channel I want to pay for so that the coverter box on the TV can let me watch them; but my VCR can't tape them. This is not the way.

The way? Putting the converter boxes inside each VCR will let me pick and choose what channels to pay for, with the converter box inside the VCR letting me tape the channels that deserve to get paid, and the TV with a converter box inside it decoding the same lineup of channels I pay for as well. The converter boxes will also decode digital cable channels as well.

This is what the cable companies and the satellite programmers do not want. Piracy is the least of their problems if such TV and VCR sets allow everybody to delete channels they don't want to pay for. This is bad news for niche networks I don't watch such as E!, Lifetime, Disney, Food, HGTV, MTV, VH1, BET, Bravo, Court, and all those crummy shopping channels. If a lot of people knocked off the niche channels that appeal to few people off their cable bill, then these niche channels would have to either appeal to a broader audience or charge their remaining viewers more money to watch their channel. Not enough fees? Then the channel deservedly goes out of business and off the air. That's the way it is with other businesses. We don't get taxed so that Montgomery Ward and some other money-losing store stays in business. Why is it this way so that channels with low viewers get subsided by the vast majority who never watch their channels so that they can stay on the air?

James Eckert:

ESPN has got to turn itself into a pay channel. They can't use the 80 percent of us who never tune in to their station with $2.61 in monthly fees anymore. The other 20 percent can pay $15 a month for the right to see ESPN on the digital tier. Figure that if ESPN goes to digital tier, then ESPN would need four times more money from the 1/5 of the cable subscribers who tune in just so that they can have the same cash flow as they had when it was once on basic cable where it cost us all $3 a month.

If half of the 20 percent won't do so, then ESPN would have to go to $30 a month, then more would unsubscribe, and finally, ESPN would lose all of their expensive sports properties just so they can cut the cost of running the channel, or fold.

TV is a business. Why are we paying for a business I don't care to support?