For some people coming into the conversation late...
- Disney bought Fox assets, and had to spin some off.
- Sinclair—which owns a lot of mid market TV stations—bought the Fox regional sports networks
- Sinclair has tried to make up for this expenditure by raising rates on cable providers whenever a contract expires
- It looks like virtually no one is renewing the contracts at Sinclair’s price
The RSNs are a major outlet for baseball, college football, soccer, pro and college basketball, and hockey—basically anything that’s not NFL.
In the background, those regional networks, which used to be independent, have been cutting staff behind the camera over the last 20 years. They may all be contractors now—and everyone I know that works for them is a contractor. For games, the announcers are safe, but other roles are getting cut in one way or another—either entirely, or in pay, or in hours.
It wouldn’t surprise me to see the number of cameras get cut even more as Sinclair finds fewer outlets for their programming.
(AT&T’s contract has not expired yet, so they still have the networks at the lower price. Possibly the same with Comcast).
