The fall of RSNs

Jacket05

Jacket05

Ramblin' Wreck
Messages
686
www.cnbc.com

Sports fans are being sidelined as local hoops and hockey networks fight the decay of pay TV

Regional sports network owners Sinclair, Comcast and AT&T are charting a path for survival as the digital future looks murky
www.cnbc.com www.cnbc.com

I have been very vocal in my hatred for Sinclair and the limitations on availability. I ended up coming across this article that goes into more detail about the fall of RSN across the country. The two quotes below pretty much sum up my main issue that they paid too much and are trying to charge more than the content is worth to make up for it.

Rather than accept large monthly subscription fees, pay-TV providers like Comcast, DirecTV and Dish, and digital providers such as YouTube TV and Hulu, are increasingly walking away to keep costs down. They’ve decided the amount they have to pay to keep RSNs in the bundle no longer makes economic sense, given how few people watch them and how much they charge. Other than ESPN, RSNs are the most expensive networks in the bundle.
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“The bundle is broken,” Silver said. “It’s clearly broken. Our regional sports networks – Sinclair in particular. They paid $10 billion. It’s not clear it’s a good deal at $5 billion.”
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Gomez Adams

Gomez Adams

Jolly Good Fellow
Messages
128
Location
Suwanee, Georgia
Sports are doing to themselves now what boxing did to itself a few decades ago: Pricing itself out of an audience.

It's pretty much pay-per-view already as you either HAVE to pay a massive Satellite/Cable bill to have ESPN or go the RSN way. Either way it's cost prohibitive for most folks.

My wife and I ditched the dish 12 years ago. I was sick and tired of paying over $100.00 per month for 100 channels of nothing to watch except my local news and ESPN.

I've not missed it. I put up an external digital antennae we get 60 channels on in HD and we have Netflix, Amazon and Paramount. I hear Tech on the radio and actually manage to get things done while doing so.

Total cost: $35.00 per month.

I know a lot of people doing the same thing. It's getting to a point nobody can tolerate the sheer expense of it all anymore. It's almost cheaper to go to the games these days than pay all the cable fees.
 

stinger 1957

Helluva Engineer
Messages
1,475
Should the conferences take it all over and we pay so much per year for their apps, subscribe to each conference we're interested in or something of that nature? That might even lead to two super conferences since the TV revenue would be the main source of income, would need a complete business model with large marketing/sales dept.
 
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