It will depend how their content partners are paid -- by number of total subscribers? Percentage of total revenue? It is possible that the prospect of a-la-carte pricing might have been baked into the original contracts with such folks.
Perhaps it's like General Electric Leasing and the airline industry -- when airlines went through their rounds of bankruptcy, abrogating their lease agreements, the leaseholders pretty much accepted the less-favorable terms, under the logic that GE couldn't find other takers for aircraft anyway, and that some revenue for the asset was better than no revenue -- and this is for an asset that could sit in the desert and age relatively slowly. By comparison, sports and entertainment contracts are like hotel rooms: the rights to broadcast today's NHL games have zero value tomorrow, the same way that a hotel room for tonight is worth nothing tomorrow. It will be interesting to watch the parallel battle between MLB and the cable and satellite providers. I know several people who subscribe to the cable-delivered "Extra Innings" package who are fuming that they might have to switch delivery platforms (egad, what a phrase) to DirecTV in order to get their out-of-town fill of baseball. Richard Cuff / Allentown, PA On 3/21/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I wonder how happy their content partners will be with this approach > and to what extent their contracts will permit it. _______________________________________________ Swprograms mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/swprograms To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], or visit the URL shown above.
