On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 8:52 AM, David Risner <[email protected]> wrote:
> I want to know what the "tax" is for all of the TV I don't watch. I > don't watch late night TV. I don't watch day time TV. I don't watch > the Housewives of anywhere. I don't watch Jersey Shore, Teen Mom, or > anything on TLC. I don't watch the Travel, Style, etc. channels. I > don't watch political coverage on TV, local TV news or the network > nightly news programs. I don't watch Fox News (in fact, I rarely watch > CNN or MSNBC either). I don't watch any business channels. I don't > watch shows about models, either in underwear or competing to become > one. I don't watch gossip shows (ET, Extra, TMZ, etc.). I don't watch > singing competitions, shows where people compete to be a couple for a > few months before breaking up, Survivor, entertainment shows > masquerading as sports (WWF, e.g.), or shows based upon people eating > gross things. > > How much extra do I pay for all of this stuff? I bet it is at least > the $8.33 a month that sports apparently cost everyone. > I am against a total a la carte system for cable, and it is true that in a package system all users will pay for some services that they never use. So labeling the entire amount that sports programing charges cable providers as a "tax" is misleading. But a substantial amount of that charge is in excess of the actual demand for the service in the package. If Bravo charged more than $5/month (as ESPN is about to) instead of what must be much less than 50 cents (since the NYT article says the next highest charge is TNT at $1.16), I would be pretty pissed, and I don't blame non-sports fans for being pissed. ESPN can get that fee not because of the amount of demand for its product, but because of the perceived passion of those that demand their product. If Bravo threatened to not sign up with a cable provider unless it got $2/month, the cable providers would tell them to go screw themselves, and hardly anyone would cancel their cable service because they were not getting the horny housewives show (I may be gotten the title of the cable channel or show wrong here). But if cableers tell ESPN to screw themselves, the perception is that large fractions of viewers would cancel their cable service. I am not sure if the empirical data actually bears out this fear - how many of the thousands who write or call to complain and threaten would actually cancel? But the threat apparently is serious enough to force the cable companies to knuckle under. This gives ESPN clout out of proportion to the number of people who actually watch their shows. I don't like all of this for a different reason; the flood of money into sports is probably the single biggest cause of the problems in sports. Nothing I like about watching sports on television would be hurt even a little if there were 30% less money being pumped into it. While the money problem predates cable tv, cable has made it worse. I would like to see all sports leagues that benefit from waivers of one kind or another to antitrust laws to be required to put a large fraction of their programming on broadcast television - and maybe even at regulated rates. The balance of the games could then be made available to more ardent fans on some kind of a la carte cable or online system. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
