The left-wing affirmative action that is cable TV faces another death blow with this month’s upcoming launch of Fox One.
Fox One launches on August 21 with a monthly price tag of $19.99 and includes the Fox Network, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, Fox Weather, Fox Sports, FS1, FS2, Fox Deportes, Big Ten Network, and Fox local stations.
This means that two very popular things that had been exclusive to pay TV — cable TV, satellite TV, and bundled streaming packages (which are another version of cable TV) — will soon be available to stream: the Fox News Channel and live sports.
Fox has obviously been reluctant to move to streaming. The carriage fees that made pay TV (cable/satellite/bundled streaming) so lucrative have been plenty lucrative for Fox. For those who don’t know, carriage fees are why your cable bill is so obnoxiously expensive. Your cable company forces you into packages that include dozens and dozens of networks you never watch (CNN, Comedy Central, MTV, MSNBC, etc.). There’s a reason for that. The multinational corporations that own those networks force cable TV providers to carry those networks and then charge them carriage fees that are passed on to you.
This is what I meant above by “left-wing affirmative action.”
Whether you watch or not, you are subsidizing CNN and the rest through your cable bill. Every month, networks no one watches receive millions and millions in revenue through these carriage fees.
You see, too few people watch a majority of cable networks, and those networks could never survive on merit (advertising rates based on viewership). CNN, Comedy Central, and MTV would have long ago gone off the air without those carriage fees, which means they have no business being in business.
Pay TV is the greatest racket in the history of entertainment.
Ah, but streaming is killing pay TV, and streaming is based on merit — where you only pay for what you watch, as opposed to paying for a hundred networks you don’t.
Every person who cuts the cable TV cord is delivering a death blow to cable TV. Better still, it’s a death blow to CNN, Comedy Central, MTV, and the rest.
But millions still stupidly have cable TV. Why? There are several reasons, but a major one is that the programming they can only access through cable TV includes things like Fox News and live sports.
Fox One, offering the ability to watch Fox’s sports offerings and Fox News via streaming for only $19.99 per month (compared to the average cable TV bill of $150), is terrible news for pay TV, and by extension, all those left-wing networks that can’t survive without it.
“We have long said that we aspire to engage with our viewers, wherever suits them best. The traditional cable bundle remains our favorite distribution channel, as we believe it continues to provide exceptional value to consumers,” Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch announced this week.
Reality forced Fox’s hand. Fox would have been perfectly happy to collect those carriage fees forever, but Fox has to go to where the audience is, and the audience is streaming. So, Fox had to make a drastic concession that will only hasten cable TV’s death spiral.
This is good for America.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
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