Here is some insight. AMC is apparantly asking for a hefty increase, more than I would have thought up to 3X the amount though not necessarily quite that much. (read the article) The problem with the comparison of AMC with other lower rated channels who get more money in the article is they are all news and sports channels. Many believe they are overpriced as is, so that to me doesn't help AMC at all. Plus love they were compared to a very new sports channel, and one that would have little or less interest to many certain times of the year.
DISH Network Says It Will Ax AMC When Its Carriage Agreement Ends on June 30 | Adweek
One thing to keep in mind is that with sports channels, if they're carrying any of your teams' games at all, they are almost must-carry for a sports fan. I mean, sure, NBCSC might not have much that's good on outside of hockey season, but a Capitals or a Rangers fan is going to have a hard time calling himself a fan if he misses tonight's big game 7 playoff game that determines who goes home for the year and who advances to the eastern conference finals for anything short of having a heart attack and needing to go to the emergency room. And, yeah, NFLN might be boring for most of the year, but most NFL fans watch every regular season game their team plays (because they're just once a week 16 times a year, in contrast to other sports where even die-hard fans don't usually watch
every game), and if the team is on that network once or twice a year, plus some key other big games they want to see, that channel becomes must carry. And sports are, by most people, considered things that need to be seen live.
You look at something like AMC, and I can totally get why people want to see the latest Mad Men as soon as it comes out, but in the end you can catch up on a season through Netflix or whatever and get the same enjoyment level if you have patience, and that's demonstrated I think by sales of the show on i-tunes and amazon, and rental rates on Netflix. Same with old movies (Which are already old when they make it to AMC). Very few people want to see last month's hockey game, though.
To tell you the truth, the only thing I ever watched on Sci-Fi was Sliders when it moved over from FOX. I never watched Syfy.
Yeah, Sliders was a favorite of mine, too, especially the first two seasons on FOX. FOX kind of messed up season three, and than SyFy kind of messed up seasons 4 and 5, but even with all the changes to format of the show, creative changes, cast changes, budget changes (That last season or two looked like it was filmed with a camcorder on sets that were 1/3 scale); it still remained very watchable. The first two seasons were brilliant, some of my favorite stuff of all time. After that it was only alright, but good enough I would have loved to have seen a season 6 and 7.
Seems like it'd be about the right time to do a remake, wouldn't it?
