GAWD. I forgot how obnoxious The Fan is.
But they bring up one good point that should be elaborated on: Why is Fox asking for such a large increase?
Because they are afraid they will NOT be able to compete with ESPN for rights to Baseball, Nascar, NFL, etc.
Generally, retransmission rights go for between 50 and 75 cents per month per subscriber. (Fox is asking for about $2.50).
ESPN gets around $5 per subscriber per month.
Fox's argument is that accepting SIGNIFICANTLY less money from cable retransmission than ESPN gets will put it at a competitive disadvantage.
If you assume 100 million households, then ESPN gets $6 billion a year from cable and satellite companies, while Fox affiliates get much less than $1 billion.
Of course, I have an antenna, so I am not too worried. But I can see this dragging on for some time.