Retransmission costs?

[corbetti]

Hi,

need some help here if anyone can point me to the right source(s)..

i'm trying to find out the cost/subscriber fee charged by the various content providers to the different cable/sat operators (US and global). For example, i've read that the Weather Channel gets $0.15/sub/month, while ESPN gets something north of $1.50/sub/month.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? Please email me directly if you have any info, as well as of course posting here.

Thanks in advance!
Corbetti

 

[cableman265]

From what I have seen in our system, it varies depending on the number of subscribers you have. The more customers you have, the better price breaks you get.

 

[corbetti]

found some costs

well, after much digging, I've found some info - i'll post it here in case it's of interest to anyone. thanks for all the suggestions!

channel price per subscriber per month
AUD$ $US
ESPN $3.12 $2.31
Nickelodean $1.15 $0.85
TNT $0.88 $0.65
SkyChannel $0.60 $0.44
CNN $0.50 $0.37
Fox News $0.23 $0.17
MSNBC $0.18 $0.13
The Weather Channel $0.20 $0.15
AV Weather $0.15 $0.11

Indian Market AUD$ Rs.
StarNews $0.14 5
Star One $0.29 10
HungamaTV $0.17 6
Disney & Toon $0.23 8
MTV $0.09 3
Nick (India) $0.09 3
ESPN + Star Sports $1.23 42.5
Hallmark Channel $0.08 2.7
B4U Movies $0.17 6
ZoomTV $0.22 7.5
MAA TV $0.14 5
VISSA $0.17 6
Ten Sports $0.40 14
Gemini & Teja $0.29 10

 

[cableman265]

Now you see why ESPN came very close to becoming a premium channel.

 

[Stargazer]

It seems to me that the bills would drop around $2-5 a month if ESPN was dropped from the lineup itself not counting all the other channels that ESPN owns.

 

[corbetti]

A la carte will be the future...

Yeah, eliminating ESPN could in theory reduce the cost to the subscriber - but what is really needed is true a la carte pricing, which would allow a customer to pick any subset of channels that they want and stop subsidizing useless content channels that 6 people watch.

That's going to take some serious lobbying in Congress, but it will eventually happen, IMHO.