inazsully said:
Ok, i'll take a stab at this.
High fixed costs create a barrier to entry. Equipment costs to film in 3D will be high. Not to mention that 3D only impresses when the director specifically films with it in mind (which is why so many conversions leave people unsatisfied). That being said, how much programming would not benefit from 3D at all (think sitcoms and a bunch of the reality tv fare that exists). This isn't necessarily something that they can film one show in 3D and air it on their channel mixed with all the other 2D programming. A 3D signal to a 2D set would likely be unwatchable. And with many shows having minimal benefit from 3D with a big bump in production costs, you could very likely take years before even network prime time is all converted to 3D. So distributors would have to have carriage agreements in place for an HD channel (for non-3D tv viewers) as we as a part time 3D channel. That's a lot of bandwidth to commit to what will likely be part time channels. Seems like it'd be a hard sell for the networks.
This is different from say televising the super bowl in 3D, they can work out agreements to turn on a special channel for that event and turn it back off after. No long term bandwidth commitment.
I think your more likely to see new full time 3D networks creating their own content and getting carriage before you see regular channels producing non-sports content in 3D. If those channels do well (which is hard to see unless they dump a ton of money into constantly producing new content), then mainstream channels will jump on the 3D bandwagon for fear of missing out.
The whole issue is a lot more complex than this, but these are some of the more salient sticking points as I see them.
