(10-01-2017 04:17 PM)TodgeRodge Wrote:  

(10-01-2017 12:55 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(10-01-2017 12:03 PM)UNT15 Wrote:  attackcoog,
you point out the sports fans who will leave sudden link for competitors? but what about the folks who leave the competition for suddenlink when they can offer cheaper prices by not having the ESPN offerings?

Price sensitvie customers are going to cut the cord and go to Suddentlink for a $10-15 discount ---with no ABC and no sports? Why would they do that when they can use the opportunity to go to VUE, Sling, HULU, or YouTube TV and get ABC and sports and all the other channels they want for HALF the price (or less) of Suddenlink? The price sensitive niche features the consumers MOST like to cut the cord and jump to much cheaper steaming options. Thats not good niche to occupy for a cable company. On the other hand, the sports fans are the niche that is much more likely to pay higher prices to get what they want. Id argue the niche you want to be in as a cable company is the one that appeals to sports fans.

not surprisingly you have it 100% totally backwards

1. Altice/Suddenlink is an internet company as well and their CEO has made it clear that they are going to invest in the internet portion of their plant in the near and longer term future

2. you seem to not understand that to get a "cheaper streaming service" you need an INTERNET SERVICE which is Altice/Suddenlink

3. 56% of cable subs said they would gladly drop ESPN and ESPN II (much less all the other channels) to save $5 dollars a month and ESPN and ESPN II and the others currently cost well over $5 a month

so the economics are in the cable companies favor

4. ABC is an over the air channel you do not need cable to get it

5. so if all you care about is ESPN and ESPN II and ABC and you are "mad" they are gone from your cable well as you pointed out all you have to do is pay LESS to stream them with your ISP........with Altice/Suddenlink being that potential ISP so they still keep your business and the main business that they are moving towards

6. if you want cable and you are one of the 56% that would ditch ESPN and the rest to save $5 a month well Altice/Suddenlink offering you a cheaper package appeals to you

so as of now Altice has better control of what happens with their potential customers because they have the control to appeal to those that want cable for a lower cost and specifically without sports channels for way too much money AND they still have the available option of ditch cable with us, keep internet with us and stream your sports OR keep cable for a lower cost, keep your internet with us and stream your sports

Altice also has the option of bundling internet and a lower cost cable package to keep some of those sports customers as cable subs especially if it means they can keep their non sports cable subs as well

7. ESPN has two options both out of their control

hope that customers leave Altice and sign up with another TV provider that has given in to their pricing or hope that customers that either stick with Altice stream ESPN with or without Altice as their ISP

of course Disney might be dumb enough to try and cut Altice internet from streaming and drive those subs to another ISP, but I don't think that would work even if technology feasible for them to do

so as long as Altice stays in front of Disney and controls the narrative and makes their subs options clear to them they are in the driver seat

because at least 56% of their subs would love to see ESPN and the rest go away to save money and the others have an option that still involved Altice as their ISP and streaming ESPN

what ESPN is faced with is watching a large % of their subs they have been cramming their channels on to be freed from paying for them and then either resigning themselves to that or trying to go head long against Altice by begging and or forcing Altice ISP subs to switch internet providers and or trying to get those that want sports to switch cable MSOs

so in the end Disney is looking at losing a lot of subs that do not want their product and that would be glad it is gone and never getting them back ever

so Disney is the one that needs to decide can they afford to hold the line, lose potential revenues while trying to force Altice's hand or does Disney do the math and realize they cannot stay in the lowest tier of cable packages forever and allow themselves to be put in a package all their own or a higher tier package

because of Altice holds the line and cable subs do not drop off dramatically you can bet every other MSO will be looking to do the same

there are two other players in this as well that should be watching closely

AT&T/DirectTV and Dish Network

Dish Network because they have ZERO ISP offering for their subs so it if becomes clear that Altice subs are A OK with losing Disney and ESPN especially because the ones that want those Disney offerings can stream it......well you can bet that Dish Network subs will want them to hold the line as well......but dish has no ISP/Streaming to offer those that do want sports so they are faced with what attackcoog wrongly believes that Altice is faced with......either give in and lose subs or don't give in and lose subs

AT&T/DirectTV on the other hand has been looking to move their UVerse TV subs off of UVerse and on to Direct TV this is because the fundamental technology of sat/dish is perfect for TV, but terrible (and never physically able to get better) for internet because of the distance/speed of sound/latency issues with sat transmissions

sat is GREAT for large VOLUMES of information in a continuous stream, but TERRIBLE for small volumes in short burst to all types of different WWW areas

so moving subs off of UVerse TV and onto Direct TV frees up more UVerse bandwidth for internet as AT&T/DirectTV is able to fully remove TV bandwidth usage from their plant and allocate it to internet

so for AT&T/DirectTV they have the best of three worlds right now (even if one interferes in the short term with their long term plans)

they can hold the line on Disney with UVerse TV, offer those sports subs the streaming options/ability by keeping them as an ISP customer OR switch them over to DirectTV where they might capitulate to Disney or somewhat capitulate at least in the short term while they see what happens with sub numbers

so in the short term that means they might not transition all TV UVerse subs over to Direct TV while they keep the ones that do not want Disney on UVerse without Disney and most likely a lot of Direct TV subs will have little other choice because of no terrestrial cable service or no FIOS to go woth so they are stuck paying for Direct TV and Disney/ESPN even if they do not want it

and the ones that do not want Disney/ESPN and have a choice still need a choice of a cable MSO or FIOS/Verizon that is holding the line on Disney and ESPN to keep bills lower

so right now Altice is making decisions they have options to get around and that also make decisions for the two major players in "cable" which are Dish and Direct and AT&T

ESPN needs to get this right or they are going to be in a world of hurt

lol....As usual, you make my case with your own points. 56% would take the discount over having ESPN. That means nearly HALF (43%) of their subscribers WANT ESPN. Case closed. No sane provider is risking the loss of HALF their subscriber base. Ive said it before, you clearly must work for a government agency or academia, because you wouldn't last a week in the private sector. ESPN didnt become the highest cost network for no reason. They have the clout to demand that high subscriber fee because carriers know they have a large number of subscribers that will leave if they cant offer ESPN. Its basically the same reason the SEC Network is such a success. The moment ESPN no longer is a desired network by a significant portion of their subscribers, the leverage will shift to the carriers---but right now---content is king and ESPN has the content enough people want that ESPN still commands great leverage.