Responding to a concept put forward in the now closed thread.

The so-called "free" games that are available from OTA TV but most often viewed via content distributor are no longer free unless you are using an antenna. The networks and their affiliates are demanding and receiving carriage fees from satellite, cable, and IPTV.

Right now the missing piece for television is effective online revenue. The major internet players are working on a model of free access and generate revenue via advertising and that advertising is profitable because of volume and the amount of user demographic data that is collected. Currently the video ad market isn't nearly as mature as the display market (see the lack of ads on most free stream services and how rarely they are targeted).

Once someone cracks that nut you will see an explosion in online video content. The value of an OTA license will be branding for the online content.

I'd wager that right now ESPN is using ESPN3 and WatchESPN to collect bucket loads of demographic data to figure out how to monetize.

I'll further wager that at least one model they are looking at is a freemium model where you can get your fill of Sun Belt, MAC, A10, type games for free, selected games from the name programs for free, with various subscription packages for higher value content and some PPV packages for select events.

And I think the death of free, OTR broadcasts is the death knell of a sport -

You want poor kids to follow your program and be a part of your tradition? They don't have fancy cable packages.

You want a national following? You will only have a following of sports fans who have these packages.

Worse... you can do what KS did this year for basketball - and limit 6 games to Time/Warner subscribers - when Time-Warner sucks... oh and black out espn for the live broadcasts.

The NFL is on the right page, simulcasting NFL Network games on CBS.

It will go IPTV. No matter how many ISPs, monopolies, and duopolies have to be dragged kicking and screaming to it.

OTA will live a long life on entropy alone. But I genuinely feel like eventually internet will become the fourth utility. Power. Water. Cellular. Internet. Internet may even come in the form of piggy backing off cellular. It is no great stretch to imagine your phone docking at home and becoming a wifi router. I get a faster connection off T-Mobile LTE than I do my 30 megabit Charter pipe.

And I feel like when that happens ... it will be a la carte but with pre-set bundles as well. It will be cheaper to get ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN The Ocho, CSS, FSN, FS1, CBSSN, NBCSN, and SportsSouth bundled as one big fat sports tier than it will be to buy the separately. I think the tale of $20/mo for just ESPN is overblown. I don't think you'd see massive attrition from ESPN in an a la carte world. They won't be able to maintain their present ludicrous level of income ... but that is just reality reasserting itself, not some negative change. More to the point, I think the big conferences will sell their channels cheap in an a la carte world. They're not getting hardly any of that fat ESPN money. For them a few bucks a household is gravy compared to direct advertiser revenue. And it doesn't take some huge leap to see them back filling empty air with academic content to reach a broader audience and further their own academic outreach.

It will get better folks. It just takes time.

(02-17-2014 01:02 AM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  It will go IPTV. No matter how many ISPs, monopolies, and duopolies have to be dragged kicking and screaming to it.

OTA will live a long life on entropy alone. But I genuinely feel like eventually internet will become the fourth utility. Power. Water. Cellular. Internet. Internet may even come in the form of piggy backing off cellular. It is no great stretch to imagine your phone docking at home and becoming a wifi router. I get a faster connection off T-Mobile LTE than I do my 30 megabit Charter pipe.

And I feel like when that happens ... it will be a la carte but with pre-set bundles as well. It will be cheaper to get ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN The Ocho, CSS, FSN, FS1, CBSSN, NBCSN, and SportsSouth bundled as one big fat sports tier than it will be to buy the separately. I think the tale of $20/mo for just ESPN is overblown. I don't think you'd see massive attrition from ESPN in an a la carte world. They won't be able to maintain their present ludicrous level of income ... but that is just reality reasserting itself, not some negative change. More to the point, I think the big conferences will sell their channels cheap in an a la carte world. They're not getting hardly any of that fat ESPN money. For them a few bucks a household is gravy compared to direct advertiser revenue. And it doesn't take some huge leap to see them back filling empty air with academic content to reach a broader audience and further their own academic outreach.

It will get better folks. It just takes time.

I do think we'll get there, but I don't think that the "tale of ESPN alone costing $20 per month" is overblown... because it won't ever be that CHEAP. You're making it sound like that's expensive. As I've said elsewhere, the British equivalent of ESPN is charging $16.50 per DAY for a la carte access (the equivalent of $500 per month), whereas their movie and TV packages cost about the same as Netflix and Hulu. People are seriously underestimating the price of sports a la carte. If ESPN is charging 5 times more than the next most expensive non-sports channel on basic cable, and literally 20 times more than the vast majority of cable channels, it stands to reason that their a la carte streaming product is going to cost several magnitudes more than the TV and movie equivalents. Just think about how much each Monday Night Football game is worth alone. ESPN is paying $100 million for each GAME. There's more interest in each one of those games than the top boxing fights that cost $50 to $100 each, so I don't see how that's going to be cheap. Instead, TV sports will end up being the most premium-type of product in an a la carte world - they'll cost the TV equivalent of a skybox at the game as opposed to the cheap seats that Netflix provides for movies by comparison.

So, while I believe that we'll be streaming more through our TVs, that's not going to make sports cheaper. They're by far the most expensive programming on cable packages because they have the pricing power to do so, which means that they'll have that same type of pricing power in an a la carte world (only there won't be the ladies that only watch Lifetime and TLC around to subsidize it anymore - see Britain's streaming sports costs as empirical evidence).

They have to be very careful about that because they could just price themselves right out of the market. Look at what has happened to boxing as a great example of that.

As recently as the 1980s, boxing was an ENORMOUSLY popular sport in this country. Fights like Hagler/Hearns and Leonard/Duran were mainstream water cooler discussions. Hell, Mike Tyson became an International phenom during that period and that was largely because so many people had seen him fight.

Juxtapose that with today and how many average sports fans could pick Floyd Mayweather - arguably the world's best boxer - out of a lineup of five random black dudes? I suspect those percentages would be quite low.

Any sport that makes its product astronomically high - and any cable provider that joins them in that pursuit - put themselves at ENORMOUS risk, IMHO.

(02-17-2014 09:11 AM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  They have to be very careful about that because they could just price themselves right out of the market. Look at what has happened to boxing as a great example of that.

As recently as the 1980s, boxing was an ENORMOUSLY popular sport in this country. Fights like Hagler/Hearns and Leonard/Duran were mainstream water cooler discussions. Hell, Mike Tyson became an International phenom during that period and that was largely because so many people had seen him fight.

Juxtapose that with today and how many average sports fans could pick Floyd Mayweather - arguably the world's best boxer - out of a lineup of five random black dudes? I suspect those percentages would be quite low.

Any sport that makes its product astronomically high - and any cable provider that joins them in that pursuit - put themselves at ENORMOUS risk, IMHO.

I agree with you that the price can't be so astronomically high to be viable. However, you can see the wariness in the pricing in Britain. The pricing there (on a daily basis at $16.50 per day) is set up to capture those people that only watch one sporting event per week (namely, the game involving their favorite Premier League team) and would otherwise not subscribe to cable. That cost, though, is intentionally high enough where if you want to watch any more sports than that, you're better off just buying basic cable entirely (thereby providing a stopgap for that basic cable model).

I could foresee the same thing here in the US: you could conceivably make it worth it to buy an a la carte sports package if you ONLY watch NFL football for a sport. Much like the Premier League in England, that's the one sport where you have a critical mass of people that only watch that sport and it's only once per week. However, if you're watching multiple sports year-round (basically anything other than football), the pricing will end up being at a point where people like most of us would still be better off just buying basic cable. Those basic cable costs will simply be passed further on to us (as sports fans).

To be clear, that might be perfectly fair - why should some lady that just watches Lifetime be financially subsidizing my sports watching? It's perfectly fair that I should be paying more than her because the programming that I like costs more to produce. I completely get that. However, I'm just trying to get the point across that virtually none of the people reading on this board will be benefiting financially from this movement. The sports fans here aren't going to be saving money by "getting rid of the Big Ten Network" or "getting rid of NBCSN" or "getting rid of the SEC Network" by going a la carte (even though I know certain people here just seem to want to pay more for a la carte just to avoid the Big Ten and SEC getting more fees on principle, which is insanity to me that you'd want to pay more for less but it is what it is). The ACC and Notre Dame fans aren't subsidizing the Big Ten Network or SEC Network. Instead, it's the rest of the world of non-sports fans that are subsidizing ALL of us. People are trying to make it into a "conference vs. conference" or "football fans vs. basketball/baseball fans" issue with a la carte, where that's a complete misnomer. Instead, the dividing line is sports fans vs. non-sports fans.

(02-17-2014 08:52 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-17-2014 01:02 AM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  It will go IPTV. No matter how many ISPs, monopolies, and duopolies have to be dragged kicking and screaming to it.

OTA will live a long life on entropy alone. But I genuinely feel like eventually internet will become the fourth utility. Power. Water. Cellular. Internet. Internet may even come in the form of piggy backing off cellular. It is no great stretch to imagine your phone docking at home and becoming a wifi router. I get a faster connection off T-Mobile LTE than I do my 30 megabit Charter pipe.

And I feel like when that happens ... it will be a la carte but with pre-set bundles as well. It will be cheaper to get ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN The Ocho, CSS, FSN, FS1, CBSSN, NBCSN, and SportsSouth bundled as one big fat sports tier than it will be to buy the separately. I think the tale of $20/mo for just ESPN is overblown. I don't think you'd see massive attrition from ESPN in an a la carte world. They won't be able to maintain their present ludicrous level of income ... but that is just reality reasserting itself, not some negative change. More to the point, I think the big conferences will sell their channels cheap in an a la carte world. They're not getting hardly any of that fat ESPN money. For them a few bucks a household is gravy compared to direct advertiser revenue. And it doesn't take some huge leap to see them back filling empty air with academic content to reach a broader audience and further their own academic outreach.

It will get better folks. It just takes time.

I do think we'll get there, but I don't think that the "tale of ESPN alone costing $20 per month" is overblown... because it won't ever be that CHEAP. You're making it sound like that's expensive. As I've said elsewhere, the British equivalent of ESPN is charging $16.50 per DAY for a la carte access (the equivalent of $500 per month), whereas their movie and TV packages cost about the same as Netflix and Hulu. People are seriously underestimating the price of sports a la carte. If ESPN is charging 5 times more than the next most expensive non-sports channel on basic cable, and literally 20 times more than the vast majority of cable channels, it stands to reason that their a la carte streaming product is going to cost several magnitudes more than the TV and movie equivalents. Just think about how much each Monday Night Football game is worth alone. ESPN is paying $100 million for each GAME. There's more interest in each one of those games than the top boxing fights that cost $50 to $100 each, so I don't see how that's going to be cheap. Instead, TV sports will end up being the most premium-type of product in an a la carte world - they'll cost the TV equivalent of a skybox at the game as opposed to the cheap seats that Netflix provides for movies by comparison.

So, while I believe that we'll be streaming more through our TVs, that's not going to make sports cheaper. They're by far the most expensive programming on cable packages because they have the pricing power to do so, which means that they'll have that same type of pricing power in an a la carte world (only there won't be the ladies that only watch Lifetime and TLC around to subsidize it anymore - see Britain's streaming sports costs as empirical evidence).

Frank, one reason it costs so much tin Britain is because the entire population of England is 63 million. There are around 320 million people in the US. You can split the fixed costs of these league rights fees among way more people. Basically, some people will opt out of ESPN in an a la carte world---but we would still have way more subscribers than they have in Britain. Comparing the two isn't really quite fair.

If you want to know the truth, networks like Lifetime will be the ones that suffer most. These networks get very low ratings and will be their first networks to be dumped by most viewers in an a la carte environment. Unable to support themselves on their current very low subscriber fees, networks like Lifetime will have to massively increase their cost to those that do choose subscribe. If that fails, they will simply go broke and disappear. Many of these niche networks are going to disappear.

Essentially, we will end up with is far fewer choices and we will pay more to have fewer networks. If you are frugal, you will be able to assemble a cable package consisting of a handful of networks you really enjoy for a little less than you currently pay---sort of a return to the 1970's where many only had access to 10-40 networks. Unfortunately, a la carte world will likely result in the vast majority of Americans ending up paying the same or more for a package that includes fewer networks.

Use Britain as a data point but I wouldn't draw the same conclusion. The USA and Britain has much different sports viewing habits.

(02-17-2014 11:43 AM)TexanMark Wrote:  Use Britain as a data point but I wouldn't draw the same conclusion. The USA and Britain has much different sports viewing habits.

It is also not just sports fans vs. non-sports fans. It is non-sports fans, sports fans, and sports fans of overpriced college conferences and pro sports. In the PPV world, at least half of the current sports fans aren't going to drop large coin to watch an overpriced PPV game of a conference they care nothing about. So only the overpriced conference fans will have to pay more. The MWC, MAC, AAC, SBC, CUSA fans wont have to pay more.

Right now I occasionally watch a non-MAC sports event, but there is no way I'm paying $16.50 to watch a "P5" conference game. If these conferences go the route of PPV then they risk losing a ton of viewers and forced passive subscribers footing the bill. Only hard-core fans pay for a PPV and those fans will get a sticker shock of what they will have to pay for those conferences to make their $300 million per year.

You can also be a "sports fan" without paying too much money on viewing sports. There plenty of MWC, AAC, MAC, SBC, CUSA "sports fans" out there. There are also plenty of people who actually play sports instead of watching them every day or much more enjoy paying a tiny fraction of the cost actually sitting in the stands of a minor league AAA baseball park then viewing a major league game.

(02-17-2014 11:43 AM)TexanMark Wrote:  Use Britain as a data point but I wouldn't draw the same conclusion. The USA and Britain has much different sports viewing habits.

On the one hand, they have different viewing habits because they have soooooo much focus on the Premier League compared to everything else. It would be like if the NFL were the only pro sports league in the US. So, in that sense, the UK can charge quite a bit for access to Premier League games.

On the other hand, the UK also has a long history of lots of blackouts and TV rights restrictions. They're much more used to paying for things on a PPV or special package basis or not being able to see certain games just because of where they live. This isn't an exaggeration: Americans with NBCSN have significantly better and more access to Premier League games than people that actually live in the UK. You can't even get a Sunday Ticket-esque package to watch games there, much less have access to *all* of the games on basic cable like we do.

What's dangerous is that I see a lot of people referring to Neflix as "a la carte". That's NOT the case. Netflix aggregates lots of different types of content from lots of different sources. Amazon and Hulu do the same. They are also 100% all-you-can-eat buffet style - you're not getting charged on a movie-by-movie or show-by-show basis (which is how they killed Blockbuster). That's exactly the same as basic cable in terms of substance, except that its form is via streaming on-demand as opposed to TV channels. This is quite different than saying that I'll only buy AMC or TNT (or ESPN or FS1) a la carte.

(02-17-2014 12:34 PM)Miami (Oh) Yeah ! Wrote:  

(02-17-2014 11:43 AM)TexanMark Wrote:  Use Britain as a data point but I wouldn't draw the same conclusion. The USA and Britain has much different sports viewing habits.

It is also not just sports fans vs. non-sports fans. It is non-sports fans, sports fans, and sports fans of overpriced college conferences and pro sports. In the PPV world, at least half of the current sports fans aren't going to drop large coin to watch an overpriced PPV game of a conference they care nothing about. So only the overpriced conference fans will have to pay more. The MWC, MAC, AAC, SBC, CUSA fans wont have to pay more.

Right now I occasionally watch a non-MAC sports event, but there is no way I'm paying $16.50 to watch a "P5" conference game. If these conferences go the route of PPV then they risk losing a ton of viewers and forced passive subscribers footing the bill. Only hard-core fans pay for a PPV and those fans will get a sticker shock of what they will have to pay for those conferences to make their $300 million per year.

You can also be a "sports fan" without paying too much money on viewing sports. There plenty of MWC, AAC, MAC, SBC, CUSA "sports fans" out there. There are also plenty of people who actually play sports instead of watching them every day or much more enjoy paying a tiny fraction of the cost actually sitting in the stands of a minor league AAA baseball park then viewing a major league game.

The thing is that you're in the minority of sports viewers. Sure, you're out there, but if your viewing habits reflected the general population, then the MAC and other G5 conferences would be the ones getting paid massive amounts of money instead. The sports that "matter" in terms of viewership are the NFL, MLB, NBA, P5 college football and basketball, and a handful of NHL, golf and NASCAR events.

And look, I don't think PPV is even the route that this would go. We (Americans) just aren't built that way in terms of entertainment - we want to play one price and get everything from those services whenever we want. To the extent that we move away from cable and more to streaming, the way we watch sports is going to look more like ESPN3 (essentially "Netflix for sports") as opposed to PPV or lots of individual websites. Fox might have their own to cover their various networks (FS1/BTN/regional sports networks). It's just a question of how much an ESPN3 with no basic cable subscriber fees behind it and tons of high value NFL/MLB/NBA/NCAA games would cost, and I'm saying that it's going to be significantly more than what a lot of people here believe.

(02-17-2014 01:24 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(02-17-2014 12:34 PM)Miami (Oh) Yeah ! Wrote:  

(02-17-2014 11:43 AM)TexanMark Wrote:  Use Britain as a data point but I wouldn't draw the same conclusion. The USA and Britain has much different sports viewing habits.

It is also not just sports fans vs. non-sports fans. It is non-sports fans, sports fans, and sports fans of overpriced college conferences and pro sports. In the PPV world, at least half of the current sports fans aren't going to drop large coin to watch an overpriced PPV game of a conference they care nothing about. So only the overpriced conference fans will have to pay more. The MWC, MAC, AAC, SBC, CUSA fans wont have to pay more.

Right now I occasionally watch a non-MAC sports event, but there is no way I'm paying $16.50 to watch a "P5" conference game. If these conferences go the route of PPV then they risk losing a ton of viewers and forced passive subscribers footing the bill. Only hard-core fans pay for a PPV and those fans will get a sticker shock of what they will have to pay for those conferences to make their $300 million per year.

You can also be a "sports fan" without paying too much money on viewing sports. There plenty of MWC, AAC, MAC, SBC, CUSA "sports fans" out there. There are also plenty of people who actually play sports instead of watching them every day or much more enjoy paying a tiny fraction of the cost actually sitting in the stands of a minor league AAA baseball park then viewing a major league game.

The thing is that you're in the minority of sports viewers. Sure, you're out there, but if your viewing habits reflected the general population, then the MAC and other G5 conferences would be the ones getting paid massive amounts of money instead. The sports that "matter" in terms of viewership are the NFL, MLB, NBA, P5 college football and basketball, and a handful of NHL, golf and NASCAR events.

And look, I don't think PPV is even the route that this would go. We (Americans) just aren't built that way in terms of entertainment - we want to play one price and get everything from those services whenever we want. To the extent that we move away from cable and more to streaming, the way we watch sports is going to look more like ESPN3 (essentially "Netflix for sports") as opposed to PPV or lots of individual websites. Fox might have their own to cover their various networks (FS1/BTN/regional sports networks). It's just a question of how much an ESPN3 with no basic cable subscriber fees behind it and tons of high value NFL/MLB/NBA/NCAA games would cost, and I'm saying that it's going to be significantly more than what a lot of people here believe.

I agree. PPV is often a declining long term model because its hard to build a future replacement audience when your product is behind a pay wall.

Worst case is that G5 football creates its own network or networks that would be priced what the market would bear---or they would continue to be cheap filler for general sports networks or maybe they fall to being sports that are primarily seen on digital networks.

(02-17-2014 09:11 AM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  They have to be very careful about that because they could just price themselves right out of the market. Look at what has happened to boxing as a great example of that.

As recently as the 1980s, boxing was an ENORMOUSLY popular sport in this country. Fights like Hagler/Hearns and Leonard/Duran were mainstream water cooler discussions. Hell, Mike Tyson became an International phenom during that period and that was largely because so many people had seen him fight.

Juxtapose that with today and how many average sports fans could pick Floyd Mayweather - arguably the world's best boxer - out of a lineup of five random black dudes? I suspect those percentages would be quite low.

Any sport that makes its product astronomically high - and any cable provider that joins them in that pursuit - put themselves at ENORMOUS risk, IMHO.

The NFL thinks its doesn't stink, and maybe they think that everyone who watches the NFL on Sundays would pay $20/week to watch if they had to, but they won't. That pricing would make the NFL as much of a lightly-watched niche sport as boxing, and those ginormous NFL egos won't allow that to happen.

DirecTV: Weather Channel versus Weather Nation

Weather Channel demanded more money from DirecTV whereas DirecTV wanted to cut Weather Channel by 25%. Weather Channel would not budge and so DirecTV brought in Weather Nation. I really like Weather Nation as I entered my zip code and I can have the local weather forecast in the 2 seconds it takes to push the red button on the tv clicker. So what is the lesson here, here on this sports alignment board?

I think all these new technologies and new broadcast platforms are really going to benefit the NonBCS conferences. Someday tv execs should realize that the NonBCS conferences teams and conferences can be put together to provide a much less expensive tv package and programming....and that the NonBCS conferences provide some measure of relief, some measure of having an alternative....to the high demands of the BCS conferences.

Here, I am sort of thinking of Ray Kroc who saw these two brothers and their hamburger stands....and thought this could be packaged into a nationally attractive franchise....which he did with McDonalds.

Arkstfan, a great post! Thanks!

(02-17-2014 02:48 PM)Tallgrass Wrote:  DirecTV: Weather Channel versus Weather Nation

Weather Channel demanded more money from DirecTV whereas DirecTV wanted to cut Weather Channel by 25%. Weather Channel would not budge and so DirecTV brought in Weather Nation. I really like Weather Nation as I entered my zip code and I can have the local weather forecast in the 2 seconds it takes to push the red button on the tv clicker. So what is the lesson here, here on this sports alignment board?

There isn't much of a lesson. Weather news is a commodity that I can get anywhere. Heck, news in general has become a commodity that I can get anywhere. At this point, most TV shows are available on multiple platforms that I can get anywhere.

In contrast, sports are (1) exclusive and (2) live. The exclusive part matters because if I want to watch Monday Night Football, I *have* to watch ESPN. This isn't the same as switching from Weather Nation to the Weather Channel (or even MSNBC to Fox News or CNN). My choice is to either watch the game on ESPN or I don't watch the game at all. At the same time, recording it on the DVR or watching a replay really doesn't do most sports fans much good. There is inherently value in watching MNF live. It's the same thing for virtually every other sporting event - their value is in their live exclusivity (and even when they aren't live, like the prime time Olympics coverage on NBC, they are DEFINITELY exclusive).

We can argue whether this is sustainable, but these TV network people aren't stupid. That's why they been paying billions and billions of dollars for sports over the past couple of years for contracts that last until almost 2030 even in the face of these chord cutting numbers. Almost everything can be commoditized or be shown on-demand... except for sports. There's nothing on-demand about it whatsoever - it's programming specifically geared toward watching a specific game at a specific time. Sports are completely unique programming in that way that can't really be compared to news channel or weather channel competition. This is why they are sooooooooo much more expensive than non-sports TV networks in the first place.

(02-17-2014 03:27 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  There isn't much of a lesson. Weather news is a commodity that I can get anywhere. Heck, news in general has become a commodity that I can get anywhere. At this point, most TV shows are available on multiple platforms that I can get anywhere.

In contrast, sports are (1) exclusive and (2) live. The exclusive part matters because if I want to watch Monday Night Football, I *have* to watch ESPN. This isn't the same as switching from Weather Nation to the Weather Channel (or even MSNBC to Fox News or CNN). My choice is to either watch the game on ESPN or I don't watch the game at all.

There is a parallel. Remember when NBC lost out on the NFL for several years, and they helped to start the XFL and televised XFL games? It was a dud. It was more ridiculed than watched.

You can replace the Weather Channel with Weather Whatever, but you can't replace the NFL with the XFL.

(02-17-2014 11:29 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  ---sort of a return to the 1970's where many only had access to 10-40 networks. Unfortunately, a la carte world will likely result in the vast majority of Americans ending up paying the same or more for a package that includes fewer networks.

I strongly disagree with this. Some networks will be free. The model is already set by TWiT, Revision3, VICE, and others online. Indeed I'd expect MOST to be free -- with costs carried by the advertiser. Sports and premium movies are what I'd expect to remain pay premiums even in a la carte.

(02-17-2014 04:02 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(02-17-2014 11:29 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  ---sort of a return to the 1970's where many only had access to 10-40 networks. Unfortunately, a la carte world will likely result in the vast majority of Americans ending up paying the same or more for a package that includes fewer networks.

I strongly disagree with this. Some networks will be free. The model is already set by TWiT, Revision3, VICE, and others online. Indeed I'd expect MOST to be free -- with costs carried by the advertiser. Sports and premium movies are what I'd expect to remain pay premiums even in a la carte.

I think you are far more tech savvy and informed about the internet than many. I had not even heard of the three examples you used, and while no expert, I do spend a lot of time on the web and have never had occasion to stumble upon these outlets. The market awareness of these types of outlets has a long way to go.

I see your point---but most people (especially the time constrained, tech challenged, and older demographic) just want to sit down, turn on the cable box and surf. This is the majority of users. They are the ones most likely to see the cable future I was discussing. That said, over time, the market will slowly migrate to alternatives. However, that will cause a need to vastly upgrade the internet infrastructure to handle the increased traffic. So even if the majority of folks move to the internet for much of their TV, the internet providers will want to make that money spent on system upgrades back---so I can easily see metered internet usage in our future where internet is metered and billed just like electricity or water. Im not all that sure there will be much of a financial improvement for the average cable customer.

In my little part of rural America, the local electric company is the one getting into the high speed internet and cable business. Our rural counties will have high speed internet that is the same or better than most cities. They decided to get into since they already have the easement rights, the customers, and no red tape to jump through.

Another interesting thing is the growth of OTA with the digital switch. Now stations can offer 2 or more channels off one station. The diginets like MeTV, ThisTV, Retro etc have found a nice niche market in the OTA and are getting ratings similar to cable channels nationally. They are doing straight barter trade with television stations and both are happy it seems.

As I mentioned in another thread I don't think $16.50 a day would happen in the US because US fans have much more diverse sports interests.

The fan of a soccer team between all competitions has about 44 games to watch. An NBA or NHL fan has nearly double that in regular season and an MLB fan nearly 4x that.

The buy a day of viewing concept though works well for a football fan who can generally buy Saturday and see what they want or an NFL fan generally can buy Sunday and be happy because they get their game as well as others under that concept.

But because US fans have diverse interests it will be hard for each pro league and each college conference to start their own highly priced maximum value subscription service, the diversity means it is an aggregators game.