(05-15-2016 11:33 AM)MplsBison Wrote: arkst (post #14), we will just have to agree to disagree -- but I'm pretty confident that this whole "go it alone" sentiment when it comes to television and rights, etc. is going away. It might appeal to people whose subscribe to ideologies steeped in individualism instead of collectivism, but at the heart of practical economics is the fact that some non-zero level of collectivism enables grander achievements and thus grander rewards.
If you have a pay per viewer model where schools are paid like most web site operators, based on how many come in and view your content 60 days after it happens, there is no value in collectivism.
In the old models (markets, people meters, carriage fees) collectivism had value because the data about the consumer was less known. In the old market model we made guesses about viewership based on a small sample of diaries and then extrapolated to determine overall value, we did the same with the people meters but relied less on people remembering what they watched. Carriage fee is/was still a best guess of what fan bases are going to shape behavior based on programming lineup and how large their impact will be. Obviously the data has improved over the years but still a lot of guessing.
But in the online environment, in short order we can gather a pretty good amount of data over a few years to understand the impact on online viewership of each school at home and away and the value of their opponents.
If payment is based on what the viewership was rather than projections of future viewing and guesstimates of an overall value of a bundle there is no need at all for the bundle nor the collective gathering of rights fees.
We have operated in an environment where the TV distributor locks a price in for five to twelve years prospectively.
If the G5 rights go down the logical path for online viewing, TV will not pay prospectively but rather will pay based on actual viewers a set number of days after distribution.
It is the difference between a retailer buying a railcar of your widgets and looking to mark them up and resell them, sending you a check for the widgets within the time agreed and the seller worrying about what to do if the product is moving better or worse than projected versus you delivering a rail car of widgets and you only getting paid as each widget is sold and time elapses to insure it isn't returned.
I don't expect a rise of independence coming along because conferences have other value. They compile stats, issue releases, do marketing, give out player and coach awards, provide a good framework for scheduling and the assignment of game officials, they run and manage championship events. The conference as seller of television rights just is a decreasing value added product for the G5 conference.
If you go to a primary online model it isn't much different for ESPN to initiate 12 wire transfers vs one each month. If school X does 25% better in viewership than the conference median and school Y does 25% below the median it is no problem to sort it out.
Historically share and share alike is pretty novel in the college conferences. Revenue formulas have historically taken into account the value of actual TV appearances and post-season appearances giving more to those generating more for the league.
That evil pro-Texas revenue sharing model of the Big XII that Nebraska and TAMU hated? It was the model that the Big 8 had operated under, it was the model the SEC had operated under until the revenue went crazy.
The only thing that will preserve collectivism in the G5 (which does NOT exist in the MWC thank you very much) will be if the dollars from member to member aren't worth fighting over. If the dollar difference between NIU and EMU isn't enough for NIU to fight over, then collectivism remains in place.