Fox News To Seek Higher Carriage Fees

[BRNout]

Who are you to determine what you think is enough? If FOX (News Corp.) is getting $2.37 per subscriber for Fox Sports (which is totally absurd, BTW), and the market supports that, then FNC is almost certainly being undervalued from their point of view. A 24-hour news channel is expensive to run, but likewise FNC has been a resounding success story for News Corporation. The average time spent watching is through the roof and they typically get more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined. The people who watch that channel find it important and tend to be very loyal to it.

Comparing Fox News to the sports channels is not valid.

Regarding the cost of operation, running a 24-hour news channel might be expensive...but that's not what Fox News is doing; they're running a 24 hour talk station, which is relatively cheap by comparison. I would bet that ESPN spends more per year on Monday Night Football than Fox News spends for it's entire programming schedule over the course of a year. So higher affiliate fees certainly can't be justified based on cost of operation, because Fox News is cheap to run compared to a sports network.

Regarding viewer demand -- Fox News is in a strange position, because it has some fiercely loyal viewers...but not a large number of them. In a recent survey of the "must see" TV networks, Fox News is notable in its absence from the list. CBS tops that list at 35% of viewers naming them. The top cable network is ESPN, at 31%. CNN comes in at 8%. Neither Fox News or MSNBC is on the list at all...and the lowest scored network on the list (Showtime) comes in at 5%. So that means that Fox news (and MSNBC) was named by fewer than 5% of viewers as being a channel that they can't live without.

While I don't doubt that any service that dumps Fox News is going to lose subscribers, the number of subscribers that they would lose is likely far, far smaller than would be lost if ESPN was dropped. Probably much smaller than for FSN, even though FSN also fails to make the list. The difference is that FSN is really a bunch of regional networks instead of being a national network. But in areas where FSN is carrying the games of the local baseball or basketball teams, I'd bet that dropping FSN would upset a lot more viewers than would dropping Fox News. In general, there are a lot more viewers who care about live game coverage than who care about partisan talking heads.

Bottom line: while Fox News may be able to extract further rate increases from service providers, they are delusional if they really think that they're worth anywhere near as much as ESPN. And they're probably not even close to FSN in perceived value.

Comparing Fox Sports Networks (FSN) to ESPN invalidates your entire argument. And, to further invalidate it, if FNC were solely a talk network they wouldn't have reporters and camera people to pay for, which they most certainly do. By going with the stereotype, you again invalidated your argument.

 

[BRNout]

Exactly my points, although I didn't have the numbers to back them up as you did.

Time and time again, when people are asked "why they don't cut the cord" it is usually because of live sports, which are delivered via ESPN, FSN, etc. Yes, outside of local sports, FSN is weak at best, but local sports are such a draw that losing FSN is a non-starter. A local operator around here dropped FSN in a carriage dispute and Sat dishes were flying off the shelves, because most of the hockey, baseball, and basketball games are exclusively carried on FSN (save for national hockey carried on VS, or the local "game of the week" packages that are on OTA TV).

The local system where I grew up didn't have, and there was no demand, for Fox News, for many years. It wasn't until the digital upgrade in 2002-2003 that we even had the channel, and that was because it, along with FMC, was forced on the operator by Fox in return for carrying the more popular Fox, FX, and FSN.

See above. Your friend mnradiofan did a fine job in explaining why FNC isn't worth as much per subscriber as ESPN. OK, but I don't think that was the argument.

Fox News is worth what distributors will pay for it. It has the numbers to support asking for an increase. My point about FSN - clearly missed by all of you - was that, if News Corp can get as much for it as they do, they can surely negotiate a lot more for Fox News. Because Fox News attracts a lot more viewers than FSN's relatively lame lineups.

 

[OhioMediaWatch]

The reason FSN's networks are able to extract larger-than-average carriage fees is obvious... they are the rightsholders to any number of major pro (and college) teams.

Here, after losing the Indians to team-owned startup SportsTime Ohio, FSOhio still maintained the rights to the Cavaliers, and re-upped.

OK, so the team now stinks after you know who took his talents you know where, but they're still one of the big local sports teams.

What else they put on FSOhio doesn't matter in carriage fee negotiations. They could run Best Freakin' Sports Show Period in a loop with fishing shows the rest of the time. The Cavaliers drive the discussion. (And yes, FSOhio does have other sports, mostly colleges, but I'm making a point.)

 

[mnradiofan]

Exactly my points, although I didn't have the numbers to back them up as you did.

Time and time again, when people are asked "why they don't cut the cord" it is usually because of live sports, which are delivered via ESPN, FSN, etc. Yes, outside of local sports, FSN is weak at best, but local sports are such a draw that losing FSN is a non-starter. A local operator around here dropped FSN in a carriage dispute and Sat dishes were flying off the shelves, because most of the hockey, baseball, and basketball games are exclusively carried on FSN (save for national hockey carried on VS, or the local "game of the week" packages that are on OTA TV).

The local system where I grew up didn't have, and there was no demand, for Fox News, for many years. It wasn't until the digital upgrade in 2002-2003 that we even had the channel, and that was because it, along with FMC, was forced on the operator by Fox in return for carrying the more popular Fox, FX, and FSN.

See above. Your friend mnradiofan did a fine job in explaining why FNC isn't worth as much per subscriber as ESPN. OK, but I don't think that was the argument.

Fox News is worth what distributors will pay for it. It has the numbers to support asking for an increase. My point about FSN - clearly missed by all of you - was that, if News Corp can get as much for it as they do, they can surely negotiate a lot more for Fox News. Because Fox News attracts a lot more viewers than FSN's relatively lame lineups.

Fox News attracts more viewers than FSN? You cannot seriously believe this to be true, can you?

Yes, most of the lineup is crap, but where it counts (local sports) the viewership is MUCH higher than Fox News, by a rather sizeable margin. More people would drop cable and switch to sat, or another provider, if FSN was dropped (by a sizeable margin) than if Fox News was dropped. Maybe you should do some research rather than letting politics get in the way!

And your argument about having to hire reporters and camera crews is completely negated by the fact that sports networks have to hire those very same people. Production crews for a sports broadcast far outnumber production crews for a news network, again, by a rather decent margin.

 

[WPPCProductions]

So Comcast owes me $6.45 dollars every month for ESPN and Fox Sports.I dont waste my time tuning these channels.why should I pay for these channels that I dont watch.Its CORRUPT.Its a rip off.as I see it.

 

[dhett]

Good luck with that claim.

 

[WPPCProductions]

Good luck with that claim.

Hehehe your right.

 

[TexasTom]

Comparing Fox Sports Networks (FSN) to ESPN invalidates your entire argument. And, to further invalidate it, if FNC were solely a talk network they wouldn't have reporters and camera people to pay for, which they most certainly do. By going with the stereotype, you again invalidated your argument.

Um, no -- you claim that my argument is invalid, and yet fail to offer anything other than your opinion to back up that point.

ESPN has a strong brand identity, which is something that FSN clearly lacks. What they do share is live play by play sports coverage -- in ESPN's case, mostly of a national nature (ie, Monday Night Football), and in FSN's case, mostly regional. So if FSN were yanked, few viewers would care about FSN per se, but they would care a great deal about losing (to pick my local examples) coverage of the Mavericks, Stars, and Rangers. There are a heck of a lot more people -- even in a fairly conservative region like North Texas -- who care about seeing the Mavericks, Stars, and Rangers, than there are who care about seeing Beck, O'Reilly, and the rest of the Fox News gang. That's what gives FSN a higher market value than Fox News.

If Fox wanted to move those local games over to Fox News, then I would suspect that they would be able to raise the fee for Fox News to $2.50/month or so. But the content that is on Fox News today is of strong appeal to only a very small number of viewers. Granted, those viewers are *extremely* loyal...but there are still far fewer of them than there are for the sports networks.

As for news coverage on Fox News...I'll stand by my opinion of it being primarily a talk channel. Yes, they run some news, but it seems to be secondary to the talk shows.