Opinion: Cable: A plan to beat Time Warner at its own game
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
When the Los Angeles Lakers forged a lucrative new deal with Time Warner Cable in February, our editorial board wrote that they were alienating fans who don’t have cable.
The decision to ditch broadcast TV in favor for cable doesn’t just affect Lakers fans, though. ‘If you live in the Los Angeles area and are not a sports fan, Time Warner Cable’s new 20-year deal with the L.A. Lakers is going to hurt you where it counts: in your wallet,’ writes Will Richmond, an online video industry analyst with VideoNuze, in Wednesday’s pages. ‘That’s because virtually all digital pay-TV subscribers in the L.A. area, whether or not they are sports fans, will foot the bill for this expensive deal.’
What to do? How about ditch cable, or at least don’t sign up for expensive packages. Our board hatches a plan:
The willingness of pay-TV subscribers to pay more every year is what enables cable networks to offer professional sports teams and leagues increasingly lavish sums for the exclusive rights to air their games. As a result, major sports franchises have been gradually fading from free TV.The only way to break the cycle may be for pay-TV customers to sign up for less expensive plans, making it harder for regional sports networks to strike multibillion-dollar rights deals. Unfortunately, cable and satellite companies tend to bundle pricey sports networks into their basic programming tiers, so it’s all but impossible even for nonsports fans to avoid paying for them.Only if consumers fled in droves to low-priced, Internet-powered alternatives would the Time Warners of the world feel the chill.
RELATED:
--Alexandra Le Tellier
