[opendtv] Re: I meant ESPN, not HBO

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 21:42:13 +0000

Craig Birkmaier wrote:

> Cable companies do not mark up the extended basic tier, at least not
> very much.

Well, what I read says they do. About as much as I claimed. Which is why going 
direct to consumer would easily put more money in the ESPN pockets, for a given 
number of subscribers, than what they get now, for the same number of 
subscribers. The difference is, of course, that as of today, ESPN has a whole 
lot more subscribers in the old school business model. But that is changing.

> Sorry about that, but if you offer channels in the extended basic
> bundle ala carte, you kill the bundle. And Disney has many channels in
> the extended basic bundle that would suffer.

Only if you don't think ahead. Like I already said, just as ESPN can make out 
by going direct to consumer, so can the rest of Disney. As to the bundle, who 
cares? You keep moaning about the owner of those stables, Craig, after the car 
era began. The MVPDs might care, but even the MVPDs have figured out that they 
need to get more in the network infrastructure end of things.

> One more time:
>
> Only a small percentage of MVPD subscribers are cutting the cord.

One more time: even John Skipper said that a small percentage is enough to 
create big changes in the distribution model. Dropping from ~90 percent to ~78 
percent, in a matter of 7 years, is not such an insignificant drop, especially 
because there's no obvious end in sight.

Bert

 
 
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