To help you understand, let’s say Altitude wants to X dollars for their content. A cable company is going to figure out x/# of viewers to equate out what that’s going to cost and if your cable bill is 80 or whatever maybe it’s $84 post Altitude deal or $4 per viewer. Cable company’s gotta eat that or pass it on to consumer. Meanwhile your 200 other freaking crazy # of cable channels are asking for raises every 2-3 years as well. So Altitude is definitely competing for cable dollars and the cable company has to figure out if it’s worth it or not. In a sports package offered by cable if they were to offer Altitude in a $10 or $20 package or whatever, Altitude is only competing with 5-10 other companies in that package for money. And it’s pretty simple to raise those paid packages to customers vs the general package.
My cable provider (and I think all 3 of these) already break out the bill for regional sports fees. This didn't just come into existence with Altitude, and hasn't gone away now that they've been dropped. So, I get what you are saying, but right now it's literally not making even a cent of difference. If fact, the cable companies are simply pocketing now what they used to pay altitude before.
There's also the matter of how these companies deal with their own RSNs. When DirectTV's contract comes up with ATT Sports net, the negotiation for carriage fees is literally going to be between an owner and a subsidiary. So that line item you are talking about effectively becomes profit (i.e. whatever they "pass" onto you, goes right into their pockets) and I simply don't believe an equal profit consideration is being given to Altitude because it's NOT pure profit for them.
I think you are heavily underestimating the amount of money here. Even at 10 to 20 dollars, I don't think we are talking about the same amount of money that a sports fee on every subscriber in the region provides. This is precisely why altitude is saying that a "direct to consumer streaming option" isn't viable. For those that demand that this be included, it would cost way more than 10-20 per subscriber to get back in the black. Like it or not, the entire RSN model (not just altitude) is predicated on minimum number of subscribers, just like the other 200+ channels in the package. This also puts up a wall against gaining new fans/subscribers as the price to dabble becomes prohibitive.
Altitude definitely loses viewership on a sports package - you’re totally right. So the part about eating their cake - they want a raise despite low viewership. They want premium channel money but want to stay on the general cable offering. The cable companies definitely have to assess whether the # of viewers actually merit the cost increase. Especially since (hate to admit this but) there’s a lot of people that never turn the Altitude channel on. It’s the same scenario by which you probably don’t want to pay extra for the Lifetime or Hallmark channels. The only way to really hash things out equally is to go by viewership numbers across all channels. Unless Altitude wanted to go to its own sports package. Then it’s only really competing against other sports channels for slices of a pie.
Again, everyone wants a raise. Just inflation alone suggest that. But I get that you don't always get what you want. And to that effect, Altitude backed off from their initial ask of getting a moderate increas and simply tried to extend the status quo. Not sure how you reconcile that with your argument. But you are talking "premium channel money"... do you have actual numbers for that, or is this just a guess? I haven't been able to find numbers, which is why I'm asking. I honestly have no idea what Altitude is asking for or what Cable is countering with (other than rough percentages).
If we believe that Altitude is no longer asking for a raise, and will simply accept the terms of the previous deal, what exactly is the holdup then?
There was a great write up by a guy in the Denver Post a few weeks ago and he pretty much explained this and hit the nail on the head. Altitude really needs to backup their desired increase by having the viewers and they just don’t.
Again, this is a fact of life for every RSN. It's not just altitude. There is a reason why hard numbers of viewership isn't being provided by the cable companies. Just cherry picked stats that makes the overall viewership look "bad" with absolutely no comparable RSN numbers being given. This is what you'd expect when you are taking a hard position in negotiations, so it's not really surprising.
