Posted on 10/21/2015 1:51:46 PM PDT by Kaslin
RUSH: ESPN is in trouble economically, financially. ESPN just announced that they're gonna have to cut a minimum of 350 jobs. And the reason why is subscribers are abandoning cable. Many people do not understand how all of this works, the cable bundle. I mean, you understand that you have to pay a minimum amount per month to get a bunch of channels, the vast majority of which you never watch, but the channels you want are in that bundle, and you have to pay for the bundle.
So let's say you want your local stations, you want ESPN, maybe HBO. Fine. You've gotta buy 25 or 30 or maybe other channels that you never watch. Now, here's the thing about that. In a free market, these networks with no audience wouldn't survive. If you have network programming that nobody watches, then there won't be any ratings and you won't be able to sell any advertising and you won't be able to operate. If, however, the cable companies collect X-amount per subscriber as though they are viewers and then pay that to the network, then the network can stay alive and viable even though nobody may be watching it.
ESPN gets six dollars per cable subscriber every month. That's ESPN's gravy train. And when cord cutting begins, when people eliminate cable from their lives, then the number of people paying for the bundle, out of which ESPN gets six bucks per customer, that starts dwindling away, and ESPN's income dwindles away, and it doesn't matter how many viewers they have or not. This is the point, with the cable bundle it doesn't matter how many viewers a network has. In ESPN's case, it doesn't matter, because they're gonna get six dollars for every household that has ESPN in its cable package.
The interesting thing is 3.2 million people have cut the cord so far, 3.2 million people have cut their cable subscription, and that means that a good percentage of that 3.2 million people are no longer funding ESPN at six dollars a month. They are leaving cable for a bunch of market reasons. Many of them are Millennials, and they just simply don't want to pay for channels. They don't have the money. Young people can't get jobs; they don't have the money. They don't want to pay for things they don't watch.
They'd rather take the money they have and a la carte their way via streaming or whatever and watch it on their device. And maybe if they have AirPlay, project it onto a TV or something, but they don't want to pay cable. Well, 3.2 million people, many of them probably not even sports fans, that's gonna add up to a serious chunk of change. That's $250 million a year for ESPN. ESPN's in close to a hundred million homes. But if they lose 3.2 million subscribers, that's a loss of $250 million a year, and that's why they are cutting 350 jobs.
But here is the piece de resistance. This is what everyone needs to know. Bundled cable subscriptions serve as the foundation for Hollywood to own pop culture. John Nolte at Breitbart makes this point extremely well today. Hollywood does not have to generate audience in order to generate income. All they have to do is secure networks being carried by cable in a basic tier, or maybe next tier up, and they get funded by customers who never watch the network, or very few do, because they're not buying for these obscure channels that are all left left-wing rubbish, many of them are.
That's how they remain viable, that's how they remain in operation, without anybody watching them, people paying the cable channels, the cable companies. Every network gets a certain amount of money per subscriber. ESPN's the top at six bucks. Not every channel gets that. Some get 50 cents, 75 cents, what have you. But the scam of bundled cable is the foundation of Hollywood's money and cultural power.
Look at it this way. If Hollywood was not able to force people to pay for networks and programming they never watch -- MSNBC has no audience. MSNBC could not stay on the air if it weren't for cable bundles. CNN, ditto, folks. They don't have enough audience to be viable with just their audience. They couldn't survive without cable and these subscriber percentages that they collect.
The same thing with Comedy Central. Nobody watches Comedy Central. Not enough people watch Comedy Central to support it via advertising. Ditto MTV. But they all get a percentage of everything you pay monthly to cable to sustain them. And Millennials are leading the way, unknowing about this impact, in taking away some of that staying power.
Considering most of us are struggling to live independently, cable is the last thing on our minds.
90% of ESPN is trash anyway, unless it’s an actual sporting event. I can’t wait for a la carte programming.
The Left sowed the seeds of their own destruction.
Everyone needs a break occasionally to just mindlessly unwind and I get that. But there’s a billion ways to do it without making monthly contributions directly to the very people trying to destroy everything you hold dear.
People get completely spazzed and start going off about “Well you own a PC and Microsoft does X.
Sure. And did anyone ever die from a lack of television? It’s 100% optional. Life in 2015 without a computer is a much harder proposition.
No one HAS to be a jihadist. There’s a lot of ways to defund the left and stop their propaganda. Shop smarter. Don’t by products from companies that push leftism TO THE GREATEST EXTENT YOU CAN. Thats really all there is to it.
The market works when you use it to your advantage and cable/Dish is a real easy thing to replace in ones life.
ESPN? The same channel that awarded Bruce Jenner for his bravery?
Hope the financial failure of this network is epic.
Pretty much every corporation gives to libs. Make your own clothes? Soap? Farm all your own food? Run your car on used cooking oil that McDonalds throws out? Good for you if you can, most people can’t hack that.
We cut the cable earlier this year. Initially we missed it, but it didn’t take long to find there were other options than the pap that satellite has to offer.
I cut cable 2 years ago, but obviously I still need Internet. And Time Warner's internet service is far better than AT&T.
So, sooner or later the cable companies are going to jack up the price for internet access, and that money will probably trickle down to the hated cable channels.
as an honest question...What year did you start listening to Rush?...be dead honest.
Real World was basically the model for liberals to go where they went. Once they found an audience of SJW mentality types, they quickly brought out the hit list of leftist causes to ‘eddress and deal with’. The gay soon followed. The right wing type was always the arsehole and so it went.
Then came the Hiltons and the Kardashians. All throughout it they bade everything bad and wrong into cool and good. They marginalized all dissent. they injected politics and pushed every liberal ideal as the correct thing and used the age old idea of peer pressure because lets face it. High school never ends. Adults worried about class reunions proves that.
And of course, ESPN was part of that. It’s a closed system. Propagandize the audience in the ways you wish then to think and behave, sell them products with ads that make it cool, get the ad revenue to profit and take the rubes money to the bank.
Josef would be proud.
Sure. Just give your cash to those that push the agenda least. Why is that objectionable to you?
You need clothes and soap. You don’t need TV.
The unbundled cost would probably have to be closer to $12/month for ESPN to maintain current revenues. I think they are going to have to face declining revenues either way.
I had a similar reaction as you to posters comment. So many cranky people on here ;)
Thanks for your post
Bwaaahaaahaaaa
That and Flo from Progressive.
Exactly. Everything they haven’t been able to defeat in an open frontal assault, they’ve infiltrated to destroy from within. They began with academia and the media, and have steadily infiltrated until now they’re destroying the formerly most conservative of institutions, such as the military and the Christian church (however, Jesus has said that a remnant will always exist, true Christianity-not churchianity-will never be destroyed). I believe they’re also in the process of using this tactic on the so-called “opposition party”. There will not be an influential institution remaining to speak for conservatism and to oppose political correctness as defined by the left, when they’re done. I wonder, once they’ve destroyed every vestige of a conservative voice in larger society, how they plan to deal with the system which actually is all the things the left pretends that conservatism and Biblical Christianity are-Islam? Islam is successfully using the same tactics against the west, including the leftist portion of it (though they make common cause with them now as it suits their interests), that the left used in the Sixties until they entrenched themselves, such as freedom of speech (which they’re now trying to suppress, now that they possess most of the megaphones), making themselves out to be oppressed victims while actually oppressing others etc.
Just look to History. They deal with their victories at the point of a gun bu killing the useful idiots. No exceptions.
History repeats. No exceptions.
True. There are some prophecy teachers who have made good points about the possibility of the antichrist coming from Islam or an Islamic background. They haven’t claimed to know that this will be so, but they have made good arguments for the possibility. More and more I can see their points.
Also, I have a Sony Blu-Ray player that has lots of streaming video icons on it such as Amazon Instant video, Netfix, Hulu Plus and others. I've never tried using them but I'm wondering what the quality of the stream would be on my large-screen TV. Has anyone used the streaming services and how is the quality?
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