On Mon, 27 Jan 1997, Sean Donelan wrote:
FoxSports-Midwest recently announced they were going to start charging cable companies 8 cents per subscriber to carry NHL hockey games. TCI balked, and was going to drop FoxSports. FoxSports ran a crawl-line across the bottom of the last NHL hockey game saying TCI customers would no longer be able to watch NHL hockey. What do you think the final outcome was? Did TCI end up paying FoxSports, or did FoxSports end up paying TCI?
This worked for FoxSports because the limited number of channels available via most cable systems creates strong brand identification and concentrates subscribers. Imagine if TCI had 400,000 channels instead of 40 with the same subscriber base and no one channel having a viewership more than .01% of the subscriber base. Mike. +------------------- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C -------------------+ | Mike Leber Direct Internet Connections Voice 408 282 1540 | | Hurricane Electric Web Hosting & Co-location Fax 408 971 3340 | | mleber@he.net http://www.he.net | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+