Here is some new info on Dish vs. ESPN
Dish-ESPN Trial Offers a Rare Inside Look at TV Dealmaking
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/dish-espn-trial-offers-a-422301
It's time to cut the cord. Either, listen on the radio while doing some other task, go to a game live, or do what I did when the NHL gave the fans the middle finger; by finding a college or minor league affiliate to watch. Look at ESPN. Baseball? There is plenty of A/AA/AAA ball. Basketball? Let's be honest, NCAA men's and women's ball, and the WNBA, have more heart and talent than the NBA. Football? Your local ABC affiliate carries your team when playing on Monday nights. So, if we change our way viewing, you'll kill ESPN's greed.
ESPN has CFB pretty much locked in - every game for my team cept for maybe 1 or 2 is carried on ESPN in some form. Now I do have ESPN3 or WatchESPN on my phone and tablet and online but the only way I was able to do that was to get the login info for my mother-in-law's comcast tv account. Now don't get me wrong that works out great too but sometimes that is blacked out if I pull it in Wifi instead of 4G which pisses me off not to mention I should be able to use my Dish login to get it cause I already pay for it thru them...but meh!
If Dish ends up losing ESPN for a while over a contract dispute, they should auto credit everyone $10/month and announce that is the cost of carrying ESPN. It will not be far from the truth. It would probably displace a lot of the blame for the channel loss on ESPN.
The article's mentioning that ESPN knew of the MFN problem with Dish and dragged their feet so long does not cast ESPN in a good light.
Interesting year with Dish and Disney with the current trial and contract ending later this year
At the same time, those who subscribe to this new sports package would see their monthly fees go up by dozens of dollars. ESPN demands to be part of most every package for a reason and I'm pretty sure they're going to see that demand sated.If they did spin ALL of the sports channels off in to their own packs, we might see a $10.00 decrease a month ,in our basic programming packs.
And that's the way it should be.At the same time, those who subscribe to this new sports package would see their monthly fees go up by dozens of dollars.
While sports do count for a lot of the increase... I wish writers would open up a math book and check out what the term "exponentially" actually means... because an exponential increase would pretty much mean no one would have sat or cable in a few years because it'd be $500 a month.
Fine, it is merely a parabolic increase. Either way, the derivative of the function is not constant.