This is really the first big battle between broadcast and service providers with regard to who is entitled to what percentage of the value that they are, together, delivering to you, via the provision of (in this case) the Fox television network. Up until now, the service providers (such as Time Warner Cable) have been claiming almost the entirety of the subscription fee paid to them that could be attributable to the extent that you enjoy watching Fox. All Fox would get for that would be from the commercials they run. As most folks know, advertising revenues are down, and they don't look like they're ever going to come back, not just because of a bad economy (that would eventually recover), but rather because advertisers are getting a much clearer picture of how much they've been raped over the years, paying far more to entertain us than we've been "paying them back" via increased sales due to commercial advertisements. So broadcasters are at a cross-roads. They can either turn belly-up, replace a lot more good (read: expensive) programming with a lot more reality programming, variety shows, news magazines, etc. Or they can try to slow down their decline into that abyss by replacing lost revenues through retransmission fees charged to satellite and cable service providers.
The broadcasters have actually been entitled to do this, since 1996. They've clearly been biding their time. I doubt that it would have gone over well a decade ago, when television advertising still had its status as a universally desirable means of marketing to consumers. Clearly, they've allowed their declining fortunes to adversely impact the quality of their programming, in the minds of many viewers. While television, itself, may be at its pinnacle, from an entertainment standpoint, an ever-greater amount of the contribution to that distinction has been coming from cable (The Closer, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Monk, The Shield, etc.) and premium cable (The Sopranos, True Blood, Dexter, etc.) Quality is clearly increasingly finding its way to where the revenue stream is more strongly founded than commercial advertisements alone (i.e., where there are subscription fees).
I have no idea who is going to win this. All that is guaranteed is that viewers are going to be the losers, no matter what. Either we're going to be paying more, or what we're getting is going to be crappier.
