Broadcast Coalitions Lock Horns Over vMVPD Issue With Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars At Stake
Dueling coalitions — the affiliate-led Coalition for Local News and O&O-led Preserve Viewer Choice Coalition — have raised the temperature on a long-simmering argument over who should be able to negotiate retransmission rights with vMVPDs. The growing size of the vMVPD revenue pot in an awful year for spot TV may have a lot to do with the timing.
The Pac-12 Network has filed a civil lawsuit against satellite and streaming company Dish Network, claiming the pay television service withheld payment during the COVID-19 pandemic in violation of its carriage agreement. According to the lawsuit, Pac-12 Network says the agreement requires it to provide a certain number of college football games during a season. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pac-12 Network only aired one game; as a consequence, the network says it offered Dish a rebate because that year’s football season was shortened.
Fox’s Hulu Deal Sets Disturbing Precedent
Fox has created a national feed of Fox programming that Hulu is substituting for Fox affiliates until they settle their differences. Fox apparently wants to make sure that it sets the lowest possible benchmarks for compensating affiliates, even though they contribute much with their local news and popular syndicated shows. Fox should be encouraging affiliates’ enthusiastic participation with compensation equal to their true value.
AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan told investors that his company’s channels are “dramatically underpriced” by MVPDs relative to the audience they deliver.
Adding five Thursday Night Football games to its lineup has paid handsome dividends for NFL Network, enabling the league’s in-house cable outlet to boost its carriage fees by as much as 41%. According to SNL Kagan estimates, NFL Network in 2013 charges operators an average affiliate fee of $1.34 per subscriber per month, a sharp increase from the $0.95 a pop the channel commanded a year ago, and placing it second behind only ESPN’s $5.45.
Fox Networks is asking pay TV distributors to shell out 80 cents monthly per subscriber to carry new national sports network Fox Sports 1, with carriage fees climbing to $1.50 monthly over the life of a multi-year contract.
