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Anything For Money Part
1
January 8
Welcome to the first article of the new
year in State of Play. And with the new year, we still have a very old
problem - the recession. Everybody wants a rapidly disappearing pot of
money. What to do about it? If you're contestants, you beg celebrities
for it. If you're a series of cable channels, you charge 200% to one of
the nations biggest regional cable companies.
Let's focus this week on the cable channels. Scripps has decided that
they want to hike up their rates for many cable providers, chief among
them Cablevision. According to Scripps, it's 'only' a few pennies, but
according to Cablevision (who is the only group to actually show
numbers), it's up from 25 to 75 cents, which would be a 50 cent, or 200%
increase, for a total of around 2.2 million a month or around 25 million
a year (give or take a few million). What this would mean is that
Cablevision would pass the lack of savings on to the viewer to pay extra
for HGTV and the Food Network.
With the departure of said channels for awhile (since neither side seems
to be budging from their positions), what does this mean? If you're a
game show fan and one of the 3.1 million in the Tri-State area affected,
that means say goodbye to new episodes of HGTV Design Star, Chopped, The
Next Food Network Star and Iron Chef (though WPIX was nice enough to air
the Iron Chef Super Battle on Sunday). It also means that when you get
the service back, you better hope to find the marathons of where you can
catch the repeats of these episodes, since Scripps isn't going to stop
airing new episodes just because 3 million people can't watch their
programming.
Of course, the first question that I have is 'why now'? According to CBS
News as of Friday, you currently have an (approximately) 17.3%
unemployment rate in the Tri-State area, and with people struggling to
make ends meet, those unemployed will be using their money on food
instead of TV. Now Scripps can make the argument that HGTV is in the Top
10 in Primetime (which it is), but not in that important 18-34
demographic. Neither network is anywhere near the Top 10, while overall
in non-Primetime, The Food network is 16th and HGTV is 17th in
Ad-Supported Cable Networks. So a small raise of a few pennies? Maybe. A
justifiable 200% increase? No.
Now let's look at the big picture. Cablevision is run by the Dolans, who
also own Madison Square Garden. A lot of their revenue is generated by
the Knicks (which are abominable) and the Rangers (who are struggling to
get a playoff spot). With a total of 80 home games to generate revenues
from, the revenue is just not there for the Dolans to be giving out
increases. All entertainment revenue is down (which you would expect in
a massive recession), and while Scripps may be looking to offset their
own losses, asking Cablevision (and in affect the general population) to
give them an extra 20 million plus in this sort of economy is
astounding.
For Scripps to be that bold to make that sort of demand would be
financially irresponsible for Cablevision to say yes to. But of course,
they will eventually settle and get sort of what they want. The real
losers here are us, the viewers, who not only miss out on programming,
but will be paying more money for programming we are not currently
watching. And although it won't affect Scripps' ratings from a national
perspective too much, don't be surprised if a number of TV viewers
change their habits and decide that Scripps programming needs to be
Chopped.
Gordon Pepper will have more money
matters next time. Meanwhile, e-mail him at
gordon@gameshownewsnet.com. |
