At Multichannel News, Mike Reynolds writes on industry reax to news that Fox News officials may propose a licensing fee to its affiliates of $1 per month, per subscriber:
Should Fox News get its price, only ESPN and regional sports networks would command higher rates in ad-supported cable....
[Tim Carry, senior vice president of affiliate relations at Fox News]and his affiliate team have spent a year conducting a road show trumpeting “Fox News Channel: America’s Most Valuable Cable Network.” The presentation touted ratings gains against Cable News Network, which gets about 40 cents per subscriber, and MSNBC; growth against broadcast news (Carry says Fox is grabbing 45% of all the viewers the older medium is losing in the genre); brand equity and consumer-resonance attributes; and Fox News’s value as a local ad-sales vehicle.
The network is gearing up for its first local ad sales initiative, tied to a “Breakfast with Fox & Friends Sweepstakes.”
“This was the best [National] Show for Fox News in the past five or six years,” Carry said. “We’ve had a lot of good discussions with distributors about our brand value. We’re going to get close to a dollar.”
Said one distributor executive: “For a lot of people, Fox News is the only channel. There will be push-back, but it’s going to be difficult for someone not to take it.”
A veteran cable operator said the “offset” could come on the business-news side.
“The ratings for CNBC and Bloomberg have been stagnant for so long, there may be an opportunity in the business segment with a different approach,” the executive said. “I’m going to try to justify [to management] the investment of a dime as part of the package, for a channel that could be worth 25 cents or more within a few years.”
Carry declined to discuss the business channel, which has been the subject of many reports and debut dates. Evidently, the combination plans are being used as an incentive and gauge to determine the proposed service’s viability.
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