No one has to tell sports fans that rely on Charter for their TV service that the company and Disney are in a standoff. Some people have a very firm idea of which side bears most of the blame, but the majority just want ESPN back. Whether it is college games on Saturday or Monday Night Football, this is the worst possible time of year to be without that network.
So much attention has gone to that dispute that others have flown under the radar. I have DirecTV. I couldn’t watch college football on CBS on Saturday or JJ Watt’s debut on The NFL Today on Sunday, because in Raleigh, our CBS affiliate is owned by Nexstar. All of that company’s local stations have been dark on AT&T-owned services since July.
Do you have Dish? Well, depending on the market you live in, you may have missed Sunday Night Football, Big Noon Saturday and more. That company is in a standoff with Hearst. That means Hearst stations in 37 markets cannot be seen by Dish subscribers.
It is interesting to see all of this happening during football season. The NFL is the most reliable property on television. In a lot of the country, college football is the second most reliable.
The pandemic changed the way so many people consumed their entertainment. Theaters are no longer a necessity for cinefiles. Almost no television show is consumed in real time. The only schedule that matters to the audience is their own. Things were already moving that way, but since 2020, the only things that people have felt the need to watch live were sports, election results, and the January 6 insurrection.
Elections of national interest only happen every other year. Presidential elections only come around every four years. The insurrection was a once-in-a-lifetime event. I can understand why networks with major play-by-play rights thought they held all the cards in these negotiations.
Maybe Disney’s ask is unreasonable. I’m not invited behind the closed doors where negotiations between that company and Charter are taking place. Both sides are pushing their respective narratives and each one wonders aloud why the other doesn’t respect the hardworking public. The level of bullshit on each side is painfully transparent for the people that missed Texas vs. Alabama on Saturday and will miss the Bills and Jets on Monday.
If you work in the media business, you know the deal. The landscape changes all the time. There is no “business as usual” anymore. Everyone at the bottom is well-aware of that fact. For the people at the top though, this is a wake up call. Their jobs are rarely endangered by new technologies or consumption patterns. Now, they are dealing with a change that the networks may never have seen coming: television is such a volatile business that even the networks with the programming that remains appointment-viewing isn’t appealing to some cable companies.
Your web search doesn’t have to be very extensive to stumble onto evidence that suggests Charter would rather drop cable distribution and focus solely on internet service. They wouldn’t be the first TV provider to do so. Internet is a much more profitable utility in 2023.
It’s a reality that will send shockwaves through sports. ESPN and FOX won’t have billions to spend on live game rights anymore. The NBA is about to learn that the hard way. Leagues likely will see a drop in revenue. That may lead owners to seek to lower paychecks, which will almost certainly lead to work stoppages.
Fans just want to see their favorite teams play without paying through the nose to do it. Unfortunately, those days are over. Leagues aren’t going to just shrug their shoulders and say “aw shucks, if ESPN or TNT can’t pay billions for our rights anymore, I guess that means we aren’t getting billions.” No, they’ll turn to the tech giants.
I was one of the many that scoffed at the idea of a pay-per-view Super Bowl when John Skipper suggested it in February. To be fair though, I don’t think any of us saw the day coming when traditional television would raise a middle finger to networks with live game rights and say they could live without sports.
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
