Thursday, February 18, 2010

There goes the TV tax

So Shaw is buying Canwest (everything except the newspapers.)  The likely result of this is that 2 of the three private networks in english Canada will be owned by cable companies, with the third private network left alone with the CBC to beg for money.  Not an enviable position to be in if you want a strong showing before the government.

Except that, as it turns out, you don't need to be Canadian to extort money from cable providers.  Fox just did that to Time-Warner at the point of a metaphorical gun (the blacking out of weekend football.)  What's notable is how much smaller the amounts in the US are -- a dollar per subscriber or less.

1 comment:

Dish Network said...

I have full sympathy for CBS. Hope it will overcome. Best of luck.