FOX just agreed to settle Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against it for $787.5 million. That sounds like a lot of money until you understand Fox’s principal source of revenue: tens of millions of people who rarely or never watch it but are forced to pay a lot of money for it anyway.
Understanding this requires a quick look at the economics of cable TV news.
Before cable, we got TV news from the news divisions of the entertainment channels CBS, NBC, and ABC. They put on a few hours of news at most per day, their 30-minute broadcasts each night plus maybe “Nightline” or something like that. Those shows had ads, but they generally didn’t cover the cost of production, so the ad revenue from the networks’ sitcoms and other shows had to subsidize the programming about reality.
Cable and satellite TV made possible the advent of 24-hour news channels, and while they made money from advertising, they also received what are called carriage fees from each subscriber. Cable or satellite providers — such as Comcast, Spectrum, DirecTV, or […]
When I worked for a cable TV company and climbed the telephone poles and ran wire to people’s houses and set up their cable box for them, the rate charged to them was only $4.00 per month. Now days I believe it is considerably more. I just use an antenna now to get my TV stations, and that is enough for me, and costs me nothing.
P.S.: I do not even get FOX channels, thank God.