News corp who owns the Big 10 Network just brought YES, it is the sole reason Rutgers is in the Big 10. As has been explained already, there will be some minor tweaks to how we currently purchase TV, but its absurd to think we're going a la carte. There is no push for it from the consumer or the providers. The only people you hear complaining about "having to buy Lifetime" are single males. Fact is most subscribers are not individuals, they are households with varying tastes. The trend to have a la carte options digitally is a good one, good enough to satisfy the vocal minority who wants such a thing.
The push will come from people who don't care about sports but are being forced to subsidize sports. Not from single males pissed off about Lifetime. The response of those people is to "cut the cable" and get all their entertainment from the internet. I think the point of the guy I was quoting was that the cable companies would react with ala carte pricing to lure those people back. If they don't let people opt out of buying ESPN they are going to lose a lot of customers.
Sports fans are hooked on live sports and cable is the only place you can get most of it. We aren't the customers who will cause the change.
The push won't come from people demanding change from their cable companies. It will be from people who eschew cable altogether because they're getting what they want from some combination of Netflix, Hulu, and NBC.com (for example).
I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but from what I can ascertain, cable companies are simply a hub that we pay a monthly fee to access various content. We do this because, in the past, the only way we could watch ESPN or FSN was through a cable box. But Internet streaming is developing to the point where we can bypass the cable box and watch the game via an Internet connection. The middleman (cable) is becoming obsolete. It's only relevance, at this point, is that I have to be a paid subscriber of a certain company to get access to Watch ESPN and HBO GO. But you don't need a cable company for that. I could easily get that for being a subscriber to a certain ISP.
The biggest threat to cable, IMO, isn't the fact that people don't want to pay for a bunch of channels they don't want. It's the fact that they want to see the same content on their cell phone, tablet, laptop, and TV when they want it. I want to be able to watch a game from my living room, and if I have to run somewhere to pick up a pizza, I want to be able to switch the feed to my cell phone so I can watch it while I wait at the pizza place for my food. The fine lines that once separated your modes of communication/entertainment are starting to blur. Smart phones and tablets run on the same OS. It's just a matter of time before computers and TVs start to share similar DNA.
There will come a point in time where you'll be able to turn on your TV set, and you won't turn on your cable box. The TV will be connected to the Internet (like most of them are now), and you'll launch your Netflix app for movies, or your ABC app to watch the game at 2:30. If you want to catch a basketball game at 7:00 on ESPN, you'll just go to the Watch ESPN app. KSU plays North Dakota State? You'll go to your K-StateHD.tv app and launch that to stream the game in 1080p (or whatever it will ultimately be). If your wife wants to watch something on the TV, you can just fire up your iPad and flip to the same app you'd launch on your TV and watch the game in HD on your tablet.
This, IMO, is why cable will die. It's a middleman, and no one wants to pay for a middleman when they don't have to. It's like a travel agent in a world where people are beginning to find Expedia, Priceline, Travelocity, etc. Technology always finds a way to cut out the waste.
