Fox News Channel Wants $1 Per Subscriber

FOX NEWS CHANNEL WANTS $1 PER CUSTOMER ANNIVERSARY GIFT
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Joe Flint joe.flint@wsj.com]
The Fox News Channel, nearing its 10th anniversary, is aiming to triple the fees it charges cable operators to carry the channel. It wants an increase to $1 dollar per month per subscriber, from the 25 cent to 35 cent subscriber fee the network currently earns. CNN gets an average of about 50 cents per subscriber; MSNBC takes in between 30 and 35 cents. Only a handful of cable networks are able to command such a high fee, most notably Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN, which takes in over $2.50 per subscriber. Like ESPN, these channels pay huge sports-rights expenses and get compensated for them. Other channels that command high distribution fees include Time Warner's TNT, which carries Nascar and the National Basketball Association and gets 90 cents, and the Disney Channel, which doesn't sell advertising and gets about $1. While posturing is a big part of these negotiations and industry executives think Fox News doesn't really expect to land a dollar per-subscriber, network executives insist they aren't just bluffing. Fox News has more viewers than any other cable news channel with a prime-time audience of about 1.5 million viewers this year, according to Nielsen Media Research. CNN's prime-time audience this year is about 700,000 viewers while MSNBC has been averaging 350,000 viewers. Fox News's ratings are high enough to make it a top-10 cable network. Fox News is banking that it is now one of the handful of channels which can play hardball with cable and satellite operators if negotiations stall. Like Viacom's Nickelodeon and Disney's ESPN, Fox News has rabid fans who would howl if it wasn't part of their basic cable package. Its mix of news and talk has struck a chord with conservative viewers.
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