Viewers will pay if Fox TV gets affiliates to give up more revenue

[Commentary] Broadcast television networks are sticking their hands deeper into another pocket — that of their own broadcast affiliates.

What's at issue are the "retransmission fees" that cable and satellite companies pay local broadcasters for the right to carry the latters' signals on their systems. The fees generally come to 10 to 20 cents per pay-TV subscriber per month, industry executives say. In other words, if you're a local TV station and your local cable company has 1 million subscribers, it will pay you $100,000 to $200,000 a month to feed your broadcast to its customers. All four major networks have been hungering for a piece of the local affiliates' action, arguing that much of what the affiliates are feeding the pay-TV systems is network content. But local stations say Fox has taken a far more aggressive stance toward its 186 independently owned affiliates than the other networks have.