In a recent front page story here on Daily Kos, the following observation was made regarding Fox News:
It wouldn't just be on your TV for free.
Problem is...it's not free. The ugly truth of so-called basic cable channels is that they all have monthly fees attached -- and Fox News is no exception.
The most recent numbers that I've seen are from two years ago. At that time, the estimated monthly fee associated with Fox News was 75 cents per subscriber, which works out to $9/year per subscriber.
To give this number some context, here's the estimated fees associated with several popular basic cable networks, from that same report:
ESPN $2.96 ($35.52 a year)
TNT $ 0.89 ($10.68 a year)
Disney Channel $ 0.79 (9.48 a year)
Fox News Channel $ 0.75 ($9.00 a year)
USA $ 0.60 ($7.20 a year)
CNN $ 0.44 ($5.28 a year)
Discovery $ 0.25 ($3.00 a year)
A&E $ 0.22 ($2.64 a year)
National Geographic $ 0.20 ($2.40 a year)
MSNBC $ 0.15 ($1.80 a year)
Court TV $ 0.11 ($1.31 a year)
Source: Kagan Research 10/06
Note that, with the exception of ESPN, Fox News Channel is one of the more expensive basic cable networks around -- almost as expensive as TNT and Disney, and substantially mroe expensive than USA, CNN, MSNBC, and Discovery.
So what?
Well, it matters because it means that if you subscribe to cable or satellite and Fox News is one of the channels that you receive, you are subsidizing their right wing crap even if you never watch the station.
It's one more argument for unbundling cable/satellite service and letting viewers choose which channels they want to pay for. Or, alternatively, for dumping the pay TV services in favor of an antenna, Internet video, and/or Netflix.