Bill O'Reilly's JetBlue Jihad has certainly gotten us all talking. About boycotts, among other things. This is a good discussion to have--but it helps to know the economics of cable TV.
To be blunt, it's not enough to quit watching.
Just by having Fox News in your channel lineup, you've got Billo's hand in your pocket. Your cable company may be paying Fox News up to $9 a year in your name. Appalled? Detailed rundown and a few suggestions on the flip.
To oversimplify just a bit, broadcast television has a single revenue source: advertising. Commercial cable channels have a second source: what's called a license fee.
Though it's not broken out this way, your cable bill has two parts. One part covers the cost of maintaining the physical system. The other part reimburses the cable provider for the content it purchases on behalf of its subscribers.
Commercial cable channels don't get into your lineup by accident. Every channel negotiates with the cable company to be paid so much per subscriber--and this is the important part--whether the channel gets watched or not.
If Bill O'Reilly's audience declines, Fox News won't be able to charge as much for commercials, and ad revenue would drop. But ratings have no direct effect on Fox News's license fees, and those are on the rise.
How much money are we talking about? And how does it compare to ad revenue?
Kagan Research (reported here) estimated Fox News's ad revenue in 2006 as about $340 million and subscriber revenue around $260 million. Kagan also estimated Fox's programming cost around $220 million. So even if ad revenue dropped to zero, license fees would keep the channel in the black. And as license fees rise over time, they may even overtake ad revenue as Fox News's #1 source of income.
And that was 2006. This year, license fees are on the rise.
Multichannel News reported in January that Fox News has negotiated new deal with big cable providers including Cablevision and Time Warner. A source told the magazine that the Time Warner deal pays Fox News 75 cents per subscriber and over time "tops out in the 80-cent range." Time Warner has 13 million subscribers. That means $117 million from Time Warner subscribers alone. Whether or not they watch.
If you want to keep Billo's hand out of your pocket, you currently have two choices at most: Either switch to a package that doesn't include it, or cut cable/satellite completely.
But what about my other channels?
Some are on the net, at least in part, though not in real time. Comedy Central streams The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. MSNBC streams (in segments) Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
Obviously this is practical for some but by no means everybody. For example, if there are big sports fans in your household, no Fox News might mean no ESPN. For teens it would might mean no MTV. As they say on the internets, your mileage may vary.
Why is this an all-or-nothing proposition? Why can't I just order cable channels a la carte?
Good question. Really the best question. Short answer: Ask your congressional representatives.
Back in 2004, articles in the Washington Post and USA Today, among others, described some tentative movement in that direction. The Republican Congress called some committee hearings to discuss the issue. But the National Cable and Telecommunications Association came out foursquare against it. Over the space of 15 months, the FCC came to 2 different conclusions on whether unbundled cable would save customers money: yes (Kevin Martin's, in 2006) and no (Michael Powell's, in 2004).
Yet the issue hasn't quite gone away. Just last month, bolstered by Martin's study, Reps. Daniel Lipinski (D-Ill.) and Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.) introduced an a-la-carte-cable bill.
In the meantime, here's a concept:
Carbon dioxide offsets
OK, let's say you can't really cut cable or satellite. You're stuck paying for the carbon dioxide that spews out of Billo's mouth. What to do? Media Matters for America (another target of O'Reilly's wrath) and the NewsHounds watch Fox News pretty closely. Both take contributions. (Not an endorsement, y'all, just a quick list. Please feel free to suggest more in comments.)
One last word about boycotts:
I am not a fan of boycotts. I don't think they work. For one thing, it's almost impossible to assemble a mass of consumers large enough to influence the behavior of a large corporation with a nationwide footprint. For another, corporations are not individuals and therefore do not feel shame. So don't make it about them. Make it about you. Think how good it will feel to get Fox News out of your mind AND out of your pocket. Weigh that against the inconvenience that deleting Fox News would represent. And then make the choice that works for you. Thanks for reading.