• Los Angeles Times, Sunday, April 25, 2010 10:28 PM

Turner Broadcasting's deal to snag most NCAA's March Madness college basketball tournament will give it leverage to charge more money to the cable and satellite distributors that carry its cable channels. The distributors then turn around and pass the costs on to consumers.

As part of its $10.8-billion pact with CBS to share the rights to the NCAA tounament, Turner will put games on TNT, TBS and TruTV. By doing this, viewers will be able to see all the games. Currently, CBS has the exclusive rights to the tournament, but with only one channel it could not show every game. That's the good news for sports fans. But the downside: SNL Kagan says cable and satellite operators only pay about 10 cents per subscriber per month for TruTV. That pales in comparison to the $1 that TNT gets and the 50 cents that TBS is averaging. Both TNT and TBS have lots of sports on them. See what's coming?

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