Are ESPN, Fox Sports And NBC Sports And Others Now Worried About 'A la Carte' Programming?

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, April 23, 2015

TV consumers are getting seemingly what they have always wanted from many old and new businesses: lots of programming choice.

Now, a more traditional pay TV provider, Verizon FiOS, has decided to join the race -- but as part of its existing business. ESPN, Fox Sports 1, NBC Sports and others maybe have a different point of view.

While not completely moving to “a la carte” programming, Verizon FiOS “Custom TV” plan essentially allows traditional TV customers to break down their big 100 to 250 channel packages in groups of 10 to 17 networks for $10 a month apiece.

Sounds like Verizon wants to give consumer want they want -- believing higher business will be the result.

We all know what this can mean -- less national TV coverage for ESPN, Fox, and NBC Sports.  And that means less national coverage for those TV advertisers who traditionally still buy networks for their “national TV” buy.

If Verizon is indeed finding a way to break their traditional TV distribution agreements, other pay TV providers, including cable and satellite TV businesses, will want to do the same.

National TV advertising? Will that still be a thing a decade or two down the road? All this may not matter -- not if true addressable TV advertising systems are able to precisely target audiences, all which could mean higher ad rates for those specific, targeted viewers.

But we are long way from that. ESPN and others get monetized by advertisers because they can deliver the potential of 90% and 95% of U.S. TV households.

National cable sports networks would want to make this an issue -- which have been targeted by many groups as being one of the key reasons true la carte programming efforts have been stymied.

It’s a big numbers game; a national TV scale still rules. When will it change -- or should it?