Those are some pretty strong claims.... got any facts to back 'em up and exactly what are you saying?
what is it you want backed up?
that IU fans "in market" could have gotten all the games on tv since the 50s, much like bball did absent the NCAA money men nixing it, or that the monopolistic anti competitive forced bundle greatly drives up your pay tv bill, whether cable/satellite or streamed.
IU basketball has been televised since the 50s, and in market and many in state fans have gotten as much or more coverage of IU bball as today for 50 yrs, and for much of that time it was free to viewers as commercials more than cover the cost.
The Bob Knight Show was ch 4's highest rated studio show, though obviously not as highly rated as the games themselves.
televising all the football games in market was no more technically problematic than doing bball, but the NCAA, (a coalition/cartel of the schools themselves), wouldn't let them do it because they wanted to force everyone to watch their 1 monopoly game of the week.
when IU played PU for the trip to the Rose Bowl in 67, PU was rated 3rd in the country, had an All American QB, and a running back who finished 2nd for the Heisman,
IU was highly ranked as well, and the country's rags to riches team.
yet that game was banned from being televised even in Indiana by the NCAA, because they wanted everyone forced to watch OSU-Mich, and no other game was allowed to be shown while OSU-Mich was on.
ch 4 would have loved to have shown that game and all the IU fball games just as they did with bball, but the NCAA wouldn't let them. (ch 4 did show a replay of the 67 IU-PU game at midnight that night, since it was technically the next day).
as for the cable bill and the forced bundle, do you think your bill would necessarily be as high if you didn't have to buy every channel?
perhaps yes or no, depending on if you actually bought every channel.
but look at it a different way.
say when you went to the grocery you couldn't by anything in the store unless you also bought a gal of milk, hamburger, toilet paper, bread, potatoes, and 40 other of the most popular items with it.
again, you can't buy anything unless you also buy toilet paper and milk and bread.
now say you are the monopoly supplier of milk or bread in the area.
the grocery you sell your milk to can't sell anything to anyone, unless they also sell them a gal of your milk too.
what impact on how much you can charge the grocery for a gal of your milk do you have, when the grocery has to have a gal of your milk to sell anything else?
point being, if you have a "must have" channel in a forced bundle, then when negotiating with the pay tv company for your channel, and it's a channel many viewers see as must have because it has IU or NFL games or Fox News, your leverage isn't just that the pay tv provider will lose out on the profit from your one channel, but will lose out on the entire $140 mo revenue from all the channels combined to the pay company you do have a contract with, often with all the revenue from the internet on top since that gets bundled in as well a lot of times.
when BTN first started, News Corp/Fox who controlled BTN, also controlled Directv at the time.
News Corp/Fox wanted a price nationally that Comcast, Time Warner, and literally every other big national cable/internet provider was unwilling to pay.
so for the first yr, no big cable provider carried BTN.
but Directv did because they were News Corp too, thus Dish did also.
but for those who had to have BTN, they had to drop Comcast or Time Warner or whomever their cable company was completely, and get Directv or Dish.
so for every customer who quit their cable company to get Directv for BTN, said cable company didn't just lose the dollar a month they would have made from BTN, they lost the entire $80 month revenue they got from the cable tv bundle, and sometimes the $40 plus bucks on top they got from internet, since those selling DTV and Dish were partnering with AT&T internet.
BTN was able to leverage not just the revenue from their channel alone, but was able to leverage the entire bundle's $120-$140 monthly revenue, just for it's one channel.
point being, the bundle doesn't just force you to buy all the channels in the bundle, but it also drastically affects how much individual "must have" channels can charge the pay tv company for their one channel, since if the pay tv company doesn't have say BTN, then not only does the pay tv company lose out on the little it makes from BTN, but may lose out on the entire $140 mo it gets from everything, if the subscriber jumps providers to get BTN.
this totally perverts the market and how much one "must have" channel can charge, since that one channel can leverage the entire monthly cable/internet bill for just their one channel.
obviously such "buy everything or nothing" collusion agreements between providers of many different products is illegal everywhere else in business, except pay tv. (which is essentially a utility as is internet, and was once treated as such).
when cable started it was legal in pay tv, because channels with commercials didn't charge for their channel, so the issue was moot for decades..
how it stays legal now that they do is a sordid tale, but hint, Comcast/NBC is now the media arm of the DNC along with CNN/Warner Media currently owned by AT&T, and Fox News is the media arm of the RNC.
and Comcast/NBC and CNN/Warner/AT&T can make or break the candidacy of many to most national office Dems, and Fox News can make or break the candidacy of many national office Pubs.
Comcast/NBC, CNN/Warner Media, and Fox/News Corp, all benefit greatly from the forced bundle that's totally illegal everywhere else in the economy, and always has been, and don't want it changed.
and CBS/Viacom and Disney/ABC/ESPN, the other major tv news outlets, don't want it changed either.
