As media companies continue to demand more from cable and satellite companies per subscriber, the costs border on ridiculous.

In you look at the Comcast rate card for the San Francisco area, local TV stations like ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC now cost $26.70 a month and local RSN costs are $18.75 a month.

Put these two fees together, and you pay $45.45 a month extra for the channels they advertise as a part of the TV package.

Stations tell viewers that they offer their signal for free over the air, yet they continue to demand more from cable companies.

When they get in a retans pissing match with the cable company, their signal is dropped from the cable line up. The stations then run crawls pleading with viewers to contact the cable cartels to ask that the stations be restored. 

In reality, the crawl should read: “Please contact the cable companies to ask them to pay more for programs you can get for free, so we can make more money because the advertising business model is not working. Your monthly cable rate will go up even more….thank you.”

Demanding more money each time the contract comes up is not a sustainable business model. When customers are hit with a rate hike, many elect to cut the cord.

Have you seen one cable company say they have added subscribers in the past ten years?

Greed is killing local television, and they can’t see that because greed has blinded them.