this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2025
20 points (100.0% liked)
CordCutters - a place for those who have unsubscribed from traditional cable TV or satellite service
1595 readers
1 users here now
CordCutters is a place for those who have cut the Cable or Satellite TV cord, and want to know what other legal services are available. No piracy talk please, it could get the person posting it in trouble with the authorities and could get the community banned on some servers, so please only talk about products and services that are legal to use.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If it matches the old cable model, its not Freeform that's expensive. Its ESPN. When cable channels costs were exposed back in about 2008, a basic cable subscription cost about $60. Of that basic cable $23 was just ESPN. Freeform didn't exist back then as a name, but ABC Family channel did which shares some of the same DNA. ABC family was just 65 cents of the $60 of basic cable. AMC was something like $1.27
Further, ESPN used their bully position to force ESPN to be carried in the basic cable bundle. They knew the awful truth that most people didn't watch it (or watch it enough to care if it left). Non-ESPN watchers were subsidizing ESPN at that time. It was estimated that if ESPN subscription costs were allowed to be born only by those that wanted the content the cost of the challenged would be about $56 per subscriber, which would be more than more than most ESPN watchers would be willing to pay.
I'm guessing that Youtube is now faced with this same thing.
My guess is Freeform is a tiny tiny bit of money, likely a rounding error's amount. I doubt that this is a war between Disney and Youtube to carry Freeform or not.
I stand corrected. Thank you.