This is actually true! Channels want shit load of money and since they don't directly charge consumers they get away with it and everyone goes to blame the streaming provider. While they have some power its just the cost of programming that really makes it look like all the blame is on service providers.
yeah, when Dish drops CBS because they think they deserve $15 for every person to be able to watch your local CBS station people don't get pissed at CBS, they get pissed at Dish because they are being assholes and removed the local station. Everyone would think differently if their bill was broken down to show that they are paying something like $20 for Disney w/ ESPN, $15 for Fox Sports, $15 for Fox stations in general, $10 for Comcast Sports Net, $10 for Viacom, $8 for Tunner, $20 for locals, plus $7 fees instead of seeing a $105 tv package (all values are made up to show a point but probably aren't that far off from reality). you don't watch Fox Sports? Tough if your carrier wants to carry the other fox stations they will pay the $15 for fox sports for everyone. Just like if you want any Disney content you will pay the $10 or whatever it is for everyone to have ESPN. You don't want to carry ESPN? Then sure for $45 for all the other stations you can only offer ESPN to certain groups. You also have to have so many people in your top tier or you have to pay a penalty come your next contract for not having enough people paying for the $15 Tunner package included in your $175 lineup vs the $7 one in your $105 lineup. That is assuming they even let you carry the stations as they might just say that going forward you can only get the $15 station package to offer your customers which is now $22 for the next term or sorry you don't offer enough of our stations so we are pulling all of our content. I have seen companies lose the ability to offer certain stations because of stuff like that.
A few weeks back I was at a cable tv provider event and they had a few hours dedicated to talking about the ever growing cost of retransmission.
Wonder how many AT&T executives gave testimony under oath during the merger hearings that the merger would lead to lower prices? If any did, they likely did so after coaching from legal staff. Now that prices have done just the opposite and soon enough after the DOJ lost the case that sudden economic changes can't really be cited as a reason, maybe charging said AT&T executives with perjury for lying under oath about pricing direction after the merger and with conspiracy for planning the lying under oath would be an option. And the attorneys for helping with said crimes.
It depends on why they raised prices. This is where I have always had a little bit of an issue here. For the companies that don't have a dog in the fight, they have no choice but to pay whatever they are bent over the table and told to pay as they get a 11 inch long 3 inch wide dildo shoved up their ass. But Comcast, AT&T.. they own some of the content already. So they are paying themselves. Given that most people have always bitches about the cost to retransmit stations they could lower the cost to something more realistic and keep themselves and their competition in a better position to not lose as many to cord cutting. But they instead keep the same mindset. Which also means that AT&T and Comcast are making more profit than the rest as the money that they pay from one division to the other is still in the hands of the larger company. Now in their case the $10 raise for AT&T could be due to what they are now having to pay other none AT&T owned companies for content. Or It could very well be that they are trying to just increase their profits.