General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: TV antennas are making a comeback in the age of digital streaming [View all]onenote
(42,700 posts)Since 1993,broadcasters have been able to force cable and satellite to pay in order to carry broadcast stations over the air. In 2018, those payments were in excess of $8.4 billion. While advertising produces more revenue than retransmission consent fees, those fees end up being passed to subscribers. Thus, broadcast stations and cable networks both rely on a mixture of ad revenue and cable/satellite fees .
Moreover, back in the day, local stations received "network comp" as a supplement to ad sales -- payments from the networks that supplied the programming (and took a portion of the revenue from ad sold during network programming. Today, the money flows in the other direction - the networks insist on getting paid by their affiliates, often out of the retransmission consent fees the stations charge cable and satellite.