OK so this doesn't have much of anything to do with personal finance, but I find it interesting....
This article from the AP Broadcasters' woes could spell trouble for free TV has a bunch of numbers on the costs of TV networks that I found pretty interesting.
"On average, the pay-TV providers pay about 26 cents for each channel they carry, according to research firm SNL Kagan. A channel as highly rated as ESPN can get close to $4, while some, such as MTV2, go for just a few pennies."
I really wish that I could just buy TV networks ala carte direct from the network rather than having to pay Comcast an obscene amount of money for 100+ channels I never watch plus the 5-10 that I actually watch. But of course we'd all like that and the cable companies know it so thats why they don't do it.
Here's a few points on revenue incomes:
"Media economist Jack Myers projects online video advertising will grow into a $2 billion business by 2012, from just $350 million to $400 million this year."
"Advertisers spent $34 billion on broadcast commercials in 2008, down by $2.4 billion from two years earlier, according to the Television Bureau of Advertising."
"In 1998, cable channels drew roughly $9.1 billion, or 24 percent of total TV ad spending, according to the Television Bureau of Advertising. By 2008, they were getting $21.6 billion, or 39 percent."
Given those figures we've got $400M from Internet, $34B from broadcast and $21.6B from cable channels. So income breaks down like this:
So the broadcast networks are still getting most of the ad revenue. Internet revenues are still trivial in comparison to the whole.