Michael Mathius
Senior HTF Member
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- Nov 12, 2000
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The following is a question and answer interview conducted with Bryan Burns, ESPN strategic business planning and development VP, at TWICE's offices in late February.
TWICE: As this went to press, we still had not seen a carriage announcement. Are you finding resistance to take the service?
Burns: We will have a number of announcements to make as we get close to launch. I think cable operators are very motivated to do this. I haven't seen any lack of desire. We all have to figure out the economics — from their standpoint what its costs to build and rebuild, and from our standpoint what it costs to build and produce
TWICE: What size audience do you expect when you throw the switch on March 30?
Burns: I think it's fair to say this will not be a massive at-launch situation. I don't think HDTV is massive at this point. So I think the launch of ESPN-HD will mirror where that market is.
TWICE: Will you charge your cable MSOs extra to carry ESPN-HD?
Burns: We are proposing to offer what we call a technical service to our affiliates. This is not an inexpensive operation we are running, so we would require a technical service fee from our affiliates [cable operators] to carry ESPN-HD. What we expect will result — and this will vary by operator — is the cable operator will assemble some sort of programming tier, where they would package together a number of HD channels.
TWICE: How do you think those cable operators, who don't currently charge extra for their HDTV services, will handle this?
Burns: I think it is inevitable that they will eventually have to charge for this. But we have seen different strategies, and all of our customers have different ideas about how to do this.
It seems that left to ESPN we should be paying an additional fee for each new HD channel. Should we expect the same form Cinemax, Encore, Starz HD channels?
TWICE: As this went to press, we still had not seen a carriage announcement. Are you finding resistance to take the service?
Burns: We will have a number of announcements to make as we get close to launch. I think cable operators are very motivated to do this. I haven't seen any lack of desire. We all have to figure out the economics — from their standpoint what its costs to build and rebuild, and from our standpoint what it costs to build and produce
TWICE: What size audience do you expect when you throw the switch on March 30?
Burns: I think it's fair to say this will not be a massive at-launch situation. I don't think HDTV is massive at this point. So I think the launch of ESPN-HD will mirror where that market is.
TWICE: Will you charge your cable MSOs extra to carry ESPN-HD?
Burns: We are proposing to offer what we call a technical service to our affiliates. This is not an inexpensive operation we are running, so we would require a technical service fee from our affiliates [cable operators] to carry ESPN-HD. What we expect will result — and this will vary by operator — is the cable operator will assemble some sort of programming tier, where they would package together a number of HD channels.
TWICE: How do you think those cable operators, who don't currently charge extra for their HDTV services, will handle this?
Burns: I think it is inevitable that they will eventually have to charge for this. But we have seen different strategies, and all of our customers have different ideas about how to do this.
It seems that left to ESPN we should be paying an additional fee for each new HD channel. Should we expect the same form Cinemax, Encore, Starz HD channels?
