Wanna watch the NCAA college basketball tournament (aka March Madness) online (presumably at work) this year? It\’ll cost you. If you\’re a cable or dish subscriber, you can \’authenticate\'[1. We\’ll see how well that works.] with your account and watch all the games for \’free\’. If you\’re not one of those people, you can pay $3.99 for the whole slate of games.
\”We had to protect our distributors, and part of that protection is to make sure when people are cable, satellite or Telco subscribers, they have the opportunity to watch all these games for free on any device they want,\” [Turner Sports president David] Levy told SI.com.
Translation: \”Why aren\’t you witless sheep spending $100/month to buy cable and watch all of our quality programming? Then this would be \’free\’ for you.\”
I will allow that four bucks is a reasonable price point. However, this does nothing to lessen my view that the cable companies are doing EVERYTHING they can to protect their cartel model for television against those of us who would prefer not to pay a maximum amount of money to watch the minimal amount of what we\’d like to see on television.