Sometimes you re willing to do that. You re willing to lose a little money on the Olympics, because you can use it to promote your fall programs. But at some point, the math makes it unworkable. But what is unworkable on a major broadcast network could be a swell pickup for a cable network. In some ways, network sports is kind of an odd idea, because people are interested in sports regionally.
Regional cable is able to do that much more efficiently than the networks.
However, national cable may not be far behind broadcast on the way to sports saturation. Cable is scaling back. Instead, regional cable sports networks could end up with an even larger share of regular-season sports. The Fox Sports regional cable networks are setting the stage for the wave of the future. Fox Sports Net has 21 owned and affiliated networks across the country, reaching 73 million homes.