[Fire TV Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] porkenhimer:
It is the price it is for the same reason cable and satalite service are the price they are. Cable channels do no get as high in the ratings as network TV, NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX, so they can not charge as much for comercial time, instead they charge cable and satalite companies to distribute their content. NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX are the major networks and everything else has to be paid for. All of these major networks own cable networks too, CBS own Showtime, ABC owns ESPN, NBC own USA Network, SYFY, And FOX own FX, just to name a few, but their cable networks do not and cannot make the money they make off ads so they charge you to watch their cable networks. My guess is most of the cost of the service is coming from the partnership between Disney and Dish network. Disney, ABC and ESPN are all the same company, and they are not gonna let you watch their content legally for pennies. If you take away all the networks that are not under the ABC Disney brand, the cost woulld probably still be over ten dollars, cause disney has a lot of content and people would still pay. Disney gives you sports with ESPN, Network TV with ABC and something for the kids with the Disney Channel. Disney/ABC could make their own app and include all their networks and people would still probably buy it for $20. Your cable and satalite bills are basically the cost of content, the cost of equipment and labor, and taxes. It cost a to keep equipment running and even if you are not effected by outages or equipment failure, you still have to pay for it. Its like if a big main water line bust in your town and it does not effect you at all, a few months later everyones bill goes up to pay for the work that was done to fix it. Its the same thing the content pushers do. So not only are you paying for the content, you are also chipping in to help pay to make sure the equipment they are using to push it to you stay up and running and is fixed when it has a problem. Its like the WWE sayin they needed a million subscribers to break even, which iis probably true. They probably do need around a million people to break even, cause it takes a lot of money to run their nework, and someone has to pay for and its not gonna be them, it will be the people that buy their content. The good part is if you are a fan of the WWE or any other content provider, the more people that pay to see it means the more profit they will make, and hopefully in return will mean the content will get better. The WWE is basically telling all these networks to follow them and sell their content online, and the WWE just reportedly made 57 million in profits from the WWE Network that was supposed to fail. They took a Pay Per View business that they basically created and everyone followed their lead, now they have basically killed Pay Per View by creating their own network, which you can already see that others are following. Five years from now most all networks will be broadcast over the internet on subscription, and when you get to the facts of it they will all be modeled after the WWE Network. I am not a fan of the WWE, but their subscription based network is gonna change the way all the networks give us their content. You do not need to have cable or satalite service to watch the WWE Network like you do with the other networks that have apps, you simply pay WWE your $9.99 and go on about your day. There is no middle man, and I honestly think all networks will copy this platform shortly in the future.