Forgive me, for I have sinned.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: SPORTS biz

DON'T TELL ANYBODY THIS. BUT I DON'T GET ESPN.

As in, 1 don't have it at lily house. As in, if you drop by on Monday evenings in I me ram, we won't be able to watch Thlonday Night Football." (What's that? No, I completely understand. Sorry you're not feeling well.)

And yet: I am alive to tell the tale.

Nly non-ESPN-ness happened mostly by accident. I kept. meaning to add it back after rejiggering our cable service. But inertia, cheapness and (he addition of an Apple TV that plays Major League Baseball games for S.99 a season have prolonged the separation.

Not having ESPN puts me in a slim minority of U.S. households. But it also gives me some personal perspective on the biggest conflict in television today.

The short version: Cable company profits arc getting squeezed by the rising cost of television content. Companies like Comcast and its satellite TV rivals Littleton-based Dish Network and DirecTV of Los Angeles: have to pay TV networks like ESPN. MTV. AMC and others for the right to redistribute their programming. Contrast alone paid nearly $8 billion to these networks and others last year.

Why should von care? First. because programming costs are the major reason pay-TV companies slam You with bigger bills every winter. Last year, Cormcast's programming costs rose by 7 percent. In a saturated market everybody who wants cable/satellite Tv already gets it there's no way for cornetist and Dish Network to protect their margins but to raise prices. Second, sports channels are (he most expensive of the I ninth. Its common for companies like Comcast to pay around 25 cents per mom h for the right to send, say. BC or Discovery Channel to your TV. ESPN, though, charges cable companies more than $4 per month for the right to send ESPN to your house.

Yep. Whether you watch ESPN or not, it's the most expensive channel (at your remote control. If your cable company removed ESPN and a dozen or so other sports networks from your cable TV service. the underlying costs of your Pay-TV package would sink. By a lot.

But that's not going to happen. ESPN's contracts require (hat if a cable company offers ESPN, the channel has to be tucked safely into the most widely subscribed pay-TV package. Which means Yours. The only alternative is for We cable company to drop ESPN altogether. And that would be economically suicidal.

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