Digital Services Offer More Flexibility Without Fox Sports- 7/14/04
First of all, please know that Fox Sports will remain completely intact through December 31, 2004. The reason we decided to no longer carry Fox Sports is simple. When we started this program back in November 2000, NPS took a leap that Fox Sports would be a huge hit, and contractually obligated to include it in all of our Digital Packages. Well... four years later, we have not signed up as many subscribers as we thought we would. The cost of the transponders and requirements put on us by Fox Sports does not make it economically feasible to continue this service. While we understand this does not settle too well for some customers (we will credit the FS portion for any month post 12/31) it does enable NPS to offer more competitive Digital Services with the Fox Sports limitations lifted. There simply are not enough Fox Sports subscribers (less than 10,000) to support the continuation of the high cost involved in carrying this service. NPS carried this for almost four years while our competitors decided not to. However, we can no longer support the financial impact and keep our digital services competitive in the market.