I like the analysis, I like the data, I disagree with the conclusions.

Small affiliates are being bought up by large conglomerates because small markets have a much lower penetration of cord cutters; large urban cores have a higher number of well-compensated professionals who are running HBOGo through their Playstations. Bentonville, Arkansas is more likely to have people plugging in an antenna.

Not only that, but broadcast television has been doubling down on immediate content - you're not going to watch the NFL playoffs the next day, you're going to sit down on your couch and watch it. This came up Sunday in /r/movies - "where can I stream the Golden Globes?" I pointed to /r/cordcutters' answer: "get an antenna."

Yeah, DirecTV paid a lot for the rights to do NBA league pass, but local carry is still king. That $6 a month CBS is charging?

It's interesting. I just bought a Silicondust HDHomerun. It has two tuners, which are routed to the antenna my condo put up. I can put The Today Show on my Playstation - and on my phone, and on my laptop, and on my Roku. It's pretty dope. But I can't get CBS. One of the shows I work on, I park in the same lot as Les Moonves - he's just over the hill. But the CBS towers just don't hit my neighborhood. Kinda funny as KCBS is literally the oldest broadcaster in the United States.

So I sniffed around for that $6 a month thing from CBS. One thing you get for sure - the entire back catalog of Viacom shows. Another thing you get for sure - next day rebroadcast. If I wanna watch The Good Wife on Wednesday instead of Tuesday, I can pay $6 a month instead of $2.99 an episode from Amazon. But the thing it had to "check" for was whether or not it'd stream live TV.

I guarantee that's because it needed to see if CBS had struck a retransfer agreement with their local affiliate.

That $6 a month undoubtedly gets divided with the local affiliate - particularly in my neighborhood, as the local affiliate is a building over from Les' office. So all these retrans fees Hirschhorn is talking about? CBS figured out a revenue share model.

"Broadcast" may well be dead in 2030, but sports, reality TV, variety programming, news and awards shows are going to belong to retransmitted local affiliates and even the guys with seedboxes and torrent wizard status are going to be pulling down their programming off the air. a 1080i HD stream is a stultifying amount of data and it's gonna have to be live somewhere.

Never bet against Les Moonves. He brought you Friends, ER, CSI, Survivor and NCIS.