The new network, which will show coverage of the New York Yankees baseball team as well as a number of other sporting franchises in the region, has been in negotiations with various broadcast platforms regarding the cost of content carriage.
Hindery has now stated that, despite talks already under way with the likes of AOL Time Warner, Cablevision Systems and Comcast, he does not expect to secure the deals until early in 2002.
The YES network CEO is attempting to convince the local cable operators, whose combined subscriber base totals more than 8 million, to pay up to $2 (B2.22) per customer each month. This represents a significant investment for the broadcasters given that they already spend at least $5.10 (B5.67) per subscriber each month for the carriage of sports channels such as ESPN and Fox Sports New York.
Hindery stated: "If I charged a buck and a half or two bucks for YES, it wouldn't embarrass me in the least."
Should the CEO secure such a deal it would guarantee the YES network up to $144m (B160m) a year in revenue. Hindery is also trying to persuade cable operators to include the YES network in their basic cable service, thus expanding the viewer reach of the content and enabling YES to potentially charge more to advertisers.
