Liberty Media President & CEO Greg Maffei said while the current process of bundling for cable channels “has been a great success, the rising price of a lot of content -- particularly sports content -- threatens the success of that bundle and threatens the success of the cable ecosystem.” Appearing on CNBC's "Squawk Box" this morning, Maffei said, “I don't think that's in the long-term interest of either the industry or consumers." CNBC's Joe Kernen noted ESPN earns $5-6 per subscriber compared to $0.20 “for everybody else" and asked, "Wouldn't it be easier to just separate out sports?" Maffei said the proliferation of RSNs has “driven up the cost of cable dramatically." Maffei: "I don't know how you look at what the cost of that sports programming is. I don’t want to pick on ESPN, but if you offered consumers the choice of saying you could (pay) $100 or $200 less a year – and it's certainly got to be at least that kind of number -- and not get some of that sports programming or not get all of that sports programming, I think a lot of consumers might make that choice." However, he noted a "pure a la carte" setup is "very problematic.” Maffei: “How do you manage all those channels? How do you manage the choice?” But he continued, “I do look and say you've got sports programming rising on unsustainable levels.” Maffei acknowledged that is “not the only programming rising on unsustainable levels," but repeated it “doesn't look like a sustainable world to me" ("Squawk Box," CNBC, 12/3).
