Time Warner Cable's Big Game of Chicken

A few days ago, Snowedin wrote an article discussing the current Time Warner debacle.

What he failed to mention, though, was the huge implications of this: that Time Warner Cable's customers will be scrambling to find some place to watch the Sugar, Cotton, and Fiesta Bowls and the BCS National Championship game (which, in case you were wondering, a few people in Austin care about), not to mention the last NFL games of the regular season, which have some pretty serious playoff implications.

This is a pretty big game of chicken TWC is playing.

Think about this: What they're resisting is paying a $1 monthly fee per subscriber. If this goes down to the wire, how many customers do you suppose will have no problem switching to one of TWC's competitors so that they can watch the big game? My guess is it's enough to keep DirectTV employees working overtime for the next 7 days. And so, for $12 per year, TWC is risking losing tens of thousands of $400/yr customers. Grand. Real grand.

There's a saying: It costs $500 to get a new customer and $50 to keep an old one.

Somebody's gotta give. And quite frankly, TWC has a whole lot more to lose here than FOX does. Game on.