Google Fiber is being held back by insane TV studio fees

Cord cutting may be the future but Google Fiber unfortunately still has to deal with the present, and that means it has to shell out cash to TV studios for the rights to deliver their shows over its pay TV service. Per The Washington Post, Google Fiber boss Milo Medin said on Monday that paying for TV programs is the biggest impediment to Google Fiber spreading further, especially because studios charge significantly more for the rights to offer their shows than they charge big cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable.

Laying down high-speed fiber is expensive. Digging trenches in the ground and stringing cables along utility poles is expensive. Getting permission to do all that is expensive. But it turns out that all of that is a fraction of the cost of offering TV programming, according to the head of Google Fiber, Milo Medin. And it’s a cost Google can’t avoid paying. Video “is the single biggest impediment” to Google Fiber’s deployment, Medin told an audience at the COMPTEL telecom conference in Dallas on Monday. “It is the single biggest piece of our cost structure.” Why is Google so down on TV? Because as important as Internet access is, Americans still love their triple-play bundle. You can’t sell Internet these days without also offering a TV package. “If you’re going to pull customers to your broadband and other services, you’ve got to lead with video,” said Jeff Gardner, the chief executive of Windstream.