How sports networks inflate your TV bill

• Fees for sports programming paid for by all subscribers
• New Verizon Select HD bundle drops all sports channels and fees
• Bargain over your bill with cable company for lower rates

Question: Verizon sent a sample of our upcoming Fios TV bill that includes $2.42 for a new "Regional Sports Network Fee." What's the reasoning for this?

Answer: That fee is one attempt by Verizon to deal with the increasing cost of sports programming aimed at superfans but subsidized by other subscribers.

Regional sports networks package the games of a big-league franchise or a big-money college athletics conference, plus related programming like interviews and talk shows. They amount to a cash cow that, courtesy of the network being carried on core cable and satellite bundles, gets to graze on other people's pastures.

The Los Angeles Dodgers, for instance, recently signed a deal with Time Warner Cable, valued at $7 to $8 billion over 25 years, to launch a new SportsNet LA channel. Its estimated $5/month carriage fee will get passed on to subscribers throughout the area, even if they root for the Angels or no baseball team at all.

Cable and satellite services have often blamed RSNs for pushing prices skyward. Back in 2006, Comcast said it would hike rates by $2 a month in the Washington-Baltimore market to cover the cost of adding the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network. But in putting an RSN line item on bills, Verizon goes one step farther.

That $2.42 is set to be added to the bills of customers on new contracts starting Feb. 15 in Verizon's California, Texas and Florida markets, with most others following March 1. It doesn't cover the exact cost. Confidentiality agreements block TV providers from providing an exact breakdown, said Verizon spokesman Bill Kula Wednesday, and the figures vary regionally: 92 percent of Fios TV markets have more than one regional sports network.

But this change does lend some transparency to a previously opaque part of your TV bill. Verizon has also given a way out to people like the author of the above e-mail, who professed to have zero interest in sports: a new "Select HD" bundle that drops all the sports channels.

Select HD, with 140 or so channels, costs $49.99 a month on a standalone basis, compared to $64.99, plus the $2.42 RSN fee, for about 210 channels on Verizon's Prime package. (Those rates can drop if you buy a bundle of TV, phone and Internet service, but they also leave out monthly equipment fees that start at $5.99 just to pop a CableCard into a TiVo and climb to $19.99 for a networked DVR.)

The new Select plan is a blunt instrument to express one's resentment over what sports programming is doing to TV costs, and for many viewers it won't work. For example, were my wife and I to subscribe to Fios TV, we'd want ESPN but, as alumni of ACC and Big East schools, couldn't care less about the Big Ten Network.

But it beats pretending that the current dynamic is sustainable. Other TV providers ought to think about smarter ways to give their viewers a vote.

If regional sports networks don't like that treatment, nothing's stopping them from letting local viewers pay to watch on the Web. Instead, they turn them away: My wife and I, having dropped subscription TV in 2009 in favor of over-the-air and Internet viewing, would pay to see Nationals games online, but MASN will not take our money.

Tip: Remember to bargain over your TV bill.

If your TV bill comes with a rate increase, don't just sit there and pay it. Complain about it first. You may not get any satisfaction, or as much as you could have gotten in the depths of the recession, but if you make a persuasive case that you're ready to leave for another service, you may very well get a break on that rate.

When you state your case, don't forget to mention the promotional rate that a competing service might charge you for the first six to 12 months — or the discount your current provider already gives to new customers.

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Rob Pegoraro is a tech writer based out of Washington, D.C. To submit a tech question, e-mail Rob at rob@robpegoraro.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/robpegoraro.