You're right, but if TV freebies can go away, what about radio?  Suppose 
most sportscasts move to XM or Serius which you also have to subscribe to? 
That could set a trend.

I agree with you about the crowd noise, but even the radio engineers could 
take a lesson from their previous generation.  The mikes they use now are 
terrible!  F's fuzz, P's pop and all that because they insist on using those 
one piece headphone microphone system where the mike is too close to your 
mouth and not very good quality, and on some sets, you can move it up and 
down, but now backwards and forwards.  They could use those lobeleer mikes 
TV anchor's use.  You never hear any distortion out of them.
Harvey