Business

Iger jabs at E$PN bashers

Don’t blame Disney’s ESPN for that super-sized monthly cable bill — blame the RSNs, or regional sports networks.

That’s the word from Disney CEO Bob Iger, whose No. 1 cable sports channel has long been under fire for being the most expensive channel on the dial and the main reason households pay so much for TV. ESPN charges $5.15 per household per month.

Iger said yesterday that ESPN provides additional services along with rate increases — and pointed at regional sports networks as the main culprits for increased pricing.

“If you look at the cost of those channels versus the ratings they deliver, it’s not even close [to ESPN],” Iger said at a conference sponsored by Sanford C. Bernstein.

Comcast’s SportsNet Washington is the highest-priced regional sports network, weighing in at $4.02 per month per household, according to figures provided by SNL Kagan, Fox Sports North is No. 2 at $3.68. (News Corp. owns Fox Sports and The Post.)

Iger slammed cable, satellite and telecom operators for their ESPN-centric bellyaching, saying programming tiers without the sports brand are hardly a runaway success.

“It’s an odd business that the very distributors of this great product complain about the cost of the product, and they do that more than selling the value of the product to their consumers,” he said.