costy, i feel like you're severely downplaying a lot of justifiable fear that people have in riot ruining ogn.
riot hasn't been known to have the best minded approach when it comes to these things. a lot of people (myself included) have been watching OGN forever now, back when it was sub only for anything higher than medium quality. i was subbed to that for so long.
the issue here is riot not being transparent with what's going on. it's cool that you received an "internal statement" that clears up your fear but until riot actually addresses this in a meaningful manner i fall into camp "ruck fiot". don't touch my ogn.
I understand what you're saying, and I don't want to comment too much on it because it's not my job, but I'm wondering why you're defaulting to "fuck riot".
Riot does not want to ruin the LCK. The change is to reduce complacency and increase competition so viewers get a better broadcast over time. It's not done for money (Riot will not receive a cent from SPOTV for broadcast rights).
I was also one of those people who subbed to OGN for the 1080p stream and OGN cake fan and Kakackle emotes, but I don't miss that. When Riot Korea took more of an involvement they made the LCK broadcast free in HD with free VoDs, no sub required. That wasn't to make money, they just wanted the broadcast to be better and for it to be more accessible to more people.
The issue with the broadcast for 2016 is still ongoing, and while Riot Korea, OGN and KeSPA have agreed to meet first thing this week to further discuss it without constant public statements that are full of he said/she said, there are certain people, some employed by OGN for the English stream and some of their friends, that are releasing one side of the story to further their own goals. A big example was this logo trademark issue which has been used by those people as an example of "Riot stealing from OGN and ruining esports in Korea!!!" when in actual fact it has nothing to do with the current situation and is not that.
Be sceptical about Riot if you want, but all I'm saying is to consider who it is that's speaking publicly, what their motives are, their past comments about Riot etc. and to realise that Riot is making whatever changes it's making to overall improve the broadcast of LoL in Korea like they have done in the past and not as some power-hungry, money-grabbing tirade to ruin OGN and Korean esports.
I'm sure there will be statements released based on the outcome of this week's meetings.
If your concern is on the quality of SPOTV's English language broadcast, I share them but I also trust my colleagues to find new talent like they have done with EU and NA LCS. These people are fucking good at their job.
