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Cable TV A La Carte?
Anonymous Coward writes "According to this BusinessWeek article you can now get your MTV a la carte. I having been waiting for years to buy my cable by the channel, and this article indicates that my cable company is now legally required to let me. I am going to call Time Warner tomorrow with my list just to see what they say. Anyone out there doing this now?"
It says you can get HBO without having to pay for a premium level of service. They can still require you to get basic service and even make you rent a digital box.
This can't be true. I mean, who's going to explicitly ask for the three religious channels, the channel where they talk about hot rods, and that one that's just a bad radio station? These things get bundled for a reason.
What kind of price limits are they put to? Same price as in a package of channels? Obviously, if they aren't held to any firm price limits, they'll just charge $20/channel, and nobody will buy it.
I do think this is a good law though, How many people on slashdot would want to get cable just for TechTV?
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
I am sure that the 'package' pricing will make consumer choice still include a few channels that would otherwise not be purchased. How many cable channels rely on being packaged with other groups of channels just to get a shot at having some eyeballs watching them?
Package deal - 39.99
Individual Channels - $3.00 -$5.00 per channel.
It could add up very quickly, and I think that most consumers couldn't be bothered to pick and choose channels while taking pricing into account IMO.
Cheers,
VonKraken
It would be better to have 70 channels of things you want to watch, rather than have 125 channels which include 4 home shopping networks, oxygen, lifetime,5 gardening channels etc....
Letting the viewers decide what they want to pay for is quite a concept. What took em so long?
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When you come to a fork in the road, take it! --Yogi Berra--
My dad's worked in cable engineering since its inception and has always said that ala carte pricing is not a good idea.
First off, it's more expensive. Consider: a fair price for a channel you really want is probably 2-5$ per month. I receive 85 channels for $23. Even eliminating the dozens I don't watch, there's more than 10 channels I do want to get, including all five major networks, comedy central, cartoon network and a gaggle of learning channels, BBCA and of course Food TV.
Second off, it's not really good for the cable co based on how the cable companies receive and send the channels themselves. Everything's handled by big blocks of splitters and amplifiers. Each handles a set of channels. Channels are pulled down from satelites in blocks as well...TWC in Albany has a set of five or so, one of which is dedicated to all the myriad HBOs, one to all the turner channels, etc. So it makes sense to sell TV in blocks...it's impossible to accurately tell how much a SINGLE channel costs you. In fact, after setup costs and maintenance costs and offsetting the possibility of customer service, just getting one channel may cost about $15 on a good margin, while getting fifty channels on the same line would only be pennies more.
Finally, it's not fair for marginal channels. You know all those channels you don't watch, like History or Speedvision or Golf TV or Univision? They're all somebody's favorite channel, believe it or not. There may be very few people who watch them, but they're getting equal billing due to being part of a package deal. Thus, they also have the ability to get hugely popular -- after all, you're more likely to catch something interesting on than if you had to order it specifically. Would TV Food be such a mainstay in our house were it not for having actually seen Good Eats, Iron Chef, David Rosengarden's Taste or Jamie Oliver? No. Hell, we wouldn't have ordered "ala carte" a channel that was ostensibly just reruns of Julia Childs.
Block pricing isn't really that expensive, anyway. I get 85 channels and broadband internet for less than the a quarter of the cost of my car's insurance and upkeep, and I sure get a lot more utility out of it.
Hey freaks: now you're ju