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Congress To Force Cable a la Carte Plans
unassimilatible writes "Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain seems to be leaning towards sponsoring legislation mandating something I have wanted for a long time: Forcing cable companies to offer "a la carte" programming packages. No U.S. cable or satellite currently offers such a plan. However, as the Washington Post reports, "That may change, if some lawmakers and consumer groups get their way, as the cable industry finds itself under increasing scrutiny. Lawmakers report that their constituents are angry about cable bills that have risen at three times the rate of inflation since the industry was largely deregulated in 1996." McCain money quote: "I go down to buy a loaf of bread. I don't have to buy broccoli and milk to go with it." Bottom line is, cable companies have a government-authorized monopoly, so maybe they need to recieve government-mandated "innovation." Why should I pay for 15 non-English channels?"
While I am completely against government regulation of things like cable, the Cable Companies have made their own bed on this one. They scammed themselves a legal monopoly, now they have to dance to the government's tune. Of course, they'll just pass the 'costs' of this on to the consumer. But they can't claim some kind of moral high ground against 'government interference', when they've been sucking off the government tit for the last 20 years.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I've been wanting this for so long. I hate paying for things I don't need.
"Besides adding to the cost, cable companies say, selling channels individually might make it difficult for lesser-watched, niche channels to survive."
This is bad how?
"...angry about cable bills that have risen at three times the rate of inflation..."
Don't forget that quality has also dropped noticeably. We're paying more for more channels, not more good programs.
G
So when did a-la-carte mean cheaper? Go to a mexican restaurant and order a 3 enchilada meal, and order 1 crispy taco on side. Unless you are going to Taco Bell... that damn crispy taco is going to cost you just about as much as 1.5 enchilada!
The cable company is going lobby against this big time. If someone just wants TechTV only at their office, it's going to cost them big time. The cable company would at least like to make some profit off of everyone of their subscribers.
Thats my $0.02... oh yeah forget... since I'm only making one comment today, I'm charging more... that'll be $3.50.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)... oops
However, less-watched channels that serve distinct but smaller audiences, such as TechTV and BET, may not survive, because not enough viewers would pay for them.
Which is fine. TechTV and BET are both complete garbage. What better way to improve the quality of programming than to mandate it through public dollar votes?
(Just give me Sci-Fi, Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, and the Playbo--er, Discovery, and I'll be good to go. Heck, maybe NBC as well, if for no other reason than this year's feisty presidential election.)
The coolest voice ever.
I'd like to see it set up so I can pick and choose each and every channel, preferably via an onscreen check list at the set top box. And if there's something I want to see on a channel I don't normally have, I can order it just for that program right at the box.
--- Ban humanity.
A big problem for cable companies is that they now have no real excuse to not have plans like this. Before digital cable they could at least claim some technological difficulties in setting up such a system. Now I would guess that it would involve minor changes to their infrastructure and users should easily be able to add or remove channels directly through their cable box.
Casual Games/Downloads
But cable companies don't work in free markets, they are given a monopoly over their customers.
Don't get me wrong - I have NO problem with access to any of those channels, but what *I* have wanted for *years* is for cable (and satellite) companies to provide me with the content *I* want at a reasonable price. Not charge me for a 120 channels because that's the only way I can see the 20 that I actually *want*.
I wouldn't mind so much IF cable wasn't so expensive. I looked from switching back from Dish Network to my local cable co.. The price I pay for *everything* that's available on my line-up is US$89/mo. via Dish Network. I wanted to get the local channels in HDTV. But to do that I'd have to switch back to cable. To switch back to cable, and keep my current channel lineup would have been US$170/mo!!! And that's not including the HDTV support...! To add insult - my local cable co (Comcast) doesn't *have* as many channels as Dish Network does.
The Dish Network ads are right - cable cos. *are* pigs...
Polymorphism -- It's what you make of it.
Uh, huh huh. It is a government-sanctioned monopoly. There is no free market, so the market is probably not going to be able to decide. I totally agree with the article - lets force them to innovate, or make them give up their monopoly!
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
The point is, it's not a free market economy. One cable provider ahs a monopoly in your area, so its his cable service, or nothing. A free market economy would have multiple cable providers in an area.
But then the concrete on your roads would nver set for cable companies laying down cable. And the investment is too high for too many competitors. So the market has to be as free as possible. And freedom to choose what to buy is the best answer in the circumstances.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
-- Note: These Comments are Generated by ME! Not You! ME!
If companies sell shit you don't want -- don't buy it.
Yes, this means you have to give up the something you want, because it's bundled with a bunch of shit you don't want. Hang in there -- if enough consumers stop consuming the shit, companies will desperately try to save themselves from bankruptcy by selling you what you really wanted in the first place.
-kgj
-kgj
Don't drop PAX! They play the censored version of Sopranos!
Tony, how in the *beep* did you think I *beep* *beep* *beep* the car *beep* *beep* and take his *beep* head *beep* over to Frankies *beep* *beep* *beep* *beep* *beep* *beep* the end.
Josh
Bottom line is, cable companies have a government-authorized monopoly
monopoly = monopoly is a situation where for technical or social reasons there cannot be more than one efficient provider of a good
Unlike Microsoft, there is no alternative to the 2 or 3 services, one of them being the Cable Monopoly, because they ALL bundle their channels.
I have to buy 100 extra channels just to watch TechTV and Cartoon Network, and then spend an hour Removing all the shopping and religious channels, as well as Fox News and A&E.
Yeah! Let the market decide! If you don't like the price don't by it and force the price down, just like gasoline and electricity and natural gas....
Oh wait....
Dude, sometimes the market can't or won't decide. Then the government, who are supposed to have the interest of the electorate not the cable company executives and shareholders, will decide.
Sometimes governement interference is bad, sometimes its not.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
If there was only one supermarket, then they probably would demand you buy everything in chunks of standard sizes. The thing is, we have competition, so since the customers don't want it, they could go somewhere else that does offer what they want.
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Cable companies don't have such competition. There's typically a choice between the local cable provider and a couple of satellite providers. They can get away with this sort of thing by a sort of unspoken agreement. If one of them offered a la carte, so would the others.
Essentially this is the prisoner's dilemma. They both know that they will both get the best results by cooperating
While we'd all like a la carte pricing of cable, it's a nightmare from a technical point of view. The only possible way to do it would be to require everyone to have a digital box - trying to do this in analog simply wouldn't be feasible (i.e. try filtering 100-106Mhz out, allowing 106-112Mhz, filtering out 112-124Mhz, allowing 124-130Mhz, etc. - each cable tap would have dozens of filters, and each would push the limits of what passive filters can actually do).
Therefore, we're talking requiring a digital box for each customer, and every single TV set - that alone will tack $5+ per TV onto everyone's monthly cable bill (digital boxes are ~$150-200 and up.
You'd probably also end up with a lot of marginal channels going off the air (outside of Slashdot, how many folks will actually _pay_ for TechTV on an a la carte basis?).
Lawmakers report that their constituents are angry about cable bills that have risen at three times the rate of inflation since the industry was largely deregulated in 1996.
I thought the theory was that unregulated markets drove down prices and were good for consumers...
It's not the cable/satellite providers. It's the channels themselves. If I'm running Jim's Cable TV and I want to offer my customers TNT, for example, Turner might make me buy TBS, The Cartoon Network and the CNN channels as one package. That means I have to charge my customer for all those. So I might as well give him the channels he is paying for.
I know this because I worked for a satellite TV provider. It was like pulling teeth to be able to offer ESPN to our customers. Finally one of our managers had to call Eisner personally to straighten things out. As much as I'd like to make the cable companies out to be the bad guys, it's really the networks.
Jim
A dyslexic man walks into a bra.
You don't have the choice to buy channels a la carte because nobody, not even satellite offers it. This is a symptom of a breakdown of the market called an oligopoly, a cousin of the better known monopoly. Both the monopoly and the oligopoly are vulnerable to having the benefits of their position taken forcably by a govenment because they are not benefiting consumers as best as they could. Since only people (consumers) vote, they have all the power, so they can ( justly IMHO ) steal from mono/oligopolies of the world that would parasitise us all if left unchecked.
Eat at Joe's.
but you TV-addicts are the ones fueling the market
I am really sorry I enjoy watching movies, TLC, TechTV, etc. I wish I could be cool and liberated like you, Anonymous Coward. Sorry if I get a flamebait outa that. I just couldn't get through Sunday without my Simpsons/Sopranos fix.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
Well, there's satellite. Which doesn't seem to be competition enough.
It's not always the cable companies that force bundling. Take a look at Disney. They force cable companies to buy their channels in blocks so that while a cable company may only want ESPN and the Disney Channel, they also have to pick up Toon Disney and other channels as well. This additional cost gets pushed onto the consumers.
Didn't Viacom and EchoStar have a fight over this issue just a few weeks ago?
"I go down to buy a loaf of bread. I don't have to buy broccoli and milk to go with it." Bottom line is, cable companies have a government-authorized monopoly, so maybe they need to recieve government-mandated "innovation." Why should I pay for 15 non-English channels?"
As a Canadian, we're used to this sort of socialism (NB: Socialism != Fascism != Communism). Many french and other non-english channels cannot survive in the market without being subsidized. Take our music industry for example. If you want to run a radio station here, you must play a certain percentage of Canadian artists so that US artists do not swamp out our industryt altogether.
All in all, I think forcing people to pay for a small percentage is a good thing, but then again what do I know? I'm just a brain-washed Canadian.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
This is hardly leftist. Pissing off companies that hold a monopoly goes all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt, arguably the most liked republican behind President Lincoln and President Reagan. McCain is more of a centrist, but he's obviously republican...
Now, if the story had said that McCain wanted this and a pony... You might have something to your theory of the leftist bent... But of course, no silly obvious bias would be allowed to be put in story here... No.. Of course not!
Finally, if Congress is going to require that the cable operators unbundle channels, then they better be sure that they require the media companies to unbundle as well. That is, if Comcast is required to sell ESPN without a dozen other Disney-owned channels, then Disney should also be required to make ESPN available to Comcast at a lower price than the bundle of ESPN plus other channels that they require Comcast to buy today. It would be interesting to see, should the cable and satellite providers sell those channels on a cost-plus-markup basis, how loud the end-users scream at ESPN's 20% annual price hikes :^)
The ILECs have stuck all kinds of charges and fees on our phone bills to cover the 'costs' of government compliance.
Low-end stations that are being subsidized right now already ARE losers. Economic darwinism is circling over them, ready to strike the minute that the government wind blows the other way. Their mandate for existence is tenuous at best.
Non mainstream programming will have to revert to unrestricted media, like radio or over-the-air TV, or the Internet. In the Warsaw ghetto it was underground newspapers. It will always survive. The problem is that you can't both claim a right to protection, and then demand a blank check on what you produce.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
"Lawmakers report that their constituents are angry about cable bills that have risen at three times the rate of inflation..."
I get so sick of hearing complaints about the cost of X rising than more than the rate of inflation. Guess what, the inflation rate is an overall value, some things will grow at a higher rate, some lower. Given the fact that the value provided by cable has grown*, I really think people don't have much to complain about here. Think also of how much time people really spend watching cable - it is basically the main form of entertainment in most homes.
This is like the constant whining over the price of gas. If you actually consider the value that consumers get out of it, the price itself isn't so bad.
* While it is fashionable to constantly bemoan the lack of good content on TV, look at the diversity of offerings that cable provides, and the opportunity for shows to reach major success from small beginnings that never would have occured on network TV (like Trading Spaces or Queer Eye).
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Here's what I see happening.
Cable rates will go up even more.
Cable companies will charge even more for the individual channels in order to recoup the costs of administering the additional choices. Popular channels will go sky high such as CNN, ESPN, HGTV, etc. The channels nobody want's (QVC, HSC) will be free anyway. I wouldn't doubt if channels like QVC actually pay cable companies to carry them. Without those "support" dollars, they will pass on the full true cost (and then some) of those good channels.
If you look at the technical issues, the only way to really do this is with digital TV. Considering the $5 or so / TV cost of the stupid box (plus even more for a remote in many places) that raises prices for households with a bunch of TV's. With old-analog, you could tivo multiple different channels at the same time while watching a third or fourth all on different channels. With digital, I'd need a box for each tivo plus one for each TV. It's easy to pay an additional $25 / month for stupid boxes.
Thanks but no thanks.
For that matter, nothing's stopping the cable companies from providing a la carte selection at some outrageous price and package-deals at the prices they've been charging all along, on the grounds that if people want a service, they'll have to pay for it at a price the market will bear.
The lament that "oh, we'll be paying $45/month for 6 channels" makes sense only if a-la-carte-only is mandated.
Dance like nobody's watching. Sing like you're in the shower. Fuck like you're being filmed.
Dish Pix was $1.50/channel, $5.00 minimum.
The price was right in that if you purchased the channels a la carte, you would rack up a much higher bill than purchasing packages. This encouraged the purchase of packages.
For example, the the bottom package was the top 50 (now top 60 since they did away with Pix). 50 Channels at $1.50 apiece would be $75, but the top 50/60 package was, IIRC, about $20. If you could really pick out 13 specific channels you wanted, and only those 13, then you could make out better with Dish Pix, especially if some of those channels were in higher tiers.
The part that became costly for Dish Network, though, and something that all of the supplemental TV services will have to address, is not the technology, but keeping customers from spending long lengths of time on the phone with customer service hemming and hawing about what channels they want. This is the reason why Dish discontinued this service, from what I understand.
The move to all-digital on cable would be a boost. This will free up some 420 MHz of bandwidth used for analogue channels from our local system, for example, which could then be turned around into one or more of: (a) better bitrate, ergo better picture, (b) more channels or (c) higher throughput for cable modem users. As I am a cable modem user, but not a cable TV viewer (I get my TV from Dish Network), option C would be my choice, but, as I said, these three are not mutually exclusive.
www.wavefront-av.com
Ummm... are you sure about that?
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
I better make this quick before the Mod-sharks bork my opinions again.
You bring up a valid issue, one that most of the leftists here are incapable of listening to. It is possible, however difficult, to keep things on the local level. Cable companies deal with the local goverments, and this is how they keep their monopolies. Take the fight to the city council, and you can see real change.
Take the fight to Washington, and you get Federalization, more hegemony, more collusion. Do you actually think that John McCain gives a flying crap about your cable bills? The man probably hasn't paid a cable bill in 20 years (if ever). He's interested in maintaining the relationship he has with the Time-Warners and Comcasts of the world. Do you really think he'd knowingly sabotage that relationship, just so you can watch Dick Van Dyke re-runs for $10 less a month?
Please. You want Uncle Sam to stop playing with the Big Boys of Wall Street? Then, YOU stop playing with them. I haven't watched cable TV in 7 years. I find my news and entertainment elsewhere. What would happen if most Americans did that, hmm? The Big Boys wouldn't be quite so Big, would they?
In some cases the shopping channels have purchased a failing small channel in your local market and then sued the cable company to carry its programming for free under the "must-carry" provisions of the last round of cable legislation. I know they've done that here in Houston.
"Would you, could you, with a goat?" Dr Seuss
Aside from the number of channels used or carried, I believe there are other factors that should be taken into account to force rate REDUCTION.
1) Digital transmission allows carrying the content of many channels in the bandwidth of a single analog channel. These added channels cost less to carry and maintain since their addition does not tax the power output capacity of the distribution amplifiers. Also the demands for signal amplitude and freedom from cross-modulation (amplifier distortion causing noise and spill-over between channels) are lessened since the digital signal is less vulnerable than analog. Analog tv signals use vestigal-sideband amplitude modulation which is vulnerable to noise in the same way that A.M. radio brodcasts are. We've all seen the cost savings of digital transmission in long-distance telephone service. The same principles apply to some degree.
2) Cable companies actually get kickbacks from sales on shopping channels, and often give those more desirable channel placement than things we want. They should pay US for carrying these!
3) Cost of the systems are subsidized by locally inserted advertising in many cases. And while this competition for ad revenue is damaging to local radio and tv broadcasters, the cable company isn't faced with the high-cost of producing news programming, or the burden of complying with public inspection files.
4) The cost for basic service users should be lower now that digital technology has virtually eliminated piracy of premium services.
5) Although it should be fair use to watch and record cable programs on anything in a household (much like we're now free to have extension phones without added fees), digital transmission requires a decoder for each location, and we're stuck with added fees for this.
6) We're stuck with paying perhaps $1 a month per decoder box for electricity to power the decoder boxes which are party of the cable company infrastructure. These boxes use power even when we're not watching which is not only costly, but environmentally unfriendly.
7) In my area, there is an anti-competitive "cable access fee" of about $10/month tacked on for internet service of those that are not cable tv subscribers. This is unreasonable considering that the connection is simply a tap into an existing feed, NOT a dedicated cable all the way back to a central office (as it is with a phone company). To the extent that using the cable system for internet use covers a portion of the infrastructure costs, the cost for basic cable users should fall.
Cable rates are held artificially high because we're dealing with monopoly. With lack of competition relief must come through regulation.
Thanks for answering your own question. Makes life easier for me.
I think it would be cool if you paid for cable usage like you do for electricity...for how much you use. Give me access to every channel, and charge me by the minute. If I really like a certain show, I'll be willing to pay for it. If I go on vacation for a couple weeks, I pay nothing.
It might also cut down on the mindless hours people spend in front of their TVs.
I don't know if I would want to pay for C-SPAN, If watch it once a week, that's a lot. And probably more than most. Yet. I really like the idea that it's there shining a light on what goes on in congress. And I'm willing to pay for it as a part of my cable bill, If there's not enough like me, then it'll go away. That would be bad.
Also the cable companies need to make it easy and CHEAP to switch channels. Now you have to call them up, and it's a minimum of $5 for any changes. They should give me a package that I can choose 15 channels, and let me pick which, and change them at will.
I would be reasonable to have then force you to make only one or two changes a month. Otherwise you could effectively rig the system to let you watch all of it. Especially if there was a web interface to the selections.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Mostly what will happen is that the small channels will go out of business, or be bought out by the bigger ones. There's a chikcen & egg problem with niche channels, because they need to sell advertising. The dual-revenue model (subscription fees + ads) only works for established stations like ESPN, or those who can piggyback on bundled packages to get distribution.
The likely scenario if a la carte were mandatory would be for major channels to acquire smaller ones, then shift some key programming over to the smaller channel in hopes of building the subscriber base. If that didn't work, they'd just shut it down and cherry-pick the programming.
A la carte sounds nice, until you realize that the menu will change once it goes into effect. If I could pick and choose amomg existing channels, it might be one thing. But that won't be the choice once reality hits home.
And for that matter, this sort of price regulation inevitably makes it illegal to offer certain discounts... they couldn't do a "buy ESPN & CNN, and get another channel for free" for example, without reducing the base price of the individual channels. Most likely, they'd have to break out a base "service cost", so out of your $40 cable bill, they'll say that $30 of it is technology overhead and $10 is programming. Or $10/$30, depending on which is more profitable. Don't worry, the FCC will play right along with whatever they request.
And expect the news and political channels to get an exemption.
Meanwhile, this is about the third time in a row that Congress has promised to lower our cable bill in an election year. How many times are we gonna fall for it?
I think you're right.
I also think that some channels that are less popular will simply get removed, regardless of the wishes of the fans of _those_ networks feel, which can be unfortunate if you happen to be a fan of that network. I may not care about HGTV but what if it were more popular than Boomerang? Which channel is going to get dropped first to make way for another channel?
Sure if you got the same number of channels it would be the same price, but if you only picked up the channels you want, it may make the cost go down for the consumer. I'm sure someone else really wants all of the religious/CSPAN/Oxygen network choices, but I don't. It might also force some networks to reevaluate. MTV, for instance, might take note if 50% of their viewers dropped MTV and MTV2 picked up.
Honestly, out of the 100 channels you get, how many do you spend more than a fraction of a second surfing past? I probably only watch 20% of the channels I get. If the rates were to double for all of basic cable, but I only paid for the 20% I wanted, I'm still saving.
One downside I see is that networks could become like TV shows. If it doesn't perform well in the first year, it'll get pulled for something else.
This reminds me of the old saying: "Democracy is four wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner."
With our current system, less popular channels are subsidized. That makes it possible for channels like TechTV, The Biography Channel, and Discovery Wings to survive.
With a la carte cable plans, we run the risk of sinking to a least-common-denominator selection of cable programming, where the consumer is given viewing choices of pro wresting, Fear Factor, Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?, and soap operas. Small, special-interest channels may go under due to a lack of people willing to pay for them individually. Sure, mom & dad my get the kids to watch a National Geographic Channel show once every month or two, but will they be willing to pay for the channel every month? I bet that most of them won't.
On the other hand, I don't like paying for non-English channels, either, nor do I have any great interest in women's channels like Oxygen. I don't really want the Home Shopping Club or QVC. But I recognize that people who do want those channels may not like paying for The Discovery Channel, The Science Channel, or Speed Channel, either, all of which I do watch.
I'd rather see us go back to the old system where cable rates were regulated. This would prevent content providers from raising the rates too high, because they would know that the cable companies could not pass the costs on to consumers. Now they raise rates and the cable companies pass the costs on to us.
My city has been taking it to the city council about our cable company for TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS. They were fighting Cox before I was born - hell, back when having cable was a social status symbol and most people around here didn't even know what the local cable company was, the city council was listening to people fighting the cable companies almost every week.
What's it gotten us? Not damn shit. Bresnan bought Cox, Charater bought Bresnan, and each one proceedes to screw us harder than the last one, and more people went to the city council to complain.
So, we ran a referrendum. It passed overwhelmingly, and we kicked Bresnan out in favor of Nova (who, at the time, offered 50 channels for $25 a month, compared to Bresnan's 30 channels for $35)
Guess what happened? Bresnan bought Nova, and we got fucked again - as did everybody up in Gladwin county who already had Nova for their cable. We got our 20 extra channels, but we also got another fifteen bucks a month on our bill instead of ten off.
Last year, Charter cut seven channels and increased the price by $8. This year, they're planning to cut two channels and add one that will soon be merging with a channel we already get anyway, and they've already tacked $5 on the bill, with $10 more comming this summer.
I think it's interesting that rates have gone up astronomically SINCE deregulation. Why is it that companies go before Congress and say "If we didn't have all this government oversight and regulations to deal with, we would be able to make more money and charge the consumers less." Well, guess what? The airlines, the savings & loan crisis, the energy companies all started either going bankrupt or ripping everyone off. Then, of course, they go back before Congress and say "It's not our fault, you didn't regulate us!"
The whole cable box thing is how they get their rates to go up.
I remember back when the cable companies could charge based on how many TVs you had hooked up in the house.
But then that got dropped (lawsuits?). So now, you pay the same rate for service to the house, and you can run it to any number of TV sets that the signal will support.
With cable boxes, they bring back a way to charge you per TV again. That is by choice. With digital TV and standards, the basic channels don't need to be scrambled and you wouldn't need separate boxes for each TV. The only ones that would need a box are the ones that get premium channels. But even technology could take care of this.
There are ways to deliver ala carte, that would not require a separate box per TV with a per box fee, but that is not what the cable/sat providers would want.
After the recent Viacom/Dish dust-up, we were reminded of the bundling forced on cable operators by content providers -- want ESPN? Then you need ESPN2, ESPN classic, ESPN gardening, ESPN chess, the Menstruation Network, and the Colonoscopy Channel *or* you don't get ESPN. Oh, and because we're providing so many channels, the cost is high, too.
Cable operators have said that forced bundling by the content providers forces them to bundle channels as well, since they could easily sell ESPN ala cart but the 27 shit channels they have to pay for as well to get ESPN wouldn't sell, making it a huge money loser.
I'm generally in favor of unbundled channels, but only if they're vertically unbundled and the cable company only pays the content providers based on the subscriptions they have for those channels. Anything else should be considered a restraint of trade.
Cable does not have a monopoly on content delivery. Cable has about 70 million subscribers, compared to 20 million for the two major satellite providers. Nearly all consumers, even apartment dwellers, have a choice between cable and satellite television.
If you look at how the market has changed in the last five years, cable rates have gone up, but quality and quantity of channels have also improved. Cable improved their product to meet competition from the satellite guys, which traditionally have offered better quality and more channels - appearantly what most consumers want.
The satellite guys experimented with a la carte a few years ago, but it didn't sell. People wanted the 150 channel package. "Super size it. I want the best value."
The government should stay out of this particular fight. Market forces are working. The thing regulators need to watch is the mega-mergers between the content providers (News Corp, Time Warner, Disney, etc). It's these guys who have the power now. The cable and satellite guys are nearing a commodity status for delivery.
I don't know about your town, but in my town, Winchester, VA, USA, I can stand in one parking lot and throw rocks in four directions, hitting, in order, a Target, a Wal Mart, a Lowes, and a Home Depot.
None of them have a local monopoly, but they all call the law when you throw rocks at them.