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A La Carte Cable TV Channels?
ryantate writes "I was reading TV Tattle and came across an interesting story in the Washington Post about people who spend less than $30 per month on cable buying a la carte. To do this you need a huge C-band dish, but Sen. John McCain wants to require a la carte pricing on digital cable. Content companies like Viacom are fighting it -- they don't want people to be able opt out of their less established channels. And at least one economist type, this guy in the Financial Times, seems to think we'll end up paying just as much under a la carte pricing. EchoStar is game but says Viacom and others are refusing to go along. "
First my little sister, now the television.. I can't trust anyone.
The TV broadcasters don't want a la carte programming. The reason they say, cost, is not the real reason. For years the broadcasters have been using extremely low wattage, spread spectrum messaging to program our minds via channel packages.
For example, if you have a "Family Package" consisting of a cartoon channel, Lifetime, etc, the broadcaster will send a weak Bogon-Lyston Mind Control signal of approximately
To date this has been undetectable by standard means, however donning a tinfoil hat will block the signal and you will feel the difference within a few weeks.
Now, if a la carte programming goes through the broadcasters and their masters (The Illuminati) will have to use a stronger signal on their most popular channels. A stronger signal may be detected which would reveal their nefarious plans.
History
Back in the mid 1960s, a brilliant electronic engineer had detected an odd signal embedded into television signal of The Ed Sullivan Show. Decoding the signal, he found messages saying "DRINK MORE SOFT DRINKS" and "SUPPORT THE VIETNAM WAR". The engineer sounded the warning bell, but to the media itself. Bad move. He was heavily drugged for over 3 years then was placed at the center of a CIA/NSA/Illuminati organised mass murder crime scene. That engineer, Charles Manson, is still in jail suffering the ravages of the drug therapy.
Don't believe me, search the net! The truth must be tol... wait a sec, there's someone at my door..
Trolling is a art,
One time payment category
Cheap terrestrial antenna : $40
HDTV decoder to pull stuff off antenna : $130
Monthly stuff
Netflix for unlimited DVD rental: $20/month
Grab your local news off the antenna (in HDTV if available), watch your favorite TV shows with your Netflix account
FYI: There is some unlimited DVD rental folks that work exactly like Netflix here in Canada
Movies for me
Cinema Flow
I'm interested in trying one of them, anyone have previous experience with them?
Candle burns its brightest in the dark
a la carte would be a good thing, in the end, for the quality of programming- it might get us more commercial-free tv, too. look at the quality of the programming on HBO compared to the rest of TV. now, if we can get a la carte programs. I'd pay a few bucks to subscribe to a season of the Sopranos and not get Sex in The City...
Cancel Cable. Save $50 a month and read a good book.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
You need the entire cable system on digital cable, to prevent cable theft. It's either that or install 60 traps on everyone's drop line!
Of course, many people will complain about digital terminal rental fees, cry extortion, blah blah; which is why it won't happen. That and people will complain about renting a terminal for every TV set. Right now cable can brag that it works without special equipment (analog, that is) on any modern TV.
Places like NYC which were using addressable terminals since the early 80s can do this, but for 99% of the cable-wired USA this will never happen. Too much infrastructure to change.
$tv_show? What are you talking about? Never heard of it. I don't have a tv, haven't owned one since $date. You should get rid of yours and spend more time on $activity[0], $activity[1], and $activity[2].
I think he's right that a lot of people will still be paying just as much for cable, but it would give those of us who only want a few channels the choice to pay a much smaller bill.
Even if I had to pay the same amount I am paying now, it would be worth it to get rid of MTV. I can't stand that channel, but then again, I never did like Britney Spears. I hate that I am forced to have that crap broadcast into my home (even if I don't ever tune into it, the feed is still there). Its a matter of principal.
"Well, Mr. Consumer, we recommend getting the 'all you can eat' package; for just $50/month, you'll have access to over 1,000 channels!"
"But I'll only watch ten of them, can I only pay for those?"
"Absolutely! We're pleased to offer a la carte pricing! And we can offer you each of those channels for...you said ten channels? Let me see...$6.00 a month per!"
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Won't it be similar to the pricing that MS follow{s/ed} for Office ? 100 bucks for each or 380 for all 5 ?
No Sig for you.!
Why pay for 200+ channels when all you really want to do is watch TNG reruns every once in awhile? If I'm not mistaken, the Digital Cable service has the capabitliy to serve only certain, user selected channels.. Paying $X.XX per GOOD channel per month makes alot more sense than $40+ for 3 good channels and 197 of crap.
A lot of times small cable channels get their business or make their money by late night channel surfers who have nothing better to do. Or the mom who is at home watching days of our lives and decides that during commercials she is going to flip through channels. The show that they are watching will very often catch the eye of the 'surfer' and next thing you know, you have a customer.
.30 or so for it. Now THAT would be cool.
If it was cheaper to go a la carte, I can't imagine anybody wanting to pay for anymore than what they already know, so you are are sort of screwing out the little guys who want to get recognized. They can't afford to buy commercial spots on other television stations (plus why would they let them), so this is their only form of advertisement. I remember a television channel that started up a couple years ago, and I was just flipping through and they had a show on the history of sex. I was interested so I started watching it.
But hopefully this will all be gone with OnDemand starting to become more common. The little guy can create a show and have it on OnDemand, and then you pay
Slashdot two weeks ago.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Ordering cable channels a la carter provides a tempting opportunity for the cable providers and their content-provider cohorts to bleed us to death with fees.
I can imagine it now.
"Yeah, I'd like the MTV 14 Channel"
"That will be $2, sir....in addition to the $10 activation fee"
"$10 activiation fee ?!? What the hell is that?"
"Sir, this is a fee we assess to cover the cost of processing your transaction, as we have to send the truck out to your house"
"Why can't you just flip a switch at the computer?"
"Sir, our systems don't work that way."
"Well forget my order. In fact, I want to drop MTV 2 that I'm currently getting"
"No problem sir. That will be a $10 deactiviation fee"
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Seems to me that the cable companies/media companies want you to purchase bundled products so they can justify higher prices.
To my subject, I'd equate it to record companies making you buy a whole CD of some artists songs when there's really only 1 or 2 hits on there that people want (I say "make" with respect to not offering just the one or two songs individually).
Sheesh... it *really* ticks me off that Disney is forcing cable companies to buy ESPN for big bucks if they want to carry the "kids" channels, especially since I have no interest in the sports channels (not a fan).
I don't know about you, but I'm sick of paying for channels I never watch.
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
I haven't RTFA, but why should that stop me from posting ;-)
Anyways, I've considered this myself before and from my perspective it might be a bad thing. Argument: Most interesting channels have a very limited audience. As such my guess is that they can only survive by "piggy-backing" on the large popular soap-opera/reality-show/talk-show kind of channels.
Of course this would be a good thing for the consumers, up to a certain point. There are some nieche channels out there. The Golf Channel, The Catholic something or another channel, Hell, even TechTV. These types of channels would slowly start to fade away because of fewer and fewer viewers. I like the idea of a la carte, but I don't want some of the better, more nieche channels disappearing.
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
Okay, CATV was established as Community Antenna Television. An antenna on top of the mountain fed the people in the valley, or some such.
People bought cable mainly to rid themselves of the hassles of an antenna, you know, the Archer Space Command thing on every chimney, rusting away with TWINAX to the back of yo' Zenith.
Cable eliminate that, and gave you a few extra channels. But the prices kept going up, and up, and up. Premium channels like HBO offer movies, and appear to have no commercials. Actually, the 30 minute documentaries about movies and indeed commercials, but that is besides the point.
Along has come HDTV. HDTV is digital, and should deliver a picture that is exactly as good as the cable delivered station. So assuming more content providers show up in town providing channels, then the need for cable should be reduced.
In my market (Virginia Beach, VA) you can receive MTV2 on UHF broadcast, but can't get it on cable until your spending $60+ dollars for Cox TV + Cox Cable. MTV2 broadcast seems to be filled with DirecTV ads. I don't get it, DirecTV delivers the same digital cable quality programming for analog cable pricing.
I know people that routinely spend $80 a month for Cable, Digtial cable and premium channels. If you think about it, that is quite a bit of money considering the majority of the channels are getting paid for your viewership. Your subscription demands them higher dollars for advertising. Not to mention half the channels go infomercial at 10pm it seems.
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
With my current Dish Service I'm on their minimum plan that gets me the channels I wish to watch. I only watch about 10% of the channels provided yet I'm paying for all of them. I recently decided that I wanted Showtime so I can watch a couple of the shows on there (Penn & Teller's BS, Dead Like Me) but to get it I have to upgrade my entire plan and pay for more channels that I wont watch.
And they wonder why people are just downloading shows off the Internet.
Hey isn't this article a dupe? Here is the earlier slashdot article on the same thing:
1 22 0&mode=nested&tid=103&tid=129&tid=188&tid= 99
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/29/144
rm -rf sig
If we were able to get TV channels a la Carte, our choices would simply be driven down to what the majority of people want to watch. As slashdot readers, most of the channels you watch (Tech TV, the Discovery channels, and others like that would simply not have enough subscribers to continue operation. We would eventually be stuck with two channels: The FRIENDS channel and ESPN. Sure we'd be able to pick what channels we want for a while until the voice of the masses is heard via their cable bills.
... but mostly because of consumer stupidity. Basically, people pay the $50/month for basic cable for the 2 or 3 channels they're interested in. Over the past 25 years, enough channels have become available that almost everyone has their 2 or 3 favorite channels that they want to watch and are willing to pay $50 for.
A la carte pricing would have the effect that people would simply buy the 2 or 3 channels they want, pay the same $50 they always did -- because that's what they were always willing to pay -- and any additional channels, which they now get for free, they'd have to pay extra for if they wanted to watch. This pricing scheme would have made send 15-20 years ago when there was still an untapped market for cable television, but in this day and age, cable TV subscribers are so ubiquitous that there's no untapped market that would be willing to subscribe to cable TV because it costs less. Everyone who would subscribe has subscribed and is already ready and willing to pay $50/month for television, and that is what they will continue to pay, even if government regulations change.
What you said was brilliant. I did exactly that and found so much more time in my life, lost weight, interaction with g.f., and other subtle effects. /.!
The dark side: I started spending way too much time on
The economic types may be exactly right when they say in an a la carte TV world we'd be paying about the same total per month. However, would we end up getting better value in exchange for that same money?
Unbundling channels would be a death blow to to the mega companies. Who-asked-for-that-anyway channels such as VH1 Classics and Nicktoons would simply die because nobody's going to part with pennies just to get that one channel. They wouldn't be able to say "We're giving you 10% more channels, now give us 10% more money!" anymore, which would knock their pricing back into shape.
Furthermore, new players who don't have the resources to launch dozens channels can now just launch one and be on the same competitive playing field. That'd open up the door for "indie" TV companies to come back into play. Right now, a one-network operation such as TechTV really has the deck stacked against it, which was part of the reason why they are being sold to Comcast.
Right now, it's the content makers forcing the "basic cable" model. They're the ones insisting that in order to get their popular networks, you have to take their unpopular ones too, and put them all into the same level of service as they're perscribed for. Wait a second... isn't that the kind of thing anti-trust laws usually stop?
I have a phone services package with SBC that includes a few things I need, and a few things I don't. I called about getting just the things I needed, and dropping the stuff I don't.
"That will be $10 more per month"
I'll stick with the package.
TowerDave
I can only see this as a way for Cable to profit:
...or something like that.
"Buy Package A (25 channels) for $29.95"
"Buy Package B (35 channels) for $34.95"
"Buy Package C (50 channels) for $39.95"
(The cable company picks the channels)
or:
"Pick any 25 channels for $35.95"
"Pick any 35 channels for $42.95"
"Pick any 50 channels for $49.95"
Just like in a Mickey D's, you can either get a combo meal for $3.99, or mix and match yourself for $7.00+.
My preference, frankly, is one channel: the one connected to my broadband router.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/15/203226 1 22 0
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/29/144
I've got two already!
originally posted on Match 29th
right here
Chaos will always win out over order because chaos is more organized
One question is this, how will the Cable Companies pay for call centers to take these a-la-carte orders?
I have heard that a few cable companies tried a-la-carte ordering, and had folks who would call, spend 30-45 minutes asking what channel shows what kind of programming, then order 2 or 3 channels. These people call up on a whim, just heard of a new channel, and will call to see if they think they should have it.
I have yet to see an answer to this every time a-la-carte cable comes up, but a-la-carte will force more calls and longer call times. How are the cable companies going to pay for their service centers?
Aha! We have finally discovered your real identity.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
If technology has it way I think we will see subscription packages(and pay per view if you don't want the whole series) for TV shows / programs instead and you would be able to watch them on demand, perhaps a Tivo like device that would download what you wanted to see and cache it, new shows could be pushed to your machine in a multicast fashion.
So the Sunday Simpsons would still only first be available at a regular schedule and the the live news programs would still have broadcast times but you could also see them later.
Of course the matter is still the bandwidth it would require and it would first happen as a kind of merger between the internet / cable tv / telephone into one package.
Must be an election year--politicians are talking about cable television prices.
(How about just cutting my taxes by $50 a month? Wouldn't that be a simpler means to the same end?!)
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
I'm a little ambivilent -- I'd have never watched HGTV if I didn't have a package. I used to have it programmed out of the bedroom TV. But one time TiVo recorded something, and now I find myself flipping to it every once in a while.
:-)
But here's why I'm ambivilent -- I have TiVo -- there's PLENTY to watch on the 10 or so channels that we "always" watch. The old promise of "500 channels!" isn't practical, and who needs it? I effectively pay $50 a month for HBOs, Telemundo, and Comedy Central. I (can) get the networks free. Of that $50, $10 is specifically for HBO, so let's see -- that $20 for Telemundo! I guess I should die of embarassment.
--Jim (me)
From the post: "Sen. John McCain wants to require a la carte pricing on digital cable"
Analog would presumably still come in bundles. Since most (all?) digital includes analog service, I assume that this would only apply to digital only stations. Of course, I didn't RTFA either.
And at least one economist type, this guy in the Financial Times, seems to think we'll end up paying just as much under a la carte pricing.
The problem with this theory is that we don't know. Ala cart will have a few effects. Firstly, it will change the payment schemes that people use. Some people will drop out of their big plans. Others will start ordering TV when they currently only use over the air (myself included). So we need to see how that balances out in terms of revenue flow to the media giants.
Another thing to think about, though, is advertising. If you are ordering a la carte are you going to watch more advertising? If you don't have as many channels to flip through are you more likely to stick through the comercial breaks? Will this change advertising schemes?
I think this is a bigger change than most people have given credit to.
~~Guildencrantz
Penguin Trivia #46: Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were. -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
I want to pay only for SHOWS I want to watch. I don't want any more channels-- why should I pay for 24 hours a day of the Discovery channel? 8 of their daily hours are infomercials. And I only watch an hour or two of the remainder, anyway.
I want TV and movies released on DVD the SAME DAY they come out on TV or in the theatre. I'll just pick up what i want to watch at the store, or download it from iShows, or whatever Apple or somebody else comes up with to sell us video.
Shopping channels get a disproportionate share of cable and satellite bandwidth to the number of actual viewers because the carrier gets a cut of the sales. In an a la carte pricing model, this would be fixed because the revenue from providing a channel that many subscribers want would exceed the revenue they get from a shopping channel.
Imagine, if you will, that you are starting out with a small family, and you want to protect them by not allowing channels with questionable content into your home. This way you can get HBO Family without worry about your children flipping the channel and seeing an execution, Sopranos style, on regular HBO.
Hell, its a lot easier then programming your V-chip.
You can select, add, and remove channels from month to month depending on your wishes or desires, while allowing you to only pay for what you want to watch!
Like most people who have posted here, most current television shows do not interest me, but every once in a while something comes on that I do want to watch. As well, most movie channels still show content that I enjoy to watch. So to be able to only pay for what I want to watch, and not have to pay for crap that I will never watch, is a big win for the consumer.
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
Then they will require you to wait around all day at home for a technician to come by, which they will assure you is necessary in order to get the channel installed. Technician will arrive 4 hours late, fumble around in the box outside for a coupld of minutes, come into the house and see the new channel on the TV, then leave. I don't know about most people, but I have a real problem taking a day off work to wait for the cable company to arrive.
One of the things that makes the multitude of channels on cable possible is the fact that they're packaged together. Few people would ever subscribe to the Avocado Channel by itself, but they'll take it as part of a package... and once in a while they might watch something on it, like the Miss Avocado pageant. And over time they might find they like some of the other Avacado programming and become regular watchers. That would never happen with a la carte pricing.
So we could end up with a dozen or so least-common-denominator channels that a strong plurality subscribes to (ESPN, EmptyV, Cartoon, Spike, HBO) being successful, and the more specialised niche channels (some of which would be some people's personal favorites)unable to get a large enough casual subscriber base and withering on the vine.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
stolen from theonion.com link posted above parent
you forgot the next part.
"What? Ok, forget you. I'm getting a Sattelite Dish. Cancel my subscription; you're not geting another dime from me."
More selective pay-per-view would be better still - SpeedTV is invariably showing NASCAR 99% of the time - a dull sport wherein drivers go many times round an oval, forever turning left.
Of course that simply doesn't give the networks what they want - me exposed to as much of their programming as possible. One can always dream.
coincidental dupe, but cheers anyway.
Why don't content providers do what Disney Channel did?
Back in 80's and Disney would giveaway a free week's worth of programming every couple of months. Due to demand and marketing created from those give away periods Disney Channel became a basic channel in most markets.
So Disney over came an al carte system off programming by giving the people what they.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
I have said no to cable tv and enjoy my few channels on the antenna. With the money I saved I purchased 3mbps DSL which I enjoy and am able to download most shows that I would watch.
EchoStar is game but says Viacom and others are refusing to go along.
I used to work for Echostar, they HAD a la carte programming once, it was called Dish Picks. They discontinued the service because of cheapskates who'd call in several times per day to add/remove channels as the shows that they liked came on.
I suspect that they are now getting in line with the idea knowing full well that it won't ever happen. I believe that they're trying to get some congressmen to think that they're good guys so there will be less opposition to them buying DirecTV. The last time they tried, the sale was blocked.
There was a rumor floating around the call center when I was there, it was a rumor and I can't vouch for the veracity of the claim so take this with a HUGE grain of salt; but the rumor was that before the last time they tried to buy DirecTV Charlie Ergan (the president of the company) had John McCain over to his house to "watch a football game", the game was blacked out in the area due to NFL restrictions, but Charlie had them override the NFL blackout and SHVIA restrictions and put the game on at his house. If this really happened and they got caught the company would have been subject to a $10k fine, I'm sure that Charlie would have paid it out of pocket but that's not the point. Once again, if this really happened, I think I have a good idea of what they talked about.
Finally as a CMA, I'd like to say again that this was just an office rumor and I can't personally vouch for its veracity. The fact that there was a rumor is 100% fact, but the contents of that rumor are not known to me as being factual.
I never looked, so I couldn't tell you if Charlie Ergan actually had a DishNetwork system at his house. If I did know about it, I would be prohibited from discussing it with anyone outside of EchoStar.
But, you'd be surprised at what porno certain celebrities order.(I can't be any more specific than that)
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
They got rid of their regular digital cable line up and split it in "themes" and they call it "a la carte" and it sounds good at first. You choose the themes or packages that you want and only pay for those. In theory it could be cheaper, but if you want to get the channels you like, you'll end up paying more.
For example, I wanted "TechTV" but it was only in one of the "Entertainment" packages. It was all sports channels (every ESPN channel you can think of) and then TechTV. I don't watch sports, yet they wanted me to pay for all of those. The same thing with A&E, it was bundled with other horrible channels.
It made no sense. I would have had to end up paying more than I was originally paying. I canceled my digital cable subscription and went back to good old analog.
The local networks, CNN, Discovery Channel, History Channel, and Comedy Central (Daily Show, South Park), for me please. Hold the 50 different shopping networks, hold the various family values (PAX, etc) channels, hold FOX News...
Because he was locked into a cable plan, he couldn't easily "vote" for the channels that he liked with his dollars . . . so he was stuck paying the extra for four lousy (in his opinion) channels that he would never watch.
I agree with the economists that say that we will pay the same for TV, but if can vote with our dollars, we establish more competitition and a more efficient marketplace. If no one likes the channel, it will be dropped in favor of something else . . .
When I move to Richmond VA in 1995, they didn't have comedy central and didn't get it for another 2 years or so . . . if people could pick and choose . . . we might have gotten it a lot sooner through an efficient marketplace that reflects true customer demand.
a pity...
The sports packages are driving the whole package. It's estimated that ESPN alone amounts to a $2.50 to $3.00 monthly "tax" on the standard packages. It's a great deal for the compulsive sports fans, but a significant burden on those of us who couldn't care less. And we recently saw how a major content provider extorted an agreement to raise its rates to cover expanded sports coverage from a major cable signal delivery provider.
The geek in me says that complexity is very, very, very bad. The words "ala cart channels", "de facto public utility", and "billing system" conjure visions of exponents whose exponents have exponents.
Finally, the fiscal conservative in me says that it will raise costs for the cable companies, which will raise costs for consumers, which will in the end probably price some people out of cable.
And then as an added bonus, we get to pay the government to take cable away from poor people. That way everybody wins.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
Just remember that you supported this regulation when the government decides it has the right to regulate the content that goes through the cable the same way it does the content that goes through the airwaves. Because if they can dictate a corporation's business model, that makes it that much easier for them to dictate it's content.
Mixing government with the economy is usually as disastrous as mixing government with religion. A pity so many don't see it.
Cable companies have a bit of overhead based on infrastructure costs and general billing/customer costs. Everything else is just accounting. And since the 10 channel customer doesn't actually cost them any more than the 300 channel customer, what is the point to them of providing that distinction?
This doesn't mean that cable companies are providing a fair value, or that they are being responsible with their monopoly power; maybe this is a way of punishing them for their abuse. But if you don't consider that, their position seems reasonable.
Record industry: So, you don't want to buy the whole CD because 85% of the album is shit? Fine, we will sell you songs at $1 each online. You can get your 15% of good songs off the album for maybe $2.50. A year later, they want to jack the price to around $2.50 a song. Your $2.50 of good songs per album is now $8 or $9. Might as well buy the whole album at wal-mart and get the physical, non-DRM goods.
Sattelite guys: So, you don't want 500 channels of crap when you only watch 30 of them regularly? Fine we will sell you them at $1 each. A year later, though, maybe they want $1.50. Your cheap $30/month roll-your-own package is now $45, yikes!
It will happen. Big media companies are greedy hoarding bastards.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Why can't I buy a bag of just the blue M&M's?
You can. In the future, all foods will be user-customizable.
Three little words for them.
Netflix and Amazon
Lets see. Basic cable costs 15 bucks a month. Cheapest way to get HBO - about 70 a month. Lets see thats 55 bucks difference. Thats either 12 Season Sized DVD purchases (how Soprano seasons are made a year?) or nearly 3 complete Netflix subscriptions. Mix and match.
and no crappy commercials either.
Winton
What's the ISBN number for The Daily Show?
www.winmx.com
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
I would think that newspapers and radio are a good way to be fully current.
I don't think up-to-the-minute news coverage really ads any value to my life. It's usually not even entertaining.
Don't watch any channel from Viacomm. We are the consumer and I don't think we should let a corporation decide what we should have. It should be a open market where you only pay for what you want and if the supplier doesn't want to sell their channels individually then so be it.
As long as they can continue to charge 50 bucks a month for 100 channels of crap, they will. And besides, do you know what channels would survive if they did go to alacarte?
The major networks (NBC, CBS, CNN, ABC), ESPN, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel and MTV. Everything else would disappear because they'd have no money to continue broadcasting. Scifi? Gone. TechTV? Gone. History, A&E, Speed Channel, Discovery, TLC, Animal Planet? GONE.
Still want a la carte?
I totally want to move to a la carte pricing, even if it does end up costing more. However, I think companies like Comcast should be put under regulation. Why? Let me break it down:
A. Comcast was able to purchase AT&T Broadband last year with very little scrutiny imposed upon it from the FTC and the FCC. AOL Time Warner was not so lucky during the merger that created them.
B. Comcast raised rates again. They claim they are recuping on their investment to upgrade their system. They claim it had to do with spending a fortune on OnDemand programming. That's great, but I don't use OnDemand; I should not be punished for this capital expense just because I was smart enough to buy my own DVR (TiVo) so that I do not need such a feature.
C. In turn, Comcast is now trying to acquire the Walt Disney Company. Comcast will claim this is going to be a pure stock swap and thus increased subscriber rates have nothing to do with it but it most certainly does...if Comcast does not suffer a large amount of customer defection due to the pricing increases, Comcast's stock will be more valuable. This helps Comcast to acquire Disney and thus it is Joe Consumer that is paying for the acquisition.
Now let us look at how Comcast could save money/increase revenue without resorting to rate increases and prosper under a la carte:
1. Deploy set-top boxes with TiVo built in; not "Comcast DVR" from some other supplier. Comcast is a shareholder in TiVo - if Comcast supports TiVo, it enriches their own investment. TiVo is a popular brand now, and brand influence can be a deciding point if it comes down to Comcast w/TiVo versus Dish Network with Dish PVR. Furthermore, Comcast can share revenue based upon TiVo's viewer statistics so they'll know which channels are being watched and what commercials are the most popular. That would be profitable.
2. Comcast can offer cable telephony. Comcast has been paying lip-service to this for years. How come I cannot get local telephone service through Comcast itself yet I can sign up for Vonage which will run over their cable line? Here in Sacramento, the upstart SureWest (which is actually Roseville Telecom) offers bundled telephone service as standard. Granted, they are offering fibre directly to the home.
3. Dump analog, period. Analog is the piracy hole in the cable systems. Digital piracy is not a major problem compared to analog. Plus, since an analog SDTV channel takes up as much bandwidth as 4-6 digital SDTV channels, this becomes more economical for Comcast to move directly to digital. Digital cable should not be considered a premium when it is so profitable. Charge a premium for HDTV.
4. A la carte pricing will not cause a customer service issue. Any channel additions and subtractions could be made via the internet, and if someone wants to spend time on the phone with customer service to add or subtract channels, leverage a fee on them.
5. Allow DirecTV and Dish to offer their own ISPs to their customers over Comcast wires and share in the revenue. Those customers are no longer Comcast customers so you might as well make some money off them. This is money that would go directly to the company and not other company competitors like the regional Bell telephone companies offering DSL packages. If you look at the revenue share agreements between Time Warner Cable and Earthlink, Time Warner Cable makes 90% of the fees.
Finally, programming packages are ridiculous. To get TechTV, I had to move up to another $5 more per month just to get it. Trio was a bonus. However, I did not require BET Jazz to be included in that. Furthermore, I would like to voice my support at Comcast keeping both TechTV and G4 separate now that they are both owned by Comcast. They are similar yet serve different interests just as MTV1 and MTV2 do.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
lets say i buy comcast cable. Let me vote for the channels that I DON'T want. There's no reason Comcast wouldn't want my input. If one channel gets consistent negative votes, drop them. If 80% of people don't care for a station, there's no use in forcing it upon them.
It may not change pricing at all, but it will make the programming much better by accepting input from the customers.
there's also no reason to have a spanish speaking package, and then have 10-20 channels in spanish anyways. Why not just broadcast different languages on the separate packages.
another idea would be to have programmable cable boxes. Let me be able to skip a channel all the time, and move the channels around on the cable box. If i could group channels together the way i wanted, and ultimately skip channels i don't care about, it would be much easier to watch tv. My Tv let me do this, but, of course, i don't even get to use the tuner in my tv, except for channel 3.
Of course, comcast is bunk anyways because their digital cable box has like a 2 second delay anytime you use the cable box. I hope the 2nd generation cable boxes are better, but i fear it'll be much the same.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
Actually happened to me.
Got a 1-5 service window. Took off work at 12:30. Cable guy literally showed up at 4:59. However, he did wind up working up on the pole (cable to my house had bad connectors).
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
The cost of a cable network to provide N channels to X customers is on the order of N.
The cost to provide a given customers N channels is on the order of 1. (the incremental cost to provide you more channels that they provide to other folks is 0, discounting premium channels)
The cost to provide all customers all channels is therefore on the order of N.
The point of all this: The price points the cable channels have defined for basic/expanded basic, etc... are completely artificial, having nothing to do with the cost. Making the system "a la carte" is a red herring, since it implies that each channel has a cost to the cable company and that the consumer could buy it individually... The fact is that providing ALL channels costs essentially the same as providing ONE channel.
The question people should be asking is not "why can't I buy my channels individually", but "why the hell does expanded basic cost so much?". When did we decide as a society that it was worth $50 a month to watch TV that was supported by commercials? Don't tell me that it costs that much to keep the cable lines or satelite downlinks in operation.
Actually, I think the whole question of whether channels should be sold a la carte is secondary to the whether we'll need cable networks in the first place.
Someone brought up the CD analogy, which I think is apt, and we've all seen how well iTunes Music Store has done with single sales. But to get to that point with TV you'd be talking about selling individual episodes of individual shows. Which I think ultimately is the model that will prevail, either that or people subscribing to one season of a particular show.
This isn't some fantasy that needs Internet-video-stream-ready set-top boxes and complex electronic billing schemes. It's happening right now with TV shows on DVD, including HBO shows like the Sopranos and Six Feet under and cult shows that never would have found an audience otherwise.
When a better technical infrastructure does emerge, for selling shows through the set-top or aggregating them with commercials on DVRs, the role of cable networks is going to shift away from distributors and toll collectors and subsidizers and more toward branders of quality content and promoters, like a record company in the music business.
The effect will be to increase the market for paid TV programming by lowering the bar to consumer and vendor entry. How many people would start watching new episodes of the Sopranos if they didn't have to take all of HBO for $18/month, or check out Adult Swim or Stargate SGI if they didn't have to shell out $60/month for the whole digital cable package as we do in the SF Bay Area?
Wouldn't people's television habits change if they knew they'd be receiving an itemized bill at the end of the month? Ratings for The OC would definitely go down.
For specialty digital channels. $2/channel (some are more expensive). They provide package discounts (buy 5 for $1.50/channel) too. You just need some political backbone.
<Insert political joke here>
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Assuming (big) that your average slashdotter is watching some of the more esoteric programming on cable (techtv, a&e, National Geographic, etc) this plan will be a disaster. Once an ala-carte system goes into place, the less subscribed channels will get less and less advertising dollars, and therefore , will either have less and less programing or cost more and more to subscribe to.
*Cleans nails with a file*
I don't pay because I don't watch.
*Blows on nails*
Jonathanjk.com
Yes, I agree that with a la carte pricing very likely the individual cost of channels will increase, for a number of reasons including re-pricing, industry-imposed "technology fees" to implement the change (which are mostly bullshit anyway, just like the $0.85 fee for number portability I'll be charged for the rest of my cellular-using life), etc. However, the only way you will end up paying more is if you elect to retain most of the channels you have now. The central idea to this a la carte movement is that people don't want, need, or use all of the channels they get now and would pay less by using less, even with an average higher per-channel cost.
As to Mr. Hazlett's wonderful analogy of two subscribers both getting half the channels for the same price as before after the new pricing scheme - it's based on the unscalable assumption that new pricing will be based on the idea that each subscriber will choose a subset of channels not chosen by any other subscriber.
In other words, yes, when you have less than 10 ppl holding up a hypothetical market, the economies of that market will dictate rediculous price hikes, but we're not talking about 2 or 10 or 1000 customers here, we're talking hundreds of millions. If a la carte goes into effect my prices are not going to go from roughly $1 per channel now to $85 per channel, more likely something on the order of 150% to 400% inflation, depending on what the market will bear.
And his rhetoric about viewing those extra channels you don't really care for as "freebies" to surf through just pisses me off. Let's face it, no matter how broad your viewing tastes there are going to be some channels that each household will never view, "freebie" or no. I'm not into sports, so the 12 sports channels I get are totally wasted on me. All sports, all day you say? Well then I press Menu, Channel, Delete - problem solved, I won't even have to waste an extra thumb press as I surf to what I do want to watch.
And the final thing in his article, at the very end, that pisses me off to no end is this bit right here: The political reaction to the illusion of higher prices. I understand that from an economics professor point of view where we talk about product value not just price, that yes, the higher prices are illusory. But this ain't no lecture hall, this is the real fucking world. Bottom line is that my cable bill went up 5 real dollars per month as of March. So whether your tattered Econ 1 book says this is all in my head or not is irrelevant, I'm still out $5 for the tennis channel and two Lifetime channels, $5 that could go towards something way more important, like my gas tank.
But gas prices are a rant for another day.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
But what REALLY gets me is that as a digital cable subscriber, I'm paying for dozens of Spanish language channels- including a few premium networks.
So we'll pay more. Bet on it.
I have a la carte programming right now. It's called bittorrent. It works like a charm and it's included in the cost of my high speed Internet.
Think about it, the average american family watches 4-6hrs of TV a DAY, so if you multiply that by 30 days and divide by say $50, your talking about 33cents for an hours of entertainment. Please find me any other form of media that is so cheap.
I absolutely can not agree with McCain's position on this. I realize that cable companies have access to a pervasive infrastructure and so I am not so much questioning whether the government has the right to make ANY regulations, but this seems a little extreme.
Why not mandate what the content of cable television might be? Hell, we already have the FCC going completely ballistic over Janet Jackson' s nipple, right? Let's spread that over to cable too. It's not that big of a stretch really when you consider that a boring old man is already, RIGHT NOW, trying to mandate what type of product MUST be sold by cable companies.
There is a downside
First, you have to keep in mind that none of the cable providers are going to let their profits slip, so if they start loosing money, they are going to raise rates. Whether this means you and I will end up paying more for cable is hard to predict, offering fewer channels will inevitable reduce overheads so it may all average out.
The other problem is that new networks are not going to have a chance since nobody is really going to be willing to pay for them. What I think the long-term trend will be is fewer and fewer networks, offering more and more traditional fare. Cable networks may be discouraged from innovating or pushing their boundaries if they are in constant worry of getting their plug pulled by disgruntled viewers. In the end, I think this may only lead to further media/network consolidation.
Really what I mean is as long as Comedy Central and Cartoon Network survive I don't really care.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
I can't remember anyone supporting the Viet Nam war during the war. Now everyone supports it.
The big media companies will always find some way around small changes, in this case making the pricing for ala carte as much or more than the fix-price option. Some sort of systemic reform needs to happen if prices are going to come down.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
Do it the vonage way... 500 minutes of TV per month for $15. Start charging for individual programs instead of for individual channels.
I know I'd spend a lot more time actually planning on what I wanted to watch instead of flipping around the channels waiting to come on.
I don't think they take into account all those people who don't have cable who would have it ala carte. I basically haven't had cable for over 15 years. They've already done their capital outlay. Every subscriber they don't have is lost money. 15 years is a lot of lost money.
Not to be too off-topic but... My last experience buying cable (not even TV, just roadrunner) will probably be my last. It took SIX VISITS from different techs to get the damn thing to work. Script for visits 1-5 follows:
...the house was too big and there was no way this could work. Oh wait, actually the *real* problem turned out to be that the feed to our house was behind a bunch of splitters INSIDE THE BOX ON THE POLE!!!
Me: So you're here to hook up our roadrunner?
Tech: Yes. I've just got to go out to the box and do some stuff...
[thirty minutes pass]
Me: So, is our roadrunner working yet?
Tech: No. Your house is too big and has too many Digital Cable Receivers on too many splitters. There's no way this will work.
Me: can't you just bring another feed into the attic, since I'm a renter and that's where I live?
Tech: No, we can only have one feed per house.
Me: But the person on the phone said many people on our block have the same service. They're charging us right now for the service you are saying your company can't provide.
Tech: This won't work and I'm leaving now.
As you can imagine, the people on the phone were in a different country than the techs were (guess which one! go on, guess!) and apparently didn't read from the same script... I had a seven day weekend and spend six of those days waiting for time warner's bitch asses... After complaining to the point where they gave us free stuff on top of free stuff, they finally sent a team out to rewire the entire house for free, at which point they found that the problem was...
Never, ever, again... They can put ten million commercials on TV advertising roadrnuner and ondemand and all these high-speed services that they simply don't have the infrastructure to provide, and have no intention of having the infrastructure to provide. You know, I can remember a time when shit like this was fucking illegal. Let's hear it for deregulation, friend of the consumer!
Bastards.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
We already have a la carte pricing in Canada. It's not as great as it sounds. Many providers have switched back to offering channels in groups. Why pay $2 a channel, when you can get 20 in a group at a cost of 50 cents each. When you buy them all individually, you begin to realise how expensive television channels are. This ends up making you spend less, which means more channels can't make a profit and we all end up with less programming.
What the US really needs to do is put more price controls on the existing setup.
First off, the economic argument, which has been made a million times. If people can get their popular channels alone, then most of the homes in America will get ESPN, Fox News and the Bass Fishing channel. Channels like Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi, etc. will just crash and burn.
It's a basic positive feedback loop. 100 people are given a la carte cable. Only 12 of them pick channel X, while 60 of them pick channel Y. Channel X is going to be more expensive. Of those 12, certain of them are going to decide that it's just not worth the extra expense -- after all, channels like Y are good enough, and less expensive. X gets more expensive. In fact, it gets too expensive for some people, who decide to forgo it in favor of watching it at a friend's house, or just renting the DVDs of their favorite shows. Furthermore, as X gets more expensive, fewer and fewer people will be willing to pick it up just to try it out, and parents aren't going to be willing to pick it up for their kids. It might spread by word of mouth, but with very few eyeballs watching, there will be very few mouths talking...
Which leads to the social point, which is more compelling with news channels, but applies elsewhere. There is something wrong with telling people that they can elect to not have the option of seeing information they don't think they'll be interested in, and save money in the deal. Right now, if my parents got this a la carte deal, they'd get Fox News and drop CNN. The trouble is, while they don't admit it, they do occasionally flip to CNN just out of idle curiosity, to see if maybe Fox isn't being so straight about things.
If you reward people for reducing their information diet, you're going to wind up with a whole lot of people who just don't understand why anyone thinks differently than they do. You'll wind up with a whole lot of people who never satiate a vague interest in history or science or cooking that might otherwise grow. You'll wind up with a bunch of people who think it's really odd that adults watch cartoons...
I'd prefer to stay with the bundling, thanks. People may not take advantage of the opportunity to broaden their horizons, but we sure as hell shouldn't be rewarding those who choose to keep theirs narrow.
1. Newspapers. Duh. (Granted, from an environmental standpoint I much prefer the idea of electronic news sources, which can be superior to either one depending on your attention span.)
2. A lot of news is completely useless if you don't have an understanding of what it means. TV generally fails on this - there's only so much information you can provide when you have to cram each story into a minute or two time slot. Some magazine programs on TV and radio do a better job, but books are really the only forum that allows enough space to really explore all of the subtleties that are involved in current events.
Granted, whether or not that matters really depends on if you're interested in being current for the sake of voyeurism or if you're trying to keep up in the world for the sake of making informed political decisions.
If it's for the former, Fox News, The Register, etc. are fine and dandy. If it's for the latter, you darn well better have a basic understanding of, say, modern economic theory (and hopefully some alternative economic ideas) before you start trying to make opinions on anything pertaining to economic policy.
While not exactly a la carte, I did come across this fact sheet that describes a little known provision about getting individual channels.
See the problem with the FT authors argument is that selling people 2-3 channels for $50 requires some marketing shmuck to have an angle. Since marketing shmucks aren't a terribly intelligent crew I'm betting it's much easier to *develop* a marketing campaign around 100+ channels for $50 than 2-3 channels for $50. Has McDs been successful in marketing reasonable portion sizes? Not to date. But a bladder buster size soda and 3lbs of fries, that's no brainer even to a marketing shmuck. A just as probable possibilty with ala carte is that Comcast or whoever has to trim some marketing shmuck headcounts at $100K per or whatever to maintain their *comfortable* profit and that savings gets passed onto the consumer. Win(consumer)-Win(cable co.)-Lose(the marketing shmuck)!!!
That the government said they would have to offer it, NOT make it available to EVERYONE. Which means that if you want a la carte you still have to get a digital box. No restructuring of infastructure and no one for all pricing would be necessary. A la carte would not have to take over their regular way of doing business. This means people who refuse to get the digital box still have to pay $50 month for a bunch of channels they dont want. Big whoopdy do. I would be more than happy to pay $50 a month for 40-50 channels I know that I want then $50 a month for 200 5 of which I watch.
Lets look at it this way
for 20$ a month you ca get the same amount of chanels and programs as you can with satalite.
why is the cable companie ripping us off.
this argument wouldnt be happening if you got you cable for 20$ a month./
Videtron is Québec's largest cable TV provider. My digital TV subscription, Illico, provides à la carte service.
They have a weird sens of "choice", by offering their à la carte service with a base selection of channels, wich you can't choose, or 20 or so stations, half of wich I never watch (Inuit TV and Parliamentary channels... uh-hu...).
Then, you have the 20- or 30- channel "à la carte" packages, for 20$ or 30$ extra (CDN). There, it's pretty much what you want, except CRTC (Canada's TV regulatory panel) enforces a Canadian vs Foreign (aka, US) content ration.
There, there are some channels that only come un small bunches, like the "US" package, wich wraps ABC, NBC, CBS and a couple other ones into 1 "convenient" package. Well, maybe I don't want multiple channels of the same network uh?
Same thing for some canadian content. To get Canal Z (a Tech TV + Space Channel -like french channel, excellent for it's Revenge des Nerz news/tech/nerd show) only comes bundles with 3 crapy ones I never watch.
So, choice is possible. Within constraints.
Ok. Where do I sign up? I would be more than content with $6.00/channel. There are only a few things I'd really like to watch on TV (I hardly touch the thing now) and I'd have no trouble winnowing it down to say, 1 to 3 channels. In my case, that would probably be Turner Classic Movies, a PBS affiliate, and something else. My antenna reception is crappy at best, but I only really need to watch the local affiliates if the weather is miserable anyhow. So I don't need to pay for those. Maybe Comedy Central as the third choice. The Daily Show is enjoyable.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
Guys that like ESPN also like Star Wars Clone Wars on Cartoon Network - and who DOESN'T like Dexter's Lab and The old Looney Tunes - women like Cartoon Network to babysit the kids.
... well because.
As for Sci Fi - same guy factor - plus seems women like the miniseries like Stephen King Reruns and Taken.
Now channels like The Golf Channel may get hurt but out cable companies should reserve garbage like that for a higher tier.
Who needs CSPAN 2?
There will be enough geeks/kids to support TechTV
Women and Couples WON'T drop TLC because of Trading Spaces and Discovery because
Most of the other good channels are in your basic package or are just repeat channels that run what the other did a few nights ago.
There is PLENTY of support for individual channels. You just make each one $1.29 - including network.
Right now it ranges from 74 cents to $1.16
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
I like the idea, but I don't expect it to save me any money. It is a safe bet that a la carte pricing will be high enough that it doesn't pay for the average viewer. Most of us will find that we watch enough channels that we get a better deal with the "value package." But it will benefit low-income viewers who can't afford the value package, as well as a minority of viewers with very narrow tastes, like people who only watch CNN or the History Channel.
Not sure how this will work out financially for the cable company. They'll make a little extra money from the first group (who wouldn't be able to afford cable otherwise), but lose on the second (who would buy the package if they had no other way to get their channel). My guess is that in the end it will negatively impact profits (clearly the cable companies think so, or a law wouldn't be required to make them do it), which will probably drive up the price of the package, so most of us will end up paying a bit more than we do now.
A few years ago Roadway the trucking company had a store here in Akron where they are based it was called Rex salvage, Roadway was self insured so if something got damaged lost etc it ended up for sale there. I bought a whole K band dish (about 6 ft accross) tuner and all that jazz. Wow was it cool I had cable too but at the time K Band was used mostly for live feeds etc generally high quality and unencrypted. I am a news junkie so I loved I I saw stuff way before the general public and generally unedited. show were sparse and feed on them were wild but I could never helo feeling like a redneck with the dish in the backyard.
Cripes! Welcome the the real world, where you have to work for a living. Most of us would like to go back to high school, not for the social life, but for the lack of being required to really work.
You may one day be employed by (or even OWN a piece of) the cable company. Oh yeah, that's right, not YOU - you're ideologically above such concerns as earning a living. That's for the common people. You're too intelligent to be required to WORK.
BAH! Pay your damn cable bill or terminate the service. And just shut up about it.
You get your news from teevee? You poor poor man. Radio, internet, newspapers, magazines are good for news. Teevee is only good for live sports, mindless comedies and dramas. Get your movies and documentaries on DVDs, get the rest of your entertainment from books, concerts and plays, pubs and friends.
Why am I paying for channels that broadcast in Arabic, Hindu, German, French, Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Spanish? When all I really want is the Navajo channel.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
I don't see anything wrong with this. If there were no fees then people would be calling every month dropping one channel and subscribing to another. If enough people do it, it'll cost the company lots of money, in customer support time if nothing else.
BTW, the cable company here offers some of the digital cable channels a la carte. The trick is, being offered through the digital box, they can change your subscribed channel list remotely, no need to send someone over. I'm not sure if they charge a fee for changing the lineup. Now if they could set it up to change the lineup programatically, then they shouldn't charge more than to recoup the programming cost.
BTW*2, the cable company in another city offers a "vacation" service. You can call them and ask to discontinue your cable service for between 3-6 months while you go on vacation. The thing is, they don't even come and disconnect your service during that time, they just don't bill you. I suppose they figure they lose less money from the few abusers than they would by sending technicians to all the vacationers.
not purchase cable TV at all.
/...
My cable TV bill is exactly $0
my Satilite TV bill is exactly $0
my Digital TV bill is exactly $0
TV sucks, it sucks you in you spend half an hour looking for something to watch then you find something that is half over. and at the end you foten look for something else to watch till your favorite program comes on in an hour or so.
I get my news from the Inet.
I get my sports from the local bar.
When I feel I need passive entertainment I walk a block down to the local video store rent a movie and pop it in.
The movie cost $2.00 Canadian, and I feel the need for that about once a week $9 a month is quit a savings over cable. and the most important thing about it is that it comes to an END.
there is no endlessly surfing for "something to watch" when its over I get to do something else usefull....
Like Post this rant on
--meh--
for years I have been willing to pay more for telev ision where I don't have to watch commercials or even the golf channel. BET has to be a bad one also. I am even willing to pay for basic cable plus 1$ per channel that I want, just to not recieve the channels I don't want. I hope this trend continues.
Case in point: the recent slapfight between Viacom and Dish. The problem wasn't that Viacom was charging too much, or Dish was trying to pay too little. The problem was, Viacom got to look like the injured party, and Dish got to look the ogre, taking goodies from subscribers but raising their rates when programming costs went up. With ala carte programming, if Viacom wants to raise rates for its channels, Dish can pass along those costs on those channels only, with perhaps a note to subscribers that this was a decision by Viacom and there are other channels on the Dish lineup for subscribers who wish to move their dollars.
I would think over the long haul that this would provide an incentive for programming providers to price their products more competitively.
Aren't shows done filming for the season before the first episode airs usually? And if not, would it be that hard to change?
Filming isn't everything. Some shows have a lot of time-consuming post-production. And some shows such as South Park have even shorter filming->post->premiere cycles.
I used to work for Echostar, they HAD a la carte programming once, it was called Dish Picks. They discontinued the service because of cheapskates who'd call in several times per day to add/remove channels as the shows that they liked came on.
Wrong Fix: Drop the a la carte model entirely.
Right Fix: If a channel is turned on once during a calendar week, bill the subscriber for the entire week.
... especially if you live in a foregone-conclusion state like NY.
For me, it's either do that or don't bother showing up, since I think both candidates are broken for various reasons, and lesser-of-two-evilism holds no appeal. I can't in good conscience vote for either sorry excuse dished up by our broken political system.
yay
... where the heck is my flying car?!
Its the governments responsibility to regulate systems that create natural monopolies. I live in a canyon with little or no over the air reception. I live 20kfeet+ from my local telco. I have a single cable company and since my house is facing the wrong side of the sky we can't get satellite. I have ONE choice for internet and TV, thats cable. I HATE my cable company (poor service, frequent outages, excessive rates, etc...). I pay $120/month for 1.5Mbit/384k internet alone. I refuse to pay any more to get a ton of channels I won't watch.
Right now I've been using a SageTV (Tivo like PVR) to record shows off the unscrambled basic cable and downloading the rest off of Bit Torrent.
As usual big business is not collecting as much money as they could from me, simply because they won't provide the services that the customers want.
Music industry: $0.99 Music downloads WITHOUT DRM
Film industry: ~$2-5.00 Movies downloads WITHOUT DRM
TV industry: ~$2-5.00 Pay channels A LA CARTE
Sure the prices could very based on demand etc... But rather than being paranoid about piracy if the industries just made it EASIER and more convenient for the users to pay rather than to pirate, all of these arguments would be moot.
Let customers change their channel lineup via the internet. No labor expense at all for the signal provider once the system is in place.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
...perhaps, is the fact that MANY of these bundled stations run "paid programming" for 4 to 8 hours a day. So we're all paying for air time that has already been paid for. I'd be more inclined to give the cable companies a pass if they made an honest effort to utilize all of the monopoly power they've been given. But when 25% of my stations are showing infomercials at any given time, I get pretty pissed about my cable bill. Why bother with 200 stations when all the real programming could fit in 100 or so?
All the posts are assuming networks will still charge in Ala carte pricing. Who says that a channel won't offer their programming for free? Most of the networks I get already have advertising on them, it won't be a stretch for them to forgo the subscriber fee to make sure they have a subscriber for advertising purpose. These networks have to have lower costs than most broadcast channels. No FCC license fees or transmitting equipment.
What, me worry?
as opposed to $54 a month for 185 channels... provided they were the 12 premium channels I wanted AND I could change my channel subscription on a monthly basis.
I would only watch five or six hours of TV a week anyway. I currently don't have TV anymore, I have internet and PS2. $54 a month buys one PS2 game a month and I don't have any commercials!
[signature]
Easier than that, they should be able to change their lineup through the digital box itself. That's how they can order pay-per-view movies right now, and that's what I meant by "programatically" beit through the digital box, automated phone interface or internet. It wouldn't surprise me if that's already in the works, competition between cable and satellite is quite hot here.
The problem with the FT.com article is that it doesn't even talk about the problem, or the solutions.
They talk about price protections in the past, and don't even consider the results might have actually been just a plot by cable companies. We know the whole rolling blackout thing in California's electric system were intentionally caused to ballon electric prices, and they still haven't come back down to this day. The same happened with the California clean air act. When it was voted in, major car companies started leasing viable, fully-electric cars. When the news quietly broke that the deadline would probably be extended if viable clean vehicles weren't ready, companies suddly pulled all their clean vehicles back in, and haven't released any more. In fact, now they are widely touting the wonders of fuel cells, because they know it'll be many years before they are ready for prime time. It's a red herring. It's all a case of the companies conspiring to push public opinion to change the laws in their favor.
It talks about the great upgrades that cable companies are going through, but you know something, as long as I'm not subscribing to digital cable, I dammed well shouldn't be paying the price for it. Digital cable is something I don't want, and if they are charging me extra for it (presumably to make digital cable look less expensive) then they deserve to be regulated to hell.
Now, for some solutions...
They say the problem is that channels like ESPN won't be able to reach the same viewership. Well hell, that's no problem at all. If ESPN wants everyone to be able to tune-in, then they simply need to NOT CHARGE the cable company for carrying the channel. Just like your local channels, they can be carried for free, so there's no reason not to recieve them. If Viacom wasn't charging to be carried, they'd still be available on Dish Network. Hell, they get their revenue from ads anyhow, and show MORE ads than free broadcast TV, so where's the cause for me paying for each channel? (CSPAN and TCM being the only commercial-free exceptions that comes to mind)
Also, the article's claim that Satellite started the push for higher prices is just a blantant lie. Satellites have always had their basic plans cheaper than basic cable, and Dish Network is less than HALF what I pay for basic cable TV right now.
This article is obviously a case of cable companies throwing their influence around to get somebody to write something favorable to counter McCain.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That non-ad supported channels work just fine. HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Stars, all of those are commercial free other than their internal ads pimping their shit to fill time and make movies fall along 1/2 hour blocks. You pay extra to recieve their feeds, and people DO pay. We currently have HBO and Stars, and are debating getting Showtime now that Penn and Teller's BS is on it. They are worth the extra money for the quality they provide.
These networks quite clearly show that, at least for many kinds of content, direct payment works quite well.
This might be a little too forward looking, but if we are still to have true convergence at some point, ala carte seems to me to be the logical result. I can't imagine going to my computer/media center in the near future and not being able to control what I want to watch and when I want to watch it, much like I can currently visit nearly any website anywhere in the world at any time. This is all part of the point and a benefit of digital technology.
Of course, the ads will always be around to annoy the heck out of us.
In the meantime, I'm paying for 150 channels of garbage, I only watch about 9 of them. (Comcast digital)
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
and I don't really know what stations they're on, and I'm not ususally concerned about when they're on.
Tivo rules.
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Actually, the TW people you would have been talking to were in your local area, it's just that the techs are incompetant fucktards. I know this because I do tech support for Road Runner.
I'd like to contrast the American experience with the Canadian one, and maybe some contrasts will become apparent...
r eas have their warts... But I think it's important to make the point that the "pay per channel" model is not the only important part of a workable scheme...
1) My cable provider has a-la-carte pricing, but only if you take the expensive digital rig (you pay more up-front, you pay less if you stick around for five years) you can also pick a bewildering array of packages(of course, confusion is their friend)
2) The pricing scheme for channels is heavily regulated, for several reasons, some of which follow:
a) Part of the per-channel price(indeed any cable bill) goes to promote production of local content
b) the CRTC regulates the final price, for consumer-protection, and to prevent many kinds of abuses
c) not all per-channel fees are considered equal
d) some channels are deemed to be worth more, for various reasons(some are actually one-fee for four channels worth of bandwidth under one theme) for example
e) the linguistics aspect also is involved(somehow, I'm neither a lawyer, nor really inclined to learn so much of this, as it oftens to be more politics than law)
It certainly isn't a perfect system, but it works on the following premises:
1) the experts on the CRTC are supposed to know what the costs are
2) The satellite operators and cable operators are "passing the token" about who's unwilling not to charge consumers for unviewed channels, having regulated prices goes around the issue of "whose fault is it" Consider also that: channel operators fight so hard to get a license to have their own channels, they can't actually argue "well gee, we fought like lions to get this and now you take away our revenue stream!" when they actually have to justify that they will have audience once the channel operates, just to get the license to start their channel.
3) Many of the bundles include common mixes, for cheaper, but I did the math, and I found it almost impossible not to get some channels I didn't want along with channels I did... Choosing per-channel for example, was the best way to guarantee I could take the Space Channel along with the Z channel(the local, francophone techno-channel)
Now obviously, so far the system works, and the large, monolithic, much-more-profitable-in-densely-populated-urban-a
The idea being is that customers in the ideal system don't pay for what they don't want, not that they pay for those they want...(Yes they are ALSO paying for those they want, but it's very easy to just tax for the unwatched channels by doubling the rate of heavily watched channels if there is no regulation/supervision)
It's also noteworthy that they don't offer this choice without a substantial customer investment(the equipment is around 600$US total, perhaps, but I'm not sure how to deduct the programming credits, since they seem to apply only on popular bundles, which go against the grain of this article).
How is this relevant you say?
Well let's see:
a good, customer-defending system has safeguards in place to protect customers, both from channel and cable-operator-spun fud(they are there to make a profit, and most of them DO own news-producing companies, so the media can hardly be considered neutral when they are concerned.) So I'd certainly suggest to any south of the border friends to consider enforcement of any safeguards before any "pay per use" schemes are applied "because they are cheaper" it's not really that simple. Without any bundles, consider this pricing: over 1$US(using approximate exchange rate) per channel, if you take no bundle at all, with a 500$+ setup fee
Some of the bundles start at 15$US... But do they include what you want? That is the question, so unless you really need only some channels, it might not really be that much cheaper, unless you really aren't interested in the same thing as the suburbian 2.3 kids family next door. Now that just may be the case of many slashdotters, your milage may of course vary.
If you "need a huge C-band dish", it is most certainly NOT cable! And I refuse to give a dime to anyone who is selling "wireless cable". That smacks of "honest policitians".
The real reason programming suppliers oppose unbundling is the slim chance that, while surfing around during the commercials in the program you want to watch, you'll be exposed to a commercial on one of the bundled channels (or at least, so they can make that case to their advertiser clients, who pay the programmers lots of money for that chance to be seen). Bundling increases ad revenue for the program suppliers.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
Actually, this is a pretty valid point. If this regulation was applied to cable, not satellite, it would probably just encourage a lot of users to switch to satellite. Which would just repeat the problem, because then people would bitch that they can't economically get a satellite connection for only one channel.
There is already legislation in place that forces cable companies to "honor" an al la carte cable plan if the consumer knows to ask for it. The operator/sales assoc. may argue that the can not do this but they are required by federal law to comply. The proposed bill will just force them to offer this option to their customers. In my option they would gain more subscribers.
Channels would be dropped en masse from cable listings if they were unwilling to charge the cable company per subscriber. ( Cable companies are like phone companies that make part of their revenue from the bill and part from inserting ads into the middles of conversations ) You would be buying content from the channels directly under a la carte.
Since there's not room in the market for more than one or two big general audience channels, channels would specialize trying to cater to 'types' of people that will ( hopefully ) find more than one their favorite shows offered. As she channels specialize they will decrease the competition for viewers, but also their possible revenue stream. The Quilt Channel might get most of the Quilting-obsessed to subscribe, but the budget would be low. That doesn't mean it would not be profitable. Low revenue is OK if costs are likewise low. If the quilt channel were to generalize, it would have to compete with The Craft Channel. If the Craft Channel wanted to generalize it would have to compete with HGTV etc all the way up to the Networks.
Because of the competition for larger revenue streams, the subject-matter specialization of channels will continue to be somewhat hazy, reflecting this tension, but because serving smaller audiences with more inexpensive programming that happens to be more valuable to them than higher budget mass appeal fare is still profitable, channels will continue to specialize.
You will probably have to pay the same to get the same amount of good stuff, but hopefully the filler will be better.
It might be interesting if a la carte could be taken to the extreme. Every viewer gets every channel but it's pay per view. There would be more adverts for shows though that way. Would you pay to watch a show with commercials? You pay a cable bill for that privilege, and pay an ISP to view web pages with ads. ( at least the ISP doesn't put them there like cable companies do with shows ) If channels had to charge viewers directly for content, would more of it be free and ad supported, or would all content be ad-free but charged for?
Eat at Joe's.
You are allowed to use an apostrophe to pluralize acronyms that are pronounced as letters instead of the word (CD's - yes, RISC's - no).
First, digital cable companies have the ability to block certain channels while allowing others, making a la carte very simple. They already do this with sports on demand, PPV, and other channels in my area.
Second, how does a new channel attract viewers? By offering free access periodically. Remember when HBO did this in the late 80's/early 90's? I know we watched lots of HBO during those descrambled weekends.
Third, I'd be interested to know the actual percentage of your total channels you watch. I personally have basic (analog cable), about 75 channels, and watch about 10 of them. I can say with certainty that there are at least 30 which I have removed with my remote and never see (including shopping networks, hispanic programming, etc).
Finally, if there are any network executives reading, I would pay more money to watch a TV channel with far fewer commercials. Otherwise, I'm going to have to get a DVR and no longer watch live TV. I just can't stand 3 mins of commercials every 12 minutes anymore.
[quote]seems to think we'll end up paying just as much under a la carte pricing.[/quote]
He is missing the point. For me it is not the fact that I want cheaper pricing or the fact that I feel like I am being ripped off. I like the price I pay for T.V. currently. What I want is the channels that I want. I don't want someone telling me that these channels are what I want. I want the choice.
we have 'tv a la carte' available for some years now already. You can either pick 'bundles' that come with predefined channels or you can select only the channels you want. It works through cable, but almost everybody has cable here.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Even doing a la carte on a monthly basis is too much of a committment - On HBO I want to watch the Real Time with Bill Maher, The Sopranos and Deadwood, and pretty much nothing else.
If true a la carte is possible, how much is a single episode of the Sopranos worth? Would I be willing to accept commercial interruptions in order to see it for free?
If I could pick my shows AND pick my commercials - sorta like netflix, then I'd be a very very happy camper.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...