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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. "
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.
Also in Canada, I believe the community co-op cable supplier in Regina, SK has long offered channels a la carte. I think they also pay less per average, not more. They put in the infrastructure to do it years ago.
The difference between this sort of system and the more commonly seen kind seems to be that they're a co-op, hence not driven to bilk their customers out of as much money as possible for programming they don't watch.
"Bundling" in generaly is far too often about the scaling of a con than the economy of scale.
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.
I agree with about 95% of what you have said, except for your per-channel costs.
Note that Echostar (Dish) is for this, but the cable companies aren't (or are indifferent). It costs Echostar virtually zero to split up their channels. They already have a 100% digital system, with all company-controlled boxes. Their distribution costs are fixed, until a satellite falls out of the sky. They are already providing all channels to all viewers, and the boxes limit what you can see. Since they already have an account management system you can access via their website or an on-TV menu, all they have to do is add checkboxes for what channels you want to watch, and change you some minimum fee plus a nominal fee per channel. Add, say 15% to make it a good deal to keep the packages, and everyone's happy. This is very much not the case with the cable companies, which is why they aren't interested.