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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. "
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.
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.
"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...
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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...
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/
Saying that cable TV A La Carte pricing would hurt the little stations is like saying breaking up ClearChannel would hurt the small bands and record producers, because they couldn't get national coverage. The problem is, the small people would be able to get more access to markets if the content provider didn't require something to be popular (or at least WANT it to become popular) to allow the content to reach the public.
Come on folks, the big cable companies' claim that they act as they do to protect the smaller channels is codswollop. The smaller companies would benifit from A La Carte Programming and the popular channels that are already on everybody's standard package (but could be eliminated under A La Carte programming) would loose out. THINK ABOUT IT!
Little Brother, watching the watchers
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.
It's either that or install 60 traps on everyone's drop line!
Or 1 programmable trap. This IS the 21st century, we DO have the technology.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
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.
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. --
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.
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.
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.
I'm an electrical engineer now, but I worked for the cable company 14 years ago. I've never heard of an addressable trap, and I don't think it's practical. To paraphrase the grandparent post, we DON'T have the technology -- not outside the lab, anyway.
Consider a system with 100 channels. You want to offer the customers total a la carte programming: any combination of any channels they want.
Can you make a digital filter (your programmable trap) that operates at VHF frequencies? Possibly, but I doubt you could put 100 of them into a modest-sized box, and have reasonable power consumption, reliability, low cost, etc.
Digital is all that's left, as the original post in this thread pointed out. But if you want your TV to do the tuning -- and if you want to use your TV's remote, hook up extra sets, etc. -- then you need 100 separate decoder circuits in the box, 100 separate RF modulators, etc. It's horribly impractical.
Having said all that, the cable companies should be made to use a standardized digital box, with a la carte programming, decent encryption to prevent theft-of-service, etc. You should be able to buy such a box if you want, and it should work with any cable provider. (Maybe this already exists -- as I said, it's been 14 years...)
Oh yeah -- if the decoder's in the home, the customer pays for the electricity it uses, rather than the cable company.
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.
If I say art will you leave me alone?
OK I guess not, but consider this: The most popular TV shows are all sitcoms and reality shows. Are you going to pay for any cable if the only thing that gets shown on any network is a sitcom or a reality show? What is your 5 favorite movies, or 5 favorite tv shows? Would you be ok if they got the axe because most people didn't like them?
Majority Rules is not a good way to produce much of anything least of all television, film or music. I am not defending the crap that is on TV, nor am I saying that only having to pay for the half dozen or so channels that I like is a bad idea, I am just saying that when you let the majority decide what you are going to watch, you better like midget dating and new episodes of survivor and friends because that is all you are going to be getting anytime soon.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
You'd be surprised. Did you know that the Bass Fishing Channel is one of the most popular on cable? Similarly, my relatives are astounded that Cartoon Network has any viewers over the age of ten.
Examine your cable company's channel schemes sometime, particularly the "extended" package. Most of the channels there were selected because they are highly valued by some small segment of the population who would otherwise be happy with basic cable. (Which I personally find pure evil. I may be happy with the concept of bundling, but the practice of it often leaves much to be desired!)