Slashdot Mirror
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. "
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
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].
"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
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.
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.
... 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.
Cancel Cable. Save $50 a month and read a good book.
OK.
What's the ISBN number for The Daily Show?
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 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
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.
OK.
What's the ISBN number for The Daily Show?
It's 0836253256 .
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