FCC Report Supports a la Carte TV Pricing

An anonymous reader writes "The FCC may soon allow cable/sat companies to sell individually customized TV channel packages. From the article: ' FCC chairman Kevin Martin spoke to a forum, sponsored by the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee in Washington, which has been examining indecency on radio and television. Martin told the forum that the FCC will soon release a report that concludes that offering TV programming a la carte is economically feasible and in the best interest of consumers.'"

Comments

TV a la carte increases overall price?

[digitaldc]

Questions for the FCC Overlords of Programming:
Who determines how much a channel is worth? The FCC? A parental group who hates Howard Stern and anything deemed indecent by their 'decency' standards?
Will you have the choice of either or plan? To opt out?
Can you choose from something other than one monopolistic cable company that only serves your area?

If you do not have the choice of leaving your plan the way it is, I see this only increasing the price of your overall bill if you want to keep the same amount of channels you already had. Then again, maybe this will inspire people to stop watching TV altogether...but probably not.

Re:Capitalism must suck

[Tim C]

Of course, nevermind that the channels that are "less-popular" are probably useless beef anyway.

Or they simply cater to a much less mainstream taste, such as literary or arts programs. Just because something isn't to your taste (or mine) doesn't make it "useless beef".

GREAT idea

[Mr2001]

I've been waiting for this a long time. I'm paying $45 a month for analog cable, and the way it is now, I can't get HBO without subscribing to an additional digital cable package (which includes a bunch of channels I'll never watch) and an HBO "plex" (including about 5 HBO channels). That's an extra $40-50 a month to get the one channel I want. If I could just pay for the channel I want, I could actually subscribe to HBO instead of downloading the shows I watch from BT.

Good for HD fans

[techstar25]

This will give people like me the option of only paying for the channels that are in HD. Right now, with Brighthouse in Florida, in order to get the 10 channel "HD Pack" I have to subscribe to 200 crappy-looking "digital" channels that I never, ever watch. Technically, I should be able to subscribe to only the major networks HD channels (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC) but they repeatedly say I can't do it without purchasing the entire digital tier.
If people only subscribed to HD channels it would give the other networks some incentive to switch to HD.

It's been possible for a while

[cblguy]

I used to work in the analog head end department at Scientific-Atlanta. We could configure channel groups, as many as we wanted (or at least, I saw no limit). I could see this extending all the way to the customer. However, the 'gotcha' is that it requires a cable box (or some other intelligent device) to do it. Customers that rely simply on cable ready TV's/VCRs would not be able to do it.

With the digital set top boxes, it'd be a piece of cake.

I don't see it being offered with the possibility to save you money on your cable bill, though. It requires individualized effort (unless they tie a web interface to the head end, and allow you to select your channels online, which would be cool). Even then, there would have to be added cost to do it. But I'd love to get rid of shopping channels, crazy religious channels, and other channels that I will never watch (spanish, BET, etc).

Wrong: A very good idea

[foolish_to_be_here]

I've heard in this thread lots of complaints that (little viewed) channels like, Discovery, History and PBS would be dropped using this approach. Wrong! These channels have huge followings as they get referred to, time and again in diverse public forums other than Slashdot. Think about it, both SciFi and Food channel were once part of the basic Direct TV satellite package years ago until the little phone cord attached to the back of every box tattled to the marketing guru's that they were getting lots of viewer time, so they got bumped up into premium packages.

Re:A la carte *allowed*?

[Life2Short]

We gave up our big analog dish when we moved in 1999. When we left "a la carte" programming had been available and was still available, dating back to when we originally bought it (1985, I'm sure it was available before then as well). Not only could you pick and choose channels, you could decide to have them for only a month at a time if you liked. So I could call in, give my account number and satellite receiver number (VideoCipher descrambler), and they could activate Cinemax for me for one month because I had read the monthly dish guide and I saw a lot of programming in the upcoming month I wanted to watch. Funny how that was all possible then...

Re:What I'm Concerned About

[IPFreely]

Well, yeah. That's good and I do that too.

But it does not solve the problem. With that, you still have to sit there with your finger on the button and do the fast forwarding. He was saying that he can't walk away and let his kids watch alone. PVR does not solve that unless you can program it to auto-skip commercials, and that isn't going to happen.

Re:Right Answer, Wrong Reason

[morgan_greywolf]

From your linked article:

Our founding fathers were God-fearing men who understood that for a country to stand it must have a solid foundation; the Bible was the source of this foundation. They believed that God's ways were much higher than Man's ways and held firmly that the Bible was the absolute standard of truth and used the Bible as a source to form our government.

From the Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11:

"The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."

I think Thomas Paine's words are a perfect example that the Founding Fathers were Deists, not Christians;

I would not dare to so dishonor my Creator God by attaching His name to that book (the Bible).
Among the most detestable villains in history, you could not find one worse than Moses. Here is an order, attributed to 'God' to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers and to debauch and rape the daughters. I would not dare so dishonor my Creator's name by (attaching) it to this filthy book (the Bible).
It is the duty of every true Deist to vindicate the moral justice of God against the evils of the Bible.
Accustom a people to believe that priests and clergy can forgive sins...and you will have sins in abundance.
The Christian church has set up a religion of pomp and revenue in pretended imitation of a person (Jesus) who lived a life of poverty.

Or how about Benjamin Franklin?

As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupt changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble...."

Still think the Founding Fathers never had Separation of Church and State in mind? How about Madison:

Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

The real myth is that the United States was founded on Christian principles. It wasn't. This is a lie propogated by people pushing a particular religious and political viewpoint not shared by the vast majority of Americans.

Re:FP: What a great idea!

[smooth wombat]

As if to underscore what I said, CNN has this article in which the PTC admits that its primary focus is on sex, not gore. From the article:

Yet the PTC, which frequently files complaints with the Federal Communications Commission about network fare, admits that its focus has primarily been on sex, not gore. One reason is that there's no government agency concerned with these issues, said Melissa Caldwell, the PTC's research director.

The council prefers to steer advertisers away from programming it disapproves of, but hasn't started any campaign against a broadcaster for violent content this season. The closest it came was a protest this month about an episode of CBS' "NCIS" where a stripper had her throat cut, primarily because it was shown before 9 p.m.

Americans "seem to have more of a taste for violence, unfortunately, so it's a little bit more difficult to get people worked up over it," Caldwell said.

Re:An alternative to full a la Carte?

[rfunches]

Why does BBC AMERICA carry advertisements when the BBC in the UK does not? In the UK, the BBC is funded by British TV licensing fees. However, by law, the BBC is not allowed to use this money to fund channels outside the UK, and so BBC AMERICA is reliant on advertising sales. Without advertisements, we would not exist.

From http://bbcamerica.com/about/about.jsp

They (BBC America) wouldn't have to pay BBC UK for broadcast rights, but they would have to make enough money from running television ads, and if BBC America runs into financial trouble, BBC UK can't legally bail them out.

Re:About time

[Photon Ghoul]

So someone like me who watches things that aren't so popular such as Animal Planet, National Geographic Channel, Food Network, DIY Network, etc

Actually, you're probably not as alone as you think. Everyone I talk to that still watches TV typically watches those channels or similar ones.

So which channels are popular anyway?

[SqueakRu]

I pieced together this ranking for an article I found here:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117918743?catego ryid=1275&cs=1

*2 & 3 are not listed but I am almost positive they are HBO and CineMax respectively

Most popular cable channels (in the USA)
1. TNT
*2. HBO
*3. Cinemax
4. Cartoon Network - woohoo!
7. Fox News
8. Spike TV
9. ESPN
10. Sci-fi
12. Comedy Central
14. FX
15. Discovery
18. TV Land
20. Court TV
21. Hallmark Channel
22. Home and Garden
23. TLC
24. Food Network
25. CNN
26. Animal Planet
27. VH1
30. Bravo
33. Country Music TV
35. E!
36. Weather Channel
37. Game Show
38. MSNBC
39. Speed Channel
42. National Geographic
44. Oxygen
46. Discovery Health
48. WE
47. Outdoor Life
50. Noggin
51. CNBC
58. BBC USA

Re:Indecency?

[theJML]

Ok, so this might be off topic but to respond to the previous poster's:

...even the PC industry (try to get a PC without MS Windows).

I can think of one right off the top of my head because my company just dropped money on another 8 servers. Dell Yeap, they've got (and have had for as long as I can remember) a "No OS Installed" option. Quite handy when you want to put your own Gentoo or netBSD distro on there and it's not in Dell's "we'll install this for you" list, or for people like me who'd like to install the packages they want and not install the stuff they don't need.

Now, to be back on topic, I know I would definately pay a little more than the current average cost per channel to only get decent ones because I know I would still come out ahead. I mean, right now it's like 40-50 bucks a month for basic digital cable, we get, maybe 150 channels? That would equate out to 26 to 30 cents a channel. I watch, probably 10-15 of those. At 30 cents each, that's $3-$4.50, not 40-50 bucks. Even at double or heck, tripple that ($12 bucks) I'd still be saving over 28 bucks a month!

It also might be interesting to use the data of which channels people buy to show the networks what people like. If lots of people choose DIY, HGTV, Food, Discovery, etc.. then maybe they'll start making shows that appeal to those people to try and get them to drop the $2 bucks on their station. And just like people who buy a console just for one game, I'm sure there are plenty of people who think "Hey, they got this one show I want to watch, I wonder if they have anything else? Well I'll Drop 2 bucks to find out!". It may actually HELP the networks at the same time.

Anyway, that's my $0.04.